Guild Wars 2

Spirits need an overhaul. All four of them need to be re-worked into a more strategic form of buff as opposed to a % chance to proc an effect. We wouldn’t need to go far for ideas, as Guild Wars had plenty of great ones.

Leave them destroyable, leave the traits. Change their primary effect and their names to match.

Really, take your pick: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Nature_ritual

And many of these could easily be adapted to fit the GW2 combat engine. Energizing Wind? Maybe reduce the cooldowns of all skills by 10% for up to 5 allies in range of the spirit?

Eh, I’ll keep dreaming.

I 1vZ all the time and come out on top.

On top of a funeral pyre.

Siamoth is the only porcine pet worth using, IMO. Even then I think you’ll get more mileage out of a canine or a spider.

At least siamoths are cute.

Yeah, they’re oso tired.

A post I just made in another thread reminded me that the cakes you can launch from the new Birthday Blaster item actually do effect your pet until it is swapped. You can even see that stat enhancement in the pet menu!

So for everyone that loves running around with a single brown bear all the time, don’t forget to feed it loads and loads of cake.

Open world PvE is about the only place you can get away with using Master’s Bond to megabuff pets. Slap 6 in BM for funzies, slot Master’s Bond, slot Pet’s Prowess and Companion’s Might, whip out your Birthday Blaster and shoot cake all over your River Drake (it actually works.)

Boom-bam. Activate Rampage as One, stack might on him, activate Signet of the Wild and press F2. Watch carnage.

It’s not super practical, but it is fun.

I say put a Taco Bell there.

For functionality, Wolf/Jungle Spider because longbow kiting pew-pew.

Aesthetically, my wolf Buster. ’Cause ROCK YOU! BUSTUH WOLF! Are you okay?

Paws! Time-out everyone!

Can you lay off the puns, please?

You have a lot of cripple with SB4, Dagger5, and Muddy Terrain. I am assuming you are going Hawk/Eagle to benefit from a low CD F2 to trigger Intimidation Training more. Since you’re already throwing out good amounts of cripple, I’d consider swapping one or both of your birds to Owl/Raven, because they have much better burst and you’ll probably still maintain permanent cripple anyway.

I find they are best for longbow-centric builds. Quick Draw puts Hunter’s Shot at a 9 second CD, making it a permanent source of swiftness for your pets, since they aren’t getting the same speed bonus from the runes.

I also think they’re better if you use Sword/Dagger. They have nice, long conditions that benefit from the extra duration the runes give.

Gonna test to see if the GS changes make it usable for small scale WvW over sword/dagger.

For those interested, message me in-game.

Charr, without a doubt.

Stands up and begins clapping slowly

Good post, Prysin.

I am a pretty die-hard longbow enthusiast, as such I did what I could to make it work in dungeons, but it’s strictly a back-up weapon there. Sword/Horn Frostspotter is a must.

I run 6/5/0/3/0 and use Remorseless and Quick Draw, other traits are all the usual dungeon running stuff. That way I can stack vuln super high on my own when heading into a bigger fight, of I can constantly contribute to high vuln stacks if I need to take a breather and back off with my longbow.

But yeah, it’s generally not a good idea.

I feel like there will be immense QQ about the Rapid Fire change.

I am with Black Box on this. Human error is what levels the playing field. There should be no inherent bonuses in a game that allow a newcomer to dispatch a veteran player, because that seriously undermines the work that a good player puts in to achieve that level of greatness.

I do agree that people should learn by competing against players of like skill. It’s not fun getting trounced 100 times in a row by a player better than you, so it’s good to work your way up. At the same time a lot can be learned from those losses, as well. Sometimes a loss means more than a win for the growth of a player.

This makes me think of the arcade days of dudes crowded around a fighting game machine. I remember getting continuously whooped when I was new to the scene, but I never felt like that was unfair. What would be their motivation to play if one dude can slap his quarters in and rack up a huge win streak after only playing the game for a few hours?

This game could use more gorilla warfare.

Mesmers do have to build clones to shatter again, so I don’t know why on Tyria you’d choose them for your argument. Stealth is irrelevant.

The point is that mistakes are punished. The root of competition (competitive gaming in particular) is punishing mistakes. If I can force a mistake, I get a reward. That’s not how warriors currently work. Now if I force a mistake, their Adrenal Health just keeps ticking harder or they still get huge damage boosts until they finally do dispense their adrenaline. Not cool, man.

“Do it ’till it works” is not a good class design.

Uuni.3561:

Any person regardless of skill level can dig up the current meta build for any given class, put a few hours into it in pvp and be virtually indistinguishable from an experienced player who has played the build for a long time. There is absolutely no iteration in the PvP scene after the first few weeks after a balance patch. The meta settles and all skill and innovation disappears

Do you honestly believe this? Indistinguishable from an experienced player who’s played the build for a long time? Where’s your proof of this? I have never seen a guy pick up a build and beat the person who pioneered said playstyle with only ‘a few hours in pvp.’ Never.

Yeah, ‘meta’ (I wish people would stop using this term) builds are strong. They’re prevalent for a reason. Effectiveness. People are always actively seeking out the most efficient build or playstyle in any competitive game. Any. Competitive. Game. Efficiency is king. That does not make a game imbalanced. People are always going to embrace the most efficient build.

I actually prefer for developers to let dust settle before changes are made. It allows the community to come up with effective strategies for beating popular characters and builds and often times it’s because of this that strategies or characters/classes fall in and out of favor.

When Marvel vs Capcom 3 came out everybody whined about Sentinel, they thought he was too good because at a very base level he is good. He’s hearty, does big damage, and is simple to play. People flocked to him. Good players actively developed strategies to beat him, bad players whined about it. Capcom immediately answers the whiners with a gigantic nerf to the character; Shortly thereafter the strategies the good players developed started leaking. So now you have all these strategies versus a nerfed character which renders said character almost useless. That’s kittening awful balancing. Capcom screwed the pooch.

You have to let things simmer. Look at Street Fighter IV, look at Starcraft II, look at the Tekken games. Those games have long periods between big balancing changes for a reason. Sometimes it takes the next game in the series, but they aren’t MMO’s so that’s not as big of a deal.

Guild Wars 2 is not on that level of balance, I am not saying that. It won’t be because it’s an RPG with way too much customization. I am saying that ANet’s infrequent patch model is a better way of balancing than knee-jerk changes. So far they’ve made a fairly well balanced RPG. That’s kittening hard to do.

Would I like to see more changes? Yes, sure. That’s exciting. It’s always fun seeing classes get new things, but I understand that that’s just not how game balance should be handled.

You are correct that using Storm Spirit to proc swiftness slows you down if your goal is to avoid combat. I usually only use it when combat isn’t really avoidable. Helps me take down an enemy or two and get back out of combat faster, plus the active ability combined with a River Drake F2 makes for a nasty chunk of damage.

Signet of the Hunt IS slower than swiftness by 8%, which is why I prefer just speccing more swiftness as opposed to relying on SotH. You could run Sword/Horn and Greatsword and actually have insane out of combat speed, but no ranged attacks.

Thanks for considering the pet swap!

As a Ranger, I lose my class mechanic for up to 60 seconds if I mess up. A thief can’t attack at all (barring auto attacks) if they’re careless with their initiative. As someone has already stated, a Mesmer loses his clones (and gets a cooldown) on a failed shatter. Etc.

Why a map completion build with such little access to swiftness? Even if it’s just double bird so that you can F1 on critters you pass by to get the buff, that’s still good swiftness. It’s also much better kill speed than burrs.

Personally this is what I did map completion with (most of the time.) I didn’t include gear choices, but a mix of Zerker and Knight stat gear is what I used and it works well. (Warning: Swiftness overkill!)

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNEQNBMhNakQNUVyWs7UHWuqBLu2rdg9AZdgCJYmpjzqZT5HHYtHA-e

I think that Thieves should be deleted in lieu of a new medium armor class, the Circus Clown. They constantly have the revealed debuff, all weapon skills are “Joke and Dagger” and every trait is “Last Refuge.”

Thieves are fine. Shadow Arts thieves are kind of a pain to fight in WvW, but whatever. That’s their place to shine and that’s okay. They keep you on your toes, at least. I’d rather have a protracted battle with a SA thief than watch a S/S LB dire stat heal-on-shout warrior drool all over his keyboard and beat pretty much anyone.

I like kiting. I like to pretend I’m a Longbow Matador and when silly GS warriors come running at me full-speed, I stealth and dodge through them and /wave before I knock them back and have my spider immobilize them for four seconds just that it can all be done again in just another few seconds.

iSpook.5612:

1 our burst skills should not blow if we miss, there are way too many ways to avoid our attacks anyway we are melee characters and we have to keep playing catch up with the target anyway

Yeah, let’s just enable lazy gameplay more. Great idea. This change should have been in the game since day one.

“Oh what’s that? You missed your wittle burst? It’s okay, there’s no penalty for that at all.”

Don’t pretend like you didn’t read the first part of my post. I am not justifying GW2 balance with anything, only including an entertaining video of what real imbalance looks like. I said there were problems and there are. The point of that post was to say that GW2 balance is far from ‘bad.’

There are very few circumstances in GW2 where individual skill can’t make up for small gaps in class balance. That means that something is being done right. Also, every class has a role in which they excel at. Unfortunately, due to its nature as both a PvE and PvP game, there are many factors that have to be balanced so you get these awkward situations where, yes, a class is over-(or under)-performing in a certain area of the game. The proper way to fix that isn’t to make these massive changes that alters the dynamic of a class, it’s to make small, gradual changes.

Good balance takes time. Other well balanced games have proven this.

Kiriakulos.1690:

Sevans.4619:

Man, I’m glad some of the people on these forums aren’t in charge of balancing the game.

Ever paid attention to the rate at which a well balanced fighting game progresses? Or better yet, what happens when there’s a knee-jerk nerf in a fighting game? You gotta be really careful and meticulous with this kind of stuff.

Maybe the current schedule would be ok if the game was “well balanced”. But it isn’t and that’s why a shorter balance period is required.

Also, too many balance changes make no sense from a player’s perspective. Remember Dhuumfire? Necros said that was a bad idea since the preview.

This game is more well balanced than most people would like to admit. There are some problems, of course. No game is perfectly balanced, but Anet has done pretty well considering all the factors that need balancing.

I feel like a lot of people that post here have never played a really imbalanced competitive game and have a hard time gauging what is truly imbalanced and what isn’t. But I’m no game designer… what do I know?

Man, I’m glad some of the people on these forums aren’t in charge of balancing the game.

Ever paid attention to the rate at which a well balanced fighting game progresses? Or better yet, what happens when there’s a knee-jerk nerf in a fighting game? You gotta be really careful and meticulous with this kind of stuff.

Atherakhia.4086:

Since it’s been brought up several times now. I’d also like to hear how the skill needing to hit provides counter play? When you see the Ranger shoot Hunter’s Shot how do you counter it? It’s instant cast with no telegraph.

Because it gives people a chance to use their active (and in some cases passive) defenses to negate the effect of the skill? Blinds, blocks, evades, reflects.

The actual animation of the skill is very different from all of the others on LB. At max range it’s possible to clutch evade it if the user doesn’t have Read the Wind.

Someone might think “Oh, I feel like this guys Hunter’s Shot is not on cool down, so I’m going to throw up my defenses because I really can’t let him nail that stealth at this moment.”

Counter-play. Simple concept, good design. Rewarding good defense is just as important as rewarding good offense.

A+

I love this idea!

No. It allows for some counter-play (which is always a good thing,) and it’s really not that hard to hit. Landing a Point Blank Shot pretty much guarantees a Hunter’s Shot if you can confirm that your PBS hit. And this is assuming this is a 1v1 where each player is focusing on the other. In a group fight or against anything with a minion, it’s guaranteed.

The pet swiftness is incredible for those who choose not to use Signet of the Hunt or Agility Training. It’s basically permanent pet swiftness while using LB.

As most people believe the Longbow to be an underperforming weapon, I wouldn’t mind seeing some kind of change, I just don’t think guaranteed stealth is the answer. Maybe one of these:

- Rip one boon on successful hit.
- Improved damage.
- 3s of cripple on successful hit.

Or if they really want to spice it up add an alternate skill while stealthed. Maybe an execute style move.

This has nothing to do with Rangers or Point Blank Shot and everything to do with bad players using any form of knockback at the wrong time.

Unless lag is particularly bad I land most of my Hunter’s Shots and Point Blank Shots. There seems to be a pretty narrow ‘cone’ in which these skills will fire properly and not cancel themselves. It takes some fancy camera maneuvering to use LB while you’re opponent is very close.

I slightly increased the camera movement sensitivity so that I can more easily swivel and guarantee my 2-3-4 skills hit when I really need them to.

I laughed out loud when I read the thread title.

T raw.4658:

Ah you’re from that Abyss guild on SBI.

I watched a bunch of you get wrecked by a power ranger from Mag

Thank you for your opinion but we really should disregard it.

That’s Mr. Power Ranger from Mag to you, sir.

But to be on topic, I like that they’re adding some skillful counter-play to the game. I will always support that. I am not sure the S/D nerf was entirely warranted, but I think people are kind of playing it up a bit. The good thieves will still be really kitten scary with that weapon set.

As others are saying, zerk rangers are good in groups. Rubbish on their own, though.

I frequently run with Empathic Bond, Signet of Renewal, and a LB with sigils of Purity/Generosity. Slap on some -% duration food and it’s pretty easy to deal with a lot of the players you’ll come across.

While Healing Spring has additional condition removal, I find I prefer Troll Unguent in most situations because it allows me to kite well and kiting has helped me win several battles against condition spamming builds.

That’s only a problem if you’re not paying much attention.

Personally, I don’t feel like an entire shout redesign or skill replacement is the proper thing to aim for here. That’s not to say that I think that shouts don’t need a lot of help, but that’s not what this is about.

Protect Me is currently useful (at least, as a WvW roamer.) I am afraid its usefulness will be worn out once the Signet of Stone change rolls through. Now I know that most pleas for class balance fall on deaf ears, but maybe — just maybe — it’ll get noticed because it’s a case of a sort of skill redundancy. “Why pick Skill A when Skill B does the same function but better?”

I guess I am interested in seeing player solutions for making Protect Me a competitive skill when compared to the upcoming Signet of Stone. Small changes that will make it significant even with the existence of SoS without entirely changing its functionality.

Only if I can get a ring that says “UNITY.”

Well it at least it seems that pretty much everyone is on the same page with this issue. Thanks for the feedback thus far.

How would you buff Protect Me so that it isn’t obsolete but also doesn’t over-shadow Signet of Stone?

With the upcoming change to Signet of Stone, I worry a bit about the viability of the Protect Me utility skill. This thread is to gauge what other ranger players think about the situation and see if maybe this is something that should be brought to ANet’s attention.

Protect Me:
- Instead of attacking, your pet will protect you by absorbing all damage you would take.
- 60 second cool down.
- Breaks stun.

Signet of Stone:
- Passive: Improves toughness [180 points at level 80] for you and your pet.
- Active: [You and] your pet take no damage from incoming attacks.
- 80 second cool down.

Do you other ranger players feel like the lower cool down and the stun break justifies the use of Protect Me over Signet of Stone? Or will it be outclassed and obsoleted once the changes roll through? I feel the stun break is nice, but I don’t quite think that it is worth it at the cost of nuking your pet (as well as preventing it from attacking) when you could just use Signet of Stone to protect both yourself and the pet while you’re both still attacking (and get a bunch of passive toughness to boot.)

What do you think? Could Protect Me use a buff to keep it viable? What kind of buff would you give it?

Personally I don’t think it’d have to be anything huge. Maybe granting retaliation to you and your pet so that it could be used offensively as well as defensively (and it also fits the theme of your pet protecting you.)

I didn’t think about that bit, good point.

I don’t post in WvW forums really, but I wanted to say that these videos are absolutely fantastic. Good job.

I don’t feel like Sunless runes work well with Entangle. The immobilize neutralizes the effect of the fear.

Krait runes on the other hand…

I think warrior LB is as good as it is because it’s attached to warrior, not because it’s an amazing weapon.

EDIT: But to be fair, it probably is better for AoE, however most WvW rangers roam anyway, so it’s not as big of a deal.

That’s why I suggested Sigil of Purity; I know Brown Bear’s on-demand removal is better, but at least this way your removal doesn’t take a complete nose-dive.

Spiders work well with Signet of Renewal and Protect Me. They have a solid life pool and since they tend to stay out of cleave damage, they usually are topped off on health. Plus Forest Spider comes bundled with all the poison you could ever want, a field that you can leap through or shoot through for weakness and poison respectively, and a three second immobilize for totally ruining somebodies day.

I just really hate bears. ;~;

How about:

Brown Bear -> Forest Spider
Sigil of Doom -> Sigil of Purity
Runes of Exuberance -> Runes of the Warrior

Just some food for thought. You get the poison, you keep the vitality, you get some passive condition removal that’s almost as good, more utility from your runes and a pet that’s better than a bear!

EDIT: Your ninja edit pointed out that precision was still a problem. You just get very little precision from those runes.