Guild Wars 2

Lets see..

Marksman Trait – Won’t be used because its over saturated with other Longbow Trait

Skirmishing Trait – Who’s going to use this? Trap Rangers won’t…. and Interrupt Builds MoC is better…Berserker Rangers won’t use it, Because they sure as hell don’t wanna be in Melee.

Wilderness Survival – Again, no one will use it…Cause it sits in Empathetic Bond’s place

Nature Trait – Not sure who’s going to use this trait..Spirit Builds Won’t use it, Shout Build won’t use it….So its pretty much Meh.

Beastmaster Trait – Depends on heal, if its not great..It won’t take Natural Healings Place.

Rangers changes were Meh

Swagger.1459:

Fluffball.8307:

Swagger.1459:

Terravos.4059:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkmR2hv8koY

This is me playing a Backstab Thief

If you don’t have an invul…I will one shot you most likely

awesome! welp, guess it’s officially time to finish leveling and gearing up my thief.

Just to clarify, because swagger never does, he is being VERY sarcastic. This video is horrific.

(clearly working for me now, wish I could have responded to this myself.)

I wasn’t being sarcastic. watching videos like that reminds me of how poor the ranger performs in wvw and how fun it would be to own face and troll people.

If you really wanna feel sad

this is me playing a Venom Aura Thief, a Spec that most Thieves think is awful…

I’ve always found SBI to be pretty decent for roaming around, mainly cause we’re not T1

Omnitek.3876:

Guardians get 300 vitality, we get faster longbow arrows… lol.

Well you have to take other considerations into account before you say 300 vitality is amazing.

For instance..Would anyone here actually use a 300 vitality trait if it would put into Wilderness Survival?

I know i wouldn’t, for the same reason I don’t use Barkskin, because Empathetic Bond is that needed…So while that 300 Vitality trait is good, Guardians might actually have something completely better they could get

This is me playing a Backstab Thief

If you don’t have an invul…I will one shot you most likely

Coulter.2315:

Terravos.4059:

umm

Rangers

Engineer’s

Also have interruptible heals

Accidentally interuptable sure or guessed. Do you want to lose immob or illusionary persona for +5secs to a guessed rupt?

Yes.. and you’d be a fool not to

Its the equiv to a bloody 10 second Silence that can’t be broken with Stun Breaks

The new Beastmaster Trait is

“Standard Gameplay Swing”: Your pet will now be able to hit targets within 120 range of it

umm

Rangers

Engineer’s

Also have interruptible heals

Atherakhia.4086:

I’m usually the type to take a wait and try it before talking down about it… but come on… who in the [censored] would ever take that trait over signet of the beastmaster?

Every time ANet does something for this class they reinforce the idea that not a single one of them play it.

heh, Actually taking it over Signet of the Beastmaster is the least of its problem

Usually the longbow builds grab Longbow Range Increase and Pierce Arrows, which already take up the Master and GM Slots

so there is no space to even grab that ability in the first place

The irony of the GM traits they posted is kitten near everyone of them is better then the Ranger one, and they should had a CDI on Ranger being crappy

You can only interrupt abilities with Cast times

Meaning it’ll work on some of the Thieves Heals, and things like Heart Seeker or

Its not actual cooldowns of abilities either, When you interrupt any ability, its put on a 5 second cooldown right now…This changes that cooldown to 10 seconds..

Sensotix.4106:

Mesmer: Power Block
Enemies of mesmers beware: they’ve learned how to mess with your skill recharge! The new trait for mesmers allows them to gain additional benefit when disrupting enemy skills. Power Block will be introduced to the Domination line and will change the recharge of an interrupted skill from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. This will not affect skills that have no recharge, but I’d imagine that stopping a necromancer from consuming conditions would surely put a nail in their coffin.

Useless vs thieves since they dont have a recharge on their abilities…
Thieves will still hardcounter mesmers so yea…
another useless trait

Its probably the most overpowered trait ever introduced this game.

Carighan.6758:

Why would it be overpowered?

We have a few ways to AE interrupt, true, but only the very random Chaos Storm can affect more than 5 targets.

Other than that, oh noes, a single target has 5s more recharge. Total gamechanger, right there! :P

It’s an interesting trait, sure, but adding a tiny AE to daze effects would have been more interesting as currently the whole mechanic is much too focused onto single targets. Or rather, everyone else isn’t! (I could be fine if 95% of all classes was single-target only)

I run a build, that basically has a 6 second daze on a 45 second cooldown, That’s incredibly powerful, but you can stun break out of it

The ability to lockdown a skill for 5 extra seconds (10 total) on interrupt is bloody stupid, anyone who’s ever played a CC build knows its stupid…. it doesn’t take a genius to figure out how oped that ability is.

The Mesmer one is way way overpowered…

If I can read a trait like that.. and instantly see how bloody overpowered it is..I question what the hell anet is thinking

Technobabble, which is a 6 second daze with MoC is incredibly powerful….The ability to lock out abilities for 10 bloody seconds every time you interrupt is just so bloody oped

Have you seen some of the other Traits?

“Enemies of mesmers beware: they’ve learned how to mess with your skill recharge! The new trait for mesmers allows them to gain additional benefit when disrupting enemy skills. Power Block will be introduced to the Domination line and will change the recharge of an interrupted skill from 5 seconds to 10 seconds. This will not affect skills that have no recharge, but I’d imagine that stopping a necromancer from consuming conditions would surely put a nail in their coffin.”

Let me go ahead and save you the time Anet, you’re going to nerf this within the first month of its release…Because its insanely OVERPOWERED

At this point, If you don’t know that the Ranger CDI is pointless anyway, and that Anet is going to do the Class Changes it thinks is best, You’ve not been paying attention to them as developers, and pretty much every other Developer of every other MMO for the past 15 years

Defending in this game is pointless unless you outnumber the people outside, In which case you’ll win the fight.

If you have Perma regen, Healing Power will always be better then Vitality

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnf8YnAVkYZlFWBxaZgYVAQtHTy8Y69I9rv9lMqmA-j0BBoODimkO0kHBKTqIasFTFRjVPjIqWvETKgFlGB-w

As for what makes it special? Its one of the best 1v1 Classes in the game

Substance E.4852:

Terravos.4059:

They’ll probably hold it till March 28th right before ESO release, that’s usually how MMO companies do it.

Only if they want to lose what little hardcore WvW community they have left. Launching a massive update that will be plagued with bugs the day Season2 of WvW launches is a sure fire way to get them to all try ESOL if for no other reason than Anet’s lack of respect for the game mode. It has more team synergy combat and can support 100+ people in one area with little to no server lag.

PvE in it may be a bit lame, but the WvW is good enough to drain Anet’s WvW if they do something stupid.

Oh…it doesn’t matter when they let loose that patch..

That ship has already sailed….ESO is going to take a chunk of WvWers from this game

Rangers have pretty much been really good at 1v1’s for a very long time

See my Youtube videos for examples of me just crushing people.

But anything past 1v1 and the ranger becomes rather mediocre in comparison to other classes.

Zerging it is honestly the worst class, I have far more success and fun zerging on for example my Thief, which countless people think suck at zerging (I disagree)

Anyway, Rangers good 1v1 class, not great at anything else.

They’ll probably hold it till March 28th right before ESO release, that’s usually how MMO companies do it.

Lets clear something up right now about Ranger Shortbow

A. Rangers actually use every single of the abilities Shortbow has, You usually don’t notice them though because of Animation they do, Plus see part B.

B. All the Ranger Shortbow Attacks do the same damage, and i’m not kidding.. That is another reason it looks like Ranger is just pelting you over and over with Auto Attacks, Because none of their other attacks are big hitters

For example

Crossfire (SB auto attack) 278 Damage with a Bleed if I’m on the side or behind the target

Poison Volley 350 Damage if all 5 Attacks hit the target (the only attack that supposedly has more damage then the auto attack)

Quick Shot 278 damage, Evade + Swiftness

Crippling Shot 278 Damage, Pet Bleeds the Target + Cripple

Concussion Shot 278 Damage, Stun or Daze depending on if infront or behind.

As you can see, All the shots basically do the same amount of damage, and they’re all very short cooldowns so Rangers tend to use them pretty much when they’re up (except maybe the evade and stun)

Now you look at a 100 Blades Warrior, you know when he 100blades you because it does a lot of damage, and has a noticeable animation

Berk.8561:

Aggrostemma.1703:

They cannot dodge through, they cannot avoid AE’s, they are useless on walls and under them.

The only time I’ve seen pets be useful around walls in WvW is when they could glitch into a tower, keep, or castle and attack the defenders and siege weapons inside but I suspect that this was not how they were intended to work, but maybe they should work that way on purpose since Dragon Tooth can attack outside of line of sight and Mesmer clones can attack up on walls.

It actually was ok till people started using Rangers to res people with Search and Rescue inside the keep..

Then it got nerfed

But yea…Was only time Guard was taken for the actual ability, not for it just being the shout with the shortest cooldown for the Natures GM Trait.

sminkiottone.6972:

Terravos.4059:

As always

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnf8YnAVkYZlFWBxaZgYVAQtHTy8Y69I9rv9lMqmA-j0BBoODimkO0kHBKTqIasFTFRjVPjIqWvETKgFlGB-w

Nice build, but is it good against competent d/p thiefs or shatterer mesmers ? do you swap empathic bond for bark skin against them ?

You can kill D/P thieves just fine..Its just a matter of time before they die basically.

Mesmer’s are zero problem as well, Because Mesmer’s generally don’t run squat for Condition Removal, and what condition removal they have doesn’t keep up with the amount of conditions BM Bunker bunker puts out.

You also never swap to Barkskin..

As always

http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnf8YnAVkYZlFWBxaZgYVAQtHTy8Y69I9rv9lMqmA-j0BBoODimkO0kHBKTqIasFTFRjVPjIqWvETKgFlGB-w

BM bunker still works.. and still eats most people

Ok…now that’s funny

a Black Widow with umm that on its face lol

She would approve

Yamsandjams.3267:

Terravos.4059:

I personally take a different route with P/D

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QBj4pEnMzNA

Also, why don’t you use traveler runes for this build? It seems they would fit it much better than the speed runes, unless you really feel you need that vitality.

Its a fairly long and complicated answer, so I’ll try and explain it as best as I can.

I’m cheap

Loubbo.9852:

I’m just waiting for Wildstar and/or Elder Scrolls Online, right now I’ve lost all faith. When they finally actually posted on the CDI after the days of nothing it was just a copy paste of completely random garbage and “No kitten” ideas. They didn’t even say “Hey, we (the devs) liked these ones in particular. Lets focus on those and fine tune it because we are looking at doing it like blah blah blah” It was just a pity post that could have been done in 5 minutes of skimming the entire thread or having the most basic idea of playing a Ranger.

I’m killing time waiting for ESO as well…i’ve already decided that’s what i’m moving to play next.

Its why i’ve not taken the CDI thread very seriously.

Zoia.3678:

Terravos.4059:

Forzani.2584:

Terravos.4059:

Forzani.2584:

Terravos.4059:

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

I read the suggestions Allie posted that she wants to pass on to the team, and i’m worried we’ll get a lot of that stuff.

Because frankly, I’d be a monster if I got even half of it..

Crap like wanting Shortbow to have Confusion/Torment/Burning just blows my mind..

That weapon would be so bloody overpowered.

Things like Lowering Trolls Urgent Cooldown + giving it condition removal…TU is pretty powerful as a heal right now..It doesn’t need anything, Heal as One could use something like that.. but not TU

Some of the trait suggestions are fine.. I just don’t want this class to end up like the Warrior.

Which is likely to happen…..and it isn’t surprising because pretty much every game like this evolves that way. The classes play a game of ‘tag your it’ taking turns being the strong class. A class can go from zero to hero with 1 or 2 minor tweaks.

The one thing I will say about Warrior though…and most classes, are their trait lines make sense. Ranger is always going to have a hindrance because their trait lines are all over the map. I never realized how bad it was until I started playing other classes where it seems there are so many more tough choices to make when picking traits. I always feel I am leaving something good out. Too many times with Rangers I end up picking a trait i don’t really want or need …but there isn’t anything else to pick.

Oh trust me, I know games play the tag you’re it game when it comes to balance

I’ve said it before, but I was a Valkyrie Player in DAOC before they got buffed…and it was an awful class at the time.. but i did play it till RR8 before they got any buffs… and it kind of played out like the Warrior buffs in this game.

They ended up getting Charge..Which was pretty powerful, and was a good ability..Then they got what was basically Levi from Reavers…That was pretty over the top..

They they were like screw it, and they gave them a bloody massively overpowered Heal line..

But yea….. A lot of games are like that….I’m just hoping Rangers don’t end up that way..Then again i’ll probably be playing ESO by then so it won’t matter..

No kidding about the Valkrie. A buddy played one off and on. Then after the buff he was pretty much unkillable. We duoed with him on his Valk and me on my Skald. We would cross bridge choke points and hoped to get attacked by the stealth brigade hanging out there. It usually didn’t end well for them.

hehe, I was the first RR5 and RR10 valkyrie in DAOC….which is pretty bad considering I came back like 5 or 6 months after that expansion came out.

i think i was probably the first RR11 one as well, but just saying 10 is easy enough.

But yea…unkillable is an understatement on valkyrie at that time….It was so bad..I stopped logging in my buffbot and instead just ran with the CL buffs, you remember those? They were like the equiv of blue shaman buffs I think…I just buffed myself, and ran around solo ganking stealthers (usually two and 3 mans at a time) and anyone else who came by.

Hah, the valkyrie buff has to be one of the most overdone class changes in DAoC history.
I made one when the expansion came out, but didn’t play it that much, as the class was kinda bland and boring. It needed some help, but the love they got….
I felt so cheesy soloing with my rr4 valkyrie after that, I went back to soloing on my lowbie rr valkyn zerker. :p
Brutalize with 25% spell duration, followed by Ragnarok spam at capped melee speed had it’s moments, though.

I use to make the Hibs and Albs rage on Merlin/Kilibury because I’d usually just sit around Bled Bridge area looking for solo fights…and 8mans would come running by and i’d intentionally wait till they’d get near..Charge at them, Dex/Quick Sheer and run away while Charged…..The amount of hate i’d get from that was pretty hilarious.

I think mainly because most Valkyries ran the Shield Slam/Spear/or Brutalize type builds, while I ran 50 sword/48 Odins/22 Mend/20 Shield/4 Parry spec (think that’s the right spec)

Odins Will was highly underestimated in that game.

But yea…That class got the biggest buff in the history of MMO’s

Dee Jay.2460:

silvermember.8941:

We can all agree in an ideal world every game would be balance with 1v1, but I think that is beyond the abilities of this game.

The way they designed certain mechanics makes it nearly impossible to do a 1v1 balance. They will have to gut out the game and completely redesign certain aspects like conditions damage, traits and certains skills and I don’t see Anet dedicating the resource to fix that. Maybe in guilds wars 3 aka Tyria they will finally realize that conditions should not be a main source of damage.

Dee Jay.2460:

Yes, there are things like AoE that need to be taken in to account.

But the thing is the “we balance around team dynamics” approach NEVER works.

On the other hand I’ve played plenty of games where 1v1 balance is taken into account and that ended up with reasonable team balance as well.

The whole sentiment of “balance” is based on 1v1. The entire lens of how we perceive that is balanced and what is OP is based around duel situations. That’s just it. You can talk about balancing around teams all you like but at the end of the day it’s how well you fare in a duel that really dictates how you perceive balance.

I would love an example of an MMORPG that had good 1v1 balance because most MMORPG have always been designed with the premise of rock paper scissor.

Name one game where you have a hard-counter triage where you have practically no chance in winning if your class comes up against your counter-class?

Because I can name numerous ones that have reasonably balanced 1v1s.

• World of Warcraft
• The Elder Scrolls Online
• Warhammer Online (exception: Bright-Wizards)
• Guild Wars 2 (despite a terrible meta most classes have a reasonable shot at killing any other class).
• pretty much all FPS games.
• even TF2, despite its different classes, doesn’t have a true hard-counter dynamic.

RTS games are the only games I can think of that still hold on to a rock-paper-scissor concept. Aka. Colossi counter Zerglings, Zerglings counter Siege Tanks, Siege Tanks counter Colossi etc.

My Shadow Warrior was pretty much a Hard Counter to Choppa’s 1v1 in WAR..

While a DoK could easily destroy my Shadow Warrior with not much i could do

Black Orc at the start of the game was pretty much unkillable 1v1 except for a Swordmaster.

Like a Black Orc at the start of the game was so unkillable that I’d have groups of Order with multiple BW’s mind you, completely ignored me (because there is no way for me to kill a Order toon with Heals as a BO at the start, without heals..I could kill them all day, 1 healer and it was impossible) because I could sit there and basically never die.

I personally take a different route with P/D

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Its also not hard to kill a pet….See the video I posted previously, I was able to flat out kill Faux’s pet as a Condition Build……if i’m able to kill a pet that fast, imagine how fast Power Builds can do it.

Yes, you can do that now…

When pets are boosted enough so they aren’t 100% useless in WvW though? I would hope it would be a little more complicated.

And I’ve never played an MMO where they could instantly resummon a dead pet. They did have resurrect spells, but they were on 5min cooldowns and/or long channel times.

Rift let ya do it (Make your next spell instant, then pop the pet spell), DAOC let ya do it to some extent (Some classes this wasn’t viable, Bonedancers for example)

I’m trying to remember if I could resummon my Warlock pet in WoW, i think I could..its been a while (Looked it up, yea i could… 2 minute cooldown)

Warhammer Had Squig herders, and they had a fairly short cast time on pets (2 seconds) I don’t remember if I had to be out of combat to cast them…. I don’t think I did.

Most of these games had pets that were far far scarier then this games Pets.

Like I said, exceptionally long cooldowns and cast times. Resurrect pet was like 8 seconds. Summon Daemon was 8 seconds I believe. Never played rift. Squig Herder was 6 seconds iirc. In WoW, the Warlock could use the daemonology talent to instant summon like you mentioned. All of which in a game with a single pet.

The whole point is that in other games, the pet is a meaningful part of the class. To lose one comes at great expense (long cast, or at the expense of a long cooldown). In GW2, the pet is meaningless. We almost want to throw it away.

I wish it were like pets in WoW where they were a positive addition to the class and something we wanted to use and keep alive. They’ll have to be this if they’re ever expected to work in WvW at all. But the price to pay for a meaningful pet instead of the meaningless ones we have today will likely be at the expense of losing our ability to swap between 2 pets more often.

I’m personally fine with this. So long as the pets are a beneficial part of the class which is entirely the opposite of what they are today.

You pretty much always had 1 pet up at the start of the fight, meaning when it died you simply could resummon it (Demonology Warlock) instantly, so thats your second pet, Those pets were also much much stronger then pets in this game.

I’m not sure how hunter worked, I have no.. but i basically just got it instant 80 and never touched it.

Squig Herder, you sure it was 6 seconds? cause i’m looking at the tooltip right now, and it says 2 seconds cast time.

also, Pets in this game aren’t meaningless….They’re a large source of Ranger damage, and out primary source of condition removal…Pets dying in this game bloody suck.

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Its also not hard to kill a pet….See the video I posted previously, I was able to flat out kill Faux’s pet as a Condition Build……if i’m able to kill a pet that fast, imagine how fast Power Builds can do it.

Yes, you can do that now…

When pets are boosted enough so they aren’t 100% useless in WvW though? I would hope it would be a little more complicated.

And I’ve never played an MMO where they could instantly resummon a dead pet. They did have resurrect spells, but they were on 5min cooldowns and/or long channel times.

Rift let ya do it (Make your next spell instant, then pop the pet spell), DAOC let ya do it to some extent (Some classes this wasn’t viable, Bonedancers for example)

I’m trying to remember if I could resummon my Warlock pet in WoW, i think I could..its been a while (Looked it up, yea i could… 2 minute cooldown)

Warhammer Had Squig herders, and they had a fairly short cast time on pets (2 seconds) I don’t remember if I had to be out of combat to cast them…. I don’t think I did.

Most of these games had pets that were far far scarier then this games Pets.

Atherakhia.4086:

Terravos.4059:

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

While I agree, please also keep in mind that no other MMO that I can recall has given players the ability to swap between pets either. Asking a PvPer to dispose of 2 pets is a bit excessive and will need to be looked at once we get to a point we want to talk about pets and WvW.

There’s no way you an make pets survivable enough in WvW and also keep the ability to swap them imo.

Most MMO’s gave the ability for Pet users to instantly summon new pets…And generally those pets were far far more powerful then this game.

Its also not hard to kill a pet….See the video I posted previously, I was able to flat out kill Faux’s pet as a Condition Build……if i’m able to kill a pet that fast, imagine how fast Power Builds can do it.

sMihaly.1492:

Please consider reducing pet aggro range, if it gets so many boosts.
Pets will just hunt down players, even if their master has no clue abut where his opponent is.
e.g.#1 I’m getting outnumbered at clocktower, so i stealth and leave through the window, “phew it was close, i hardly survived with 2k hp” then le pet finds me from nowhere and kills me with one hit. After its owner loaded the node he just has to look around for popping numbers to find me. …

e.g.#2 Not much to explain on this… just calculate the way the pet had to run from the roof to get to me.

Crap like this annoys me

What you just describe, is how every single pet class in the history of online gaming has worked…Do you know the solution all those other games came up with? Killing the Pet….Far to long the SPvP players of this game have requested dumbing down of Pet Classes because they don’t wanna adopt the strategy of dealing with Pets. Something that every other PvPer in every other game has managed to deal with, against pets that have been far stronger then the pets in this game.

If your solution to dealing with a pet class is “Please reduce the range of which a pet class can have his pet attack you” then you’re not actually very good at pvp.

misterdevious.6482:

Terravos.4059:

Anyway i tried testing that Melee thing how since ya said it seems random.. and I really do think they won’t heal unless the bird drops in health..I let a mob pet beat on a mob while it beat on me, and i let it get me down to 1k health, not once did the Bird use the heal…the second I let it the bird tank (swapped gear) it would pop its health soon as it dropped in health

Yeah, being injured is a prerequisite for this skill, which I listed in my earlier post.

Which if you think about it, Makes zero bloody sense to have it setup that way. Mainly cause The Moa isn’t a Tanky pet..You generally don’t want it to be tanking….

So requiring the Heal to be based off what the Moa’s health is just seems crazy.

Esp with the low low radius it has

If you want healing, i’m pretty sure the Fern Hound is far far better then Moa is and ever will be.

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

misterdevious.6482:

If you order a moa to attack it will use its Harmonic Cry if…

• Harmonic Cry is not on Cooldown
• It is outside of melee range of the target.
• It is within 1500 units of the target.
• It is injured 10% or more.

If you are in a zerg v zerg situation with untraited pets, 2 passive moas that stay alive can contribute far more than 2 other pets that die in 2 seconds. Something is better than nothing.

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

Chances are that any pet is dead. That’s not a Moa issue.

Well, Bears can survive, mainly cause they have the invul they can pop..

Anything else though, you’re pretty much correct..It’ll die.

misterdevious.6482:

Terravos.4059:

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

I already suggested in an official proposal that the range be increased to 480 or 600. And moas will heal in melee range but in melee it seems random which skill they use so you don’t know when the heal will go off.

I’m referring to their suckiness right now..

Make them 800 Range, and it might be useful…. and make it off the Rangers Health.

Anyway i tried testing that Melee thing how since ya said it seems random.. and I really do think they won’t heal unless the bird drops in health..I let a mob pet beat on a mob while it beat on me, and i let it get me down to 1k health, not once did the Bird use the heal…the second I let it the bird tank (swapped gear) it would pop its health soon as it dropped in health

misterdevious.6482:

If you order a moa to attack it will use its Harmonic Cry if…

• Harmonic Cry is not on Cooldown
• It is outside of melee range of the target.
• It is within 1500 units of the target.
• It is injured 10% or more.

If you are in a zerg v zerg situation with untraited pets, 2 passive moas that stay alive can contribute far more than 2 other pets that die in 2 seconds. Something is better than nothing.

Chances are if you’re in a zerg vs zerg situation with an untraited pet, esp a moa..its already dead.

and the really weird part about the Moa Heal, Its 240 radius….It requires the pet to be hurt not the player, and it don’t do it from what you’re saying in melee range (never noticed that)

Chrispy.5641:

Wrong. I’ve actually landed Rending Pounce on other Players, plenty of times because the Lynx will do a homing leap attack on whoever you tell it to hit. It is a very powerful attack, and is the same attack (with a different effect) as the Snow Leopard you kept advertising as being so good. I already said that the Arctodus’s was useless.

I was actually referring to Arctodus Bleed, not the Lynx Bleed, The Lynx Bleed is somewhat reliable because its a Pounce, while Arcotdus of course is awful

Yeah, it will. Take a high precision build, and use Warhorn/Sword. If you have over 100% crit chance, then Hunters Call will apply 17 stacks of might on your pet if all attacks hit. Then there is the might gained from just landing crits. You will always have 25 might on your pet. How about you go try it for yourself.

I took a full Rabid Build, with Fury up, which is 75% Crit Chance, Most I could get using Warhorn + Axe (splitblade is 5x hits) was around 20, I suppose there might be some way to get 100% crit chance all the time (i’m guessing Assassins + the Precision Trait in Marksman, with a bunch of Precision type sigils and runes + Fury) and then using Warhorn to apply 17 stacks of Might for 5 seconds before it drops away, and you wait for the cooldown to pop up on Hunter Call. But ya know what is actually fairly easy to do in fights? Just Popping Rampage as one and then Hunter’s Call…You don’t need even need Companions Might or a lot of Crit Chance Or a 100% crit chance build.

I’m sorry you don’t know how to use Reef Drake properly, but that doesn’t make it stupid. Stupid looking yes, but not stupid in concept.

And Utility is more than just CC. Its also healing, drawing Aggro off of you, removing conditions, applying conditions, etc._

I know how to use the Reef Drake Properly, Its not hard..Its just its that awful… This is why the only thing you’re going to land it is on is PVE Mobs, where confusion isn’t exactly all that amazing

Healing – None of the pets are useful for healing, Not even Moa’s, Aggro..I suppose that could be utility, but then again if you want that, you have the Brown Bear, which cures conditions and can draw aggression, and is tanky. Applying conditions…In pve Generally no its not that useful..Because you have countless other options in this game to apply conditions.. in PvP again No The example pets cited are all awful compared to Spiders.

Chrispy.5641:

Aside from Drawing Aggro from enemies, because they have more Toughness than your combined Armor does? Not every pet can be super useful and awesome in every game mode. Devourers just so happen to be better in PvE than other game modes. That doesn’t make them useless.

Oh yes It does make them useless, They have no utility, and you’re better off running a Brown Bear if you want something that can draw aggression..There is nothing remotely useful about them in PvE.

6 Seconds on a 30 Second cooldown to you and allies when traited. Combine that with Companion’s Defense, and an Earth Spirit, and you can have near permanent Protection Uptime. Also, Harmonic Cry is the Healing Skill, not a Daze. Are you sure you know what you are talking about? Did you even click on the link? That comment just made you lose some credibility!

Do you honestly run Concentration Training? I’m trying to figure out this build you’re running cause you keep saying “If you only spec into it” because I can’t think of any point where I said to myself..Ya know I should pickup that Moa and spec Concentration Training to provide the group with 6 seconds of Protection every 30 seconds in PVE, and I sure as hell wouldn’t do it in PVP, and no i didn’t click the link because i assumed it was that crappy daze that is just god awful. I suppose it does cost me some credibility though of not knowing the name of that crappy Daze..I mean, Its not like I have countless videos of me playing the Ranger

Aside from that, you don’t need the healing 90% of the time if you are seperate from your pet because you are at range, mostly because the enemy aggro will be on your pet. in Melee, with your pet, the healing is very powerful when you have 2 moas.

if your Moa has aggression in PvE on anything that would require it to heal, Its probably dead anyway

The Spider’s Poison field is weak, and doesn’t last long enough to get any combo effects (which you don’t have control over, anymore than the Moa’s Heal skill). You can with the Murellow’s combo field though. 10 seconds of weakness of 5 surrounding enemies is good, because that is damage mitigation, with a 25% uptime (38% uptime traited) Great in PvE and WvW. Also, if you need to have a water field up 100% of the time so no other field can be put down, you aren’t a good player

The spider poison field isn’kittens F2, Its just a random ability it does…Meaning its far better then Murellows F2, since the Spiders have much better F2’s in general. And no… 10 seconds of weakness is not good with that Cooldown, No one thinks that’s good. If you use a Black Bear in PvP thinking thats good, then I pity people you run with. Also in Large Fights (which is what i’m assuming you’re doing, Since you’d never run a Murellow in a Small Man or Solo Fight i hope) you pretty much want Water Field up as much as possible during the actual fights…There are far better ways to apply Weakness to the enemy then Wasting countless Condition Removals and Healing done from Water Fields.

Pets with Chill – You are a little misguided on this issue. The Snow Leopard’s Chill is 4 seconds (6 with Malicious training), and the Owl’s Chill is actually 6 seconds (9 with Malicious training), with a lower Cooldown than the Snow Leopard. You also got the Ice Drake, which can apply 5 seconds of chill (7.5 traited) to up to 5 targets.

You need to go check Snow Leopard again mate, Their F2 hits twice, not once..Owl I think probably works the same..I’m not certain on that…Also those times are wrong (The tool tip will take into account your Condition Duration, including the 10% you get in Marksman to pickup Malicious Training) Ice Drake Chill you’ll never land on anyone
—————————————————-

I went back and checked this again, Mainly because I knew Snow leopards chill was like 11-12 seconds long.. and looking at the tooltip you wouldn’t think that it was.

So i was curious why it was this way.

Snow owl hits twice..But applies only 1 “stack” of chill

Meaning, 3 seconds Base on its chill, It’ll automatically apply 6 seconds, then 3 more seconds if you have malicious for 9 seconds total on its chill.

Snow Leopard hits 2x, But applies 2 Stacks of Chill on each hit, Those stacks are 2 seconds each. So the Base duration of a Snow Leopard Chill Leap is 8 seconds, 12 if you have Malicious Training.

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

If you’re going to make a change to Hunter Call from the Warhorn line, Give it a Daze…as this would give offhand using Rangers an actual Daze to work with when ya consider Moment of Clarity.

Why? We have Greatsword and Shortbow that already inflict stun and daze. You can already maximize the Moment of Clarity trait by using those two weapons. If you can’t already maximize the trait using those two weapons, what is the point of putting a daze on Warhorn?

Both of those are non offhand weapons, By opening up Warhorn onto those weapons, You give for example..Trap builds decent access to Moment of Clarity (since some surprisingly won’t use the GTAE trap trait cause they dislike the targetting of it) You also open up possibly using things like Axe/Horn or Sword/horn for builds.. which would be interesting.

I already use Axe/Horn and Sword/Horn. Hunter’s Call as it is right now can apply a substantial amount of bleeding with the right trait, which combined with a Rabid gear trap build, can easily overwhelm just about anyone. It could also apply a substantial amount of might to your pet with the right trait, which combined with any high precision build increases your pet’s damage output in quite a dramatic way.

I don’t need that removed for yet another stun/daze (that will have the same disadvantages as Hunters Call does now), nor do I want Warhorn #5 to be nerfed just so we can have a daze put there.

You wouldn’t remove the multiple hits from the Hunter’s Call, it simply apply a 2 second Daze period (not per hit)

and I know it applies a lot of bleeding.

Chrispy.5641:

Terravos.4059:

…snip…

Devourers – They have High toughness and are Ranged. They are not meant to deal high damage, which if that is your only concern (looks kind of obvious based on this post), then yes, they are worthless to you. Otherwise, they are great for drawing enemy aggro because of their high toughness, and skills like “Protect Me” tend to work better with a tougher pet around than a glassy cat or bird.

Skills like Protect Me is awful for a Devourer, in fact Protect Me is pretty much awful in general unless you’re using a Bear, If ya don’t believe me, Go out into pvp right now with your Devourer, and have someone hit you while having Protect Me up, watch it die in a bout 3 seconds flat.., Also you’re not getting why I’m pointing out there damage is crap, Its because they have ZERO UTILITY to make up for that damage loss

Moas – Fury, and also Protection, and also Harmonic Cry. The extra healing you get from having two Moas is quite substantial if you are good at timing the skills and switching them. Again, if your point is that they are useless because of the lack of damage, then you aren’t using them for their purpose (which definitely isn’t damage).

Protection from the Moa is crap, 4 seconds on a 30 second cooldown? That is not good….Not good by any standard, and Harmonic Cry isn’t good either. Again its a 2 second PBAE daze on a 30 second timer…Their Healing also isn’t great…Know why? Because you have no control over it… and again..Its PBAE… you basically have to be standing next to them when they try and use it

Pets with Chill – You are a little misguided on this issue. The Snow Leopard’s Chill is 4 seconds (6 with Malicious training), and the Owl’s Chill is actually 6 seconds (9 with Malicious training), with a lower Cooldown than the Snow Leopard. You also got the Ice Drake, which can apply 5 seconds of chill (7.5 traited) to up to 5 targets.

You need to go check Snow Leopard again mate, Their F2 hits twice, not once..Owl I think probably works the same..I’m not certain on that…Also those times are wrong (The tool tip will take into account your Condition Duration, including the 10% you get in Marksman to pickup Malicious Training) Ice Drake Chill you’ll never land on anyone

Bears – Again, if your issue is damage, there are super glassy cats and birds right over there! I already talked about the Polar Bear. The Brown Bear is awesome for the condition removal. The Black bear’s F2 does 10 seconds of weakness to 5 surrrounding foes (15 traited). That is actually extremely powerful. The Murellow has a 7 second Poison Field, which is definitely useful with a few allied blast finishers for the weakness, and it inflicts poison anyways.

Black Bear has a 10 second Weakness on a 40 second cooldown, That’s not good… You can get a Poison Field as a base ability on Spiders pretty much, Not to mention Poison Field is incredibly common and often times you don’t want it anyway cause it will overwrite Water Fields

The Arctodus has almost the same F2 skill as the Lynx. It will also deal less damage because of the lack of precision compared to the Lynx. Its pointless to have a damaging skill on a pet whose purpose isn’t damage.

That Bleed is one of the worst Bleeds in the game….Do you know why? Because it has the most obvious animation in the game…If you get hit by that bleed..you’re afk

Eagle and Hawk – If you take the Companion’s Might trait, you can very easily keep 25 stacks of might on your pet. That equal to 875 condition damage. If you add Expertise training, the total becomes 1225, and having a constant, never-ending source of mid-level bleeding damage to compliment your build isn’t a bad thing.

Companion’s Might won’t let ya keep 25 Stacks of Might on your pet easily, i don’t know where you got that at, You might be able to get 10 stacks…. but 25 from Companions might…No..Just no..

Drakes – For the Reef Drake, use the traits I told you about earlier, and you can throw on some pretty substantial damage from confusion. I guess I’m one of those idiots because I actually know how to use pets, huh? I’m not saying they are optimized though, because their F2 is kind of difficult to use unless you time it right, and also their inability to hit a moving target.

We have pets that deal lots of damage (cats and birds), and we have pets with lots of cc (dogs and spiders). Please stop going on and on about other pets being useless just because Damage and CC is all you care about.

If a pet doesn’t have damage, it better have utility, that seems to be a pretty simple concept, and yes using a Reef drake is stupid

Prysin.8542:

Terravos.4059:

Devourers are an easy fix.

change the F2’s to something else that don’t suck… (you have a channel bleed, which people just dodge, a bloody copy of the Shortbow 2 ability, only its harder to land, and a Poison Field that takes forever to fire off and by the time it lands, the person has already moved) Give them something else….My Suggestion Would be CC oriented, That stun for example that the underwater one gets..You could remove every single Devourer and just have that one, and it’d probably get used some..

But anyway…increase Devourer range to 1500 ….Like longbow, Give it a 20% chance to do a Stack of Torment per hit….It’d actually be a decent pet then..

Would be more fun if they did AOE damage… AOE poison, AOE bleed, AOE something… and we get to choose where the skill lands, then we can atleast guide/herd the enemy in the right direction, and it would also help us in general gameplay.

a way to distinguish pet F2 skills with AOE targeting from normal ones is to simply give it a yellow targeting circle instead of green.

We get more AOE, better control of skill and overall, better F2… i call that a win win win.

That’d be interesting, make it a Ranged AoE pet..

Would make it more useful.

SkiTz.4590:

Terravos.4059:

AEFA.9035:

Terravos.4059:

Allie one of the biggest problems with Rangers right now is the fact we have a lot of redundant and crappy pets that serve no purpose.

Devourers, There is zero reason to run with these zero..now I know someone is going to pop in and say “Well you see, i run PVE and I like using it so it won’t die cause its ranged” completely ignoring the fact you can run a lot of other pets, That will probably die in a fight, and they’ll still probably do more damage then Devourers who stay alive the whole time. The only time a Devourer is good is when you’re underwater, Because it actually has a very good Stun ability.. That is the only time.

Moa’s Again, are pretty much redundant….You basically have one that’s used for its fury, and nothing else…..There is no reason to run any of them.

Pretty much every single pet that has a Howl or a Screech that applies a Chill..Completely worthless as an ability… ..The only good pet that’s good with Chill is the Snow Leopard, because that bloody chill is like 7 or 8 seconds long, and 11 with the dang Malicious Training.

Bears in General, There is really zero reason to run any bear other then Brown Bear if you’re going to run them…You have a bunch of crappy F2’s basically.

Eagle and its cousin the hawk, There is no reason to run these birds….Some will say “But they have a good F2 with a bleed” ….The Bleed is worthless, and it basically hits less then the auto attack they do..No reason to use them.

Pigs in general are awful, You get some pretty good abilities if you bother wasting time picking up the environmental items they summon (and that’s a whole other annoyance) but then you have to deal with a Pet that does awful damage, and has a Knockdown that in general is awful…. Some will say “But its a 3 second cone knockdown” and my reply is, Its a 3 second Cast time Knockdown that has 300 range…Meaning that person has to stand in the same spot as the Pig basically for 3 bloody seconds without moving for your pig to come close to landing its Knockdown…You basically have to hope the pig randomly gets lucky…That’s basically what it comes down to. Its complete luck if you land it….There is no counter play or skill involved, its simply luck..

Drakes…Do you know why people primarily use the river and marsh drakes with a few idiots using the Reef Drake (why people still use that Drake i’ll never understand)

Its because they’re the only drakes that have a chance in hell of actually hitting something that’s not standing still, and is afk. Even then..It takes them so bloody long to cast their ability, you have to actually hope your Drake isn’t near the target when it starts to cast..Because chances are, they’ll probably run through it and waste the cast.

What pets are actually good?

Most of the Dogs, because they have reliable CC
Cats, Because they DPS..but since they’ve been nerfed, there really isn’t a reason to use them over Dogs in PvP.
and Spiders…Because they’re actually our only good PvP pet now….mainly cause they have a bloody 4 second Immobilize.

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.

Pointing out most of our pets are god awful carbon copies with slightly different F2’s that mostly suck is unproductive?

It is if the devs already know about it (which they should considering how much this community has mentioned pets suck)

Thing is, i don’t think they do know about it…i think they believe that having 5 different copies of a pet with 1 different ability of that pet is perfectly fine..

The problem is our pets AI….at least that’s from what I’ve seen…

You could change our Pet AI to hit every single time, and I bet ya people would still use the pets I primary listed because they in general have the best abilities….and decent damage.

Condition Damage isn’t overpowered..

I’ve explained this in countless threads.

If I was to fight someone that could apply 10 Stacks of Bleed on me and nothing else

I would choose to fight that person every single time over a person who could apply 5 Stacks of Bleed, Cripple, Chill, Vulnerability…Even though the 5 STacks of Bleed is way less damage then 10 stacks….

Because Condition Damage isn’t what is powerful..

Condition Coverage is what makes Conditions powerful…..You could apply bleeds on me all day long, but if you don’t have anything to cover that bleed…I’ll shrug it off.