Guild Wars 2

Blue map of EotM makes for great selfie lighting.

Leg/Butt Cape Pride!

blud.8174:

infantrydiv.1620:

Specific Game Mode
Primarily PvP and WvW, but decent for PvE as well
Proposal Overview
Reverse the leaps on Ranger Sword Skill #2
Goal of Proposal
Currently the Ranger sword skill #2 leaps backwards and then forwards, the goal of the proposal would be to make the sword first leap forwards and then backwards
Proposal Functionality
Currently the sword 2 leap feels kind of wonky and useless in most situations. It’s alright because of the hard evade on it and the distance generation of the initial leap, but reversing the leaps would improve fluidity of gameplay. For example, with my proposal you could do combos like this:
Sword 2 to leap into the fight, Sword 3 to poison, Torch 5 for burning field, Sword 3 to leap out of burning field, swap to longbow or shortbow now at range.
Associated Risks
Not much, I’d say that the evade on Sword 2 could be removed if this was implemented, but keep the cripple and leap finisher.

This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this idea. I am strongly opposed to it.

The argument is that the current leap order is useless in most situations. My argument would be that in fact, this would at best result in the same feeling in most situations and at worst, be even worse.

It’s highly impractical outside of things like PvP where you want to chase someone. I would be open to considering this for PvP-only, but even then…what do you do when you’re already face-to-face with your foe and they’re landing massive damage and AoE on you? You leap forward to take more damage?

We already have serpent’s strike and stalkers strike that both function better as dodges. We need a gap closer on the sword.

The best option would be to reverse the order and then remove the time limit on the second skill. You can close the gap at the start and hit some nice damage and then you have a retreat skill in reserve if you need it since we don’t need to spam gap closers with the cripple on the auto.

It gives us the best of both without any sacrifice.

Part 2

Devourers
“Parasite”
-For the next X seconds the pet’s attacks have a 25% chance to steal health from the foe to heal the pet and Player.
“Carapace”
-AoE Protection and stability.
“For the Swarm”
-Pet instantly dies and revives downed players and dead NPCs adjacent to pet. Cannot be slotted on two pets at the same time. This skill would be massively useful in WvW and dungeons.

Drakes
“____ Breath”
-Same functionality as the Marsh and River drake breath weapon but tied to drake type and their current breath weapons. They all have bounce and homing to aid in delivery.
“Tail Swipe”
-Similar to current drake skill but causes launch like the hostile drakes do with their tail sweeps. Blast finisher.
“Draconic Strength”
-Passive: Player gains 1% damage increase for every 3 points in beastmastery. Allowing for an 80/30 ranger at the expense of pet the skill.

I tried to limit the skills more to effects that we currently don’t posses rather than just flat damage that plagues pet skills right now. As I said, I purposely left out cooldowns, durations, and cast times because it’s impossible to gauge how powerful these would need to be when the pet can only use 1 skill at a time, the player has all the damage, and our other skills, as well as pet performance, is improved. Something on the list that looks too weak now might be too powerful after the changes or vice versa.

Pets would retain the slotted skill when rotated out so you could, for example, use the moa’s “Yeehaw” to charge the pet into a zerg in wvw and then rapidly switch to a moa slotted for “Edge of Extinction” to bomb the zerg with damage and boon stripping when they inevitably instagib it.

Our class identity would shift from “Guy/Gal with Pet” to “Guy/Gal with access to large skill pool delivered through pet.” It also gives an element of unpredictability to the Ranger as you would have no way of knowing what skill they have in reserve out of over 2 dozen different ones.

Balance would be an issue but I feel the inability to slot for more than one at a time along with the fact that most of them are performed by the pet with it’s inherent AI limitations would keep their power in check.

Again, mostly off the top of my head ideas but a basic plan of how a 100% damage ranger with a utility tool pet could work in theory since it’s what many of us would like to see happen but hasn’t yet been laid out effectively.

Going through the CDI I had noticed that while many of us, myself included, have been championing a 100% Ranger with Support pet option, there isn’t really a suggested idea of how it might work in detail. This is just some loose ideas I threw together and would need access to an actual test server to see how they work in tandem with a stronger Ranger than we have now so I make no assumptions to their balance but I will try my best to no power creep the class. At least, not too much

The idea is that the ranger’s weapon coefficients would be increased by ~30% and the pet’s coefficient would be reduced to 0 as a baseline. Pets would instead have a list of 3 skills we could slot like normal utilities that are unique to each pet type (cats, hounds). These would take the place of the F2 slot and the other F’s would function as normal. Any F2 skills would have separate damage amounts not tied to the amount of invested BM points. The other two attack skills would be removed from pet actions to limit interference with the F2 skill and to allow for shorter cool downs as they now only have auto and F2.

The Beastmastery line would be changed from an increase in pet stats to an increase to the pet’s damage coefficient by 1% and reduce the Ranger’s damage per point in the line. This would effectively allow one who wishes to beastmaster to do so with appropriate trait investment and prevent a 100%+30% ranger from happening in spvp. This would require a condensing of pet traits and reallocation of most if not all of them to the Beastmaster line as a player with points in other lines has little use for them and to allow maximum use of traits for beastmasters.

The Pet “Types” and Their Respective Skills

I made it only restricted by pet type to allow some amount of player aesthetic choice on pet appearance without having to worry about performance. Similar to how pets in GW1 worked.

Hounds
“Strike as One”
-Your next attack cripples the target and your pet shadow steps to the target and knocks them down.
“Terrifying Howl”
-Same as current Wolf skill. Reduced cool down to compensate for smaller skill pool.
“Pack Ferocity”
-AoE stability and fury. More team utility and more access to stability for the Ranger.

Cats
“Stalk”
-Both you and your pet gain 10 seconds of Stealth. Ends on attack like normal stealth. We need some kind of skill that emulates the activity of a hunter blending into nature.
“Rending Claws”
-Passive Effect: Both you and your pet gain ‘Sharpened Edges’ effect.
“Clever Girl”
-Pet moves to targeted location. Press again to shadowstep to your pet’s location. “The one you see is only a distraction” Could also be made to simply step to pet’s location, without the placement element.

Birds
“Go for the Eyes!”
-Channeled attack over several seconds that applies multiple blind applications.
“Scavenger’s Strike”
-Pet strikes foe, stealing 2 boons on next attack. You gain stolen boons.
“Airspeed Velocity”
-Passive: Player and pet gain 25% movement speed. Swiftness has no effect while skill is active. Player need not be unladen.

Hogs
“Scavenge”
-Works as current Scavenge skill but places item directly into the player’s F2 slot in the same way Steal works for the thief. Reduced cool down to compensate for smaller skill pool. Also could instead be an aoe that gives allies tools as well but may be too powerful or open to trolling allied players.

Bears
“Brutal Mauling”
-Knocks foe down and inflicts daze. Blast finisher. Cleaves.
“Thick Hide”
-Passive: 20% of the damage you take is redirected to the pet.
“Hibernation”
-Passive:You and adjacent allies gain health regeneration while not moving.

Optional Replacement Skill “Oh Bother”
-Bear creates a cloud of bees at it’s location that inflict Torment.

Moas
“Yeehaw!”
-The pet shadowsteps to your location and you both leap forward 1200 units
“Stampede”
-Pet gains stability and charges forward, knocking back foes as it moves.
“Edge of Extinction”
-Passive: Pet deals AoE damage and strips boons on death. Unblockable. A good skill in areas like WvW zerg fights where the pet dies as a norm and boon strip AoE is massively useful. Nod to extinct Moas and the EoE of GW1 as well.

Spiders
“Snare”
-Pulls target to Pet’s location. Inflicts cripple and poison. 1200 range to allow for pulling folks off walls in WvW.
“Funnel Web”
-Creates web at pet’s location that inflicts AoE immobilize. Conditions on player are transferred to affected foes.
“Debilitating Venom”
-Passive: Both Pet and Player deal 10% more damage to foes suffering from poison. 10% chance on strike to inflict 2s of poison if foe is already poisoned.

The magic of easy mode Dire armor.

Bran.7425:

At this point I am thinking that it is past time for the CDI to at least move to a different phase as now vocal members of other profession communities are starting to plot generic *Well ranger needs help, but so does X". I just got caught up and saw a couple of those and it is a sign of more to come, might need to have people start flagging them simple as they do not add anything constructive.

The second I saw a necro start to complain like their class needs help I almost caved my skull in from how hard I facepalmed. Maybe they need condition help in pve but that’s hardly unique to them.

http://www.twitch.tv/gw2ascii/c/3575974

Necro “weakness” at work.

misterdevious.6482:

SkiTz.4590:

I don’t understand what makes it even sensible to have traits like “pets move faster” or pets do x, y ,z. in the skirmishing line. Like really? this trait literally might be used by 0.05% of the ranger player base

Theres literally 4-5 of these junk traits in every single line. And its such a waste. What on earth is the point of the beast master trait line? Literally every single trait line on ranger has beast-master traits in them….i don’t even.. just a big face palm..

If you want a melee pet to have a chance to hit moving players you want it to run faster… for example if you wanted to run axe/dagger, sword/torch w/traps… the agility training trait you complain about which is in skirmishing might be the only option for giving your pet needed pvp/wvw speed.

If all beastmaster traits were in the beastmaster line then you could only pick 3… not much variety, and the pet couldn’t get very powerful. Worse… if you wanted to do anything with your pet you would be forced to go into that line (which would be horrible). By spreading the traits out you can spec any way you want and still get some kind of benefit from your pets. The Mesmer pre/crit-damage line is similar… it has traits that generate clones and cause conditions with clones… not in the condition line and not in the illusion line. They have illusion/shatter traits all over. The pet is our profession mechanic so it is the same way.

My personal preference is beastmaster first, druid second, wildman/woodsman third, archer fourth and it is quite clear that many people have those archetypes in the opposite order.

The problem is that beast/minionmaster is an entire class identity unto itself. Shoehorning 2-3 different class designs into one body is what is causing a lot of our problems. We could be an archer/woodsman, a druid, or a beastmaster but we don’t have enough focus on any of them to perform those roles well. Beastmaster also suffers from the obvious limitations of the games unifiorm mob AI.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Gotejjeken.1267:

I still think we are missing quite a bit of dev feedback here. Specifically in regards to the pet damage and leash nerfs. There had to be a reason for that, and obviously all of the posts here suggesting more pet usefulness will be tainted by whatever reason caused the nerfs in the first place.

In fact, prior to said nerfs I do not recall reading many complaints about pets. There has always been the survivability issue, and to an extent getting in the way during certain times, however nothing to the level we have now.

Oh, there were complaints about them, but only in sPvP, nowhere else. That’s what led to all the pet nerfs, QQing from sPvP about a class who is only good at 1v1s and holding points…which led to the destruction of the class everywhere else. It’s also the MAIN reason why I have always hated sPvP and the sPvP community.

They’re also the group of people that tricked Anet into powercreeping the hell out of the Warrior just because it wasn’t amazing at 100% of the game.

Renn.8241:

On the GW2 Homepage this is what is written for Rangers as a description;
“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

We need emphasis on reach of our weapons and base damage at ranger.
I know the devs what to keep GW1 separate but maybe they should look at how they built the Ranger there, in my opinion it was a well balanced class in GW1

True but they gave most of our good bow skills to the warrior (burning arrows, pin down) and our preparations became thief venoms. We pretty much just have spirits (no where as good as gw1) and pets (only ever saw use in bunnythumper/petminionfactory builds).

Akisame.9508:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

Actually Orca, I believe a couple of months after the game was released, ranger community was complaining that we couldn’t dps as well as all the other classes and a dev was quoted as saying that we might not see those large number’s because ‘about’ 30% of the ranger’s damage is done by the pet, so we have to figure pet damage when viewing our own damage in order to get the real DPS amount like all other classes. That is where the 30% came from. Later player’s changed it to 30 to 40 percent and I can only believe it’s because with the addition of new and more powerful gear, everyone’s DPS goes up by their 100% number’s while ours only goes up by a 70% number because as you know, pets don’t scale with our armor. Either that or people are just over exaggerating to get their point across. <Shrug>

You’ve been around here for a while and are a steadfast, reliable poster on the ranger forums, I thought you would have known that. I wish I remember exactly when that quote came out so I can link it but it was a while ago.

Edit
Just like when people say because the word ranger has the word range in it doesn’t mean we are a ranged class. In one of the video’s where they are talking about classes just a few months ago, they talked like 10 o 20 minutes about each class. when asked about ranger’s they talked about ranger’s for only 2 minutes (feeling the love there) but one of the things said was, and I don’t remember the exact phrasing of it, but that ranger’s where designed to be the long range damage dealers of the game. (would love to find that one too so I can link it here).

While we are digging up dev posts, someone should find the one they made after they nerfed Sb range that described how they didn’t want us just spamming 111111111 to deal damage. Because we are the "sustained damage’ dealers of the game…

Malediktus.9250:

runeblade.7514:

I rather that they just remove aqua breathers.

Same. Aqua breathers are just useless in the game. Nothing happens if you take them off or play with a broken one. They are probably a remnant of a pre beta stage.

They do however replace your helmet when underwater so you can’t have a complete rune set if you don’t have one.

Farzo.8410:

Kaiyanwan.8521:

Mark Katzbach.9084:

As Colin mentioned in this blog post, “Due to the size and scope of the final four story releases in season one, the next round of major features will be bundled together into a large “feature only” release that will come after the first season of the Living World 2014 has finished.”

More information on this feature release will come available after the current living world arc wraps up.

Sorry, I cannot see an expansion sized patch in what is called a large “feature only” release.

Doesn’t seem to be the same. A large patch is a large patch, expansion sized is a whole different kind of expectation.

People have different views of what expansion means. Most certain, people usually imagine an expansion to be what World of Warcraft has released in the past and continues with.

Raised level cap, a whole new continent, a new feature is usually what people associate expansion with.

Expansion is just that, an expansion of in game content. New skills, mobs, areas, mechanics ect that are a permanent addition to the launch box content.

Most of what anet has done so far is repainted and put in new furniture in different rooms of a house for two weeks at a time, then taken it all away, rather than adding a whole new room or a pool that sticks around for the life of the house.

-You’ve been asked, more than you care to count.-
“Why are you playing a Ranger?”
“Can you bring any other class besides Ranger?”

-Danced on the corpse of a foe because they just lost to a power ranger who didn’t even slot EB. They’re playing was bad and they should feel bad.-

It also doesn’t look anywhere as awesome as Rox’s quiver. assuming you’re not charr that is.

Aridia.3042:

roamzero.9486:

I remember when Beastmaster Ranger was kind of fun in WvW. Back in the day the pet had enough range that you could send it out of a keep, or even on top of keep walls with guard. It was great fun to send a hard hitting jaguar against say, a squishy backline ele.

The sPvP people ruined all of that sadly Would it be too much to ask to revert the pet leash nerf in WvW?

That to me was the worst kittening nerf. Having that 5k range on the leash was literally the only thing this class had that no other did. I was actually friggin’ useful in clearing open field sieges in WvW.

The main reason why it was nerfed it’s because half wits were complaining that rangers could run off to to another node while leaving the pet on mid.

Think about how utterly stupid that is for a minute.

Pet = bot.

Bot = PVE.

If you have problems PVEing 1 target, you have no business in trying to balance PVP.

Yet, that’s exactly who Anet listened to, half wits that can’t manage to kill one bot.

We have to remember that these are also the same people who can’t seem to figure out how to 2 shot spirits in spvp.

Sube Dai.8496:

Substance E.4852:

Chrispy.5641:

afoot.6932:

Arghore.8340:

…or add spirits to pets (which I personally don’t like at all, but that’s some other discussion)…

Please, elaborate. The potential change to spirits is the topic I’m most interested in at this point.

What the Dev had written::

PvX
General:

1. Remove spirits. They clutter up the map and provide less strategic value with target changes.
   1. Instead, apply an aura to the pet that does the same thing spirits currently do.
      1. Obviously, this would be a huge rework and would require changes to spirit traits.

I personally don’t see how that could be balanced at all.

In all likelihood it means we give up the spirit active or we are limited to 1 spirit at a time per pet.

Something that would make us much better for pve/wvw zergs but would probably be very bad for spvp. A split would be best but I’m assuming they are looking for any reason to gut spirit bunkers at this point anyway.

Anything that buffs the pet, and only the pet, is a massive fail. People hate that our damage is separated, regardless of how much you can buff it.

And removing party support to buff 30% of our damage = epic epic fail.

True but what I am getting from the suggestion isn’t that it just puffs the pet. It means that the spirit AoE Buff will radiate from the pet itself rather than a separate mob. It means we would have always mobile spirits that could have the durability of a devourer or bear.

Even if we have to give up the activate effects or can only have one on at time, the ability to roll in a zerg with a sturdy frost or stone spirit flowing out of a brown bear is a massive buff to the class that has little team buff utility. We would, overnight, become desired in wvw instead of laughed at.

Chrispy.5641:

afoot.6932:

Arghore.8340:

…or add spirits to pets (which I personally don’t like at all, but that’s some other discussion)…

Please, elaborate. The potential change to spirits is the topic I’m most interested in at this point.

What the Dev had written::

PvX
General:

1. Remove spirits. They clutter up the map and provide less strategic value with target changes.
   1. Instead, apply an aura to the pet that does the same thing spirits currently do.
      1. Obviously, this would be a huge rework and would require changes to spirit traits.

I personally don’t see how that could be balanced at all.

In all likelihood it means we give up the spirit active or we are limited to 1 spirit at a time per pet.

Something that would make us much better for pve/wvw zergs but would probably be very bad for spvp. A split would be best but I’m assuming they are looking for any reason to gut spirit bunkers at this point anyway.

Sarlack.4096:

MY guildie, who is an experienced PVP player and has played with me across several games over the last 10 years picked up a Ranger in SPVP a week or two ago.

HE normally Mains a Mesmer, Guardian and a Warrior

Only build knowledge he has is using the bits and pieces he has heard me talking about in Vent.

He played it for several days and promptly proclaimed “Why the hell do all the Rangers cry, this is the most fun I have had on a class”

My response “They are trying to be something they were never meant to be” “Play the class to its strengths”

Fix Pet AI and a few tweaks and we are not so bad off….

My only disappointment comes from Anet’s lack of clear direction for the class, seems like they are making it up as they go along from patch to patch.

SPVP Ranger performance =/= PvE/WvW Ranger performance.

All the animosity is entirely on the everything BUT spvp side.

runeblade.7514:

I rather that they just remove aqua breathers.

I’d rather they remove water combat all together.

urdriel.8496:

Prysin.8542:

urdriel.8496:

WatchTheShow.7203:

PvP players need to realize we are not upset with the ranger’s state in PvP. I PvP from time to time on my ranger and I don’t have any issues in there. PvP on rangers right now are fine. I’m seeing too many posts related to PvP posters saying things like “cry more PvE/WvW is ez mode with my swagbow, ranger is fine GG YOLO”.

What 90% of this thread is talking about is PvE, and WvW.

What’s more annoying is PvP and PvE are supposedly separate as far as skills getting buffed/nerfed. Yet, every time they nerf rangers in PvP, the PvE/WvW rangers get hit with the same nerf. Cut the invisible symbiotic bond between the two game modes and be done with it. Separate them for good.

Pet leash range, and pet attack range were nerfed due to Spvp Players.

Pet leash range was purely due to PvE and WvW because you could tell your pet to attack stuff and let it kill stuff while you were miles away. I abused this loads of times to kill veterans while hiding in safety outside of the area. All you had to do was activate TU when pet HP got low….

In WvW, it wrecked havoc on thieves and mesmers when the old BM builds told the pet to attack a thief or a mesmer, it did so and tracked them through stealth (couldnt attack, but if they dropped stealth the pet was on their kitten in a split second). Thief/mesmer tries to run and the pet would follow all the way back to citadel spawn, forcing them ot be in combat.

Leash range was never a real issue in PvP, merely an annoyance.

Also, if you do not take care of your pet, you do not take care of your own DPS. Ignoring the pet, is like not giving a kitten about your own DPS output. Whatever effort you put into the pet, comes out in the form of pure performance. Nothing else.

Pet leashr ange was nerfed because rangers were able to capture points and send pet to help their teammate, it is true that leash had a IMBALANCED distance, but the nerf was too hard.

I remember to be able to send pet to attack ballistas and catas while i was out of range xDDD

I went from (almost) never seeing “Target too far” errors in WvW to seeing them every 5 minutes after that bullkitten nerf.

Being able to send the pet to harass folks was one of the few nice things about playing ranger in WvW.

Substance E.4852:

phys.7689:

Except there is no “duo team” with the pet. We have absolutely no advantage that other classes don’t by our use of a pet and allocation of our damage onto it. We used to atleast be able to spread our damage out but then they nerfed the kitten out of our leash range so that is no more. The very fact that we have to melee to get maximum dps makes the pet even more pointless. What advantage is there to have a pet and ranger working at 70/30 in melee, so close that they are clipping into one another, over simply having a single player with 100% of the damage attacking the same target? There isn’t one, certainly not when the pet can’t dodge red rings of death nor function in WvW zergs at all. I don’t even target people with the pet and it still gets instagibed by aoe spam.

As long as we only equal 100% when working with the pet and it can’t body block enemies like pets can in other games, the pet is absolutely superfluous. A good player will always perform better than one of equal skill that has to share a portion of their damage with an unreliable AI.

We’ve had 1.5 years to roleplay Dar the Beastmaster and it has been a headache for anyone that cares about efficiency and respect in pve/wvw. We just want a class that isn’t a joke and works correctly. Flavor ALWAYS takes a backseat to functionality.

its not flavor, its actually the core of the archetype, what you are asking for is for the current ranger to die, and be replaced by another class. Why not just ask for the other archetype? then people can have both.

As far as the rng/pet duo, it can be improved, but theres actually a decent amount of it already.
If they make f2 responsive
have less pet animations root the pet
fix the order of command so they dont constantly self interupt
give some better retreat control

ranger/pets will be pretty beastly. probably get nerfed, but thats another story

Expect you missed my entire point. Those suggestions improve the pet but DO NOT lend it, or us, capabilities that other classes do not have nor does it make us better than a ranger with 100% damage and F#’s that emulate current pet skills or a pet that is a mobile boon/cc dispenser.

That is what is wrong with pets at their core. They don’t give us anything that makes the ranger better than another class. Even the things that make us desirable to have in pve are ranger skills and traits. Frost spirit and Spotter have nothing to do with the pet. The red moa is the only one even worth considering for team support.

Pets need a fundamental rework. They need to be a tool that lets us do something that others can not. They need to be a functional reason to roll ranger, not just an aesthetic one.

And yes, I am asking for the current ranger to die. It has had it’s fun but now its getting old and crapping on the carpet. It’s time to put it down and get a new ranger, one that works and makes other classes wish they could do what only we can.

Just guest to Blackgate or another full PVE server. We have a 24/7 champ train going in Queensdale.

Pop an xp booster and the points will flow like spice.

Acidicore.3264:

Avascar.9237:

Braham better not get Majory, Rox, and Kasmeer as his 3 girlfriends. I swear.

kitten fanfiction.

Braham and Rox get married and adopt Taimi, calling it.

There’s a lot of powerful females leading the charge, and I don’t think Braham is any weaker considering how much Rox sees him as a able enough companion. He’s certainly it’s the Meg Griffin of the group. I honestly wouldn’t be surprised to see Canach joining the group sometime in the future, but hopefully they keep his more interesting characteristic (anti-hero, willing to go to some extremes to get the job done, regardless of morality) and allow his new motif (in the cell, he seems a bit too repentant of his actions, maybe some clarifications as to what extent) to have some impact but not total reform.

He didn’t really need to repent because he was never really a “bad guy”. He did what he did to destroy the contracts binding people to the island. He never intended to harm civilians nor did he know the extent that his plan would affect the island’s wildlife I’m assuming from the fact that he was only against the Consortium and genuinely wanted to help the people contracted to them.

King Amadaeus.8619:

Asclepius.4396:

@KingAmadeus, I scared. I hear guild is going to run BEARBOW ZERG. I sorry, no water or dodge rolls for me I too terrified. I going to ESO. #FeartheBear.

Entire T2 guild zerg just Bearbow, 25 ranger, all bear, all time.

Too OP, banned4lyfe…

Berk.8561:

Timelord.8190:

The limit of people is more than the server can handle.
The amount of skill lag in wvw is insane.

Now lag on the low-tiered servers. Just saying.

I’m sure it has nothing to do with the lack of players though…

Thing is, that doesn’t help in WvW or during world bosses. I’m not going to blow my heal because my pet might die in a situation where I am trying to not die myself.
Protection will also only do so much to help keep a pet alive when it gets run over by the hammer train with their low WvW health pools or hit by something like Tequila Sunrise’s water waves.

Both situations can EASILY kill a pet in the 20 second window it takes to swap again when in combat so switching is merely a last ditch effort that likely causes you to sacrifice pet B to save pet A. Not an entirely solid idea if you use two different kinds of pets to allow for greater utility.

They are simply incapable of functioning as intended in these game modes, there’s no “learn to play” about it. Not until pets are able to dodge or automatically avoid/negate aoe.

phys.7689:

but see, the mesmers illusions are not pets, they are manifestations of their skill use. And while you could build a rng like mesmer, it would not be a pet really.

Also the class is built to have the pet and the ranger playing off each other. A big part of the mechanic is supposed to be actively keeping your pet alive. the F1 and F3 skills arent on the Fbar by mistake, its actually supposed to be an important part of keeping the pet alive, telling it who, and what to attack and when to retreat.
(return to me should get retreat functionality in battle aka get away from the target, running behind me because return to me sucks in melee for defending the pet)
this is why ranger gets heals that heal both, access to regeneration, skills like vulnerability, etc.
swap is a defensive measure, this is why the cooldown is long if the pet dies, but not if it is swapped.
a lot of the high level play of ranger is supposed to happen at the pet management level, the problem is some of the tools arent refined, and that a lot of people never learned how to use their pet properly.

a great many rangers dont know you can lock a pet to a target with f1, or make it switch targets with f1, they dont know how the pet acts differently in passive mode. They dont know how to use return to me to avoid dmg.

Ranger IS a pet class, utterly and completely, its defense and offense at a high level is based on mastering control of the pet. I strongly suggest anet make another class for the people who dont want a pet but what long ranged DPS, because that class is completely different than what rng is about. They want long range burst damage preparation/strategy class, soloist, whereas ranger is a skirmishing pressure damage mix up focused team duo (pet and ranger) oriented class.

Essentially they want hawkeye ( http://atomicanxiety.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/hawkeye-widescreen.jpg )from the avengers movie, whereas ranger is beastmaster ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BeastMaster_%28TV_series%29 )

there is very little in common with these two archetypes other than the fact they both can use bows.

Except there is no “duo team” with the pet. We have absolutely no advantage that other classes don’t by our use of a pet and allocation of our damage onto it. We used to atleast be able to spread our damage out but then they nerfed the kitten out of our leash range so that is no more. The very fact that we have to melee to get maximum dps makes the pet even more pointless. What advantage is there to have a pet and ranger working at 70/30 in melee, so close that they are clipping into one another, over simply having a single player with 100% of the damage attacking the same target? There isn’t one, certainly not when the pet can’t dodge red rings of death nor function in WvW zergs at all. I don’t even target people with the pet and it still gets instagibed by aoe spam.

As long as we only equal 100% when working with the pet and it can’t body block enemies like pets can in other games, the pet is absolutely superfluous. A good player will always perform better than one of equal skill that has to share a portion of their damage with an unreliable AI.

We’ve had 1.5 years to roleplay Dar the Beastmaster and it has been a headache for anyone that cares about efficiency and respect in pve/wvw. We just want a class that isn’t a joke and works correctly. Flavor ALWAYS takes a backseat to functionality.

Dabrixmgp.4758:

Suxen.8574:

WvW players only have one output: find another game

is that even an option? Only game I can think of some type of mass fight PvP is Archeage and I dont even think NA is in Beta yet.

Not sure EvE has a limit to amount of ships that can be in one system at a time but that is such a different kind of game it’s probably not worth mentioning.

I’ll just leave this here because we could all use a good laugh and Anet obviously needs to be reminded why we got voted #1 in need of help by an overwhelming majority.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Ranger-Pets-Overpowered/first

Master Fuhon.1068:

Nage.1520:

But….but….what about the true hero of the story.

We love you Evon!

Evon is extremely weak for a Charr. He’s dependent on others to run his schemes, and the workers he employs make him have to do things himself (which he then fails at). He spends all his time trying to exploit the weak economically because most types could just run him through.

He’s exactly the type of being you’d expect to run away to go serve an evil Dragon. Dragon’s manipulate these types by bribing them with power, which was the original goal of why they wanted money in the first place.

Ah, but if the dragons kill everyone, who is left to buy BLC’s? Plus he’d probably just turned into an ice or crystal zombie in the end anyway.

Farzo.8410:

Depends on what you mean with strong.

I’d say Logan is pretty strong.

For maybe the 5 minutes he isn’t worried that Jenna is about to drop dead at any second and he should be right there to make sure it doesn’t happen.

I like Brahm. He’s dumber than a sack of bricks but he seems like a fairly together person with clear goals and motivations.

Avascar.9237:

Braham better not get Majory, Rox, and Kasmeer as his 3 girlfriends. I swear.

kitten fanfiction.

He just gets Rox and Frostbite…

Yes, it’s THAT kind of fanfic ?_?

afoot.6932:

Flytrap.8075:

The simple truth is that spirits in their current form are ridiculously toxic in sPvP. They require no skill and offer far too much passive power. The whole strategy behind the build is essentially to spam your auto-attack and to hide in the zoo clutter.

I don’t think that Ranger’s “roleplaying options” should be placed ahead of balancing the class.

Allie’s suggestion wasn’t regarding removing the passive effects, it was that spirits no longer be visible and that the effects are carried by your pet to remove “visual clutter.” The change would have no effect on spirit passive effects being overpowered in PvP. In fact, putting the passive effect on pets would probably make spirit skills more powerful in PvP, since you wouldn’t be able to see that spirits are in play as easily as you can now.

I can almost guarantee you they would give the pet a massively obvious aura that showed it was in “spirit mode”.

They aren’t going to just take spirits and stick them on an always mobile mob with more health and armor than before and not make it obvious they are there. We’ll probably have to sacrifice the active effect of the spirit as well for the reasons I just listed.

snow.8097:

and again xD

yes its really clever to compare ranger with warrior over and over and over and over….
alone the mind to compare totally different classes is not useful and makes no sense.
Warrior has another game design then ranger. deal with it.

and before u start again with ur minds on pet (QQ 30%, QQ they dont hit, QQ ranger is weak because i never won a 1v1…err we loose 30% of our damage) yes we know it, its an issue since headstart, but instead of crying around and hope that a Balance patch makes ranger OP too feel strong first time, some ranger learned their class and their pet mechanic. from this People u should learn instead of believing ranger class is the weakest class ingame.

Feel free to list some tips rather than empty, vapid, “Learn to play bro!” comments if you are so sure that it’s player skill rather than class design at fault here.

psizone.8437:

RyuDragnier.9476:

He’ll also get zero sympathy from other thieves. If you die to a Ranger, you suck as a thief, PERIOD. This is from a former Ranger main currently playing Thief (and why I want Rangers to be better).

Not really, I main a ranger and honestly, I love running into a thief since I’m pretty confident I’ll win 80% of the time. Thieves are fun as hell to fight as a ranger, except when they abuse stealth and backstab. But honestly, there aren’t many classes that can properly counter the backstab thief build. I have a level 80 thief and it’s painfully obvious that some of their builds are just plain OP.

People need to let go of the whole “if you die to a ranger, you suck” thing. Rangers need a fix and a few buffs, but we’re not a terrible class.

lol, no, you aren’t winning against 80% of the thieves 1v1. Nice try though…

Mice.8921:

Domey.9804:

….
3.The thief knew stealth =/= invulerability, you can also predict their postition in stealth

That’s the key to beating thieves on any class right there.. Every good thief player (its one of my mains, but recently I’ve been leveling a ranger) can count stealth time and reveal times in their head… they’re also good at guessing your position in stealth…
Now, as a WvW solo/small group D/D thief, let me give some suggestions real quick…

If a thief enters stealth at low health or with multiple conditions, they will try to stay in it for the full duration (or at least 3 of 4 seconds to trigger 2 not 1 condi remove), therefore, you’re best bet is activating your defensive skills after 2-2.5 seconds (Gs 4 for example)
IF YOU THINK YOU CAN PREDICT THEIR BACKSTAB TIME do not, in ANY circumstance, dodge forwards… never EVER dodge forwards against a thief, it will NOT work… EVER… dodge backwards always…
its important to remember that thieves want to be behind you, if they’re in front of you, backstab tickles at best…
when you want to avoid a backstab, roll backwards not forwards so they have to reposition rather than just stepping forwards

When at thief enters stealth, run a small circle, while changing which direction you’re facing to make it hard for them get behind you…

If its not a D/P thief, back against a wall so they can’t backstab you at all (beware a D/P will just perma-blind you if you do this)
If you want to use a CC from outside of black powder to stop a heart seeker, fire one basic attack followed immediately by what you want to hit… It doesn’t matter if you have blind when you launch the cc, provided your basic attack hits first… most people launch an attack, and then WAIT for the blind condition to be removed by the hit, and THEN they do their cc… just fire basic attack and cc one after the other, with practice you’ll land the cc straight after the basic attack and it will be as if you weren’t blinded (important for LB users)

If they enter stealth at low health and you’re at high health and can take a hit, that’s when you use your AoE dmg that roots you… otherwise, stay away from staying still no matter what

Says a lot about the game that ones has to do all this just to kill an average thief player when all one needs to do to kill a Ranger player, even a good one, is CC+Burst…

sorudo.9054:

Substance E.4852:

Nyel.1843:

Substance E.4852:

The other problem is that Wildstar is also owned by NCsoft. Where is all that NCsoft publisher money gonna go if Wildstar suddenly becomes a bigger cash cow than GW2? Certainly not into Anet if that ends up being the case…

Wildstar won’t be a bigger cash cow than Guild Wars 2. Mass appeal, known brand and quality vs. a new game. I highly doubt Wildstar will sell more than 1,5-2 million copies.

Can I borrow that crystal ball when you’re done?

Even 50% less people, but paying a monthly fee, is probably going to earn them more and said fee will be easier to swallow than other games because they are copying EvE Online’s PLEX system where you can buy and sell monthly passes for ingame money. Make a buttload of gold every 30 days? No more monthly fee for you.

and then archeage and black desert comes along and all of a sudden wildstar is the same as GW2, you can be hyped about a game but i have had plenty of times that what ppl claim is only gonna make you expect more then there really is.
also, a monthly fee is bad voodoo, it asks to be turned in to a freemuim game someday.

I’m not saying Wildstar will be good. I love the art style but know little of the game play and scifi mmo’s are tricky business.

And as far as the fee goes, it just has to be good (a huge hurdle for an MMO but not an impossible one) Both EvE and WoW are still pay to play with Wildstar copying EvE’s PLEX system of buying and selling monthly passes in game which is a genius system that other games don’t emulate enough.

Nyel.1843:

Substance E.4852:

The other problem is that Wildstar is also owned by NCsoft. Where is all that NCsoft publisher money gonna go if Wildstar suddenly becomes a bigger cash cow than GW2? Certainly not into Anet if that ends up being the case…

Wildstar won’t be a bigger cash cow than Guild Wars 2. Mass appeal, known brand and quality vs. a new game. I highly doubt Wildstar will sell more than 1,5-2 million copies.

Can I borrow that crystal ball when you’re done?

Going back in time 7 years or so, we’d all probably think very little of GW1. A game by a new company, that bucks most every MMO trope out there with WoW tearing it up in an unprecedented fashion? Nah, they’ll never make it…

Even 50% less people, but paying a monthly fee, is probably going to earn them more and said fee will be easier to swallow than other games because they are copying EvE Online’s PLEX system where you can buy and sell monthly passes for ingame money. Make a buttload of gold every 30 days? No more monthly fee for you.

SkiTz.4590:

IndigoSundown.5419:

Hjorje.9453:

sorudo.9054:

by this time, GW1 has 3 chapters released and Anet is hyped up about EotN, till now GW2 doesn’t even come close to one chapter worth of content……
ill wait and see but it doesn’t look good, the only thing that really lures me back is ether a big expansion or new places unlocked, hopefully without making achievements the main attraction but instead making the story (and no DPS or zerg fest) more important.

Sorry to say they did not have 3 chapters released. They had only added Cantha by this time. With Nightfall still months away. I do see your point about having added more content, but putting false information doesn’t help the argument.

Speaking of false info, check your dates.

GW launched 4/28/05; Factions on 4/28/06; Nightfall on 10/27/06; 1 year, 183 days.
GW2 launched 8/28/12; it’s now 1 year, 191 days.

GW1 team is not the same as GW2….Completely different philsophies

GW2 is handicapped by NCsoft. Anet’s hand is forced here because the best thing for business right now is gemstore additions + LS (god knows why, LS sucks and is dead content after 2-3 days of release and officially dead content after a few weeks)

Needless to say, if GW2 keeps following this path of focusing on LS + gemstore, its going to die soon

If there isn’t any serious content (i’m talking expac content like new skills/class/PvP modes, end game content, etc) than this game is done.

Just wait till EQN, Wildstar, etc release and you will see. Anet already stated IN GAME sales for gems have gone down 25%… what does that mean? they will be adding more lucrative things to gem store, guaranteed. And this is going to be heavily pushed by NCsoft over any xpac like update.

The other problem is that Wildstar is also owned by NCsoft. Where is all that NCsoft publisher money gonna go if Wildstar suddenly becomes a bigger cash cow than GW2? Certainly not into Anet if that ends up being the case. They’ll be pressured to do more with less and the game will show it. More tricks to pressure people to play every day, more QoL updates in the gem store…

Knighthonor.4061:

castle.3689:

RLD.7439:

What kind of developer forces these setting on their players?
I just started playing FFXIV ARR and they have a setting where I can adjust everyone elses spell effects. I can even turn them all completely off! This. Is. Awesome.
Never miss a dodge again.

I don’t know why we aren’t getting an official response specifically addressing spell clutter. Would allowing players to reduce it make the game too easy, because dodging was meant to be artificially difficult due to spell clutter blocking boss telegraphs? Can a developer look at the screenshots below and genuinely say they can tell what is going on? For a game that is marketed on dynamic combat and “play the game, not the UI”, it is an utter failure that this issue which players have been complaining about since beta has gone on deaf ears—even Colin’s post in this thread avoided it.

Anet may not want to tell you all this, but this is something hard coded into the game code.

Thats why they are having trouble simply removing the large particle effects.

They have to dig deep into the code, which cost large sum of money to fix these issues when its something that deeply programmed into the code of the game.

Particle generation is a fairly straightforward system in games. Not sure what you are talking about to be honest.

The only “coding” they would have to invest in is a system that automatically scales effects down in large fights. One that works much better than their current solution.

Oak da Vite.9054:

What are you asking for?

Ragers have anti stealth already – as the only class btw.

“Sick ’Em” reveals thieves for 4 sec. Should be enough to kill most thieves.
River Drakes F2 is also quite useful, if used in the right moment. Just like the 2 on longbow.
For shadow refuge use the fear of the wolf or your aoe’s like “whirling defence” or “Bonfire” or your traps.

As defensive skills we have “Protect Me” or “Signet of Stone” (when traited) against their burst damage.

There is no need to improve the ranger agains thieves…

When you have mesmers or thieves hiding in your towers, simply ask for good rangers in mapchat or teamspeak. Also if you have thieves killing your dolyaks or permablocking you waypoints.

Its a big difference trying to duel a D/P theif with unlimited stealth or a D/D who gets free CnD’s off your pet vs just being a Sic Em dispenser while your pals bumrush the lone thief.

All a thief has to do is kite for those 4 seconds and then you are a sitting duck. You just wasted a utility and the class’s lack of burst has never made a thief think twice about attacking a Ranger. Just ask any of them.

SirMorgenStar.6721:

Hopefully they saw my brilliant suggestion in the Cantha thread and have begun moving sand from the Crystal Desert into Kaineng City so the asian community won’t be offended by the architecture when we go there.

How dare you allow sand to touch non-sand architecture!? I am highly offended.

Duke Nukem.6783:

i think it usually helps keep the economy in check

Pretty sure you mean gold sinks keep the economy in check. Trade between players doesn’t create gold, it has the opposite effect actually. Only items that can be merched create gold which causes inflation.

Flytrap.8075:

AEFA.9035:

The CDI is now, meaning the chance for a change is now and half of the thread are people arguing. I wish I have that much time in my life to demoralize people online.

Ahem.

AEFA.9035:

Everyone This is a good example of players who shouldn’t have the right to post in CDI threads like these and should roll another class. Waste of time and Dev’s resources reading unproductive posts like these. Do yourself a favour and save a minute of your life from reading this.

I couldn’t resist.

Careful now, or he’ll offer a objective rebuttal of “L2P bro”

thefantasticg.3984:

Terravos.4059:

My biggest worry is we get the Warrior Treatment, as in to much to fast..

I would rather that than nothing at all, i.e. what we have gotten the last 1.5 years.

True, but we aren’t the warrior. If they make us too good they won’t just go back and slightly whittle down things one skill at a time. We would likely just get Beta Nerf 2.0 and end up even worse than we were before this whole thing.

Wanderer.3248:

Spear will probably be a two handed weapon if they ever release it for land combat.

What would be really cool is if they made it both. If you just use the spear it functions as a 2h melee weapon, but changes to a 1h ranged if you use an offhand.

Anet really does need to get over this fetish for soul binding every new thing they add to the game.

The blade fragments are especially annoying. The price of cores says there’s a market for them but I can’t do anything but craft em or toss em.

CMstorm.8679:

ESO won’t even be worth it at all. The only update between now and the big feature patch is the maintenance patch on the 18th, and that’s when glory is being removed. Also, since Anet moved the feature build from being on the 18th, we can only assume they have a lot more content and more than likely new additions, possibly some updated current content as well for when it comes in early April.

lol. Pretty obvious it’s meant as a way to keep people in here when a competitor launches.

It took them over a month just to give us a new flame armor. Don’t expect them to cram in a bunch more stuff because they had 2 more weeks.

AEFA.9035:

Substance E.4852:

Allie Murdock.8152:

1. VII. Spotter – Should be moved to Skirmishing as Gradmaster minor.
   1. Rework to 5% crit chance & 3% crit damage
2. Change VII to Hunter’s Tactics – +3% increase damage on disabled enemies (stun/daze/knockdown/fear/immob)

Not sure who suggested this but unless “Hunter’s Tactics” is also an aura like Spotter or other classes’ auras, then this is a horrible tradeoff if we are to ever be more desirable in WvW. Crit chance and damage is virtually useless to a zerg of PVT heavies whereas a damage buff on a stuned target is a HUGE buff to the hammer train meta. Rangers go from the butt of every WvW joke to almost a must have for zerg combat. It’s just that easy to fix us.

We lose 2% crit chance and have it moved up a tier and to a different tree for something that is just another highly circumstantial trait that relies on our pets to land their very short duration stuns for us.

Im the one who made all of those PVE suggestions mentioned by Allie actually. If you can’t get your head around the changes and why these changes, sorry but you need to play more Ranger bro.

lol whatever you say “bro”

I’d pay if it were a 1:1 scale mini. Not the weird ones that are just a little too small like the last set of trick or treater minis we got.

Forzani.2584:

Substance E.4852:

Forzani.2584:

urdriel.8496:

Forzani.2584:

I saw a beauty of a post in the CDI a day ago. The guy started the post with …“I have never played a Ranger, but here are my suggestions how to improve them”

Pretty much sums up the problem.

If you fight against rangers you know what they need ……..

Actually rangers need a skill which people were afraid of, each time people see a ranger they stomp him because they know that rangers doesnt have a real burst skill(eviscerate,mindwrack,elecombo,stealth+BS,etc).

lol yea, that makes them a real expert.

#wow

I’d trust a person who steamrolls zerk rangers in WvW every night over the people who keep trying to act like we have a burst power build because a roided Maul can one shot a distracted person (only folks with less than ~16k health) every ~45 seconds.

They might not know the class inside and out but we also have some of the most delusional, selfish players of any class in the game in our ranks. How often do you see other classes kitten that they can’t just auto range without getting kicked from dungeon parties?

lol sure. Very credible statement.

Choosing to not slot for obvious party support because it clashes with one’s desire to be the lone sniper? I must be imagining all the whiny threads about people getting booted from dungeon parties for going bearbow then…

Or maybe I’m confusing them with warrior threads wanting to go rifle pewpew instead of using melee…