Guild Wars 2

HHR LostProphet.4801:

gawker.8340:

Reverse leap chain for #2 on sword. It’s better that way for combo fields.

That would make the second part completely useless.

You only need to increase the time it allows between skills. Something along the lines of the theif sword gap closer.

Leap in, dps a bit, and then you have the option of leaping back and dodging if necessary. The other big weakness of the sword is the complete lack of a gap closer.

Cufufalating.8479:

I dont know, Sharpened Edges will be doing around 130 damage per proc and be procing around 42% of your hits (assuming an average of 50% fury uptime), which is an average of 55 extra damage every attack.

Not exactly knocking the ball out the park but thats still probably a 5-7% damage increase depending on your targets armour, which really isnt that bad.

I’d probably still prefer quickdraw but.. I wouldnt says its useless. People pay good money for a Sigil of Force to do that same thing :P

I mostly prefer Agility training for that slot. Pets (melee ones) can’t hit worth a kitten without a speed boost and the smart money is on swapping out hunt signet before engaging an enemy if you can.

The bleeds are a decent amount of extra, free dps, but the increased dps from a hitting pet without having to sacrifice a utility slot is probably going to help more in most cases.

WTF is “sustained melee AoE”?

That has to be a typo. We’re rangers, not Elementalists/Warriors.

Ranger’s have some of the worst AoE, melee or otherwise, in the game. Only one sword attack in the auto chain even cleaves, only one pet type cleaves, and we have no aoe burst skills, only small packet spam skills or condition spam.

Hell, our lack of any respectable AoE is half the reason we have no place in serious WvW guilds.

After stuff like this keeps popping up, it amazes me that ANYONE thinks the CDI will bear any kind of fruit. Asking for fixes to things they don’t think are broken is a waste of everyone’s time.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

After that Ready Up episode I kinda fear that they’re in the everything is fine with the rangers or the we just have to adjust some levers mood.

Feels like they have been in that mood for a very, very long time now.

Fluffball.8307:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

How do you want to stick to a stealthed opponent? o.O

If I may answer since I’m here: you literally go flying when you hit a stealthed thief. You can’t stick to him, but you can find out exactly where he is. It’s very powerful, especially combined with maul.

The leap is on the third hit meaning you have to hit a stealthed target twice to fly. That either requires extreme luck or an extremely bad theif.

I recall they promised to give us a platform to give suggestions. They never promised to do anything about them.

And after the lol’tacular traits we got. I wouldn’t hold my breath if I were you.

The new UI is a hotmess. They really swung for the fence when they tried to make it as clunky as possible.

Sorry, but people will still laugh at your pvt gear. Nothing’s changed.

Zerk is still the best dps gear and best dps = best pve set.

Other classes hit like freight trains = working as intended
A ranger manages to hit hard in the day and age and people wonder if it’s a “bug”…

Finn Dove of Myst.7819:

By the way, what has happened to my character’s “personality”? You know, honorable or unpredictable or so on? Where did that go?

That was a Roleplaying element and as such had to be removed along with the Town Clothes system.

Sword is trash in a zerg unless you float around the edge. It locks you on a person which means you can’t get away from the train when you’ll need to and if you use it without a target you leap all over the place doing very little damage and often leaping into a spot you don’t want to be in.

If you want to be in the think of it, both the axe and GS are far better and both bows with piercing arrows can also do decent damage to multiple targets.

Nerelith.7360:

ozmaniandevil.6805:

I have one question for ANet… since it seems the devs are pushing everyone to TP flipping as the ONLY real source of in-game cash, who exactly is going to be out in the world actually collecting the stuff to sell?

Me… Playing the game as Intended.

Mindlessly grinding overworld speedbump trash mobs = correct way to play
Mindlessly grinding overworld speedbump champ mobs = incorrect way to play

GW2 player logic 101

There’s really no place where this will make a difference though. Pve is still melee or go home and as long as we have to stand on the ledge of a wall in WvW to actually hit anyone close to the wall, right where anyone attacking would be standing, it doesn’t matter how far it shoots.

We won’t even be able to use it to pewpew siege from a huge distance because eagle + read = no piercing arrows so all they have to do is stand in front of the catapult and you won’t be able to do a thing to it.

Fletch.3572:

Fluffball.8307:

Because it was never broken in the first place, and it’s definitely not a bug. Many of us don’t want them to touch it.

Wait who?

People who like to pretend they are hella kitten and have no problem with an obviously broken skill mechanic.

Lime.5768:

ZigWentZag.6082:

why wouldn’t you want it to be touched? I for one love using the sword but not being able to dodge because I’m locked into an auto attack doesn’t make sense to me since any other class can break their animations to dodge imo it puts us at a unfair disadvantage compared to other classes using mele. but iI would like to hear your opinion as to why it should remain the same

Learn to dodge with the sword. It’s easy and probably the best sword auto in the game.

lulwut? There is only specific times in the chain that you can dodge or strafe. There’s no “learn 2 play bro” about it…

solrik.6028:

- Rangers need a big damage output boost. We’re talking 25% plus at least. We need to be feared, especially at range. Right now we are worse than a standard arrow cart.

Stopped reading there… Arrow carts wouldn’t be used if anyone was better than one…

Good, maybe everyone will roll zerk rangers instead and every fight can be over in a matter of seconds. Hour long Garrison fights are so dull…

Atherakhia.4086:

And that’s the exact problem Durzlla. When you ask players to rank classes from most to least useful in WvW, the Ranger, Thief, and Mesmer tend to round out the bottom. The thing all these classes have in common is no real group weapon.

The question then becomes can we improve a weapon enough to actually offer enough to make the Ranger become noticed in WvW or if it’s a lost cause and a new weapon would end up being needed?

What are some things this game’s lacking or what are some things that are currently running unopposed that a Ranger could be given?

It’s not because they have no group utility on it’s own (lulwut? @ mesmer, there is no more vital a class in wvw) it’s because we can’t combine group damage and survivability the way heavies and necros can. Ele’s get a free pass because the staff is amazing and D/D is a boon machine. Even engies get more respect simply because nade spam = aoe spam.

In order for us to be taken on boon dispensing alone, we would need a borderline OP skill set to make it work and it would need 0 interaction with the pet to function.

The biggest problem is that zerg damage = physical damage. As long as the ranger is “pet+player = all other classes” in dps, we will always be at the back of the bus when it comes to the damage that wins the wvw fights when the pet is very much mortal and almost entirely based on single target damage.

Uhtameit.2413:

Woah. There is so much that is wrong that I don’t know where to start.

The pet damage is mediocre? have you ever used a bird with a build to get 25 stacks of might on the pet? you might wanna try that…

Have you ever actually used a bird against a target that never stops moving, or any pet against a target that constantly stealths, like say a thief? You might wanna try that…

Roaming or zerging? Either is going to require at least 1600 toughness to do well and keep you from getting 2 shotted by thieves.

The most effective, or at least easiest to play, zerg build is full PVT gear on a signet build. Some use a more clerics focused build but I haven’t found the healing to really be necessary to often and our pets die almost immediately in a zerg so you don’t want to sac too much damage or you won’t really be of any help.

The best roaming is either a regen bunker or a BM bunker. I haven’t tried the BM build personally but some folks have posted some impressive vids of it’s performance.

thefantasticg.3984:

I’m wondering if this patch is going to be the Ranger’s time to shine. I’m certainly not putting the slightest bit of hope into that. Just seems that from the CDIs and whatnot that the Ranger was going to be at the forefront of this balance patch.

I wouldn’t be surprised in the slightest if the pet F2 fix, viper trap getting a poison field, the healing spirit nerf “fix” and the new traits were the only things we get out of this.

Anytime the devs say Rangers are going to get “amazing” things, it’s always bad mojo…

I’m actually expecting this update to be severely lacking in balance changes across the board.

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

So, me and Jcbroe were talking with some people about spirits, and my idea (based off of Battosais idea) for spirits is that you “summon” then for 60s (like now), but instead of an actual spirit a wisp floats around your pet (blue for water, purple for storm, orange for sun, yellowish brown for stone, white/almost white blue for frost, very large green wisp for elite) each one would give a passive effect, this effect would be “every 5th hit X effect occurs.” This passive would NOT be very powerful and would provide a very mediocre buff for everyone effected.

However, activating the spirit would “kill” the spirit and make your pet radiate with an aura, this aura would provide a pulsing benefit to allies near your pet as well as make your pets every 3rd attack apply a stronger effect than the passive.

EX: Sun Spirit: Summon a spirit to aid your allies in battle, causing every 5th attack for allies in range to Burn for 1s. Duration: 60s

Suns Might: The Spirit uses it’s remaining energy to imbue your pet with strength, causing every 3rd attack to blind and burn the target for 2s, and to give allies within X radius 1stack of might for 5s every second. Duration: 5s

The traits would OBVIOUSLY have to change as well, I’d like to see them become something like this:

Vigorous Spirit: renamed to Invigorating Spirits, is now the Grand Master trait, effect changed to: Your pet gains increased stacks for each spirit and aura attached to it.

Spirits Unbound: now an Adept Trait, your spirits CD is reduced by 20%

Natures Vengeance: The active effects of the spirits are increased, additionally effects of the spirits occur a hit earlier (IE passive effect is now 4 hits, not 5).

This would 1) remove cluttering 2) make spirits more fun to use and less mindless 3) allow MORE counter play to how spirits are, now killing the pet would end ALL spirit effects as well as the pet dying, this makes loading up 5 spirits into your pet very risky, but at the same time VERY powerful 4) this would allow tankier pets (such as bears and pigs) to be stronger in more aspects of the game 5) this doesn’t necisarily hell PETS in WvW, but it makes spirits less easy to pick off and die to AoE and 6) it makes spirits less point demanding to be good, but still rewards (and encourages) dumping points into spirits.

Yeah these are definitely really awesome and I would love to see the system to switch over to this instead of what it currently is.

The idea of changing spirits to a kind of aura that the pet gains was one of the few ideas that seemed like it had a chance of being considered by the devs in the CDI and is probably the best way to handle them aside from massive HP injection or invulnerability since I just can’t ever see GW1 size radii ever being implemented.

Reverence.6915:

OP should transfer to an NA server. NA servers are quite pug friendly, which generally results in less skillful play, but much more shenanigans

lol half the time I end up feeling like the only reason BG does as well as we do is because our commanders know how to herd the pugs like pros.

“A large guild group incoming!? Go my horde of rando guys and win us a victory when all logic says we shouldn’t”

Zaxares.5419:

Hey guys! I consulted an Asuran fortune teller and he shared this gem from April 2015 Patch Notes!

- All Bear pets now have base 1 million health and scale for 1,000 health with each point of Vitality. Rangers have the Determined buff as long as their Bear pet is alive.

My god O_O

The legends were true…

#bearnado2014

You can get the chest, legs and shoulders of commando in the personal story so at least that skin set isn’t going anywhere unless they are going to delete it from my stash or change it to a completely different skin.

jcbroe.4329:

@Substance E;
Is it safe to assume that I’m not the only one who thinks the sheer amount of pet traits and the vast spread of them should be seriously condensed?

Absolutely. Several of them need to just be inherent. The condition damage, heal power, and increased movement speed should be part of the pet as is. Even Pet’s Prowess could be reworked as an inherent critical damage mod based on pet type since it works much better for birds or cats than it does for bears or pigs. It’s easily one of my favorite pet traits, but I would love to not feel like I have to take it to make my pets hit for real damage.*

The idea of a bear that rarely crits but hits for massive damage when it does thanks to a low crit chance but a huge crit modifier is an interesting one.

I’d also love to see the traits that give bonuses be universal and not limited to pet types or condensed. Rending attacks and intimidation training could be combined and stability training is an obvious choice to combo with shared anguish.

*This, of course, would only be necessary in a world where we never get a system that shares our equipment stat bonuses with our pets.

Durzlla.6295:

Pets, like on Gw1, should just move faster than players by default (it only makes sense), and then SotH and swiftness can boost that speed even more. It’d help the pet immensely when it comes with keeping up with the target.

I really feel all they need to do is change pet melee skills to 250-300 range like the Polymorph Moa form and it will solve the “Run, stop, attack, repeat” system that makes them unable to hit reliably on a moving target.

If we became that one class that was impossible to kite completely because you couldn’t kite both the pet and ranger at the same time, we would not only get an identity, it would vastly improve the viability of our power builds based around nothing but sustained damage.

edit

Was just completing the heart in the Caledon Forest where you can turn into a fern hound and noticed that you can run and attack at the same time. The dog stops running and does the attack animation but you keep sliding forward. I would also suggest this as an alternative to the extra range on melee attack. It looks kind of odd but works just fine.

Fluffball.8307:

No one complains about thieves in sPvP.

And yet they complain about spirit rangers like there’s no tomorrow. Maybe that’s because the game modes are significantly different in stat allotment, available gear, and goal?

You get only 50 crit damage with 30 in crit line and zerker ammy with zerker gem.

I have almost that much with mostly soldier and knights gear and only 20 in skirmishing.

Thieves would be just as annoying in spvp as they are in wvw if they had pve crit damage along with food, wrench, ruins bloodlust, and guard slayer on them.

Deamhan.9538:

It’s because nobody wants diversity. As soon as you suggest build, and therefore party composition, diversity, all the triniphobics come crawling out.

Oh, they don’t hate the trinity, they just all want to be able to play the DPS role with any class that suits their fancy. GW2 is the only game that caved and gave it to them.
If that means the only team comp worth a kitten is the one that cranks out the most damage in the least amount of time, then so be it.

Tank and support is turbo lame, DPS role for all!

Pet fix is obvious. You give them a 300 range for all melee attacks so they leap. It’s already in use with the Moa Form Mesmer elite.

jcbroe.4329:

So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.

Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

It’s a problem that all classes have but I think it becomes more obvious because we have either pet traits or player traits and rarely do the two overlap as opposed to the other classes having mostly all player traits.

Trixie.7614:

People who think TESO is a threat have clearly never tried it.

The fact that you can’t play your favorite race and with your friends is a shameful thing to do in a MMO. It’s like a really poorly made Alliance and Horde.

But don’t worry! If you play pay more you can play in any faction!

Doesn’t matter. This update is obviously timed to keep people looking at GW2 and from jumping on the launch day bandwagon of a competing title, especially when said title has a very comparable wvw system of it’s own. I’d suspect they would time it closer to the actual launch date if they could and are using progressive previews to build hype instead.

WoW is no different. They had Mists roll out at the same time as GW2 and have another expansion coming sometime in 2014 to likely combat ES:OL and WildStar.

We probably won’t see as big of an effort to one up WildStar as it has the same publisher and not as much overlap with GW2.

Vayne.8563:

No idea what you’re basing this “bad track record” on, but I don’t think that the game is really in that situation.

Basically there are too many people who really do like the game for it to be in those straights. It doesn’t work for certain types of players…that’s 100% true. It really wasn’t designed for those players.

There are enough people it DOES work for to keep this game running for a long, long time.

This isn’t a p2p game where high player pop = profit though. Those thousands of people logging in each day need to be buying gems or Anet makes squat off of them which means, after the box money is used up, they start losing money keeping the servers and staff running.

Being a b2p game means people can come and go as they please, but Anet needs them to also be buying gems when they do log in if they want things to keep chugging along.

The game won’t be going anywhere anytime soon but that applies to both down and up if they stick to their “play it safe and appeal to the lowest common denominator” strategy.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

No one ever mentions these, but there are some other permanent or semi-permanent changes to the game. Kessex Hills has several new DEs and gathering nodes. Three of the starter zones have new DEs, as well.

Maybe no one does them, but they were added to the game. Which makes one think….
Will any new ‘permanent’ content be played after the first few weeks? I don’t know. I do them, when I’m in the area, but not many seem to. What a shame.

That’s mostly because anet takes the easy route and makes everything about grinding gold or mats. Aside from obsidian generation, we have pretty much no use for karma after one becomes lvl80 and gets enough gold to buy the armor they want. Plenty of folks are sitting on thousands of wvw badges because there isn’t much to do with them. Dailies get more and more simplistic and general as time goes on lessening the need to go to different areas to complete them.

Meanwhile, both ascended and legendary gear is only accessible by massive grinding of money and materials which means people will flock to the best spot to farm and never go anywhere else because why bother? It’s no big mystery why only 2 zones have dedicated champ trains.

One easy way is to give all those crap trophy drops a purpose like they had in GW1. Most are restricted to specific mobs in small areas so people would have to go all over the map to get them if they were given a purpose that people desired. It certainly worked in GW1 when they created Nicholas the Traveler and the Zaishen bounties. Zones went from dead for years to overflowing with activity when in rotation.

It’s not impossible to breathe life into zones, but they can’t do it when one just needs stacks of mats and a fat wallet to get all the “best” gear. At least, not with the systems they currently have in place.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

I have see at least 5 different rangers played by Dev’s on blackgate and maybe overflow. Anyone who say they never play Rangers is talking out of their fanny.

The Anet tag is available to all Anet employes. A small fraction of the 300 people working there are actually in a position to make any design decisions.

We have no way of knowing if those rangers are head staff, on the art team, or just a secretary.

I don’t know if anyone has tested it but according to the wiki “This skill’s effect will cease to function if a shout is used, the pet is given an order, or the pet falls in battle.”

It would make sense if it suffers from the same bullkitten problem we have with Sic ’Em.

Stone.6751:

1. Guardian
2. Warrior
3. Necromancer
4. Elementalist

5. Mesmer
6. Thief
7. Ranger
8. Engineer

I split this into top and bottom four because it makes more sense to me that way. The top four all play key roles in an organized WvW group. I’m putting Guardian and Warrior up front only because my experience says a larger meat-shield up front is more beneficial than the DPS power from the squishies back.

In some ways a Necromancer can play somewhat between front and back with survivability, utility and DPS. They have some extremely useful skills like Well of Corruption, Plague Form, Epidemic, and can suck up the downed state enemies with Death Shroud. They are very useful, but I ranked them slightly lower than Guardian and Warrior only because you don’t need as many to be successful.

All of this is assuming you are running in a group. If you are roaming or doing small group stuff I’d change the list around quite a bit.

Nade spam automatically makes the engineer better than the Ranger in zerg fights. Ranger is easily the #8 for zergs by a large margin.

Aridia.3042:

Prysin.8542:

if rangers were given a trait that increased movement speed and/or endurance regeneration when using bows (like ele with scepter trait, or ele with dagger traits/ warrior with melee weapon trait) then we would be in a stronger position, overall, as a “archery” class.
Personally, i prefer to use a mix of melee and ranged. But i would be overjoyed to get a trait that gave +X% movement speed and return X% endurance when dodging while having a bow/ increased endurance regen while having a bow. It would make my life on ranged builds a whole lot easier.

Good trait, so long as it doesn’t end up in marksmanship, lol.

We all know it would.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

The Master of the Nameless has 680 health so yeah, it kills him in 1s. Technically its not a 1 shot and you cannot use it in PvP as it contains broken PvE skills.

But less than 1 second is close enough to a 1 shot in my book

I just logged on to GW1, first time since forever, it was something like;

Favorable Winds
“I am the Strongest”
Glass Arrows
Ebon Battle Standard
Triple Shot
Savage Shot
16 Marksmanship
15 Expertise
Hornbow with 20/20 and +1 Marks 20%

For FoW I used;
All the +1 cons
A full con set
Birthday Cupcake

So its not like you can repeat it over and over, you need a big setup, then, BAM! SPIKED! Then you have to setup for the next one.

The Mo/P with 16 in Smiting for Judges Insight was great for the extra 20% AP and Holy damage, plus Great Dwarf Weapon is 40% chance to Knock Down and +20 dmg, Succour also for the +1 energy regen. Also with 12 in Command for movement buffs to get us around.

Was just a fun build for FoW where you could snipe everything. Or Shards of Orr.

The point I was trying to make though, is that spike dmg has ALWAYS been a part of the ranger. RSpike had to be continually nerfed because it was so effective, (dont even get me started on 50 copies of Favorable Winds in back-in-the-day HoH, rangers one shotting players haha) I always played spike ranger in PvE whether that was Splinter barrage or Holy Damage for Undead (FoW Book trick or Duo with monk). Or just for fun, repeat the Undead Hordes quest in Beetletun solo and just never take the reward. Or Duo trapping the Underworld, that’s spike also, even though its applying conditions at the same time.

My standard bar was [ OgcSc5MTnSOG5WqGwGzk5irg ] in case anyone still plays GW1. That’s Sundering Attack, Penetrating Attack, Prepared Shot, Savage Shot, Read the Wind, “I am the Strongest”, EBSOH, Shadow Sanctuary. You could just cycle the 1st three skills forever hitting everything in the game for 150+ dmg per shot and the CDs go 4s, 4s, 6s. That is sustained spike.

There were only certain occasions that I even used conditions as, lets face it, they just take too long to kill things. You can shoot something with an arrow to make it bleed, then poison it and kite around waiting for it to die, but you can also just shoot it in the head and kill it. A master archer can certainly shoot with extreme precision.

Maybe they should make RtW give +XX% crit dmg also.

Sorry for such along post.

lol I had completely forgotten about those insane PvE only skills.

sorudo.9054:

Substance E.4852:

sorudo.9054:

Olvendred.3027:

lol. The one game that gives you unlimited, instant teleportation to almost anywhere in the world, from absolutely anywhere in the world, and there’s a problem with it costing some pocket change?

GW1 still smiles and thinks “you can travel anywhere for free yet it was never a problem”

Yes, and the only reason that game never had inflation problems is because every item was worth barely anything when you sold them to merchants combined with the relatively low drop rate of gear when in a group of 8. The flow of cash into the economy was insanely slow for a game with hardly any gold sink to speak of.

TP taxes probably nuke more money than all other system combined but the teleport fee helps.

lol, you really think ppl sold things to merch’s?
most are sold to other players with a huge price tag attached to it, just look for an armbrace and ask again how low the inflation is……you need 30 ecto’s for just one of them and ecto’s cost about 12K (as far as my memory remembers)

How is that inflation? Armbraces had insane prices from day 1 and hardly ever changed even when people got really good at farming them. They didn’t start low and climb up from there.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

jcbroe.4329:

…In Guild Wars 1, bow rangers did most of their damage through conditions like poison, bleeding, and burning. The few builds that were more centered around direct damage didn’t have “instant bonus damage,” but made bows into more “turret” like builds, which could achieve a high output of constant damage, but that damage in Guild Wars 1 would have been considered a pressure/spike assist build, and not a spike build…

…Is it perfect in Guild Wars 2? No, but the ranger class as seen be ANet has never been a high damage 1 shot sniper.

Just a history lesson to end the bickering.

My Ranger Spike build from GW1 on the Master of Damage on the Isle of the Nameless. I think you will see that the 1 shot sniper build is certainly possible with Ranger in GW1, this damage is with a +1 marksmanship grip, you should see the damage I get if I get a monk to buff me with judges insight and use a +20% vs Undead grip on Undead foes in FoW. Usually got a monk friend to buff me with Judges Insight and Great Dwarf Weapon and we would duo the FoW battlegrounds for shards. You could kill stuff from outside range and never get aggro.

Oh, and btw, Ranger was one of two classes (other being assassin) that could complete the FoW solo.

What build was this because I have never, ever heard of ANY class hitting for that much in a single hit. That’s literally enough to down a person in 1 hit with a dervish coming in first place with a maximum of 635 health.

sorudo.9054:

Olvendred.3027:

lol. The one game that gives you unlimited, instant teleportation to almost anywhere in the world, from absolutely anywhere in the world, and there’s a problem with it costing some pocket change?

GW1 still smiles and thinks “you can travel anywhere for free yet it was never a problem”

Yes, and the only reason that game never had inflation problems is because every item was worth barely anything when you sold them to merchants combined with the relatively low drop rate of gear when in a group of 8. The flow of cash into the economy was insanely slow for a game with hardly any gold sink to speak of.

TP taxes probably nuke more money than all other system combined but the teleport fee helps.

Olvendred.3027:

lol. The one game that gives you unlimited, instant teleportation to almost anywhere in the world, from absolutely anywhere in the world, and there’s a problem with it costing some pocket change?

First World Guildwars Problems…
In other games people grind their butts off to buy a mount that goes 5% faster and people are complaining that they have to pay a small fee to OPTIONALLY teleport very near any spot on the map.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Substance E.4852:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I just want to recap the design philosophy behind the longbow, so we’re all on the same table again:
The longbow is meant to deal damage at range. Noone ever said it should deal high damage.
However, there is the major flaw that we aren’t able to utilize the range we’ve been given. This applies both to WvW, where we aren’t able to maintain our range to justify the longbow, and PvE, where is simply no need to bring in a ranged weapon.
So there are two things we could do to fix the flaw.
1) Scrap the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range and it wouldn’t need to if we would say that the longbow is meant to deal high damage on any range.
2) Fix the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range. Therefore we have to add cripples and immobilizes to effectively maintain our range. This would be fairly easy to do for WvW, but maintaining the range in PvE isn’t the problem. The problem is, that there is no need to range anything. You can melee all day long in PvE. So ANet has either to deliver content tailored to using long range weapons or they have to buff the longbow to a certain extent, so it’s more desireable to use longrange weapons than melee weapons. Either way, they probably have to buff the damage atleast a bit.

It’d be far easier to simply remove the range penalty on the auto attack. It doesn’t need a bonus effect if it’s already the hardest hitting ranged attack in the game, that’s enough on it’s own. It then becomes useful in pve because you can stack in melee range and it’s still plenty balanced in pvp because melee will still hit for more and the bow lacks survival skills beyond a short stealth so you’re toast when they inevitably close the gap.

Then, if any balance issues do crop up, they can shave off damage from the auto till it works without having to drastically retool the skills.

Looks like a band-aid solution to me. Melee weapons should be more effective in melee range than ranged weapons. It is stupid to stand directly in front of the enemie and “snipe” him. It may be the easiest fix but it’s also the most silly fix I can think of.
They can, however, decrease the minimum range for the maximum damage required.

It still wouldn’t do more than the 1H sword. And as I said, they can then shave down the damage if it starts to break the “melee > ranged dps” rule.

It may be a band-aid fix, but that’s how Anet rolls with Ranger fixes anyway…

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I just want to recap the design philosophy behind the longbow, so we’re all on the same table again:
The longbow is meant to deal damage at range. Noone ever said it should deal high damage.
However, there is the major flaw that we aren’t able to utilize the range we’ve been given. This applies both to WvW, where we aren’t able to maintain our range to justify the longbow, and PvE, where is simply no need to bring in a ranged weapon.
So there are two things we could do to fix the flaw.
1) Scrap the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range and it wouldn’t need to if we would say that the longbow is meant to deal high damage on any range.
2) Fix the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range. Therefore we have to add cripples and immobilizes to effectively maintain our range. This would be fairly easy to do for WvW, but maintaining the range in PvE isn’t the problem. The problem is, that there is no need to range anything. You can melee all day long in PvE. So ANet has either to deliver content tailored to using long range weapons or they have to buff the longbow to a certain extent, so it’s more desireable to use longrange weapons than melee weapons. Either way, they probably have to buff the damage atleast a bit.

It’d be far easier to simply remove the range penalty on the auto attack. It doesn’t need a bonus effect if it’s already the hardest hitting ranged attack in the game, that’s enough on it’s own. It then becomes useful in pve because you can stack in melee range and it’s still plenty balanced in pvp because melee will still hit for more and the bow lacks survival skills beyond a short stealth so you’re toast when they inevitably close the gap.

Then, if any balance issues do crop up, they can shave off damage from the auto till it works without having to drastically retool the skills.

Cufufalating.8479:

Durzlla.6295:

Rym.1469:

Poison Master could be a cool trait if it would increase healing debuff to 66%. That would be actually very useful in PvP and maybe in some (future?) PvE scenarios. As it stands now, absolutely horrible and nothing interesting.

For other traits… D’oh I lost it when reading. A GM bugfix, GM poor-man’s RNG when most of the most dangerous skills are not even projectiles…. GM which will probably heal like a one Water Blast from Ele.

Last chance they have are some major, hidden for some reason, changes to weapons and utilities.

As it stands for now, that “Feature patch” adds nowhere as much as major patches in other MMOs.

There’s nothing fair or fun about having your healing reduced by 66% by a profession who can EASILY maintain +100% poison duration, as it is now it makes poison something dangerous to have on you (moreso than usual) and makes it so that no matter how much they cry, or beg, or plee, they will NEVER not be poisoned.

Have to agree with Durz, 66% is way too much. 50% is probably the most you could get away with.

I would instead prefer something like poison turns into weakness or bleeding when cleansed, rather than being cleansed altogether. That would be more interesting than its current 50% damage boost.

The trait applying torment when we poison a target (like the poison is more potent or w/e) would go well with a class that is heavily based around kiting.

Prysin.8542:

Durzlla.6295:

Substance E.4852:

Durzlla.6295:

Aridia.3042:

Durzlla.6295:

Combine Sigil of Ice + Predators Instinct, the enemy will almost never get to you, it’s brutally hilarious.

It’s 30% chance proc on crit with 10 sec ICD that nets you 2 seconds of cripple. Target would have to be not a warrior, have no gap closer, or AFK to keep them at 1k range for longer than 1 shot.

It’s chill, that’s 66% longer CDs for 2s, and 66% slower movement, not 25% and it’s not to keep them at 1k+ range it’s to keep them from GETTING TO YOU. If they can not hit you, they can not win. That chill DESTROYS gap closers btw, try to leap at me with a 1200 range leap, go ahead, i’ll watch you move 400 units, good luck leaping to me.

You’d have to be using duration extending food to get that 2s against someone with poultry soup and runes though. With just the marksmanship buff you’ll only get about 1.5 seconds of chill.

Yes, but not very many people run condi reduction… you shouldn’t assume that it’s being run to determine whether or not it’s worth running.

not many run condi reduction in PvP. In WvW it is running rampant and every warrior is running Dogged March + Melandru Runes and possibly Lemongrass too, unless they got Omnom Compote (heals for 800 or so on kill).

In sPvP your statement is true durrz, in WvW it is not. Considering you spent most of your time in dungeons and PvP, while i spend the wast majority of my time in WvW, we can just agree that we are equally qualified to talk about our own “specialities”.
In WvW, you won’t do crap against a warrior with 2 seconds chill. Even running Alpine Wolf with Malicious training and Intimidation training barely slows down a warrior (thats 7 sec chill + 11 sec cripple for those who wonder)

True. I’ve tried the sigil of ice and found it fairly underwhelming in WvW. It might be worth trying again with the change to proc rate and double sigil slots on the 14th though since you will always get that chill with opening strike on your first hit.

Stop trying to invuln pewpew from the ledges and jump down like everyone else?

Durzlla.6295:

Aridia.3042:

Durzlla.6295:

Combine Sigil of Ice + Predators Instinct, the enemy will almost never get to you, it’s brutally hilarious.

It’s 30% chance proc on crit with 10 sec ICD that nets you 2 seconds of cripple. Target would have to be not a warrior, have no gap closer, or AFK to keep them at 1k range for longer than 1 shot.

It’s chill, that’s 66% longer CDs for 2s, and 66% slower movement, not 25% and it’s not to keep them at 1k+ range it’s to keep them from GETTING TO YOU. If they can not hit you, they can not win. That chill DESTROYS gap closers btw, try to leap at me with a 1200 range leap, go ahead, i’ll watch you move 400 units, good luck leaping to me.

You’d have to be using duration extending food to get that 2s against someone with poultry soup and runes though. With just the marksmanship buff you’ll only get about 1.5 seconds of chill.

AEFA.9035:

jcbroe.4329:

I ran Ritualist support for my Team in HA when I wasn’t running R/E Magebane snare hahaha, so yes, I absolutely miss that style of play and those tactics.

Rangers in this game have the perfect tools to make use of decently ranged spirits, since we have so many leaps and evade backs. We can leap out of a fight, summon a spirit out of harms way that could buff the whole team, and then back into the fray.

The competitive aspect of it is that going up against it, it would be like “where is all this burning/bleed coming from, or how do they all have protection/regen right now? It must a spirit. We need our roamer to go take care of it.”

In that moment the roamer leaves the fight to go take care of the spirit, it creates just enough of a window of opportunity where it allows the team running spirits to possibly push a few kills and win the teamfight, or gain the advantage, because the other team lost a part of their damage for just enough time to give the spirit team the upper hand.

I really wish ANet look into this more, just by adding more range to the spirits would make them very viable in 1 or 2 types of game modes in game. (wvw/pvp) Where is the people’s champ at? Allie!!!

It’s important to remember though that our spirits only affect allies just as the ritualist spirits only affected one side. They paid for this by having to sac life each time the spirit proced it’s effect or having short durations with large energy costs.

If we wanted the same, allies only, large radius, spirits that the ritualist had, we’ll have to pay for it somehow.

I mean, I’d love to have the Ranger spirits from GW1 but there’s no way I’d bring a buff spirit into WvW that also affected the enemy zerg. Maybe the old Edge of Extinction spirit though. That would be fun as hell for a short while.

Chrispy.5641:

Substance E.4852:

Chrispy.5641:

Durzlla.6295:

Shared this in Skype with Jcbroe, but like 10s after I posted I remembered an idea me and my friend had for the LB#1 change it from what it is to being Penetrating Shot: deal 1% more damage per stack of vuln. IE: if they had 25 vuln instead of doing 25% more damage you’d be doing 50% more damage. If they want to keep the long range thing make it so that you apply 1 stack of vuln for 10s or so while you’re over 1k range, but other than that don’t change the damage.

This would allow the LB to not only be a very lethal weapon in team fights due to the high vuln that can be around, but it’d also Synergise nicely with Rapid Fire and the proposed Hunters Shot (immob + vuln), imo it’d also warrant Rapid fires long cast time since that’d be a 20% damage boost instead of 10%, it’d give the enemy a chance to stop you from setting them up for death.

This is probably one of the better, less confusing ideas I’ve seen over the past year and a half. The only thing I would be cautious of is just how crazy the damage will stack up after using Signets in their current form (not that its a bad thing, but a 12-15k auto attack, even if its one well planned shot…it will send every other class up in arms)

Not any worse than Killshot and that doesn’t require a bar of long cooldown signets to work.

I know you feel poor and neglected, and are envious of just about everything other professions can do because the Ranger can’t do it, and still you want to play the ranger instead of other professions. That’s okay. You don’t deserve a response beyond that based on the fact that you still feel the need to compare a class mechanic (burst) skill to an auto attack.

Evidently I’ve touched a nerve…

Chrispy.5641:

Durzlla.6295:

Shared this in Skype with Jcbroe, but like 10s after I posted I remembered an idea me and my friend had for the LB#1 change it from what it is to being Penetrating Shot: deal 1% more damage per stack of vuln. IE: if they had 25 vuln instead of doing 25% more damage you’d be doing 50% more damage. If they want to keep the long range thing make it so that you apply 1 stack of vuln for 10s or so while you’re over 1k range, but other than that don’t change the damage.

This would allow the LB to not only be a very lethal weapon in team fights due to the high vuln that can be around, but it’d also Synergise nicely with Rapid Fire and the proposed Hunters Shot (immob + vuln), imo it’d also warrant Rapid fires long cast time since that’d be a 20% damage boost instead of 10%, it’d give the enemy a chance to stop you from setting them up for death.

This is probably one of the better, less confusing ideas I’ve seen over the past year and a half. The only thing I would be cautious of is just how crazy the damage will stack up after using Signets in their current form (not that its a bad thing, but a 12-15k auto attack, even if its one well planned shot…it will send every other class up in arms)

Not any worse than Killshot and that doesn’t require a bar of long cooldown signets to work.

Sandpit.3467:

All we need now are some viable builds to swap between!

It’ll be worth it to be able to change from a zerg build to roam build on the fly since neither one is worth a kitten in the wrong setting.
Hopefully they will release some kind of template system to make it easier.

misterdevious.6482:

The secret to keeping your pets alive through the most massive scorched earth mapblob v mapblob fights is to be an absolutely terrible ranger. Horrible. Bears. Bark Skin. Heal as One (between swaps and a Heal as One, your pet really only has to last 10s before you help it.) Using Guard not for its ability to grant regen and swiftness, but using it to grant perma protection and assign your pet a radius that it will not leave (you can keep it out of the heaviest part of the fight). 1400 Healing Power, Fortifying Bond, and Sigil of Luck all help immensely as well.

Will it ever be worth it to go to such extreme lengths to keep tanky pets alive? Probably not. Fun though when retalbear starts doing better dps than damage pets.

You realize you created a completely useless build for actually killing anyone just to keep the pet alive right?

It actually helps illustrate how bad the situation is that it requires so much just to keep the pet alive, never mind using it in any offensive capacity (which won’t be much with a bear)