Guild Wars 2

Ya, this kitten is ridiculous. I can’t even reach the end of the spawn area before I error 7:11

Durzlla.6295:

Substance E.4852:

Durzlla.6295:

Substance E.4852:

I was half expecting them to bring Birds and Spiders back inline with the rest of the wet noodle pets.

What’s wrong with spiders O.o?

Spiders hit for a lot now easily 700-750 on cursed shore mobs with no points in BM.
Not to mention the cave spider is a ranged 12 seconds of new weakness now.

Ah so your post was dripping with sarcasm that i didn’t pick up xD

lol ya.

Durzlla.6295:

Substance E.4852:

I was half expecting them to bring Birds and Spiders back inline with the rest of the wet noodle pets.

What’s wrong with spiders O.o?

Spiders hit for a lot now easily 700-750 on cursed shore mobs with no points in BM.
Not to mention the cave spider is a ranged 12 seconds of new weakness now.

I was half expecting them to bring Birds and Spiders back inline with the rest of the wet noodle pets.

Aridia.3042:

Substance E.4852:

Hey, but on the plus side, Anet broke guard again and we can send pets outside and inside tower walls once more. Enjoy it while it lasts!

Guard is not broken, pets are going through walls normally with just plain F1 as long as you have someone targeted on the other side or on top of the wall.

Not sure if this is working as intended though.

I would say no unless they have done a 180 since they fixed guard the first time. And the way they walk right through the walls definitively makes it seem like a bug. as much as I like to be able to use pets in wvw again, I really hope they get on this asap before the zoomhack people start to abuse the hell out of it. It’s already bad enough to get hit with dragon’s teeth inside tower walls.

Soronthar.7236:

shh.. don’t say that LB is hitting 300 more than it should even if the indicator say that you’re out of range! They would fix it!

You have been able to do this with the bow, and I suspect any projectile weapon, since launch if you are on higher ground than the target. It’s also harder to gauge how far the arrow goes since we get the red bar past 1200 even with eagle eye on level targets sometimes.

Hey, but on the plus side, Anet broke guard again and we can send pets outside and inside tower walls once more. Enjoy it while it lasts!

-Drop expertise training and use Wilderness Knowledge, you will shave several seconds off both lighting reflexes and zephyr recharges.

-In a wvw setting you are really limiting yourself if you don’t use either piercing arrows or eagle eye on a longbow. Piercing arrows affect everything they hit so you will be able to cause multiple stacks of vulnerability with the longbow. You can also knock back several people at once with pointblank but it’s pretty tricky to pull off.

-Typicly you don’t want to focus on condition damage if you are going to be using the LB primarily but, if you can put in some points without taking too much from raw damage you can effectively switch between bows and a trap build if needed.

-When ever i run wvw it’s usually in a very Rampager’s heavy setup that has decent raw damage, crit chance, and condition damage to let me switch up as needed. Traps aren’t nearly as good as necro marks but they can help slow down a zerg that is about to bust through your gate better than anything else we have at our disposal and they have respectable cool downs even when not traited for it.

-Also, if you play on any of the borderlands I would consider taking the fall damage trait when not directly in combat and switching out as needed. I know I’m no the only one who has miscalculated or had the game glitchout on fall distance and forced me to walk all the way back from spawn before.

Terkov.4138:

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

That means that, yes, when you are in WvW shooting a guy from the walls with a longbow and you see a warrior running at the zerg with an axe, you’re actually hitting for more than he is.

What about our pet, wasting time on wall? The stupid bag of fur won’t help there, and even if it could, it’d die in few secs.

It wasn’t really worth sending them into the enemy force even when we could.

Hell, be happy if you can even stand on the walls. Tier 1 walls are an insta-death zone.

jewishjoyride.4693:

I don’t feel nerfed. I’ve FINALLY had a chance to play a bit in every area of the game since the last patch. I really don’t feel nerfed.

I am sorry to all the SB auto spammers out there who finally have to change their playstyle.

Live in denial all you want, the pet damage nerfs affect you regardless of what weapons you use.

A Massive Headache.1879:

I don’t see how anyone could argue this won’t be an expansions worth of content. How long do you play expansions? we will see new areas and dungeons, and if it comes up, new races and professions if needed. it’s just not going to be presented all at once. I’ll admit I wasn’t the biggest fan of living story stuff, but overall it’s something to do and work towards and I’m happy I partake in it. Also some races share models, like the tengu and charr I believe so new races aren’t out of the question.

New races need new home areas and new racial personal stories, new skills and racial armor. It’s not just a matter of mesh wrapping existing armor to a new body.

You can’t realistically make the tengu a playable race and not create the entire walled off tengu area at the same time.

Hell, the Tengu as a playable race could be it’s own purchasable expansion by itself.

While it’s not impossible, it just doesn’t fit into their current method.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Is this deja vu? I could have sworn I saw this exact thread/post earlier today!

More like something they did in GW1.

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Design-a-Weapon_%282007%29

It actually produced some pretty kitten weapons (far better than most of what the staff made). The only real issue was virtually every one of them ended up as super rare drops in endgame content so it didn’t add as much to the game as it could have.

I could see a lot of utility for the skill if they just added the effect of reviving any dead pet we have equipped. Suddenly it becomes an attractive option in areas where pet death is all but inevitable while making these spots easier to handle.

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

Durzlla.6295:

Bart.3672:

Kain Francois.4328:

Maybe their higherups (marketing department?) has something shoved up them, that forces the balance team to listen to stupid “trends” rather than actual good balance.

If it’s true, they will only loose from this in long term. No one wants to play unbalanced game that favors some classes over others. You just switch to “prefered” class or stop giving a kitten about game.

It’s not, Anet likes to focus on one or two profs at a time, this patch was warrior and necro, rangers day is coming to shine, just be patient

Game’s been out for 10 months and what little improvements we got (better pet attacking, increased pet health, pets not losing aggro on stealthed targets) was pretty much negated by this last update.

We are still basically in the same spot we have been since launch. Until they stop balancing around their failed Esport or finally kittening split pvp/wvw/pve balance changes, the “promised day” isn’t likely to ever get here.

They just need to balance the pet around the player, and no the other way around. Up until the last patch, the players abilities were basically the only thing that got touched, and because the pet has anchored the ranger to a certain effectiveness, the changes couldn’t be more drastic because in tandem with the player, it would have been too strong.

However, now that the pet has been reduced, it is time to to start a trend of making the players abilities better.

I was hoping that the update would have given the pet damage back to the player and maybe this will happen one day idk. I’d rather they do things that make the ranger a better team player like make RaO allow the pet to apply it’s might stacks in an AoE instead of just to the player and remove virtually all charge up on skills like the stalker roar or the red moa aoe fury.

Giving more power to the player and making the pet evade when we do (not just on dodge) would go a really long way but we need to bring more to the group than just an amazing water field because we will never be an amazing dps machine and that is the only other player role in the game.

We have a lot of potential but it seems like so much of it is wasted. I can’t even use the stalker roar in most instances where my wvw zerg stacks for might simply because they have already started to move by the time the skill has actually fired off.

They work on the same system as absolutely every other item in the game. Why should pets be any different? They worked just fine in GW1 where you had even less space in your personal inventory than this game.

DarksunG.9537:

Krosslite.1950:

DarksunG.9537:

Krosslite.1950:

I got this here:
*something we all read**
you keep pushing this like you know something when it is obvious you don’t.

If you can’t see this is not equal to an actual Expansion, then you really are stuck in mediocrity. I also love how you ignore that they’ve been saying this for 6 MONTHS.

IF they somehow deliver real expansion-level stuff (which they imply but don’t explain) then great. But so far, we’re almost a year out & this aint no Cantha.

Once again lets define the word Expansion:
per Dictionary.com it is:

1. the act or process of expanding.
2. the state or quality of being expanded.
3. the amount or degree of expanding.
4. an expanded, dilated, or enlarged portion or form of a thing: The present article is an expansion of one he wrote last year.
5. anything spread out; expanse.

and once again you prove my point about you know nothing

LOL yeah; look up the work Mob too. I bet we’re all using that wrong huh? & Tank! ooo, you got us all there!! We all know nothing!

Substance E.4852:

DarksunG.9537:

Krosslite.1950:

I got this here:
*something we all read**
you keep pushing this like you know something when it is obvious you don’t.

If you can’t see this is not equal to an actual Expansion, then you really are stuck in mediocrity.

IF they somehow deliver real expansion-level stuff (which they imply but don’t explain) then great. But so far, we’re almost a year out & this aint Cantha.

I actually feel bad for the people who keep asking for things like new races as though anything Anet has put out yet shows they’d be willing to tackle something like making every piece of armor fit a quagan and providing appropriate skill animations. That alone is something that you would be expected to pay for in a typical expansion. Unless CCP suddenly acquires the GW license, it isn’t going to happen in their current platform.

I don’t get your point. You feel bad for people because they expect expansion-type features in the same amount of time games normally have expansion-type features?

No, I feel bad for them because they desire something that is impractical in Anet’s current direction. Like I said, a new race (especially one that isn’t humanoid or human in scale) is a huge endeavor and wouldn’t be expected to happen for free but since Anet wants to shy away from paid expansions, I just don’t see how it can happen.

Vayne.8563:

Tachenon.5270:

Vayne.8563:

I mean Anet put 30 new dynamic events into the game back in November, and on one cared at all. Hardly anyone spoke about it. So they’re trying something different.

How old was the game in November?

It was about three months old, but I don’t think that’s the point. People were complaining that there was no new content. Anet added fractals, new jumping puzzles/mini dungeons and new events. Everything got talked about but the events.

Unless they were lvl 80 events that gave attractive rewards, it isn’t hard to see why.

jubskie.3152:

jcbroe.4329:

On a side note, I don’t understand why its the only “Pet” skill in the game, and I wish the shouts would be reworked to be pet skills, and then the beastmastery trait line could take a heavier focus on improving them.

I noticed this as well. I was just talking to another ranger and he thought that RaO was a shout because of how similar in theme it was to the other shouts. It really should be turned into a shout so Shout Mastery can affect it.

@topic
I was about to say that “2 stacks of might per attack” already exists with devourers, but Chopps beat me to it! Also, the poison field from murellow, carrion devourer and spider pets count as “hits” from the pet so if you catch 3 enemies, you get a lot of stacks of might really quick.

I haven’t tested with lightning breath and insect swarm yet, but I believe those bounces would count too. That would be 5 shots x 3 bounces each = 15 stacks of might with one F2 press.

Personally, I think making it a shout and affected by Shout Mastery would already improve the elite by a lot if we can access it every 96 seconds, and it would give players a reason to invest 10 in BM. I badly need a reason to invest in BM when 10 in Wilderness Survival is a far superior choice both stat-wise and trait selection-wise.

River and march drake F2 on 2+ targets is pretty much an instant 25 stack. It’s even easier since they have cleave attacks.

Durzlla.6295:

Bart.3672:

Kain Francois.4328:

Maybe their higherups (marketing department?) has something shoved up them, that forces the balance team to listen to stupid “trends” rather than actual good balance.

If it’s true, they will only loose from this in long term. No one wants to play unbalanced game that favors some classes over others. You just switch to “prefered” class or stop giving a kitten about game.

It’s not, Anet likes to focus on one or two profs at a time, this patch was warrior and necro, rangers day is coming to shine, just be patient

Game’s been out for 10 months and what little improvements we got (better pet attacking, increased pet health, pets not losing aggro on stealthed targets) was pretty much negated by this last update.

We are still basically in the same spot we have been since launch. Until they stop balancing around their failed Esport or finally kittening split pvp/wvw/pve balance changes, the “promised day” isn’t likely to ever get here.

Chopps.5047:

Hadrians.4567:

@ Chopps Spirits had never 40k Hp but in a dream ….

On the order of means “a factor of ten higher” in an estimate. I always thought it was in the 10k range like a normal player’s health. I think a bear is 40k health fwiw. I don’t know I don’t really use spirits except in dungeons vs mobs using vigorous spirits and they tend to survive those encounters. All i know is 4000 seems awfully low. Also just because I guess at something that ISNT SHOWN by anet in tooltips doesn’t mean I’m wrong about everything. I’d kick your kitten up and down the sidewalk in pvp ranger v ranger no doubt. See who knows more then?

Threatening to kick someone’s kitten because they disagree with you? This isn’t Xbox Live dude…

This could all be easily tested by having someone hit them and record how much damage it really took to kill them but I guess threats and suppositions are more scientific.

It isn’t even just about the vitality, ambients take 100k from a fart because they have no armor and I suspect that is also part of the problem with spirits.

Hard to ruin a game with narcissism when they let you buy yourself your own mini map icon.

This is a multiplayer game and by design they always include methods of placing yourself over your fellow players.

1. Asinine balancing

Maining as a Ranger now is really only done for kittens and giggles as the class has no place in serious game play anymore outside of spvp. They sold a game free from the holy trinity and ended up creating one anyway only now we have a game with no defined team roles and as a result every ‘hard’ fight is no different than a Quick Time Event game where you press _ to not die.

2. Temp Content

The living story was a great idea when they pitched it as an ever evolving series of events that would change the face of Tyria over time. But, like most of the rest of the game, Anet grossly oversold the idea and so far the LS has been nothing but grocery list grind (activate X markers) over and over again with any kind of equipment largely tied into RNG boxes that reward only those with disposable money in game or in reality.

A game should get bigger and better over time, not just hover around sort of okay.

3. No Obvious Direction Anymore

As others have pointed out, by this point, GW1 already had come out with Factions and Nightfall was on the horizon. What exactly are they planning for GW2? We’ve already been told multiple times that they have no current plans for an expansion so what is there to look forward to other than more of #2 from above? For a team that seems to hold pvp over all other game modes they have been woefully slow to add anything to it.

Getting close to a year old and still no gvg, team death match or dueling? Is it because you can’t tie RNG gem boxes to them?

Quarktastic.1027:

If anet makes maul a blast finisher, I wouldn’t be surprised if they reduce the duration of healing spring to 6 seconds to compensate. But hey, thieves can blast a water field 3 times in a row, and they can make their own water fields with a consumable, so what’s the harm in giving rangers a reliable blast finisher?

I’d say that they wouldn’t touch the duration on spring since you can chain backstabs with a smoke field and spamming heart seeker over and over again but who am I kidding.

Quarktastic.1027:

Rangers would be a lot more fun if anet had given us a decent pet system to work with. Right now, pets are just a portable DoT that can be easily killed, or mitigated simply by moving.

I’ve played several pay to win Korean/Chinese MMOs that had much more involved pet systems, which made me gravitate towards the pet classes.

I know not everyone wants to be saddled with a pet, but would you mind so much if you could use that pet to buff your own stats? Or if you had complete control over all their skills and movements? Or if certain pets granted you special boons unique to that pet family?

This would not only make the pet good but make the ranger a fun class to play.

I rarely ever used a pet in gw1 and even less so after they made them leave un-exploitable corpses (should have been pvp only but w/e). I picked ranegr again because I figured they had discovered how to make pets work this time around since they built it from the ground up as an integrated part and not just a specific build. Too bad they blundered that royally.

I actually kind of miss the GW1 unstoppable meat shield juggernauts that were pets.

rogerwilko.6895:

Sandpit.3467:

rogerwilko.6895:

=> If it feels “shallow” sorry, maybe ranger is not the 1 button win proff you were hoping.
IMO ranger is a pretty complicated profession, when played at it`s full potential.

All professions will benefit in the hands of a skilled player and a novice will die regardless of the strength of that profession. But no profession should require the player to be an expert to be viable.

for me:
viable = win 1v1 50% of times.
more than viable = win 1v3 vs decent players.

Ranger is not viable?

The isn’t another play mode in the entire game besides 1on1 pvp?

News to me…

Well, look at this way. Anet wanted to create a game devoid of class roles and do away with the holy trinity (I know, I’m laughing in disappointment also but hear me out) and Rangers are clearly the paragon of the Anet GW2 philosophy. We are tailor made for casuals and are capable of nothing that would make another class feel alienated.

I guess if nothing else, we excel at that.

I really wonder how much the thing will drop in price now. I don’t really see them ever reversing this decision and I doubt the Thief community alone can keep the price where it was.

Good news for thieves I guess.

They could just increase the AoE of the buff to 3000-3500. Even with so-so buffs they would still be useful and mostly out of harms way the whole time.

It’s all just Anet not being able to accept that GW2 isn’t, and will probably never be, an Esport. They tried and failed miserably. If they had held off launch until more game modes were done and proper ladder systems were in place then maybe they would have had a shot of breaking on to the scene but they rushed the entire game with many things half finished and bugs galore.

We still don’t have any way for guilds to fight one another outside of heavily planned matches in corners of WvW maps and no legitimate way of dueling. They can’t make these things but still balance around spvp like it matters the most?

Sol.4310:

Rangers are still strong in SPvP, there just rather weak in WvW seen as WvW is all about who can hit the hardest.

WvW is also about who can bring the most to the group and Ranger is near the bottom of the list for group synergy. If it weren’t for Healing Spring, we’d really have nothing worthwhile.

Blame it on not being able to stomp underwater not on lick wounds.

As long as pets don’t dodge when we dodge? No.

The fact is that Warriors are there because they curbstomp pve and mesmers and guardians are the best support classes. Unless a major class upheaval happens or they create all new types of boss mechanics (no more aoe instagib zones, more armor and less health for condition builds ect) nothing will really change.

jubskie.3152:

Substance E.4852:

jubskie.3152:

Substance E.4852:

When I rely on them to let me into a group or get in on organized WvW nights it does.

Being asked or told to bring another class is decidedly not fun.

Well, with people like you propagating the stigma that rangers are horrible, I’m not surprised. Funny how it works, eh?

No the raw damage numbers and lack of team support propagate the stigma.

My attitude towards the ranger has 0 effect on the damage it does or it’s ability to increase the effectiveness of the other players around me. Funny how it works, eh?

You in forums: Ranger suck balls. We own the title for worst class in the entire game.
~~~
Pugs: I read in the forums that rangers are the worst class in the game. Its in the official forums so it must be true!
~~~
You in forums: QQ they won’t let me in groups T_T

Yes, your attitude affects people.

No actually many of the people in charge of my guild have a ranger in their rosters so they know full well what they are talking about. You act as though people are incapable of trying the class out to make a judgment compared to another class in the same role. Maybe try playing another class and you might see things differently yourself.

And I’m pretty sure people are more turned off by things like dungeon guides that focus more on keeping your pet alive and buffed than actual team dynamics.

Oh and if people are affected by the forums then I guess the game will be dead within the week since you yourself have said “If you visit any other profession section, you’ll see a lot of complaints and QQing. It’s not limited to just rangers. Heck, even warriors (that are considered DPS gods) are complaining about their class.”

Warriors must be akin to god himself if they can kitten that much and yet still be so prevalent.

jubskie.3152:

Substance E.4852:

When I rely on them to let me into a group or get in on organized WvW nights it does.

Being asked or told to bring another class is decidedly not fun.

Well, with people like you propagating the stigma that rangers are horrible, I’m not surprised. Funny how it works, eh?

No the raw damage numbers and lack of team support propagate the stigma.

My attitude towards the ranger has 0 effect on the damage it does or it’s ability to increase the effectiveness of the other players around me. Funny how it works, eh?

jubskie.3152:

Substance E.4852:

jubskie.3152:

OP, don’t believe the “ranger sucks circlejerk.” If you visit any other profession section, you’ll see a lot of complaints and QQing. It’s not limited to just rangers. Heck, even warriors (that are considered DPS gods) are complaining about their class.

Best advice I can give you is just play whatever you want and form your own conclusions. As long as you’re having fun with your class, other’s opinions shouldn’t matter.

Except none of those other classes think they are as bad as the ranger, even the Engineers.

No matter how bad they think they have it they all know we have it worst. That special kitten shaped trophy is ours and ours alone.

Looks like you missed the last part. I’ll repeat it for you in bolded characters for emphasis:

As long as you’re having fun with your class, other’s opinions shouldn’t matter.

When I rely on them to let me into a group or get in on organized WvW nights it does.

Being asked or told to bring another class is decidedly not fun.

qualm like a bomb.6512:

Ah! the glory days when rangers could group and drop spirits and 3-2-1 spike in HA. Yes it could be countered easily but it was better than iway…. kittening llama warriors. Now our Short bow hits the shins of our enemy. (well if they are asura it may be a headshot)

I would trade every one of my utilities just to be able to EoE bomb WvW.

Im Mudbone.1437:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Marcus Greythorne.6843:

stop trolling, please!

what trolling? i am merely starting the facts.

at the moment, most of their man power are focused on living story content, which comes with rng boxes, which promotes gem sales.

And this relates to this topic how?

Whats the point when the OP asks questions that can only ever be answered by speculation in the first place?

I find it hard to believe the thing will be any more fun than costume brawl where it’s go gemstore or go home.

Vayne.8563:

fellyn.5083:

Vayne.8563:

Most people are looking at Guild Wars 1 from the point of view of four products not one. Though Guild Wars Prophecies was a good game, it took many years before the game really came into it’s own.

That is to say, a lot of people liked Nightfall and Eye of the North more than Prophecies. Not everyone, but a lot.

Nightfall didn’t come out until a year an a half after Prophecies.

Guild Wars 1 WAS a great game. But some of the things that made it great, also made it niche…and it was niche. It was never a household name.

A lot of the stuff you see in Guild Wars 2 is an attempt to deal with the shortcomings of Guild Wars 1. As an example…the skill system.

Guild Wars 1 had to very big problems with skills. There were too many of them, and with the dual profession system it was literally impossible to balance skills. People complain about the inbalance in Guild Wars 2 but they never had to deal with the permasin, or even sabway. Guild Wars 1 had serious balance issues and less skills meant more control by Anet, which is what they wanted. But there was another problem.

Many people couldn’t figure out how to make a decent build. There really were too many skills and not everyone is capable of making a build. I’m a guy who loved to make builds. That’s what I did half the time. Make new builds. But at the same time I was doing an enjoying this, other builds were ruining the game for me, particularly because if you didn’t run Build A you weren’t going to be finding a group to do the Underworld. Everyone only wanted specific builds so they could do speed clears. It was pretty obnoxious.

So Anet lost a lot of people to the inability to have a build that worked. The solution was tie skills to weapons and introduce less skills at start. This way when they do finally have an expansion and they add skills, there’s more of a chance to keep it balanced and even a total noob can play a build because his weapons have the skills he’ll basically need.

Guild Wars 1 was a great game for a small percentage of the audience. Frankly I think Guild Wars 2 will improve a lot in the years to come, but it’s going to take another six months to a year before it’s the game it should have been at launch.

At one point in it’s life GW1 had well over 5 million players and was competing with WoW for the king of mmos title. How is that niche?

Guild Wars 1 probably never had 5 million people playing at the same time. Don’t confuse 5 million copies sold (a landmark they didn’t hit till like year 4 or 5) with 12.4 million subscribers (and many gamers would even consider WoW niche).

12.4 million subscribers, has nothing to do with boxes sold. Boxes sold includes people like both my sons who played it briefly, and left for WoW.

You can’t use box sales to say whether something is niche or not. Only concurrent players. I seriously doubt Guild Wars 1 had more than 1 million concurrent players at any time.

The word niche only works when you compare pontential players to people playing. Niche doesn’t exist in a background. There are currently according to some estimates 200 million gamers. MMOs by most are still considered niche. Only WoW is close to being not niche.

Consider this. Diablo 3 sold 6.8 million copies in it’s first week on existence, more than Guild Wars 1 sold in 7 years.

Niche is niche.

Diablo III’s level of fan anticipation was somewhere between what people felt for SC2 and what they are feeling for Half Life 3.

If GW had made two other amazing games that had a cult following instead of being the flagship, mold breaking product from a new company, they would have sold a helluva lot more copies than they did.

thefantasticg.3984:

Said no one ever

Well, not in this game anyway. Spirits were kittening amazing in GW1 but got shot to hell like every other aspect of the class.

jubskie.3152:

OP, don’t believe the “ranger sucks circlejerk.” If you visit any other profession section, you’ll see a lot of complaints and QQing. It’s not limited to just rangers. Heck, even warriors (that are considered DPS gods) are complaining about their class.

Best advice I can give you is just play whatever you want and form your own conclusions. As long as you’re having fun with your class, other’s opinions shouldn’t matter.

Except none of those other classes think they are as bad as the ranger, even the Engineers.

No matter how bad they think they have it they all know we have it worst. That special kitten shaped trophy is ours and ours alone.

Quarktastic.1027:

Lokki.1092:

This sounds more like the numbers I see daily. The Idea that only 10% of people PvP sounds wrong when nearly every zone is empty but WvW is always full (on my server).

Anecdotes are fun are they not?

When you look at player populations across game modes, you have to take a few factors into account. WvW is comprised of only three maps and one instance. PvE has 31 explorable areas, eight dungeon instances, fractals of the mists, and more personal story instances than I care to count. Population density in a given game mode may also depend on which server you’re on. A server more focused on WvW may have a higher WvW population than PvE population.

I would argue, across all servers, the average player population is higher in PvE than in WvW or SPvP.

WvW servers can only hold 70-80 people per map side before a queue starts up. Assuming all three BL’s and EB are queued for a particular server, that is only 280-320 people max. That would have to be one dead server for the WvW population to ever ever outnumber the people in the overworld/dungeons.

Adian.8756:

Oh no? You can’t autoattack with Shortbow anymore, from freaking miles away, while applying 14+ stacks of Bleed? God forbid you actually have to use skills to play.

Ranger Shortbow was by far the most forgiving, braindead, easy-mode way to play in all of GW2. Thank god they changed the range.

If you have skills, then you are using a different class to do whatever you are doing on your ranger.

Kichwas.7152:

AlexisRosewood.4210:

They’re called RANGERS for a reason they fight at range. Might as well call the profession a melee class kthxbyeinb4haters

When I was a kid in spelling class, we also had to write the definition of the word next to it on our spelling list.

Do they no longer do that in school?

https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/

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.

Unparallelled archers…
from a distance…

Bran.7425:

rchu.8945:

Bran.7425:

At this rate I expect them to admit within three years time that an AI companion class was a mistake with their vision for GW2 and preventing it from hurting their vision resulted in killing the class in the process.

three years? With ESO coming out, I doubt anyone will give them three years… Unless you main a thief.

Maybe I overestimated their timeline, maybe it will hit rock bottom in time for Wintersday.

If they don’t make a serious attempt at at least some kind of expansion by then it will.

darkace.8925:

Bryzy.2719:

RyuDragnier.9476:

For Ranger, darkace, we don’t even need to look at the builds to know that. They halved the damage for almost every pet we have, making the only viable build at this point for Ranger the Trap Ranger build. BM has been destroyed, at least in its offensive capabilities.

And reduced the crit rate of our most-used pet(s) by 75%

If it’s the most-used pet, it’s the most-used for a reason. Perhaps it was too good? Perhaps a nerf was warranted?

No, it’s because the others sucked.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have officially been Smiter’s Booned

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Smiter%27s_Boon_%28PvP%29

This skill was modified in the August 21st, 2008 update to effectively remove it from PvP. In a Developer update, ArenaNet stated, “We recognize that the changes to this skill will essentially remove it from play. In the future, we may consider whether or not there is an incarnation of this skill that would be viable but balanced. For now, we do not expect it to see serious use.”
This skill is considered by most to be the paramount example of a nerf and thus, has given rise to a nickname known as Smiter’s Booning (or simply S-booning) or “[to] 25/90 <a skill>” (in reference to the new energy cost and recharge), or simply “booned.” (example- “The skill got booned!”) It is most often used when players cry out for the nerf of a particular problematic skill or when a skill has been made so underpowered it becomes unplayable in serious builds.

jcbroe.4329:

Shiren.9532:

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

GSSBlunaspike.4153:

jcbroe.4329:

I wouldn’t say that people make baseless complaints, but I do feel they blow things out of proportion, or don’t understand the concept of balance around high skill competition.

The longbow and shortbow should have never operated so similarly, and the damage should have always had its highest focus coming from the player (I’m talking like 90% player, 10% pet).

I personally think that when one person who is popular in the community expressed his justified concerns, it turned into a bunch of lemmings crying about the apocalypse.

Anet did this awesome thing for GW1, they split the skills between pve/pvp. The only reason they don’t do that now is plain laziness. They know it, and we know it.

There is absolutely no reason to balance the skills the same. People in pvp don’t have the same abilities, or the same stats as mobs in pve. So balancing them to do more damage to someone with 17 to 20k health is going to suck when they fight something with 250k health.

I think that’s more of a dungeon argument to begin with, because I have no problem melting any mob in PvE with any build or weapon.
So if there are any changes that are going to be made, I’m sure the dev teams communicate with each other and reach these decisions.

As far as I know, pets were always dead to begin with in dungeons(thats what a lot of the community seems to think), using shortbow wasn’t an optimal way to run dungeons, and now, rangers have the option to trait to give their dungeon group perma regen and swiftness. It doesn’t sound like they hurt all that much other than peoples feelings that they can’t 1 spam at 1200 range to me.

The perma swiftness and regen is still not nearly enough to bring a ranger over a guardian as a support role.

Did I ever argue that it was taking a guardians place? All I mentioned was an additional, and potentially useful option.

From my dungeon experiences, swiftness and regeneration are two of the least useful buffs in a good group. Good groups don’t need regen and swiftness isn’t really useful against dungeon mobs because they don’t run away (not to mention there being no shortage of party wide swiftness for skipping without this trait).

That’s such a nitpicky thing though. It isn’t like there is zero benefit from being able to apply 100% regen uptime to a group.

Also, I wonder if it ever occurs to people that they are waiting to roll out all of these balance patches before any significant dungeon changes are made? Aka, re-tailoring the dungeons around the balance of the majority of the “big” ones are out of the way? Because I doubt that dungeons were meant to be played in the speedrun mentality that they are now, with skipping content and all of the current shenanigans with the mechanics alone the pigeonhole players into specific builds and setups.

Their record in GW1 on dungeons makes me think that if anything has deviated from what they envisioned, they will either not fix it, or they will only slap a band aid on it to make it look like they tried.

They probably didn’t mean for the majority of people to speed clear CoF exclusively but if they care at all they are being very silent on the matter.

Overworld PvE? I’d just use what you have been, the only real change is things will take longer to die and you can’t kite bosses at 1200 range with the SB anymore.

People spend money to turn into weird things, not just other humans in armor you can buy on the gem store.

Dime Baggins.1058:

I like playing my Ranger sooo much I spent real money on gems to buy him the unlimited use mining pick and harvesting sickle. After this horrible nerfing of the ranger class I don’t want to play him anymore. Either Anet should make them account bound so I can use them to with another character who’s class hasn’t been ruined (yet) or give me a COMPLETE REFUND for the gems I bought to buy them. I’ll gladly hand over the pick and sickle.

^ This.

I could transmute my non accessory gear to a new class if I wanted but the sickle is forever glued to a class that has no real future in the game and we have no way of knowing if they will ever release another version since I doubt they will ever make them account bound.