Guild Wars 2

Zenith.7301:

Soilder.3607:

Barrage deals significantly more damage than rapid fire, albeit in a longer span of time. The one thing that bothers me most on this forum is when people say barrage is weak, because it absolutely isn’t. Will it be weak against a PVD Guardian with protection and blocks? Sure, but so too will be any AoE. If you use the skill against anyone who isn’t a super tank and they stand in it, they will take heavy damage.

Yes, retaliation will hurt you. But oh well, its not like we’re necessary in zergs anyway.

See, this is why we need DPS meters in this game, some people can’t weigh the value of skills properly.

Barrage is a stationary skill with three times the cooldown of rapid fire, and it’s a non-mobile channeled ability whose damage is tied to a zone.

Barrage has longer effective cd than meteor shower and it’s by all means worse as an aoe skill.

And we’re not just talking zergs, on larger hitbox bosses meteor shower takes a dump on barrage.

Ok, everyone is aware that meteor shower is the better skill. That does not make barrage a bad skill by any means. And everything you said about barrage also applies to meteor shower. However, the question that should be asked is is meteor shower too good? Which it very well may be.

Should we do a cross comparison of Maul and Arcing Slice as well? One deals significantly more damage than the other.

Barrage deals significantly more damage than rapid fire, albeit in a longer span of time. The one thing that bothers me most on this forum is when people say barrage is weak, because it absolutely isn’t. Will it be weak against a PVD Guardian with protection and blocks? Sure, but so too will be any AoE. If you use the skill against anyone who isn’t a super tank and they stand in it, they will take heavy damage.

Yes, retaliation will hurt you. But oh well, its not like we’re necessary in zergs anyway.

Currently, this skill takes about 4 seconds total to deal all its damage. An idea that floats around my head is if the number of attacks was halved to 8 instead of 16 and the damage of each attack was doubled, thereby reducing the total channel time to around 2 seconds while retaining the total amount of damage. In addition to this, since your opponent will only be struck constantly for two seconds, having each attack apply blind wouldn’t be too strong since they’d only be shut down for two seconds instead of four.

I’m disappointed in this. The most important skills that needed the buff were bonfire and stalker’s strike imo, only because they lost a lot of their functionality without it.

Crippling talon also needs its projectile speed increased as well.

Personally, I don’t think any teleport skills should be 1200 range. I think its just too much escapability. One click and you’re done; the only thing that can hit you is ranger longbow.

I don’t agree with mesmer blink being buffed to 1200 range on such a short cool down, and I always contended that thief shadowstep should’ve been nerfed to 1000 range and its cool down reduced to compensate.

Teleports, especially now with the range lock mechanic, are a guaranteed mobility skill since they can be casted regardless of stun (except for thief sword, since casting time) and movement impairing conditions, whereas leap and run skills don’t have that luxury, though they do tend to enjoy shorter cooldowns, which I guess might be where the balance comes to play.

We have plenty of sources of swiftness already. What if it say refillled 25 endurance for nearby allies as well?

Stop bumping this. It was a joke post. I was referencing the old GW1 Smiter’s Boon . As I said before, I thought this upate added Smiter’s Boon into the game for the first time and didn’t know it had existed previously. I wanted to be the first to start a Nerf thread for it for the sake of the old smiters boon.

I said in my original post that the trait granted a woeful imbalance between the damage and healing potential of the Guardian class. That is exactly what it did for Smiting Prayers monks back in GW1, allowing them to heal for nearly the same capacity as dedicated healing prayer monks while still being able to dish out significant damage. I also referenced the 90 second cool down the skill was given in PvP, which is what essentially made it unusable along with a duration decrease.

Have a mesmer mos form your pet. All his auto attacks will leap towards the target and actually hit.

Funny how that works, right? Too bad it wasn’t implemented to our pets.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Spirits don’t need to be mobile they need better effect. In gw1 spirits weren’t mobile but they were strong. Frozen soil = prevented ressing. Edge of extinction = when a mob died all creature of that type would take damage.

Rangers in Gw1 used placement and positioning, Our spirits just need to be better and the number of targets needs to be up’d. Mesmer have two skill that have no taget limit and one skill with 10. Spirits just need to be better.

Guild Wars 1 I’d say wasn’t nearly revolving around movement as much as GW2 does.
There were no movement skills at all except for shadowsteps and ride the lightning.

Don’t forget, you couldn’t move while attacking either.

runeblade.7514:

Durzlla.6295:

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Immobile is fine, assuming the Range is large enough to be able to affect the moving battle. Which it isn’t, therefore immobile is a massive nerf. Range needs to be increased dramatically.

They have a 1200 radius…

Wrong, they have 360 radius. Its even in the tooltip. You can even test it out that they don’t have 1200 radius.

The radius of their passive effect is 1000, is what he meant to say.

If spirits are going to be able and sacrificial, then they should be immune to damage imo.

Substance E.4852:

Durzlla.6295:

Wondrouswall.7169:

Lazze quoted Irenio/Kui directly from the bugs sub-forum. I’m just pointing out Kui’s wording when he said “some” offhand range items.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ranger-Bugs-Updated/page/2#post5305287

Ah, i really hope it’s bonefire, WD, WH#4, and Dagger #5 that were looked at, the other ones really aren’t too noticeable with the lack of the size increase.

Oh, dagger #4 is very noticeable…

Torch 4 too.

That 25% velocity boost awhile back made the range nice.

MrDark.8632:

90s ICD?

This is a joke post referencing the GW1’s Smiter’s Boon: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter's_Boon_%28PvP%29

Ding. I thought this update added smiters boon for the first time, so I saw my chance for the gw1 reference. I didn’t realize it had already been in prior existence as a tome spell, however.

Funny that everyone assumed I mained ele. Yea its on my tag, but I main ranger actually.

jcbroe.4329:

Soilder.3607:

jcbroe.4329:

No, just no.

If anything, the ranger needs to become LESS associated with animals as they approach the realm of becoming MORE magic based.

If I have to deal with BS transformations that will never be worthwhile in any sort of meaningful setting other than to the people who want to RP like it’s WoW instead of just playing WoW, I’m driving cross country to have a word with ANet and I will personally oversee the firing of whoever came up with the dumbkitten idea to implement Druid, or who cares what it’s called, ANY Ranger change like this.

I’ve tried to remain unbiased and stay optimistic about HoT, even though every week that it isn’t a reveal week and ESPECIALLY every week that goes by without Druid or Release Date info, I get tested a little bit more, but this, this less-than-fecal-matter-worthy implementation of Druid is my line in the sand.

Quite strong feelings. Now imagine if we all had such a passion for important things, like poor people.

Strong words to express resolved feelings.

And this is a videogame forum, not a political and social philosophies forum. I have feelings and opinions outside of the realm of videogames and not a single one of them would lack any of the same passion shown here. Seeing as how this isn’t the place to discuss those things though…. yeah lol.

Good. Poor people it is then.

jcbroe.4329:

No, just no.

If anything, the ranger needs to become LESS associated with animals as they approach the realm of becoming MORE magic based.

If I have to deal with BS transformations that will never be worthwhile in any sort of meaningful setting other than to the people who want to RP like it’s WoW instead of just playing WoW, I’m driving cross country to have a word with ANet and I will personally oversee the firing of whoever came up with the dumbkitten idea to implement Druid, or who cares what it’s called, ANY Ranger change like this.

I’ve tried to remain unbiased and stay optimistic about HoT, even though every week that it isn’t a reveal week and ESPECIALLY every week that goes by without Druid or Release Date info, I get tested a little bit more, but this, this less-than-fecal-matter-worthy implementation of Druid is my line in the sand.

Quite strong feelings. Now imagine if we all had such a passion for important things, like poor people.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

Soilder.3607:

…Empathetic Bond…

Exactly

It’s ok, they can change the name to transfer conditions to pet then boons bond.

Being able to deal damage directly from using a healing skill is simply unfair. It’s one thing if you have an AoE attack going, since that was pre-casted, but healing and being able to deal damage directly from it, even while you yourself are capable of blocking all attacks, is just bad for the game.

I think that, if anything, a 90 second icd should be added to the trait at minimum, that way at least the guard can’t just dish out damage everytime he heals himself. This would be a fair change that I’m confident should be implemented. As it stands, this trait grants a woeful imbalance between the healing and damage potential of the guardian class, which is something that needs to change.

Substance E.4852:

Tied heavily to a caster weapon?

Confirmed: Vampiric Touch Ranger inbound

New trait: Sixteen Expertise – Your touch skills recharge 100% faster.

UNLIMITED LIFE STEAL SPAM.

This thread must be bumped. If it is not talked about, a-net will forget about it. There is no reason at all for this change not to happen. It was simply overlooked and needs to be re-added into the game.

Since these two traits now compete against eachother, I think its time Empathetic Bond received an overhaul. For one, any trait/skill which harms the pet should be changed to not do so. It was never a smart idea, but overlookable at launch since the game had just come out and the dust surrounding needed balancing was settling.

SotF outclasses EB. It doesn’t kill the pet, has the potential for 10 cd cures on your bar, and reduces the recharge of a number of skills which have good use, including a healing and elite skill. EB had once been good, but the amount of condition damage coming out now almost always results in the death of the pet against a dedicated condition spec, with or without the trait active. And this is without taking into account the fact that pets have to deal with direct damage as well as crowd control that they cannot evade.

I don’t want to throw out suggestions, because mine usually turn out biased. However, this trait needs to be changed. An idea that floats around my head is if conditions that are transferred to the pet are converted to boons with the same durations as the ones from fortifying bond. I think this would gives EB a noticeable advantage over SotF as it now potentially increases the sustainability of your pets, in addition to curing cd’s.

Either way, please change this trait into something different. Doing so is a sensible balance change.

All the utility shouts need to be re-worked. Protect me is only ok when running a bear pet, but even then, any f1-4 button will reset the skill as well as using another shout.

Any skill/trait which kills the pet for our benefit should never have existed in the first place.

If protect me were re-vamped, I’d like to see it grant resistance.

manveruppd.7601:

Plus remember, probably earth/fire sigils proccing as well.

It’s all good. I got her into party chat and she said the golem damage buff was bugged and applying +100% damage to her even though she currently wasn’t in one. Later on I saw a few other players doing insane damage with the same bug as well.

TheLastNobody.8319:

Soilder.3607:

I have literally never seen this type of damage done before from a necro. Can anyone tell me what happenend and how he managed (trait combo’s etc) to do such a high amount of damage? Necrotic bite is a skill from dagger auto attack chain and it crit’d for 8k damage. I’m in awe right now.

I’m not very tanky. Only have 2450 armor, but I’ve never taken damage this fast from any other class before. She didn’t have any quickness either.

she would’ve had to have been using spite, tell me, did you notice how much vulnerability you had on you at the time? Because if under 50% health and no boons, she coud’ve had a 25% damage increase. But even with the might stacking spite offers, you would’ve had to have been standing still….ehhh…any help here? I’m no math major!

I don’t know about vulnerability nor might stacks. I don’t think there were many as right after I died I clicked on her to take a look at what boons/food she had. She did have a food which granted +8% damage while moving as well as the sharpening stones which grant +4% power and +2% power based on toughness and vitality, respectively. But I don’t remember seeing a significant amount of might stacks, if any at all.

Also, she did have some buff on which granted +100% damage to players and siege equipment while inside of a golem. No idea if she might’ve bugged it or something.

Edit: Nevermind, managed to find her again and get her into a party. Theres a bug with that +100% damage food while in a golem food currently. Apparently many have exploited it.

I have literally never seen this type of damage done before from a necro. Can anyone tell me what happenend and how he managed (trait combo’s etc) to do such a high amount of damage? Necrotic bite is a skill from dagger auto attack chain and it crit’d for 8k damage. I’m in awe right now.

I’m not very tanky. Only have 2450 armor, but I’ve never taken damage this fast from any other class before. She didn’t have any quickness either.

This trait needs to scale off vitality. We had a trait in the nature magic line that granted a 7% bonus to power based on your vitality. I used it often and thought it was a decent trait. Instinctive reaction isn’t bad for the quickness, but the scaling from healing power is pointless.

Bumping this. This change needs to happen immediately. Address it now please.

Lower the casting time of hornet’s sting to 1/4 second imo. Sword has great mobility, wouldn’t want to lose the backward roll.

Both are solid. Its up to your playstyle. However, I find that quickness is better for power specs than condition.

When I run settlers, I use beastly warden. If I’m power, then I’m going with zephyrs speed. Honestly though, zephyrs speed makes full melee ranger the kitten. Try it out.

Aomine.5012:

Vendetta.1958:

Shortbow imo has the highest skill cap of all ranger weaponsets.

The fact that 80% of you insist that it is a condition weapon is laughable, and demonstrates that you have not fully experimented with the weapon.

Leave shortbow as is.

I always find it amusing that there’re always some Mr. genius criticize or verbally harass other people without backing up his claims with evidence or examples. It always ends up leaving them with 0 credibility and give a laugh to their readers.

This seem to be the trend of the Majority of the forum posts.

He was trolling. He had to be. The entire point of the weapon is spam 1.

Honestly, in the current state of things., I wouldn’t find it unjustified if EB transferred conditions to the pet and then converted them to boons. Not only that but it would fit the skill name better.

Yea, the intended functionality of the weapon is totally irrelevant with the current state of the game. It was good at launch, but things have changed so much now that a revamp is in order.

What I miss most from this trait is knowing that you had an on demand blast finish with pet swap no matter what. I don’t care about not being able to stow and swap for double proc’s, I just really liked the blast finishing.

I stand behind the suggestions of having the trait feature a stripped down version of CotW, where the boons only last 10 seconds, but the icd is 15 instead.

Swirling strike, when used, damages up to 5 targets surrounding the ranger, is a whirl finisher for only the duration of the attack (3/4 seconds), but reflects projectiles for about another second after the skill has ended, for around two seconds total.

Make whirling defense like this. Have you character do a spin attack, while moving of course, that does decent damage to up to 5 surrounding opponents, while also reflecting projectiles for about another second after the skill ends. Drop the recharge to 15 seconds or so too to compensate for the loss in total reflection uptime.

I say this mainly from a pvp perspective, but I think it would go a good way in making the skill more usable for that game format.

Lazze.9870:

Same procedure as always.

This wasn’t even a bug, it never had an intended icd unlike Clarion Bond. It’s a straight up nerf.

Yea, this trait has been this way since launch. Well, zephyr’s speed used to be the minor adept trait in BM before it was moved to grandmaster and it’s quickness was increased to 3 seconds instead of 2. That was a big nerf back when it first happened and really shut down zerk ranger for awhile, as they only needed to trait five points into BM to get on demand quickness. But now that the trait is seeing play again, of course it gets nerfed once more.

OGDeadHead.8326:

They did improve this functionality quite a bit about a year or so ago, but it’s still an issue. I try to wait about half a second or so before using F2, if it’s a targeted ability.

Yea, they did good work with pet f2’s, and I’ve never come across this problem without quickness on the pet. However, the pet shouldn’t be misfunctioning, even with quickness. And I really doubt this will be addressed anytime in the near future, which sucks because it happens way too often for me to be comfortable.

Skills that don’t really need a target, like wolfs howl, are fine, but other like drake f2’s or bird f2’s simply become wasted.

This seriously needs to not be in-game. For anyone who doesn’t know what I’m talking about, it’s when you are immobilized after either jumping or using a leap skill, and the game thinks that you’re still in air for the duration of the immobilize and doesn’t let you use skills.

This bug should’ve been addressed way earlier and I’m surprised it’s still here. It’s pretty gamebreaking when you’re unable to use skills for several seconds, it’s essentially a free unbreakable stun for your opponent or for you should you happen to cause it.

Just a minor issue here. I’ve been running quickening zephyr lately and it’s pretty great, however, sometimes it will cause my pets to use their f2 skill without actually aiming for my target. As in, I swap them in, hit f2, and they just attack in whatever direction they were facing at the time and not at my target.

It isn’t too big of a deal, but it’s resulted in a fair share of fights lost. Hope this gets fixed soon…

You’re all dramatizing the kitten out of this nerf. The trait is nowhere near useless, its god kitten half upkeep on fury and swiftness, aoe, and a blast finisher. Enter combat with pet stowed and it procs, wait until you feel twenty four or thirty seconds has passed then swap. Should you need to swap pets before the trait has recharged, then oh well, you’ll get it next swap.

The reason they made this change was because entering combat with pet stowed proc’d the trait, but not the pet cd, allowing you to cast again immediately. And if you already had a war horn equipped, that meant you could do three call of the wilds in a row. Granted, the change they should’ve made would simply have been entering combat with the pet stowed not triggering pet swap traits, but they didn’t. The trait is still fine.

Was this an intended change, because I don’t really like. The other changes they made to spirits are great, but I don’t understand why this needed to happen.

Lol, thats kittening funny. Most broken thing I’ve seen yet.

We Heal as One?

That’s, like, actually pretty funny.

Unspecified.9142:

Soilder.3607:

I think we need to all sit back and wait. I see tons of potential in these changes and have to say I very much like them.

Not only that, but while we’re worried about things like condition removal being only in one traitline again we really have no idea how big of a metashift we’ll see with all the classes changes.

Technically you are correct that we don’t know how things may change but just sitting back and saying nothing tells the Devs “Everything looks good, please do all that and we’ll be happy.”

Also they specifically asked the community to discuss this stuff on the forums and theorycraft.

I’m just addressing the players who are complaining that their favorite class has been trashed. Maybe they’re right, maybe they’re wrong. I just think we need some patience before we start to lose our tempers.

And on the topic of giving A-net feedback, I do not like how SotF has ended up in the WS traitline. That’s a big no for me and is entirely against what the introduction of the trait was for in the first place (as in, condition removal outside of WS).

I think we need to all sit back and wait. I see tons of potential in these changes and have to say I very much like them.

Not only that, but while we’re worried about things like condition removal being only in one traitline again we really have no idea how big of a metashift we’ll see with all the classes changes.

Sebrent.3625:

@Lyger:
Because that wouldn’t look as much like the spirits from GW1 who had an enormous range to their effects unlike our 1,000 range spirits.

For some reason, it appears that there is a desire to adhere to some of the look and feel of the spirits from GW1 … despite the facts that those had far superior range … and I believe you couldn’t stack them … and they were constant effects as opposed to chances to proc …

Not really sure why the only aspects ported over were the ones that people don’t like :-(

The ranger spirits were called nature rituals in guild wars 1.

And yes, they had a huge range, but were immobile and could only be moved if you had the ritualist as a primary or secondary profession. Important thing to note is that the effects from the spirits also effected enemies. You couldn’t stack the effects of spirits either, but you could have more than one of the same spirit if it were a ranger spirit (ritualist spirits are destroyed once the same one is cast by another ritualist).

DavyMcB.1603:

It’s funny to have that only ‘pet’ skill when nothing in trait lines has anything to do with ‘pet’.

Plus, it would fit more on shout. I think.

There’s actually a trait in the BM line that reduces “pet” skills by 10% recharge time. This doesn’t apply to RaO, but only the two pet skills that have a cooldown besides their f2.

Usually I come into suggestion threads thinking they will be totally off-base and dumb, but these sound really nice and balanced.

However, I suggest the 3 point and 5 point minor traits are swapped and the damage increase to a target with vulnerability is increased to 5%. Only so it stays in line with other minor traits as the 5 pointers are usually the ones with a damage boost.

Yea, entangle is either hit or miss. Many classes have the ability to immediately break out of it or cure the immobilize.

Tbh, I often wonder if it were more balanced to just have the skill apply five seconds of immobilize on use instead of over time.

Eurantien.4632:

I feel in WvW, because of the open terrain, power ranger can win every 1 v 1. Meanwhile
In PvP with the addition of so many obstacles to LoS behind dueling beckmes significantly harder because your are confined to a small area and they have more sustain. Still, I think ranger can win 1 v 1s even in or around the nodes unless it’s a d/d ele and shoutbow are extremely hard. That being said, is it easy? No.

When I run on my d/d ele (I’m zerk) and I see a longbow ranger, I know that its going to be a hard fight provided they’re competent. Usually I start the fight by lightning flashing towards them, popping armor of earth and using RtL to drop as much range between me and them as possible. Otherwise you’ll literally be at half health before you can even retaliate.

Celestial ele is a different story, apparently, but I don’t run one. Either way, a competent longbow ranger is very strong.

Yea I really see spirits as being very lackluster. They just die real easily in any large fight. Engineer turrets have an advantage in that they can’t be critically hit and the engineer himself can heal them with traits I believe.

Ranger spirits were at one point part of the PvP meta, and people complained very much about them as they were seen as cheese and of a low skill cap. Not gonna argue; I didn’t like them. However, like any build, people who play it well are always rewarded over those who don’t.

The passive effects of two spirits were eventually nerfed (sun spirit lost a second of burning and spirit of nature lost 160 hps) and the active effect of the storm spirit had its damage reduced by 33%. This, along with some changes among other classes, eventually led to them being pushed out of the meta.

It is worth noting that a patch back in April of 2013 I think buffed the health of non elite spirits by 60% in PvE.

Here’s the balance patch that bumped spirits into the meta. It did so through trait compressions and other buffs to spirits.

Toxsa.2701:

Soilder.3607:

The trait actually isn’t half bad as it’s probably the only trait affecting pets worth taking. It negates whatever incoming cc activated the trait, grants your pet 5 stacks of stability for three seconds, and only has a 10 second cooldown. For the most post, it can almost guarantee that your pet is immune to CC because of how often it can activate.

And how does that help you in any way? Lick Wound ONLY?
Yeah sure your pet gain stability, but their damage is wet noodle and no-one cares, and no-one will waste their precious CC on pets if he’s not using lick wound. Most people will just stomp you directly with the help of blind/block/invulnerable/stability, instead of wasting their CC to stop pet anyway.

Engineer has passive protection from Crowd Control with a 5 secs ICD.
(3 secs duration)
Not to mention it’s an ADAPT trait.

This trait is nothing compare to engineer’s trait.

It’s not about people using direct CC on the pet, it’s about when someone uses CC on you that is either AoE or can also affect the pet in some other way (like elementalist lightning aura).

This trait will see the most use for people running beastmaster specs, where their pet damage will be made much more consistent due to the fact that the pet can resist most CC that comes their way. And when a BM spec runs with a glassy pet, you can expect the pet to deal lots of damage.

The trait is good under certain circumstances. Just because you only play the game in one way doesn’t mean everyone else does too.

The trait actually isn’t half bad as it’s probably the only trait affecting pets worth taking. It negates whatever incoming cc activated the trait, grants your pet 5 stacks of stability for three seconds, and only has a 10 second cooldown. For the most post, it can almost guarantee that your pet is immune to CC because of how often it can activate.