I think we all remember the post by ANet back around the time of the Lost Shores living story stating that Zhaitan had been defeated. This was an important post as most of the community, especially the RPers have run with this as the current state of the world.
At PAX, though, myself and other lore-fiends heard directly from Angel that Zhaitan is not, as we have been told, actually dead. I am wondering if it is possible to get official confirmation on this?
And if Zhaitan is confirmed as not-yet-dead how are we, as a community, going to approach this from an RP standpoint?
I’m not talking about meta builds though lol. I’m talking about how useful a tool was in order to be able to “preview” your group composition before entering content. It sure would save time, instead of finding out the ranger is going to “bearbow” with the wrong traits, poor equipment, and no helpful group utilities after you get into the dungeon, for instance.
As much as I enjoy templates, I am afraid that it has the potential for bad things. The potential for a ‘gear-check’ like mechanic being forced in the meta. And that is something that we should strive to avoid.
If you ask me, however, I’ll tell you that I dislike that ascended gear got added, and really dislike the way it was implemented with a long grind to achieve it. I’ll tell you that my normal play style means I have no hope of achieving it without specifically farming for it, and that my current farming is the first time in any game that I’ve ever actually farmed. I’ll also point out that, for the first time since I got excited about GW2 two years before launch, there’s a distinct possibility I’ll move to another game, especially if ascended armor follows the pattern of ascended weapons. Though the “you don’t need ascended, so just ignore it” crowd won’t understand, I just want to have BiS gear and enjoy the game without needing to work toward another loot carrot.
One thing to note on the ascended gear is that it doesn’t seem to bad to outfit a single character. If you run more than one character/class, though, it goes from barely bearable to impossible to even consider. Because the ‘refining’ of the materials is time-gated, it means that it doesn’t just take x hours to outfit your multiple charas. It now takes x days to do so.
I was initially interested in ascendeds. Now I just dislike them on principle. To unobtainable.
So to start with what i am suggesting we do is that we have a list of topics for each category, so for example:
PVE
1:Ascended Gear
2:Raiding
3: RNG
4: RoleplayingFor global issues such as bugs, balance etc we can open up more threads but lets just start with 3. Note my list above is just an example. So what i am asking you guys and gals to think about is how do you want to go about choosing the list for WvW, PVE, and PVP
Chris
Those are a great choice for PvE topics. I’d strongly add class balance in there as well but you see it as a global issue. When the discussion on balance does come up, though, it should include seperate discussions on class balance for each game mode as many classes (such as rangers) have an entirely seperate meta in each mode, making balance discussions highly difficult.
I know what you mean about Traveler runes. Now that they don’t have Magifind I feel able to proudly say I’ve been using them for nearly a year. I’m actually a bit saddened as to the change in the effect for the sixth rune. It used to give a flat +5% speed boost on top of Signet of the Hunt, which is what I ran it for. I miss my perma +30% speed boost. Well at least I have one more utility slot to use, I guess.
i dont think speed stacks like that… u prolly jus run 25% cuz gw2 takes the higher of the two and ignores the lower one
No. It did. I tested it. It was glorious! ^.^
You could get to a +33% speed boost if you also had the ascended utility infusion. I had better uses for my infusion, though, so I was only at +30%.
This is why in guild wars 1, build templates were lifesavers. Make a group, tell joiners we “need this from you”, ask them to ping their build, and if they didn’t cooperate or weren’t running the requested build/utilities, kick them and find somebody else.
ESPECIALLY for instanced content.
Often the meta builds were less effective than other builds, which really got on my nerves to the point where I just ran 7 heroes with 40/40s and full rune sets to complete everything because they were less painful than pug groups.
It depended on the meta build. As a long time GW1 ranger player, the ranger builds used in the meta were the builds to use in most all cases. And most other players didn’t mind if you deviated a bit from the main meta to add your own preferences so long as you still fulfilled your ‘role’ in the group.
I can’t count how many times I was there just for Frozen Soil. And how badly most other players used that skill … *shudders*
Melandru is the set I should be running on my Ranger and Warrior, and I would run it on my Necro too if I didn’t like the Travelers runes so much.
I know what you mean about Traveler runes. Now that they don’t have Magifind I feel able to proudly say I’ve been using them for nearly a year. I’m actually a bit saddened as to the change in the effect for the sixth rune. It used to give a flat +5% speed boost on top of Signet of the Hunt, which is what I ran it for. I miss my perma +30% speed boost. Well at least I have one more utility slot to use, I guess.
You can ask team to portal you to the switch or just use invulnerable skill to run to the switch.
When you say “switch” do you mean the control panel at the end of the room (by the exit door)? Does that area stay un-electrified the whole time?
I think he means one of the platforms. And no, the area by the control panel gets electrified during most stages.
The game right now has 7 classes that can be played with your face on the keyboard, rolling it around, and the 8th is the elementalist.
Sorry. Gotta strongly disagree here. You try that on a ranger and you’re dead. Same goes for thief and mesmer. True for most of the others, though.
It’s doubtful that any autoattack is going to receive much improvement, as last time balance devs were communicating to players (I believe it was in a twitch chat during the last tourny), they said that they were already in the stages of discussion reducing the effectiveness of autoattacks where it’s needed across the board, and improving cooldown skills, in order to promote skill rotations and gameplay that doesn’t involve running around and autoattacking.
Whether they go through with that change remains to be seen, however, if it was something that was already on the table, it’s doubtful that autoattacks are going to see many damage increases, for the most part.
Yeah. It does surprise me that they’re so shocked that people auto-attack so much. Maybe is because all the weapon skills have decently high cooldowns. And the utilities, by and large, have very large cooldowns. I want to use more skills. But with so few skills with decent cooldowns that really does put a damper on it.
Oh. It works. Such a lovely group boost. ^.^
Back in the betas gs ranger was considered op as the damage was around double what it is now, so that’s why it got the nerf hammer so hard. I’d like to see it go up as well, but I just don’t see it happening.
Yeah. Back in beta the ranger GS was excessively OP. As were spirits. Unfortunately, they nerfed both hard. Now that the spirits have gotten a bit more attention and have become more viable, I’d like to see the same happen with the GS. We are the only class in the game, after all, whose two-handed melee option is not their strongest offensive melee weapon.
Pets have been and will always be the mechanic that holds the ranger back from ever being a solid class.
A year later and Anet still can’t get them right.
In saying that one would assume what we have is all we will get.
I truly don’t know why anyone bothers to complain anymore as it’s a waste of time.
It has nothing to do with pet AI. Pets are great. If you micro them well you can turn a fight. It has everything to do with the F2 skills being extremely unresponsive. There are hundreds of other pet complaint threads, don’t infect this thread and turn it into one please. I just want anet to see this and maybe do something so I can play the kitten class properly.
No. Sorry. There are problems with the AI as well. Yes F2 isn’t responsive enough, but there are major issues with pets responsiveness to AoEs. As in they don’t have any responsiveness to them. Combine that with their tendancy, even when pulled back with F3, to still stand a good distance from you, oftentimes in the AoE you’re trying to pull them out of. And their inability to dodge the heavy attacks (and our inability to tell them to dodge). And while, yes, you can swap pets to avoid damage, some damage sources occur more than every 20s (16s traited) so you can’t always use that for your pet to avoid the damage.
Evasive purity already is a grandmaster trait.
Oh. I’m in then. Thought it was master.
It is a master trait. One that already removes poison and blindness with a 10s cooldown. The proposed change would just allow it to remove a third condition, but increase the cooldown to 15s as a cost. That isn’t entirely unreasonable as with only being able to clear those two condition the trait isn’t the most useful.
Yeah, i’m not really worried about the dungeon meta, just the temp one cause i do really want that backpack…
Most of the achievements are pretty easy, thankfully, as are the daily ones that also count towards the LS achievement.
Stand strong, Durz! Stand strong!
I’m trying!! I do like my Ranger… but my engineer and mesmer are just looking so much more fun since they’re not getting kitten in almost every new fight in PvE… and they have more trix and/or explosions…
PS: Does anyone know if the meta achievement for Twilight Assault will be staying after the 15th?
No clue on the meta thing. I think it will remain, as the achievements for the first update of each month tend to run the entire month. We’ve received no confirmation of it either way, though.
Probably safest to make sure you get the meta done, just in case. The dungeon achievements will stay for sure so no hurry there..
I think you’ll get more interested in having you if they didn’t need to pay you. There are plenty okittend souls that will assist others with the achievements for free.
This pleases me! I’ve been putting off playing until i knew whether or not i should stand strong with my ranger or finally let my mesmer take over as my new main…
Stand strong, Durz! Stand strong!
Are you joking? Most of my changes are QoL improvements. If they all did come true, which I don’t expect to happen and is not my intention, then the only thing that’d be even remotely op would be our vigor uptime. But even then, as I explained earlier, that uptime has the potential to be strong but also has the potential to be weak. Maybe you can claim the 20% increased power scaling op, but I think its completely justifiable over the fact that our pets are unreliable and the fact that we already have poor power scaling to begin with. And that power increase only effects auto attacks as well.
While the pets are highly unreliable in some modes of play (PvE), their shortcomings aren’t quite so glaring in others (PvP). This led to the current situation where we, in PvE, are nerfed for design decisions in PvP.
Pets can be relied upon to a much greater degree in PvP. In fact they are and that is a major reason why rangers are firmly in the PvP meta. In PvP as the ranger pet can and does deal significant damage buffing the rangers damage further, while highly requested and helpful in PvE, would make the ranger too powerful in PvP.
The only way a power gain to rangers directly would make sense and not be OP is to simultaneously nerf pet damage output. While that would not be noticed by many PvE players, it has the potential to greatly impact the meta for rangers in all game modes for those that are skilled with the class.
We also can do good conditions, but conditions are much more limited in the PvE meta and neither as reliable nor as effective against what we face.
I… don’t think I follow? Was I missing bosses cleansing me?
I also don’t follow the full-on berserkers thing. wouldn’t that get like, really dangerous?
There is a hard cap on how many conditions that can be on an enemy, causing lower powered stacks to be ‘overwritten’ and thus losing the damage from them. Also some enemies are immune to certain conditions. All objects are immune to all conditions. Direct damage has none of these drawbacks and is thus the preferred combat style in PvE.
As for running berserker being dangerous? Yes. It is. Our survivability is then entirely based on our ability to position, heal, regen, dodge, and evade. But we cannot reach near as much direct damage running more defensive-statted armors due to our poor power scaling.
Let’s hope rangers even come up at all. They have a lovely precedent of not even mentioning us.
Sword/Dagger, Longbow, and occasionally the GS are the weapons du jour for rangers in late-game PVE. Full or near-full berserker/assassin gear is also best to maximize your damage output, as is running all the good group utility you can such as spirits, Spotter, and Healing Spring.
We also can do good conditions, but conditions are much more limited in the PvE meta and neither as reliable nor as effective against what we face.
Because Anet for all their talk about being different decided to follow the well-worn path of the fantasy archer trope. They always have to have some beast companion, well that’s great and all all but it’s always a pain in videogames.
It wasn’t until WoW that the “woodsman/archer with his/her trusty <insert animal> companion” trope came into popularity. So I guess it’s Blizzard’s fault.
No. Sorry. Pets for rangers has far predated WoW. It is a major point on the D&D 3.0/3.5 ranger and a minor point on the AD&D ranger. Don’t blame that on WoW. There is plenty of better thing to blame on WoW that are actually accurate.
To conclude – Ranger IS a good class, YES it does need work but name a class that doesn’t.
Answer: Guardian
You also need to be careful when partying up with others on personal story later as your choice can be shunted to one of the options that you don’t want. You may be able to take advantage of that bug to fix your issue.
I, on the other hand, got hit by that bug and refuse to ever do any more story on that chara until they will actually fix it.
While I’ll admit that most of the dungeon is well designed, I will say that there are a couple things that could use some improvement.
I think that the oozes in the ooze room could just just a tad bit more health. Many classes have cleave on their weapons, making it hard for the ooze to survive if you can’t pull the elementals away. And before you say that you should pull them away/reflect the attacks I feel I must point out that only a couple classes have targeted pulls and only a couple classes have reflect/block fields. Yes it’s still achievable and yes it’s meant to require teamwork, but the gap between groups that have said classes in them and groups that do not is a bit too large. Just giving a bit more health (not a lot, just a small amount) to the oozes should make this room a lot better.
And then there is the Clockheart. Overall pretty well designed again, but there are three seperate things in this fight I found to be badly thought out. For one, the teleport on the holo machines. This one, thankfully, has been acknowledged by the design team and will be fixed in the next major patch.
The second is the sprocket/gear attack. I understand that it’s supposed to push us to melee. It does a good job of that. Too good, unfortunately. I don’t think it should ever target downed/dead players. In that fight if you go down and the boss moves, you’re most likely out for the remainder of battle as those sprockets will still target you and assure you are dead instead of downed. Then they will keep being thrown at anyone trying to rez you.
And the last is the super attack. When the Clockheart still has a lot of health I feel that the damage and knockback it does is acceptable. If his health is low, though, and he pulls it off it will take most professions from full health to dead in one or two of the hits. Yes, I understand that it’s supposed to be punishing to not remove the shield. But so punishing that it kills the entire party unless they’re invulned (few classes have an invuln that will last long enough) and forces a full fight reset? That’s a bit much. No other fight in the game has such a devastating attack.
Outside of those small issues, though, it is a well designed dungeon. Hopefully they’ll keep the rewards high enough to keep people doing it, because if they don’t then the good design will be seemingly wasted.
That was a random number to enphatize the idea.
Hyperboles!Seriosly talking, i boubt my pet deals even nearby 50% of the dmg, but it’s undeniable that the gap between “ranger + pet” and “ranger alone” DPS is quite harsh.
Too wide imo, and it’s one of the main issue of the class.
Sorry. Many people who post here do seem to think the gap is as big as that.
I believe that the actual percentage is 30% to 40%. Yes, that is a high percentage for how unreliable the AI is. I think all of us want either a more reliable AI or more of the damage shifted to us. Both solutions would work. But something does need to be done regardless.
Make pet more utility based, change up skills and stats, whatever, but losing 60% of your DPS output because it relies on a AI unable to
walk away AoEs
dodge
and which have a 60sec CD on respawnis just bad.
I really, really hate to have to be the one to say this, but … if your pet is responsible for 60% of your DPS then you’re doing something horribly wrong.
Sword auto roots you because the other two skills are basically free evades on top of the evades you get with offhand and your dodge button. If you run Sw/D and GS you can basically straight evade/block for something like nine seconds straight every 20 seconds or so.
I still take full damage from every single thing that attacks me in PvE while swording
I don’t know where you’re getting this Evade crap from.
Are you confusing it with the dagger offhand?
Sword 2 and 3 are both evades. Their evade windows are a bit odd, but you can still evade attacks if you time them correctly.
I have a level 68 ranger now, and I solo’d a level 55 champion in Timberland Falls with a Guardian on the same level as me. I don’t know what happened, but somehow we killed the champion in 10 minutes, with help from an elementalist on the last 25% of the champ’s health. I used my bear as a distraction (yes, a bear, that MF’er kept us alive), the Guardian went all out with mace and focus and I spammed:
- Rapid shot
- Barrage + Sharpening Stone
- AoE heal + #5 warhorn
- Zephyr’s Quickness + #1 sword.After the battle I could only conclude one thing: having played warrior and guardian, the Ranger was the first class I could pull off this trick. Yes, it probably helped we were with the 3 of us (including pet), but I can say that is an accomplishment.
Until now, I still didn’t have any problems with PvE, except those nasty Krait in TF with their champion up. Those guys get a buff of fury + 20 stacks of might from the Krait witch so they were a pain in the kitten .
We are nigh-unkillable in open-world PvE. Practically any ranger here can tell you that. Unfortunately once you get to late-game PvE (dungeons, fractals, etc…) we are in a much more … disadvantaged state.
It’s permanent. I can’t wait for Halloween too tho, I hope Mad King returns with his clocktower and labyrinth and all the spooky goody goodies <3
Let’s hope it’s more permanent than TA F/U.
We are not punished for using the sword you just have to rethink your evade. In truth you have 4 evades. Your two normal evades become back-ups and the second and Third skill become your primary.
One thing The Queens Gauntlet should of taught us is that weapon skill evade are very valuable. While running is circle may have seem the thing to do. Evading with weapon skill allow you to be anywhere you wanted to be.
You will only die in dungeon due to a failure to evade with the sword if you don’t know how to properly use skills 2 and 3. You may die with the sword due to too much damage intake but that’s another issue.
Rangers can have 7 evades in one build the only other class that can have that many are thieves with 8. If you only use dodge as a means to evade then you’re missing so much of what we can do.
You don’t need to stack toughness to tank. Rangers in Gw1 were good because of all the evades we had. We didn’t attack fast with our bows. If you think so log-on to gw1 and see how slow we attacked.
We are punished as it makes it more difficult to use the evades and dodges we have access to. The ranger sword is, bar none, the most difficult weapon in the game to properly use and has the highest skill floor by a large margin. Despite what you perceive to be it’s power, I don’t feel that it deserves the drawback that it does.
Yes, it is a strong weapon, relatively speaking of course. Yes, it has good evades. But the much higher skill level required to use it properly makes it hard to use, or even impossible to some. With that I am speaking of players with high ping/latency, of course, which is something completely outside of their control. For those players that weapon is just not an option. And even for the players with good ping where it is an option, it takes significantly more skill to use. More skill than any other weapon in the game requires.
That being said, I have been using the sword myself in dungeons. It is our highest DPS weapon by a decent margin. I only swap to GS when the higher mobility is a necessity and the sword drawbacks outweigh it’s benefits. When the GS’s defensiveness is more important than the sword’s offensiveness.
And you’re completely right that we don’t need to stack toughness to tank (in PvE; PvP is a different story). We survive based on our evasion and not getting hit in the first place. That’s always been the Guild Wars ranger, in both 1 and 2, and to that I’ve never disagreed.
By traiting that far into Wilderness Survival we are blocked from taking more of the good offensive traits. Many, if not most, of the current powerful ranger builds don’t have the free trait points to boost Wilderness Survival up to 30.
Yes, it is a great option if we can spare the points, but most rangers would be harming themselves far more than helping by traiting out of the traits that make their build.
But it is the same argument that a lot of the other classes have. Everybody seems to think that they should be able to build full offensive and get all of the defensive utilities they need to go along with it, when that just isn’t the case across most classes. Most classes have to give up defense, particularly condition removal, in order to get more offense.
Now, the classes that this is the least true for are Warriors and Thieves, with Cleansing Ire and (cba about the name) the trait that removes conditions in stealth. They lose some damage potential, but not such a huge amount that it is detrimental to their damage output.
Whether or not ANet likes how it works on these classes and is willing to spread the love remains to be seen. All we know is that they want the Guardian to be even better at removing conditions outside of shouts at this point. At least, for certain at this point.
That much is true. We do need to give up offense for good defense. That is always the case with all classes, but affects some of us (rangers) more than the more … ‘favored’ classes (guardian).
Now I think the complaint here is less that we don’t have any condition clears and more that we don’t have better active condition clears. Passive clears are nice, yes, but without more strict control you can find yourself with a bad condition and be waiting for the passive effect to get around to occurring. And we are not unique in having few active condi clears.
People complain, when fighting against us, that we are too passive. This may be true. The problem is that we don’t have many active options. I’m sure a majority of rangers would prefer more active options than the passive ones we tend to use and abuse now.
@ SynfulChaot you don’t need to turn it off to survive you just choose to. No other class has 3 evades on a weapon set either. When I said you in my post before I didn’t mean you SynfulChaot specifically. I meant Ranger that complain about this issue in general. Like If I said when you learned to ride a bike you used training wheels at first you probably thought you would never learn to do without out it until you did. Not everyone has learned to ride a bike and those that did not all used training wheels. Specially I don’t know your skill level but one can see how that would apply in a general sense.
We Rangers constantly complain that we are not unique enough and yet we compare what we do with other classes. That in itself isn’t a bad thing, but having 3 evades on a weapon set is not a bad thing either.
Why do I think that to stop the root you will have to give up something because it was a choice to root the ranger and block the dodge and anet track record tells me that to get something you have to give up something. Because once you spec into endurance regen plus and 20% skill recharge that is a lot of evade not including the ability to add invulnerability in more than one form. This doesn’t include evades on other weapon set. That is way to much. So they limited your normal dodge just a bit.
I may be wrong but in the event they make the sword easier to work with it will be help I’m not in need of and I would hate to receive another nerf because of it.
Yes there may not be a nerf but my question to you all is if there is what are you prepared to give up.
If you have that weapon on auto-attack, then you will die in dungeons. Period. There is simply too much damage that must be avoided and sword on auto prevents you from avoiding it.
You keep speaking of 3 evades on a weapon set. Yes, we have that on one particular set. One that is not always used. You don’t balance one weapon (sword) based solely on a single weapon it can be paired with. You balance it on it’s own merits. And on it’s own merits it only has two evades. Yes we are unique in not only having multiple evades on a weapon, but also in having an evade on one of our auto-attacks (on GS). But again, as I have said previously, we have those evades so we can survive. We are dependent upon them for survivability in ways that other classes are not.
Yes, we have other damage mitigation in the form two invulns, both of with notable requirements/drawbacks (necessitating a specific grandmaster trait and sacrificing a non-insignificant portion of your DPS), endurance regen boosting, and cooldown lowering for our weapon evades. And most of these require specifically traiting for them. They are not automatic and endemic to all rangers. Again, you don’t balance one weapon alone against everything. Especially against a couple particular builds when all other builds may not have the additional anything.
So why is it that only the sword has the drawbacks that it does. Why is it that only the sword is punished? For having more than one evade/mitigation skill? GS, you might recall, has evade on autoattack, a pretty fast cooldown block, and a daze/stun.
I, personally, think it is an unfortunate artifact of the way that gap-closer skills work as all have this period where you cannot dodge. We are just both fortunate and unfortunate enough to have one in our auto-attack. Fortunate as it allows us to stick to our targets (boon in PvP; useless in PvE) and unfortunate that it roots us when we use it (downside for all, but especially in PvE). Basically the weapon’s design is great for PvP due to the gap-closer but a major liability in PvE as the gap-closer is useless and we still have to pay for it.
Why is it that only the PvE players need to pay the price without gaining the true benefits of it?
Gimme a gryphon. Then I’ll forever be a happy ranger. ^.^
Split second dodging in pve really. In PvE there is more than enough time to perceive the danger and then react to it. Perception and reaction should be instantaneous in pve there is more than enough time.
The average reaction time is 215 milliseconds. Nothing in guildwars 2 requires that kind of reaction time. If you happed to be bless with a reaction of half that then pretty much you have all the time in the world (time being relative). In PvE Mobs have over blown animation red circles appear 2 to 3 seconds before you need to dodge them.
The argument against root is more valid in PvP then PvE. While you may say mobs can down you in one shot but, your less likely to ralley in PvP.
The 1h sword is our best weapon: Anet made it root for a reason agree or disagree for them to change. Then their postion on the root would of had to change which is doubtful. Or they will give into what some of the players want and the removal of the root will most likely happen with a nerf.
So which aspect of the 1h sword do you want nerfed so you can use an evade that you have access to in another form: cripple, damage Oh I see the might for our pets since you guys cant seem to keep them alive.
Funny how most ranger that do melee keep their pets alive a lot better. They will be the ones that actually use this weapon to the fullest that will suffer the most for those who barely understand what this weapon bring into play for the ranger.
Its always the design it’s never the player.
It’s both, actually. Both problematic design and players not adapting to it.
You don’t need to remove any aspect of the sword attack to make up for the root that comes with it. The problem isn’t the jump itself. The problem is that we’re rooted both during the jump and for a non-insignificant period after the jump. This may not be an issue in PvP as the jump is a boon to you there. In PvE the jump is completely mechanically unnecessary due to PvE combat and not only disallows dodging but also strafing while attacking to avoid damage. This highly limits your damage mitigation to just your dodges and evades, both of which are delayed due to the root. Please tell me what part of design necessitates that we should be rooted after the motion. Because I can’t see one.
Please don’t assume I’m one of those rangers that can’t use the weapon and can’t ever keep the pet alive. It was a lovely allusion of me as a bad player. I’m not and it doesn’t help your argument. I actually know what I’m doing, thankyouverymuch.
As for reaction times? Not all attacks are highly telegraphed. Some are barely telegraphed at all. And that is if you can see the telegraph through effects on the boss. Even those attacks that are telegraphed cause us to need to halt our attacks much earlier so as to not be caught unable to dodge.
Basically after looking at all classes weapons and attacks, I find that the root on the attack is unnecessary and unfairly punishes us for using our most powerful weapon. No other weapon in the game do you need to turn off auto attack and cut DPS just to survive. No other. I’m sorry, but that’s just bad design.
That depends on what game mode you’re talking about.
In PvP, most rangers will be running Empathic Bond due to the condi meta.
In PvE, it doesn’t matter what you run because you’re facing AI.
In WvW, you can rely on your zerg/team for cleansing, so it’s not necessary.If you’re doing any sort of 1v1 or skirmishing with your build, though, whether roaming in WvW or playing tPvP, it’s not even a question. No offensive trait is going to compare to what the WS trait line can offer.
Either way, Signet of Renewal alone is one of the best cleansing utilities in the game. It’s a full cleanse and a stunbreak both, acting as a passive cleansing utility when not on cooldown, and can be traited for a shorter CD through an offensive trait line.
Regardless, there are plenty of arguments that can be made for both sides, but the ranger remains one of the top professions in the game as far as cleansing is concerned. Not only are their cleansing outlets very powerful (Signet of Renewal and Empathic Bond), but they also don’t have to severely hurt their own builds by investing in them, as a Mesmer has to, for example. To each their own, though.
I am strictly a PvE player, though I understand the meta in all game modes. And when I speak of PvE I’m speaking of late-game dungeons, not open-world.
That being said, Signet of Renewal is quite powerful and should be in most builds. It’s only real downside is it’s excessively high cooldown, even when traited, and requirement of your pet being alive. Unfortunately for Empathetic Bond, though, 30 points in Wilderness Survival is run in practically zero builds for PvE due to the necessity of other skills for class viability. We kinda need to min-max the heck out of our class to remain useful in PvE due to the DPS heavy meta currently in PvE. That gates us out of being able to use apply that many points to Wilderness Survival.
That leaves our only other real cleansing option as Healing Spring, which again is probably one of the best group condi clears in the game. It, thankfully, has a much shorter cooldown of only 30 seconds.
Almost every ranger, whether offensively built or not, should be investing in the WS trait line. It has three of the ranger’s best traits, which are almost crucial for any spec.
Natural Vigor: 50% faster endurance regen.
Companion’s Defense: 2 seconds of protection on dodge.
Empathic Bond: 3 conditions cleansed every 10 seconds.It’s not even a matter of build type. That’s like saying a defensively-built mesmer shouldn’t take Deceptive Evasion because it’s in a trait line with offensive stats. Traits aren’t selected based on the stats of their respective line. Any good player builds based solely on the traits themselves, and if they happen to be in line that provides beneficial stats to their particular build, then that’s just a bonus.
By traiting that far into Wilderness Survival we are blocked from taking more of the good offensive traits. Many, if not most, of the current powerful ranger builds don’t have the free trait points to boost Wilderness Survival up to 30.
Yes, it is a great option if we can spare the points, but most rangers would be harming themselves far more than helping by traiting out of the traits that make their build.
When you’re saying thieves aren’t an issue for rangers, whilst complaining about a lack of condition cleansing on the class with one of the best cleansing traits in the game (Empathic Bond), amongst other things, something is wrong.
A single grandmaster trait requiring traiting 30 points into the defensive tree. Inaccessible for more damaging specs.
I’m sorry. There is no excuse for locking us out of dodges on an auto-attack. If there is a fight where split-second dodging is required, I swap to GS as it allows me to actually survive whereas the sword would get me killed.
And I sit back and look at the game objectively on a daily basis. Trying to figure out why some design decisions were made. I can understand many of them. But, as far as PvE is concerned, the root is both unnecessary and unnecessarily dangerous. It may be a fair counter for the weapon in PvP and roaming WvW, but it has no place in PvE.
Sword auto roots you because the other two skills are basically free evades on top of the evades you get with offhand and your dodge button. If you run Sw/D and GS you can basically straight evade/block for something like nine seconds straight every 20 seconds or so.
While you may feel that the root is well deserved in PvP, I can tell you from personal experience that in dungeons it is a major liability. One that no other class needs to deal with. Yes we have evades. We have evades because we’d die without them. We survive in melee because of the evades. But the root should go as it has no place in an auto-attack. Were the roots on any other attack it’d be more acceptable. But it’s on our max damage weapon’s auto. And that’s just bad design.
All they need to do is remove the root and the complaints will stop. We don’t mind the jump. We just mind not being able to dodge as necessary unless we purposefully cut our DPS, something no other class needs to do.
I prefer ranger shouts to warrior and guardian shouts.
Many warriors run at least one shout and there are warrior builds built around shouts. Same for guardian, except it is rare that a guardian is not running at least one shout.
Ranger shouts, on the other hand, are widely ignored. Rare are the rangers that run one, and rarer is the ranger that runs one without Nature’s Voice being traited for swiftness/regen spamming. The shouts are, honestly, some of our worst utilities to bring.
It’s still useful in some dungeons with mine-type mechanics. Like SE path 1 and Canach’s Lair. Pets, even on passive, will trod over and set off every mine in the time zone. >.<
My suggestion? Use an ele. Mist Form’s immunity allows you to run across the electrified floor with impunity.
Just out of curiosity, could you point out which you think are OP? I want to see if I agree or if I can give a reason for it not to be. Or you could be right. Again, just curious.
Signet of the Beastmaster – Effect changed to, Signets active effects now affect nearby allies.
- Applying the active effects to the entire party would be quite broken as you could grant the entire party invuln, stability, and increased damage.
Piercing Arrows changed to Incendiary Arrows – Effect becomes, Arrows that hit targets explode and deal damage in a 90 degree radius. (They still pierce)
- Exploding piercing arrows? That could cause heavy, heavy group damage. Larger damage potential than any current AoE unless the explosion damage was negligible. Then what would the point be?
Honed Axes – Changed to, conditions dealt with axes last 50% longer.
- Probably a bit too long of an increase in duration.
Evasive purity – Changed to, remove two conditions when dodging. ICD of 10.
- Making dodges gain the ability to remove anything short of stun is a bit broken. Makes immobilize and fear impotent against rangers as valid CC without needing a skill.
Rending Attacks – Changed to, pets bleed on critical hits with their basic attacks.
- Probably make the bleed require a proc. Maybe 33%-50%? All hits causing bleed could add a lot of damage.
Stability training – Changed to, grants 5 seconds of stability to you, your pet, and nearby allies when swapping pets.
- Group 5 second stability on a 20 second timer? Or 16 seconds if traited for pet swap. That’s a bit too powerful. That’s even better than a guardian can do.
Vigorous Training – Changed to, grants 10 seconds of vigor to you, your pet, and nearby allies when swapping pets.
- Group 10 second vigor on a 20/16 second timer? That’s at least 50% uptime without any boon duration increase. You could solo perma-maintain vigor for the entire party nearly effortlessly. That’s … kinda crazy OP.
Yeah. Some of those are blatantly OP. That’s how we can all tell that they’re not all going to happen. But, as a whole, there are some very good ideas in there that should be considered.
The OP didn’t say ALL signets effect the allies around you, he said:
“Signets active abilities will always affect you and your pet.
Signet of Renewal- Active changes to, cleanse all conditions from you and your pet."
Signet of the Wild would be the only signet that would effect allies. And, considering its cooldown in addition to the skills many other professions offer, it wouldn’t be op.
I say everything on here was pretty spot-on with how things need to be balanced. There is more, but this was a lot of it.
I still hold that several of them are OP, but I agree that many look like they’re what we need.
Strange. I have seen that nowhere. Either way when the rewards fade than so will most of the people that run it.
And where did you hear that there will be three releases this month? I am quite curious.
They are bi-weekly, hence 1st, 15th and 29th October.
Oh. Right. Silly months with five Tuesdays. Twilight Assault will probably still last the full four weeks is my guess, though.
Every patch I go straight to the Ranger bit, I have never failed to be really disappointed.
Same here. This one truly promises to be different, though. I doubt it will be everything we need, but it looks like it will quite easily be our best patch. Though, honestly, that’s not hard to do. >.<
Are you sure it’s only two weeks? The release notes state that the higher rewards will remain during the duration of the Twilight Assault LS. Typically the first LS each month lasts the entire month, with the second lasting only two weeks.
If I recall correctly, they said it during the preview. Also, keep in mind that this month will have 3 releases.
Strange. I have seen that nowhere. Either way when the rewards fade than so will most of the people that run it.
And where did you hear that there will be three releases this month? I am quite curious.
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