Guild Wars 2

Honestly I still wish remorseless made opening strikes unblockable. It would give us FINALLY an option to deal with all the rampant projecting reflection/destruction HoT introduced and would give the longbow its purpose again as a pressure weapon. Where as now its only a POTENTIAL burst weapon. Something you use to force someone to pop a cooldown so you can kill them with more reliable means.

Legendaries stopped caring because its so rare for us to actually GET a game that we just want to have fun playing it at this point. Going for legendary this season was the biggest mistake I made. I should have PURPOSELY tanked my games regardless of how that affected the people around me because then I would have atleast been able to play.

As it is right now I havn’t had a match in several days. I go in to que and in the 30-40 minutes I wait for the match I lose interest in playing at all and just leave. Because I know its very possible im only half way to a match.

Believe me If I could get more than 1 match a day concievably I would give more of a kitten about the quality of said matches. But as it is there isn’t much point for me to que at all much less worry about how even the matchup itself is gonna be.

Next season im just gonna play bloody Power Greatsword Reaper instead of my main because atleast then itl take me longer to hit legendary.

I LOVE the league system. But I HATE being at near the top of it.

ZS on F2 does offer some options for older pets.

I personally dislike the idea of it being some radius based skill. If it procs in a radius it is technically a support capable skill and will be balanced accordingly. Something I want to avoid in this case.

Ranger HAS support builds and skills. What we don’t have is a single viable self focused build in any game mode. Every build we currently run is based on its team utility for atleast 30-40% of its in combat effectiveness. In the case of PvE and WvW our support becomes over 60-70% of our combat effectiveness.

I would prefer the ZS to still trigger on the ranger and his pet only. No radius whatsoever. When you press f2 it pops on the ranger and his pet.

And in return it keeps the duration and effectiveness it currently has. If I had my dream trait it would also give the pet super speed. Why? Becuase many f2s force the pet to stand still for a moment or two due to the animation. Even with quickness. There are also cases where the pet has to move into range. With super speed it would enable the pet to more easily enter combat range which I feel would do more to assist old pets then say pets like smoke scale who don’t NEED that kind of bonus to land there burst. It would be a buff to nearly every base pet however.

It is true that a beast mastery focused ranger does not want to swap pets. Mostly as a BM build I used to run dual wolves before HoT due to the balance of damage vs cooldowns vs surivability of the pet.

This is especially true in the case of a shout ranger. Who often has various unique effects active on there pet which are canceled by swapping.

However the current ZS isn’t a bad trait. Infact its quite useful as far as reducing the dps loss for swapping pets.

The proposed version if ZS isn’t bad either. The difference being is that both would be useful in different situations.

One thing to consider is that pets don’t have there damage loaded onto there F2.

Lets take wolves for example whos damage is based on its two abilities that it casts itself. Or cats who do loads of damage with there auto attack.

Instead of trying to rework the damage on ZS. I would focus on the ability to increase the reliability of the pets damage. In this case the super speed on the pet we recieve before.

Sic Em gives the same effect and it does wonders at making a pet more ability to fight a moving target depending on the pets attack animation. A second source (Super Speed + Quickness + Might (Super Speed only on the Pet not the ranger)) might go a surprising difference towards improving pet reliability.

But heres the crux of my issue here. A: Zephyr’s Speed as it currently is. B: Zephyr’s Speed as you propose it to be.

Both would still be decent traits.

Which I would argue means it shouldn’t be the focus of rework when there are other traits that need so much more focus.

Traits like Predator’s Instinct need the kind of attention people in this thread are giving traits that are more likely to be taken.

If both A and B work. Lets mention the two concepts but FOCUS on the traits both majors and minors that need proper reworks to function in the current game.

I like most of your ideas. The Zephyr’s speed change is something id be interesting in testing before committing to. But thats mostly because I have hte muscle memory for the pet swap heal as one combo down by now. But the ability to control it would be interesting.

Adding more duality (Putting the trigger effect on both ourselves AND our pet like on the predator’s instinct trait) is a good idea. We don’t have things like unblockable attacks because we have two damage sources. Enabling both damage sources to use our trait effects makes it more likely the “proc” wont pop on something like a block. Many of our traits would actually be useful if they were reliable.

The damage boost in nature magic is interesting. Not something I have really thought about before despite taking that trait often.

The invigorating bond change is nice. Though I would argue to increase the base healing effect instead of swapping the scaling. An alternate healing method for non menders druids makes it possible to focus less on druid itself.

If a base ranger could have another source of self recovery at the cost of a protection proc that seems like a fair trade.

Having more mechanics that only a druid will really benefit from won’t help our build diversity much.

Edit: I don’t use skirmishing enough to have a determined opinion on it. But the most dangerous game change to boons that have instead effect is appealing to me. Typically by the time your might stacks up high enough to be dangerous your pressured enough to be near death.

Yes basically the poll didnt happen

Aye >.< Beggining to agree that these polls were backwards. Anyone who had even the SLIGHTEST issue with DBL is now virtually guaranteed to vote to scrap the DBL in the next Poll. I really hope it also requires a 75% to pass. And that anet understands that the fact that they now have to deal with 3 months of something they don’t enjoy is gonna push people that would have been okay with it as one of the three to vote to remove it entirely.

^ Can confirm. Got a full ascended valk set (Wanted to maximize my damage) balanced perfectly to hit 100% crit chance with massive amounts of power and ferocity. Was set to be in melee 100% of the time due to the massive healthpool so I would have 0 downtime on damage. Second they saw I wasn’t condi I got the boot.

So I have pretty much decided I was never going to raid since I don’t like condi builds and my other class is only viable on a playstyle I dont enjoy playing.

My Sweet Lily.1952:

No, there are dps specs. It’s just that while we don’t bring the highest dps, we bring unique buffs. So all our dps specs need to bring those buffs first, then we can focus the rest of our build to dps.

I mean, you wouldn’t want a Druid with 5k dps because he’s a ’’support’’, when you can have a Druid with the same supporting capabilities with 15k dps.

SB/A+T is the highest condi dps set we currently have so yes, it’s decent.

To be fair though our definition of a dps spec has to be in comparison to the dps specs of other classes. Other classes deal ALOT more dps than we do in there pure dps specs than we do in our pure dps specs.

Which means that if we wanted to build for dps. There would be litteraly no reason in taking us over say this other class that does more dps than us in their “Buffing” build than we do in our “dps” build.

What druid has that keeps us relevant is our roll as a burst healer and the fact that we buff people when we heal them. What kept ranger relevant before was teh existance of frost spirit and spotter.

Were a buff class as far as PvE goes as well as in the eyes of the PvE community. We aren’t and have never been taken for our damage.

Edit: One thing I will say though is that we are pretty good SELF buffers too. We can maintain permanent might and fury on ourselves along with high durations of quickness.

If content were released where that capability was relevant im pretty sure a “pure” dps ranger would be more relevant. Its just in current content perma boons are the norm. So being able to self buff isn’t that impressive.

Amenaza.8346:

Shadelang.3012:

Using the terrain to your advantage over gimmicks (like kiting in and ABOVE the cliffs near NE camp).

What do I get in EBG and ABL if I don’t want to deal with that? Oh their coming after me in the middle of this flat plain and Im not running a stealth class and there is no terrain that works to my advantage? Well better hide in this tower then.

Sorry to break it to you, but on EBG and ABL the kind of large group harassment you describe is perfectly possible, even without “cheesy stealth combos”. Ive done this plenty with DH or even vanilla guard, one of the most un-mobile class there is. It already is quite costly (in terms of time and effort) and disadvantageous for a pug zerg to chase roamers like that. Of course there is a risk involved and every roamer thats still left in this game knows that a roaming build worth its salt should have some sort of exit strategy.
What you ask for is the ability as a solo player/small group to severely impede larger groups with impunity, because due to the DBL map design in order to retaliate the enemy would have to run around for half a minute to just get on the same level of elevation as you. Does that sound fair in any shape or form?

Well I have to say you did a pretty good job cherry picking one part of my post to respond to while putting words into my mouth and completely ignoring the purpose of my post.

That part of my post is based off my own experiences. As I stated at the beginning of the post I do NOT claim to speak for any other player except for those I know and play with personally something some other people have not had the courage to do.

If your going to respond to my post. At least have the decency to not pick the one part of the post that was based on personnel opinion and experience. Of COURSE people are going to have different experiences. But choosing only one part of my post to rip at while ignoring the rest (Including as I said before the point of the post) is inherently dishonest on your part. As you take something out of context in order to portray it in a specific fashion to other readers.

Ryou.2398:

Shadelang.3012:

Unfortunately druid is there for the group damage buffs as far as PvE goes. Grace of the land and frost spirit to be percise. Everything else is secondary as far as our ability to contribute in places like raids and high level fractals go. Even our healing.

If you go for condi dps you can probably get a raid group as long as they don’t have a druid/ranger already (Your only losing dps if you bring two). Or atleast you will have a better chance than a power variant. But if you want to do high end content as a dps build then you should probably pick something like condi necro or engi.

Were a support class atm. Our dps variants don’t bring anything that someone else can’t do much much better.

So are there no dps specs at all right now its all healing? Sb is still decent right?

The closest you get to decent dps spec is going to be

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Druid_-_A/T_Condition

this is an axe torch focused build that also uses a shortbow. There is also a description on how to use it

But even this build doesn’t do as much damage as other classes condi builds. So it is brought for the buffs it provides. And the potential to burst heal while still doing enough damage to be useful in that regard. Its a utility build more than a dps build.

As for pure dps builds I don’t believe there are any that will get you into competitive groups like raids or high end fractals. But for normal PvE you can run pretty much anything you find fun.

Power builds do not have a similar option unfortunately.

Longbow Sword/Axe Shout Ranger.

I just wish there was less projectile reflection in the game so I could justify bringing it anywhere >.<

“Most players who play wvw” tend to be those who are used to running in a zerg.

Unlike the OP I am not gonna claim I speak for everyone (Who knew you could even DO that on the forums :O).

But me and my friends enjoyed DBL alot more precisely because it didn’t encourage mindless blobbing. It gave us a place to play where we could harass larger groups and actually get away without running cheesy stealth comps (Like stealth condi gank compositions who lead with moa while invis "rolls eyes). Fighting in the oasis and going up the ramps to shoot down at a bypassing group in order to pick people off. Heading behind trees and in side tunnels to come in behind larger groups in order to snipe a few off before they reach your tower.

Using the terrain to your advantage over gimmicks (like kiting in and ABOVE the cliffs near NE camp).

What do I get in EBG and ABL if I don’t want to deal with that? Oh their coming after me in the middle of this flat plain and Im not running a stealth class and there is no terrain that works to my advantage? Well better hide in this tower then.

Oh this hole in the wall is filled to the brim with reflects and there is no way around or ABOVE the enemy that isn’t plastered in aoes or leaves me completely 100% exposed for whenever someone with a higher movement speed decides to chase me down? Well hope I like literally sitting there doing absolutely nothing for 15 minutes until one side or the other gets bored and pushes the other.

As a roamer DBL gave me more options. I liked having those options. Now that I am back in ABL I pretty much abandoned my primary class and playstyle because it simply doesn’t function well with the limited choices I have.

If I sound annoyed in this post its because I am. Im tired of seeing posts claiming to speak for me. I don’t like having to individually speak up every single time someone copy pastes there assumptions. And I don’t want to be counted in the same camp as “Them”. And I don’t like seeing posts that completely ignore the opinions of literally any other human being that plays this games because the poster is some all knowing god who knows EXACTLY why every bad thing in the game has happened ever. And who refuses to even acknowledge the CONCEPT that they might be wrong while pushing others to accept there ideas.

God kitten I get enough of that from the local evangelists that try to convince me the world is only 6 thousand years old.

Unfortunately druid is there for the group damage buffs as far as PvE goes. Grace of the land and frost spirit to be percise. Everything else is secondary as far as our ability to contribute in places like raids and high level fractals go. Even our healing.

If you go for condi dps you can probably get a raid group as long as they don’t have a druid/ranger already (Your only losing dps if you bring two). Or atleast you will have a better chance than a power variant. But if you want to do high end content as a dps build then you should probably pick something like condi necro or engi.

Were a support class atm. Our dps variants don’t bring anything that someone else can’t do much much better.

Unfortunately if the QQers get what they want and they remove the map forever. I don’t see anet ever making that big a time investment to WvW ever again. I am worried this will just be the end of anything new. Odds are the only changes WvW will get from here on (if such a poll passes in there favor) are back ground changes. (like the scoring/reward changes)

If they throw out all the work they put into DBL. Why in the hells would they make the same risk again in the future? With that giant red warning sign over there heads the entire time.

Edited for less generalizing/assuming.

Editing My post to be less long winded. This seems to be a repeating pattern lately.

Change is necessary for WvW to stay alive. No matter the game type new content has to be added or significant changes have to be done to whats already there. The combined setup Anet offers gives us the best chance to give continuous feed back to improve Desert Borderlands. But that only works if people don’t reject even the concept of DBL.

Desert borderlands can be improved. This isn’t some wishful thinking. It is simple logic. Rejecting that is by definition insane and it means your living in your own fantasy world.

So. We know desert borderlands can be improved. And we know arena net is willing to work to improve it (They have already taken a few large steps for towards that).

But the only way that will happen is if players are allowed to play the maps and test the changes so they can continue to provide feedback

Refusing to allow that interaction by refusing to even accept the idea that some people should be allowed to play that map so that it can continue to be improved is… well its the height of selfishness to say the least. If you aren’t even willing to allow other people to play the map so that it can become something fun to not only them but you as well is just plain short sighted.

This poll gives us an opportunity to make the map just as good as alpine borderlands. And due to the nature of the map it has every possibility of being BETTER. We have this chance now. But unless we make use of it then were throwing away not only all the effort that was put into the map from both devs and players but also all of its future potential. And stating that it HAS no potential is purely dishonest.

I voted to have desert borderlands be one of the 3 borderlands in every weekly matchup. Because it gives people that prefer the tried and true a place to be while letting people that want to look for something new do so in the hopes that eventually everyone can enjoy both maps equally.

I hope everyone will vote not on a knee jerk reaction but after actually thinking about the impact their decision…or rejection…can have on the future of the game.

Crise.9401:

Shadelang.3012:

But if we give up on it entirely. Then quite frankly the largest single contribution given to WvW will have been entirely for nothing. And I honestly doubt we would EVER see any more WvW maps if we gave up on desert borderlands entirely.

---

In other words. If we give up on new content for WvW such as the desert borderlands just because of the past then WvW is dead and we should all give up now because all that awaits it is stagnation

Well said, I am one for playing the long game when it comes to DBL… and in the mean time I believe that it is better to have a choice over three months of being force fed one map over the other. While I can’t say which of the choices on offer would actually produce faster results in terms of iterating DBL to be in a better place, I would still hope most people see the long term benefit of not forsaking DBL entirely.

Come future expansions it will be harder and harder for ArenaNet to excite WvW players, all the more so if we tell them now that we don’t want to see different maps. With HoT they tried to give WvW players a major piece of content, and arguably failed, but I’d rather they keep trying than allow the game mode to hit a glass ceiling because the playerbase can’t think in the long term.

This is definetly the center of my original post. I wish I had been able to write it as well in my first draft haha I blame being awake for far far too long.

Redoing my post to be less long winded.

I also find the desert borderlands to be more easily defended as long as a defending force is actually present. Something more likely with the current server merges. Aside from that Desert Borderlands is significantly improved based to its previous incarnations. And anet has made it clear they are willing to continue improving the map until it suits the WvW playerbase. (Even going so far as massive restructuring of the terrain)

I voted to have the desert borderlands be 1 of the 3 matches in the hopes that it is assigned to the “weakest” server in order to give them the terrain advantage similar to red keep in EBG. With stronger layouts that are less vulnerable to treb spam (Garrison in Desert borderlands has an easier time countersieging and taking out groups harrasing the outside) as well as more effective defensive lords that can give defending teams advantages. I feel desert borderlands can be a good addition as long as it is still improved over time.

But as for the original topic. I can understand why anet has decided to chose to continue to improve desert borderlands instead of throwing it away in some knee jerk reaction. Because desert borderlands CAN be a good wvw map. It just needs time and continued adjustment. Abandoning it now isn’t just a bad sign for WvW immediately. But for any future development as well.

If anet gives up on desert borderlands now it sets a VERY bad precedent for WvW. One being that WvW is just too risky to try and develop significant content for. Ultimately meaning that WvW may end up just dieing of stagnation entirely without recieving significant content updates. Which would be very bad for the game as a whole.

Trevor Boyer.6524:

Shadelang.3012:

PvP actually offers you pretty good gold. For example doing the arah track and using the tokens to buy rare helmets to salvage for ectos. You also get a good number of boxes/lootbags. As well as exotics that can be either mystic forged or salvaged.

You also gain 2 gold a day from the daily. And the laurels you get from logging in can be used to get t6 mats which greatly reduces the value. You also get mystic clovers for completing the track lowering the number of times you may need to farm for that item as well. You actually get most of the items you need normally. You will however have to start focusing towards what your short on.

To put it into perspective. I made the ascension myself as a primarily PvP and WvW player. I did recieve aid from another player near the end. But he was helping me get the last two t6 mats that I needed (around 140 golds worth of assistance he sent me) it was a big help but something that would have been completed in a week or two if I played a bit harder than I usually do.

All mystic clovers and the like were gotten by my own means.

That attitude will change, after you go to the Auric Basin meta for an hour.

I never claimed it offered the best gold in the game. The point I was making is that it was more than possible to make the gift of fortune with what PvP gives you.

PvP actually offers you pretty good gold. For example doing the arah track and using the tokens to buy rare helmets to salvage for ectos. You also get a good number of boxes/lootbags. As well as exotics that can be either mystic forged or salvaged.

You also gain 2 gold a day from the daily. And the laurels you get from logging in can be used to get t6 mats which greatly reduces the value. You also get mystic clovers for completing the track lowering the number of times you may need to farm for that item as well. You actually get most of the items you need normally. You will however have to start focusing towards what your short on.

To put it into perspective. I made the ascension myself as a primarily PvP and WvW player. I did recieve aid from another player near the end. But he was helping me get the last two t6 mats that I needed (around 140 golds worth of assistance he sent me) it was a big help but something that would have been completed in a week or two if I played a bit harder than I usually do.

All mystic clovers and the like were gotten by my own means.

Wind Riders, And Wyverns with attacks that matter.

Honestly the GvG meta tended to follow the WvW meta. CC, Aoe damage, and Tankiness are key. Pick teams have much fewer “targets” to go after. Nomads gear is much more prevalent. And the matches can often be decided by just who can get there murder ball on the slightly less tanky backline first since the two murderballs pretty much don’t do anything to eachother until the cooldowns are gone.

So the gameplay (while still fun) can grow stale after awhile. Many of hte old builds people enjoyed don’t exist anymore (Pick rangers for example were only a thing for a couple months but with HOT disappeared entirely. There is simply too much random projectile defense in the game. And a scrapper can just chase you around until you die causing most “druids” now to run nomads like the frontline.)

The guild halls also split the gvg guilds in half. Some guilds are willing to fight in arenas. Others aren’t.

Then you have the current prebuffing. Its entirely possible to stack your frontline with 2 bloody minutes of resistance and protection. Not to mention permanent swiftness, regen, fury, and might. And with the way revenants pulse boons it makes stripping those stacks almost pointless. You rip it off and its back on in a second with the duration steadily rising.

This means that classes that don’t have a method of piercing through boons don’t have much of a place unless there frontline capable or boon producers themselves. WIth further reinforces the aoe pressure meta as opposed to focusing a target down one at a time. Pressure the group until someone misses a cooldown. Then gang up on them and move on to the next. Where before it was possible to single a target out ahead of time and really focus on killing that one victim forcing the rest of the team to either attack one of yours to force you off of there ally or cover for them. That IS still possible but its much more difficult.

Tl;DR. the current dynamics of the game don’t support terribly diverse methods of GvGing. Where before you could see multiple teams had completely different strategies involved. Now there is typically one general meta with very small differences between compositions. This caused many guilds to feel that it had grown stale. And they simply weren’t willing to go through the trouble of dealing with glitchy guild hall maps or dealing with trolls interfering with there gvgs in OS

Luckily there are still guilds that run there own flavor. And I feel its mostly them that are keeping the GvG scene struggling along until something changes.

When you are screaming at the enemy zerg to leave bay alone so you can go back to watching the anime youv been burning through for 2 hours.

Ouch u.u sorry to hear that mate.

vhiran xergo.7802:

I’d just like to be able to have decent DPS. Spirits are useless aside from renewal’s revive in PVE. Just ditch the spirit and let us have revive.

Unfortunately as long as frost spirit,spotter, and grace of the land exist, our 3 primary unique damage buffs (They will almost always be dps increases to the party to bring), I doubt we will get the kind of personal dps we want. Our roll atm is contributing to OTHER peoples dps. Not doing anything ourselves in that regard.

Believe me I hate that. But as it stands even if a dps oriented elite spec comes in the next expansion. Or even if one of the core lines DOES become a psuedo “elite” spec. We will probably be running the same builds we are now atleast as far as PvE and WvW go. In PvP we might get some other options.

But even if we COULD do ele level personal dps we still won’t be taking that line because our contribution through grace of the land and frost spirit will probably still be higher. Atleast in the eyes of the community around us. Anything that could boost us to the point where we deal enough damage to warrant not taking the group buffs will probably be at the level that makes us have broken levels of damage in PvP. OR will be designed in a way that it simply isn’t useful in PvP.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Shadelang.3012:

Druid sustain is already strong if they gave us reliable damage too it would be OP. Our pets were nerfed because we had too much reliable damage relevant to our sustain and control.

We might have been playing a different game, the two of us.
Pets were many things but reliable damage was not one.

Buffing the core Ranger and nerfing druid would be fine by me.
But there hasn’t been a single buff, yet. Nerfs and Nerfs only. If we are talking about S&R that was still inferior to other classes saves – we got hammered again because we can’t have nice things.

If we have too much damage for our survival, I don’t want to know what do you think of elementalists and revenants. I don’t believe those are mistakes of the matrix. I think every class contributes with it’s presence and has a footing in the game.
Except the Rangers. We are there just because people feel more powerful when we are around. And that’s about it.

You could have been correct about our survival if we weren’t the game’s easiest class to be focused down. And you can’t prove me wrong about this point.

Smokescale and bristleback were pretty reliable in terms of actual combat. Smokescale could deal fairly high amounts of reliable damage in the right build (I used my old ranger build to get it to hit for 14k+ before its nerf. And with its built in tracking that was enough to deal at least 5-6k even on tanky/evade spammy targets. I used to use it to 1 round tempests when I prebuffed it correctly and hit them from stealth. Losing the ability to command the smoke assault was the biggest nerf for my core ranger build. And ultimately was what pushed me into running druid (The smoke field just didn’t do much for my play style).

Bristlebacks in their previous form with the duration of there old ability were very good at penetrating through dodges and blocks. The long duration of the skill spread the damage out but in doing so made it hard to negate with just one dodge or block unless you used quickness to speed up the animation. Its nature as a projectile hurt it more than most other forms of defense. Now that the attack occurs so kitten quickly. The damage is so much easier to have accidentally negated. Making the skill itself a less reliable form of burst.

Now both occur faster (Both consist of fewer hits causing the animation to end soon) Making them easier to dodge/block/negate. (This also reduces the survivability of smokescale as it has 2 less attacks worth of I-Frames to work with) Most of which now happens automatically as the normal flow of the fight. Our ONLY METHOD in the entire game of dealing with blocks (Smokescale takedown “bug”) is now gone making the REST of our damage even more unreliable.

Matt Stacey.7415:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Matt Stacey.7415:

Hopefully ANet realizes how one-sided this buff-bot class has been and does the exact opposite with the next elite spec

2 patches in a row we got a damage nerf. One was on our main DPS weapon (sword) and second on our most used pets.
I wouldn’t bet my shoes on your statement.

Honestly I wouldn’t bet anything either, I’m just trying to have semblance of hope for the ranger class because at the moment it is just not fun for me. I’d like to think it will turn around soon…but it is not easy

The issue is with elite specs themselves. They CAN’T buff anything in the core ranger without buffing druid in comparison. Because of how our trait system works any utility skill or trait they buff in order to give us back some of our pressure will just immediately be incorporated into the meta druid build.

Druid sustain is already strong if they gave us reliable damage too it would be OP. Our pets were nerfed because we had too much reliable damage relevant to our sustain and control.

But again due to the way this games build system works it isn’t possible for them to say “Okay were going to buff core ranger’s pressure without buffing druids” It isn’t likely atleast*.

The only possible method they have for doing so is in future elite specs that I can see*. Meaning that we have to buy another expansion. Which I will probably do because I love this game but it still leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

Its why there have been suggestions to make one of the core specs an “elite” spec for base ranger. Something that only rangers could take that druids lose access to. Like the beast mastery line so that anet has something they can use to balance our damage and our sustain independently. Anet could give us the pet damage back through the beast mastery line as long as druid couldn’t access it. Or they could give us reliable attacks through marksmanship (Like making opening strikes unblockable) as long as druid didn’t have access to it.

Unfortunately until either A: Druid gets nerfed to the ground. B: The next expansion hits. Or C: A core spec becomes unavailable to druid and RANGER is based around that core spec. We probably won’t be getting reliable damage oriented builds. Simply because druid is too kitten good at what it does.

I tend to use tonics to go into dolyak form and eat omnomberry ghosts for the spectral effect. Then I RP-Walk around EBG and gather a following of friends and enemies alike until x roaming group decides to ruin it for everyone. I usually do this once every 2 weeks or so though I used to do it every day.

When its safe to stomp depends pretty heavily on what class your playing. If your a druid and SoTP and Signet of stone are down stomping is extremely risky unless you can manage it from stealth. Combine that with the fact that druids can’t cleave except for AF 5 then its much safer to try to disrupt/kill the people that go for the rez (Lunar impact, Glyph daze) than it is to go for the stomp yourself. Of course invuln rezzing nullifies this.

If the enemy has a condi reaper in the field stomping is also really difficult to pull off and that same reaper risks alot when it goes for a stomp without people supporting it.

If there is a scrapper rezzing then unless you have a team mate performing heavy down cleave you simply aren’t going to get the stomp in time. They rez too fast and the scrapper will be covered by stability making disrupting the rez difficult. Your best bet is to perform as heavy a cleave as you can with multiple people forcing the engis elixir s to proc and then focus firing the downed body until it wheres off and the scrapper has to pull back.

Knowing when to stomp is very important. But knowing when stomping is something that won’t work and infact may cost you the team fight in general is also important*. Theres no point stomping the guy if you down immediately after and your comp isn’t one that can pull off a rez in a high pressure area

Currently near the end of diamond with a 9 game win streak going on. 4 more and ill be in legendary.

Win streaks are definetly possible as solo que. But then I havn’t ever felt like my personnel skill didn’t matter while solo queing

Unfortunately it seems like it would be difficult. Stronghold ultimately isn’t terribly popular due to the fact that it is VERY easy to stack a specific comp and guarantee a win if your fighting as a premade. If your solo queing then again the comb can be just as important. Two tempests in your offensive lane makes your bomb throwers near immortal. A pair of reapers guarantees you can stop the enemy team from capping mists and guarantee your own cap (corrupt boon + plague form) unless they have a pair of reapers of there own to counter it.

Almost the same thing happened in the death match game mode. Specific comps made it incredibly easy to farm wins. And not having those comps reduced your odds of succeeding massively. Deathmatch was also INCREDIBLY prone to snowballing due to the lack of secondary mechanics.

So what we need is a game mode that encourages spreading people out except for specific objectives. Doesn’t favor one specific toolset over others more than a minor amount. Encourages attempting multiple methods to achieve similar results. And has swing mechanics that can enable a losing team to recover without being the sole purpose of the map.

ATM the one that gets the closest is conquest. Though I once suggested Assault style maps (trading between defending and attacking sides to defend a location that had multiple potential entrances and layers of defenses to give various locations of advantage,disadvantage based on your composition)

Tragic Positive.9356:

Number 6 is a heal – so in case you are talking about We Heal as One – it’s working as intended.

Only shouts that are supposed to cleanse your allies in addition to you and your pet are S&R, Protect Me and Guard.

WHaO,SotP,Sick’Em – these are not a subject for AoE cleanse.
Additionally – Sick’Em has no reason why it should cleanse the Ranger, either.

Funny. Reaper shouts work with these runes. And they don’t affect ANY friendly targets whatsoever. So that kind of throws your idea out the window a bit. And yes their heal skill does too. So does there elite skill :O. The rune is supposed to proc on shout use. REGARDLESS of the shout. The only thing thats interfering is the base mechanics behind a rangers shouts. Which only affects 2 targets directly.

Edit: It is likely when reaper shouts were made they were made with the runes based on shouts in mind. Where as judging from how ranger shouts originally functioned they were a bit more haphazard in there making.

This is something I and a few other rangers have brought up time and time again repeatedly. Especially those of us that used shouts even before the rework. Unfortunately. No one, not even the rest of the ranger community, gave a kitten because it just didn’t matter since shouts weren’t used by most people. It didn’t get much publicity and probably remained a minor issue that was difficult to fix as far as anet is concerned.

(Ranger shouts don’t interact with other players at all. Our trait does. But the shout itself only “strikes” us and our pets meaning that only those two targets are effected by the runes. Ironically this means that the shout is working PERFECTLY as far as it is designed. But since our shouts only effect these 2 targets. Only these 2 targets can be cleansed. Even Guard and Search and rescue probably only “strike” ourselves and the pet. Then that “strike” produces secondary affects on other players that don’t count as “strikes” from the shout itself. Atleast that is my understanding just from watching the shouts in action for literally years)

Since none of the ranger community bothered to care or even comment before when it was something only 1 out of maybe hundreds of rangers had to deal with. All I can do at this point is sit back and laugh at everyones frustration as they notice this issue for the first time. It’s petty I know. But in the end since I don’t think it will get fixed until some dev somewhere takes a personal interest in it I might as well get some satisfaction from other people experiencing the frustration I dealt with back when no one cared about it.

The leagues have taught me that I as a player have alot I can still improve on. Which before the endless waves of random match after random match sort of masked.

I have reached legendary in the previous two seasons and I am well on my way to reaching it in this season too. Yet I have had times when I get completely demolished and I realize their are some basic things I am kittening up that never occured to me. Before I just relied on my combat ability for example and that carried me through most matches. But the leagues taught me that ultimately my knowledge of rotations was pretty much nonexistant. Im good at killing. But thats about it. It also showed me that in the end I wasn’t good at working together with someone. I timed knockbacks and heals in ways that were beneficial to my own survival and ability to deal damage. Not necessary in ways that were good for my allies. These are mistakes that in the normal matches I fought before didn’t have any significant issue. But in the league matches can ultimately cost my team a team fight that could snowball into a loss. So ive been able to identify places I need to improve on… though ill admit its slow going haha. Going from a solo quers isolated playstyle towards a team fighters isn’t exactly easy.

Ill post my reply in a game mode perspective if thats alright. Their are too many small issues ive found to really get into with the amount of time I have so I feel it would be easier this way.

PvE: Were buff bots. God I am tired of being a buff bot. I am REALLY hoping the next elite spec is one that encurages increasing your own personnel dps and sustain so we can compete dps wise.

I don’t mind slotting a couple spirits and grace of the land. But I have been forced to have them be a mandatory part of every possible PvE build I could make from the day people realized how broken they were. I would like to play something else for once and not be considered a joke class because I do half the damage as an ele in boss fights…maybe less even.

WvW: As a class were pretty unreliable here. Again were brought not for what we ourselves do but for a mechanic and a trait. Namely our act as a healer and damage buffer.

And heres the best part. We aren’t the best at ANY roll. Or even terribly reliable. Pretty much the top wvw build for rangers atm is full nomads druid….nomads. Thats so far into healer territory its sad. Unfortunately we aren’t really needed. A melee train can sustain itself just fine without us. And druids still have the issue of not being reliable in terms of its ability to stay alive when near the melee train. Druid gives some good escapes. But we are still very easily locked down by incidental aoes and CCs. The “healing” we put out can much more reliably be done by a frontline tempest. Who can actually push with the melee.

Meanwhile our dps or “pick” builds are incredibly squishy. Even if you use marauders or a tankier combination of gear (sacrificing your damage) you run a very real risk of getting 100-0d before you can hit signet of stone due to stealth bursts. When we CAN do our damage. Our primary pick weapon is projectile reliant. And HoT and the current meta added a MASSIVE amount of projectile destruction to the field.

If your arrows aren’t being destroyed or reflected the damage they do is still minor due to the fact that we are balanced around our pets dps as well. Pets which can’t fight in WvW. The pet with the highest WvW combat potential (the bristleback) has to get several hundred range closer to our targets putting him dangerously into the aoe heavy zone. Unless we go way left or right of the zerg fights in order to get clear LoS on our targets. Making us extremely vulnerable to any duo team of thieves,mesmers, or maybe just a bored revenant. All of which can either get close to use without us seeing them or close the gap faster than we can expand it.

In other words we just aren’t designed for the wvw environment. Even as healers. And I don’t see that changing any time soon except with an elite spec. So yay we get to buy another expansion that MIGHT address the issues we have there. And thats IF the issues get addressed at all.

As far as PvP goes its not as bad. Druid is still considered one of the “meta” builds. Thats bunker druid however. Our dps druid builds lack alot of the sustain they need to compete with condi mesmers and power revenants on point. We can fight them and even win. But the cards are stacked against us. And in team fights we have the same roll as the old necro builds used to have. The initial focus target.

FIghting a condi war as a dps druid while trying not to give up the point however is a pure nightmare

Like with WvW our damage is unreliable. We are heavily dependent on our pets to deal damage for us because our actual weapons are incredibly easy to counter.

Notice a pattern? In ALL THREE GAME MODES our only “viable” builds involves our roll as support. Supporting others damage because we can’t deal damage ourselves. Supporting others survival because we can’t survive ourselves. Supporting our pets and focusing on surviving because we can’t reliably build towards just killing the kitten.

Obviously this is from my own experience. And ill admit the last month has been more frustrating than many in attempting to adapt by playstyle to the metas of all 3 game modes. But I thought id put for the issues as I saw them.

If we end up going back to the old tier system that would be pretty bad for me. My guild is on a full server. So my ability to play with them is pretty kitten ed set on the server linkings. I was even preparing to transfer form server to server to maintain the link.

If we end up going back I am just not going to be able to play with my friends anymore. After weeks of enjoying wvw again for the first time in over a year I am just not sure ill keep bothering with it once I lose that again. And no I’m not gonna ask my guild to transfer down to play with me cause I got locked out. That would be pretty kittened up.

If you need to break the links then do so. Ill understand and probably so will many of the others in my situation. But don’t be surprised when we don’t log on for reset anymore because the people we want to play with wont be there.

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

@Shadelang

Ah, solo q. Okay.

Can you outline the stuff you want in a build? So I can make better adjustments.

Self Reliance. Reliable Sustained ranged damage that is difficult to outheal. The ability to delay a losing 1v1 even against a counter class. Fury and Might uptime. The ability to make good use of the pet more than (Okay come back. Okay attack). The ability to sustain the pet while it is active through boon support when necessary. And freedom of movement.

But LB is mandatory right?

Not mandatory. But staff simply doesn’t have the damage output to prevent being outhealed.

Edit: I experimented with staff quite a bit. But even with 25 stacks of might I noticed that many of the builds I fought could quite easily deal with the damage output. And I relied entirely on pet bursts to deal relevant damage.

Edit 2: You did give me an idea with other rune combos though I have a list of ones im gonna try with different amulets and see if any can solve the weaknesses ive been seeing. If they can I may go back to running druid.

Edit:3 (instead of making a new post and just bumping my own thread) I have noticed sword axe might be better for hte build I posted earlier. The reflect from whirling defense actually does a pretty good job of laying off some of warriors condi pressure. And it hits hard enough you can usually force an endure pain proc. Just an idea for anyone wanting to try something with base ranger.

Any updates?

Swapped to Longbow, Sword/Axe and a marauders amulet. Whirling Defense is actually pretty amazing right now for forcing warriors off you if you get too close. I am also using Beastly Warden (an idea I got from someone else I can’t take credit for that decision) and its improved my sustain ALOT. There is alot less aoe stability in the meta and with protect me and beastly warden both up you can chain taunt if your careful.

I will say the evades on sword require MUCH better timing than the ones on greatsword or staff. But the damage of axe offhand is worth it I feel and sword auto even with its lower dps is still good damage.

Still running MM NM BM with full shouts and the same runes as before (Just havn’t found one that matches my needs quite as much)

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

@Shadelang

Ah, solo q. Okay.

Can you outline the stuff you want in a build? So I can make better adjustments.

Self Reliance. Reliable Sustained ranged damage that is difficult to outheal. The ability to delay a losing 1v1 even against a counter class. Fury and Might uptime. The ability to make good use of the pet more than (Okay come back. Okay attack). The ability to sustain the pet while it is active through boon support when necessary. And freedom of movement.

But LB is mandatory right?

Not mandatory. But staff simply doesn’t have the damage output to prevent being outhealed.

Edit: I experimented with staff quite a bit. But even with 25 stacks of might I noticed that many of the builds I fought could quite easily deal with the damage output. And I relied entirely on pet bursts to deal relevant damage.

Edit 2: You did give me an idea with other rune combos though I have a list of ones im gonna try with different amulets and see if any can solve the weaknesses ive been seeing. If they can I may go back to running druid.

Edit:3 (instead of making a new post and just bumping my own thread) I have noticed sword axe might be better for hte build I posted earlier. The reflect from whirling defense actually does a pretty good job of laying off some of warriors condi pressure. And it hits hard enough you can usually force an endure pain proc. Just an idea for anyone wanting to try something with base ranger.

Crapgame.6519:

I was going to suggest runes of durability due to shouts…then L2R ( ) and see you are talking about sPvP Yoke is on me – lol.

Durability runes are good u.u I would use them in WvW if it wasn’t for prevalence of frost aura I have to deal with.

StickerHappy.8052:

@Shadelang

Ah, solo q. Okay.

Can you outline the stuff you want in a build? So I can make better adjustments.

Self Reliance. Reliable Sustained ranged damage that is difficult to outheal. The ability to delay a losing 1v1 even against a counter class. Fury and Might uptime. The ability to make good use of the pet more than (Okay come back. Okay attack). The ability to sustain the pet while it is active through boon support when necessary. And freedom of movement.

Edit: And I wasn’t joking about the ability to get rid of chill and weakness. Those to debuffs absolutely SHAFT our damage. Chill because our damage is burst based. Weakness becuase it prevents our burst from properly functioning.

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

^Can confirm, Shadelang is a solid druid.

Thank you for saying so. Though the events of the last 24 hours makes me doubt that haha. If I was as good as I thought I was I would have found a way to make my build work.

But so far the most effectiveness I have found with my shout build has actually been to give up druid entirely in favor of MM NM and BM with a paladins amulet and soldier runes. GS/LB

It feels like its too dangerous to try and perform a close engage so I fell back on the old sniper roll. Still testing it out against various builds but so far I am hopeful. If it works out I may try to advertise it for rangers/druids that want to avoid going bunker. It has more counters than the previous build did though its tanky enough it can survive for a bit even if those counters are present. Cross your fingers >.<

Link me the build, I will try to help you tweak it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA9Ci1CCuCCctgh9gav9A4s/44IeaP4LikvEpfG-TZhFABAcIAG4CAwwTAo/yADt/AA

This is what I have started running. Its very close to one of the old power ranger builds and the playstyle is the same. The biggest change are the utilities I chose to run and the runes/amulet. I ended up going for paladins because it gives us a better spread of stats considering our competition. (Enables you to better handle vault spam thieves or condi players). And also because of weapon scaling for rangers ferocity is almost pointless for short term fighting

Biggest weakness are condi players. It can go toe to toe with a scrapper but it is reccomended to make use of your ranged nature against against condi builds unless you know how to dodge key condition applications.

I originally wanted to take wilderness knowledge. But I underestimated how much the damage loss from hte birstleback and smokescale hurt us and I realized that most builds out their were able to simply stand in my attacks without showing any sign of danger. So ultimately I went for marksmanship. I took piercing shots in order to be able to shoot through mesmer clones and necromancer “Rise” minions as well as for some much needed down cleave.

Clarion bond gives us near permanent fury uptime if used with other skills. Making it a no brainer as far as damage boosts go.

I went for might stacking sigils on the longbow in order to provide buffs for both myself and my pet through nature magic. Unfortunately Fire and Air sigils didn’t do enough for me to justify using them so I went for strength/battle because shout ranger is VERY good at manipulating/magnifying the effects of might stacks.

Out of everything I have tried in the last 24+ hours this is the best so far. Still working on it but aside from taking a menders amulet and falling back to the bunker role I am not sure how many other options we have with our current level of damage.

First lemme tell you this:

Soldier Runes are really subpar for ranger shouts, Our shouts are all over 15 seconds cd, you are not maximizing condition removal at all. Which promotes spamming shouts then in turn becomes unskilled play.

MM is meh too. I would just go NM BM Druid with LB/GS.

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqAVsg1CCuCCctglOBz5vFAKcPtgBwCDelGT3plI9zA-TZRGAB8XGo8jAgCPCA03fAgLAAA

This is my take on your build.

I removed MM.

Put Druid for mass condi clear, sustain, stealth and That ancient seeds proc with LB 4 for kiting and decaps or caps.

Now you wonder, you lose damage with losing MM.

I replaced it with High Quickness uptime for you and your pet. Easy 25 might stacks for you and pet.

High protection uptime now with Protect me and and Protective ward, Perma regen as well and you still get fury from GS.

This is all you and the pet. Your pets will be hitting so fast and you too because I changed the amy to demolisher. that +560 ferocity man that Paladin doesn’t have.

Now low HP right? I added Sotw for more sustain together with Perma regen and Protection that enables you to enter druid form every cd = more sustain.

you basically have 50% boon duration on this build. I removed the battle sigils because you have so much boon duration even swapping and might sigil + your heal will easily

Outnumbered? Disengage with stealth via LB 3 and celestial shadow.

Condition removal sources are Druidic Clarity, AF 2, AoE 2 conditions converted with Leadership runes (very good synergy with low CD of Rao)

Ultimately my runes and utility set are my own personnel choice. If you have seen my other posts you know I have been running shouts from very early in the game. The condi clear is NOT to get rid of things like bleeds,burning. I generally attempt to avoid getting hit by those in the first place. I use them to get rid of weakness and chill.

Your build is very close to the one I ran before. And it had extreme flaws. One the arrows do not pierce. Meaning when fighting condi mesmers and necros a VERY large number of your attacks are blocked by various AI. And in team fights it is very easy to lose the ability to hit the target your focusing.

I ran druid before entirely for Lunar Impact, Druidic Clarity, and Celestial Shadow. Lunar Impact was nerfed and I had to question the tradeoff on the rest of my skills for that. And the mushrooms were nerfed lowering my ability to assit in team fights where my arrows were blocked/reflected.

I avoid boon procs that I don’t have direct control over. Largely because having quickness or stolen is extremely dangerous. So instinctive reaction took a side line for the more reliable damage boost of bountiful hunter.

Unfortunately hte classes I most need to kite are verrifiable immune to ancient seeds or can get out of it very quickly if they manage there cooldowns correctly. So it was always a secondary mechanic to me.

As I said I have run an EXTREMELY similar build to what you suggest for hte last 3-4 months. Unfortunately it has fallen behind due to the fact that it can no longer engage in close quarters in the current meta due to the lessened condi removal. With that in mind I chose to instead make what damage I new DID work more reliable with high fury uptime and piercing.

Your build will work for most people. And it offers reasonable sustain. But the key things that make it strong can be countered by the composition of your opponents. Which means its effectiveness can be based on luck as well which I don’t like.

While the leadership runes are interesting. It does mean that when you do get that chill or weakness on you that is crippling your ability to deal damage. You have to pop a major cooldown (CA) to get rid of it. Which is dangerous because then you won’t have it when its necessary. That is in part why I still chose to run trooper runes. You would also be suprised how much dps your pet loses because chill prevents its cooldowns from cycling properly. Also because of weakness.

Trooper runes cleanses you and your pet simultaneously. Which is why I still use them despite the fact that they don’t affect team mates.

Edit: Also the issue with demolishers amulet is that ferocity doesn’t increase our dmg as much as it does other classes. Also due to its low HP if you DO get bombed while CA is on cooldown you WILL die to condi overload. You simply don’t have the health pool to wait for it to come off cooldown. Meaning avoiding the burst entirely is optimal thus making ht ability to condi dump irrelevant.

Edit: Note that your build would be better for coordinated teams where other players can cover for any weaknesses when necessary. But I primarily solo que. Meaning a self reliant build is mandatory as I simply can’t expect my team mates to be able to help me out. So I typically run builds that aren’t reliant on the performance of my team mates if I can help it.

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

^Can confirm, Shadelang is a solid druid.

Thank you for saying so. Though the events of the last 24 hours makes me doubt that haha. If I was as good as I thought I was I would have found a way to make my build work.

But so far the most effectiveness I have found with my shout build has actually been to give up druid entirely in favor of MM NM and BM with a paladins amulet and soldier runes. GS/LB

It feels like its too dangerous to try and perform a close engage so I fell back on the old sniper roll. Still testing it out against various builds but so far I am hopeful. If it works out I may try to advertise it for rangers/druids that want to avoid going bunker. It has more counters than the previous build did though its tanky enough it can survive for a bit even if those counters are present. Cross your fingers >.<

Link me the build, I will try to help you tweak it.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATRnUqA9Ci1CCuCCctgh9gav9A4s/44IeaP4LikvEpfG-TZhFABAcIAG4CAwwTAo/yADt/AA

This is what I have started running. Its very close to one of the old power ranger builds and the playstyle is the same. The biggest change are the utilities I chose to run and the runes/amulet. I ended up going for paladins because it gives us a better spread of stats considering our competition. (Enables you to better handle vault spam thieves or condi players). And also because of weapon scaling for rangers ferocity is almost pointless for short term fighting

Biggest weakness are condi players. It can go toe to toe with a scrapper but it is reccomended to make use of your ranged nature against against condi builds unless you know how to dodge key condition applications.

I originally wanted to take wilderness knowledge. But I underestimated how much the damage loss from hte birstleback and smokescale hurt us and I realized that most builds out their were able to simply stand in my attacks without showing any sign of danger. So ultimately I went for marksmanship. I took piercing shots in order to be able to shoot through mesmer clones and necromancer “Rise” minions as well as for some much needed down cleave.

Clarion bond gives us near permanent fury uptime if used with other skills. Making it a no brainer as far as damage boosts go.

I went for might stacking sigils on the longbow in order to provide buffs for both myself and my pet through nature magic. Unfortunately Fire and Air sigils didn’t do enough for me to justify using them so I went for strength/battle because shout ranger is VERY good at manipulating/magnifying the effects of might stacks.

Out of everything I have tried in the last 24+ hours this is the best so far. Still working on it but aside from taking a menders amulet and falling back to the bunker role I am not sure how many other options we have with our current level of damage.

StickerHappy.8052:

^Can confirm, Shadelang is a solid druid.

Thank you for saying so. Though the events of the last 24 hours makes me doubt that haha. If I was as good as I thought I was I would have found a way to make my build work.

But so far the most effectiveness I have found with my shout build has actually been to give up druid entirely in favor of MM NM and BM with a paladins amulet and soldier runes. GS/LB

It feels like its too dangerous to try and perform a close engage so I fell back on the old sniper roll. Still testing it out against various builds but so far I am hopeful. If it works out I may try to advertise it for rangers/druids that want to avoid going bunker. It has more counters than the previous build did though its tanky enough it can survive for a bit even if those counters are present. Cross your fingers >.<

@OGDeadHead: Honestly I agree.

What I would like is to see the builds arenanet actually thinks are viable for rangers to play in wvw and PvP. If they think were well balanced with these changes then I would LOVE to see what they feel like we should be playing. Because im not seeing it.

Even our Menders builds get bogged down now.

Druids were one of hte major sources of team cleanses. However their method of cleansing in team fights nad 2v2s 3v3s was cut in half. So the assistance your druid USED to give you is now gone. Also Condi warrior is back in the meta and stronger than it ever was. Its also TANKIER than it ever was. Its also harder to avoid its damage than it used to be.

People forgot what it was like to get bleed stacks that lasted 15+ seconds.

Combine that with the fact that its counters dont exist anymore most warriors are going to run condi making them pretty much top dog. Condi Burst Revs are also reappearing. Condi Necros never left and infact can now stack there damage ontop of eachother.

The only reliable group cleansers are eles. Which actually get kittenED when they have that many condi players focusing them down.

So the two primary cleansers no longer can do their job effectively.

Ultimately. Classes capable of strong condition output have made it into the meta all at once. So power builds (which are and always have been weak to condition builds) are no longer optimal with the exception of those capable of high amounts of evasion.

Enjoy

Wondrouswall.7169:

Careful. Anet might just stop reading at the title and change our Longbow to fire cakes. x)

On topic, though, I bet Anet is having a good laugh. Though, suggestions like the one quoted below are probably making them laugh harder.

Shadelang.3012:

For example change Remorseless to be “All attacks are unblockable when you attack your target from behind”

Remember: Roy’s lead now since Peters left. We aren’t getting anything good from here on out.

Yeah. Unfortunately thats kind of what we need. Either that or for 40% of the projectile hate in the game to magically vanish in thin air and I don’t see THAT happening anytime soon.

Due to our pets we can’t be reliable sustained melee dpsers in PvP. So our only option for long term damage is ranged. And our only ranged dps weapon is negated accidentally by….just about everyone.

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

Hahaha I have noticed lately today that I no longer have the damage to kill anything. A thief STOOD in my bristleback f2 that I had boosted with sic em. He still had half his life after it. I can no longer apply any reliable pressure to ellies. I cant disrupt the blocks of revenants and mesmers so they get to freely heal. Condi reapers are so kitten tanky that a boosted rapid fire with 25 stacks of might did less than 2k damage. Thats with a marauders amulet.

I hope you all like playing condi and bunker people. Because power atleast seems to be dead entirely. I just cant find a way to get hte damage I need to burst ANYTHING.

Edit: and Rangers Sustained damage has always been a joke.

Off topic, what does your ranger wear? your armor on Serena look so good.

Haha thanks. Bladed chest gloves legs and boots. Triumphant shoulders and either the triumphant head piece or the Mask of the Wanderer skin. Glittering weapons and its all in starry night dye color.

Attachment for reference.

Why does it look black? Starry night is blue. :O

Starry Night is a very dark blue. Almost black infact. But when the light hits it right it gets a unique shine that i like. And the coloring fits glittering weapons more than going black or just blue would.

Or in this case sustained damage.

We can pretty much see from the patch today that ranger simply won’t be allowed to have reliable burst damage. The reason being that our “burst” comes from a combination of our own weapon damage and our pets damage occuring simultaneously. Rapid fire+spike barrage for example. Or CA 5 + smoke assault.

Steadily but surely though our burst from our only 2 reliable pets has steadily been dropped down. And we have reached a point that I am concerned about.

Our burst is now low enough that other classes can soak it. Which means it is no longer effective burst. Our burst can also be unreliable at times. Which means it is no longer something we can count on in the heat of combat such as PvP and WvW.

Which is a problem. Because our sustained damage isn’t exactly great in either damage OR reliability.

Our damage boosting traits rely on gimmicks. Our damaging weapons have either recently lost damage or been left behind in the meta. Our defensive weapons no longer keep up with the demand placed on them.

So my suggestion is this. If we can’t be burst fighters due to the nature of the game and your balancing preferences. Please allow us to be sustain fighters.

Rework marksmanship towards enabling us to actually land our hits.

For example change Remorseless to be “All attacks are unblockable when you attack your target from behind” This enables us to pierce through the massive amount of projectile destruction and reflection in the game. But confines it behind a positioning requirment that doesn’t assist us as much in 1v1s. In other words it is primarily a team fighting mechancic. Something we desperately need.

Give our other traitlines abilities that help our freedom of movement. Our soft CC’s don’t even matter in the current game anymore kitten many people have ways to either ignore the effects of them or make sure we can’t capitalize on them. I don’t see why we should be forced to take druid to gain even half the same level of freedom of movement. Last I checked avoiding being tied down was critical for a ranger to survive. Which is why almost every ranger on the planet runs druid now.

If we can’t be allowed reliable and decent levels of burst damage. Then we need sustained damage and the ability to actually utilize it.

Longbow is accidentally negated. Greatsword does pitiful long term damage. Sword and its partners lack the defense we need to survive using it and sword no longer has the damage needed to counter pressure another melee user. Axe is lol. Staff is a support weapon. We don’t have a reliable damage option for PvP. Edit: And I completely forgot shortbow even exists!

We need improvements to our ability to land damage through the massive plethora of counters that exist in the game. If we can’t do that. And if the pattern of the last few months with druid continues. We will be relegated to bunker roles where we can safely be ignored in team fights until the other side is ready to bother killing us. The only other option is giving us reliable burst. And we have been shown repeatedly that isn’t allowed.

Edit: removed some obnoxiousness form my post.

Crapgame.6519:

Wow, these changes actually surprised me.

I don’t know if I should just swap out my current back piece to a mattress or change classes. I honestly don’t like being a baby about change but this one seems to really neuter the Druid.

I wasn’t joking earlier. It really does feel like either going condi or full bunker are our only real options. We lost a massive chunk of our 1v1 pressure which was our only real thing we had going for us. We also lost ALOT of team support with the shroom nerf. (Used to be in fights where I couldnt enter because it was too hot I would spam shrooms to keep others active. Thats kinda pointless now for 1 whole condi a pop)

oshilator.4681:

Shadelang.3012:

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

Hahaha I have noticed lately today that I no longer have the damage to kill anything. A thief STOOD in my bristleback f2 that I had boosted with sic em. He still had half his life after it. I can no longer apply any reliable pressure to ellies. I cant disrupt the blocks of revenants and mesmers so they get to freely heal. Condi reapers are so kitten tanky that a boosted rapid fire with 25 stacks of might did less than 2k damage. Thats with a marauders amulet.

I hope you all like playing condi and bunker people. Because power atleast seems to be dead entirely. I just cant find a way to get hte damage I need to burst ANYTHING.

Edit: and Rangers Sustained damage has always been a joke.

Off topic, what does your ranger wear? your armor on Serena look so good.

Haha thanks. Bladed chest gloves legs and boots. Triumphant shoulders and either the triumphant head piece or the Mask of the Wanderer skin. Glittering weapons and its all in starry night dye color.

Attachment for reference.

Now you’ve done it. By posting that picture, you’ve given them a reason to nerf Glittering weapons.

I wouldn’t even be surrised haha

StickerHappy.8052:

Shadelang.3012:

Hahaha I have noticed lately today that I no longer have the damage to kill anything. A thief STOOD in my bristleback f2 that I had boosted with sic em. He still had half his life after it. I can no longer apply any reliable pressure to ellies. I cant disrupt the blocks of revenants and mesmers so they get to freely heal. Condi reapers are so kitten tanky that a boosted rapid fire with 25 stacks of might did less than 2k damage. Thats with a marauders amulet.

I hope you all like playing condi and bunker people. Because power atleast seems to be dead entirely. I just cant find a way to get hte damage I need to burst ANYTHING.

Edit: and Rangers Sustained damage has always been a joke.

Off topic, what does your ranger wear? your armor on Serena look so good.

Haha thanks. Bladed chest gloves legs and boots. Triumphant shoulders and either the triumphant head piece or the Mask of the Wanderer skin. Glittering weapons and its all in starry night dye color.

Attachment for reference.