Guild Wars 2

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Honestly, there shouldn’t be separate boons for ranger vs. pet at all. Any boon effect that hits pet gets redirected to the ranger, and the pet just gets the benefits of whichever boons the ranger has on them. That way, there would be no need to copy boons at all, and it would allow for boon removal to counterplay stacking better (because boon stripping the ranger once would remove the boons from the ranger, and remove the effects of them from the pet). Honestly, that’s how it should have been from the time the game was released.

Exactly. Have all boons put on either the Ranger or their pet go into a “pool” of sorts that applies to both of them (with only one application of those boons if it hits them simultaneously). Bam, you’ve fixed the problem with them taking up a slot in the target limit of friendly buff utilities, and given the Ranger the option to stay at range while the rest of the team fights in melee. Or, let the pet fight at range while the Ranger is in melee, either way. Also gives some nice tactical value to splitting your focus and letting the pet fight alongside one group of buff-slinging allies while the Ranger fights alongside a different group, resulting in getting the buffs of both groups. So much fun potential there, without being forced into one specific healing ability or trait line.

New content only.

That’s my main qualm with it, is that only the newer PvE content will be designed in such a way as to take advantage of the healing potential of Druid. And even that isn’t set in stone, as all we have to go on is their word, and we know they’ve been “detached” before. X) It’ll probably have plenty of viability in PvP and WvW, but most existing PvE content isn’t going to have a need for them except with more casual groups.

Because SPEEEEEEEEEED!

I’m a fairly casual player, I’ll admit. Very little PvP-ing, and I tend to stick to the zerg in WvW. But the sheer mobility of Thief is what makes me enjoy it, and it’s only going to get better with Vault on Daredevil.

Charr, as with all of my characters, since my friends and I have all themed our characters as being in a Warband together. :P I need to come up with some way to explain all of the powers away as being something mechanical, though. Iron Legion forever.

I don’t mind playing second fiddle to Druid at all in regards to healing. X) Rangers have been needing something to give them a place in team content, and I say good for them. :P Ventari is still incredibly potent compared to what kind of team healing is available on all the other classes. Had been pretty much the best available until Druid’s reveal. Seems like a perfectly acceptable spot to be in. XD

I wonder if the healing proc on Water Spirit counts as a heal in regards to the various on-heal bonuses in Druid’s tree. And what about Regeneration applications? If they do, Water Spirit might actually be quite potent for building up the bar and keeping your other heals at optimum effectiveness.

Those Shout changes sound awesome. o.o Would love to have “advanced modes” for pets. Would make them all a LOT more enticing. X) Would “We Heal As One” and “Strength of the Pack” change, given such an overhaul in mechanics?

I was JUST thinking of something quite similar. X) A bit more straightforward, though; a buff that reduces the cooldown on all spells of the Overloaded Attunement by 33% (stacking with the 33% reduction traits, allowing one to truly specialize in one Attunement by getting spells at 1/3 of their current cooldown), and perhaps a basic damage boost for the autoattacks.

Don’t get me wrong, your suggestions are certainly appealing, they’re just a bit complicated and thus harder to implement on the Developer end of things. XD Either one would make me quite giddy, though; I really wanna be able to justify staying in Air all the time with a Dagger. :P

Gaaroth.2567:

Toolbox.9375:

Heimdallr.7021:

at this point i don’t really think they will add any new weapon to rev.

Which is quite sad, given that Guardian has 10 and Warrior has 13! (When counting mainhand and offhand seperately, anyway.)

Though, I suppose they’re quite well-off when compared to the other Jack-of-all-Trades classes, with Elementalist at 6 and Engineer at 5. X) Thooough Elementalist COULD be seen as having 24 with their Attunements, or even 29 with Conjures, and Engineer could be seen as having 11 with Kits. :P

uhm after RIfle, Pistol/Pistol and Pistol/Shield which are other engi’s weapons? Not counting incoming hammer :-D
Anyway like eles and engis the class mechanic covers/justify the low number of weapons. And i’m kinda cool with that.

I was counting their Kits and Hammer in the tally. :P

Fluffball.8307:

CandyHearts.6025:

Well I hope it’s okay to mention that Druid’s had some tiny bits and pieces datamined. Aspects, and unless I heard wrong. 3 of them. It made me think of

https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Zephyrites

I know they may have 0 in common but I found it interesting that it’s a bit similar.

Do you have a link to the aspects data mining? I haven’t seen that anywhere.

If you type in “[&CEwHAAA=]” in-game, it’ll bring up something similar to the image here. Only now, the title is “Druidic Clarity”.

I certainly wouldn’t object to getting all those delicious movement abilities on one of the Glyphs.

Heimdallr.7021:

at this point i don’t really think they will add any new weapon to rev.

Which is quite sad, given that Guardian has 10 and Warrior has 13! (When counting mainhand and offhand seperately, anyway.)

Though, I suppose they’re quite well-off when compared to the other Jack-of-all-Trades classes, with Elementalist at 6 and Engineer at 5. X) Thooough Elementalist COULD be seen as having 24 with their Attunements, or even 29 with Conjures, and Engineer could be seen as having 11 with Kits. :P

There was a really nice suggestion a while back for such a thing, if you wanna show your support. :P

I most certainly would not object to getting extra Utilities available to swap out at my leisure, but I must also admit that I found the existing setup to work quite nicely. As someone above said, Revenants are not at the mercy of cooldowns, at least not so much as other classes. So even if there’s only one or two abilities that you’re actually using, the difference is that you DO in fact get to use them. One of my biggest qualms with nearly every profession is the often-gargantuan cooldowns rendering this or that ability nigh-useless in actual combat, simply because you only get to use it once per fight. Revenant felt far more adaptable and usable, to me, simply because of how often you could use your desired abilities.

How do you give a new playstyle to a class that’s good at everything?

Make it good at nothing.

(I’m not really too upset about it, I just find it kind of amusing that its supportive capabilities took a nerf when that’s nearly all it can do in the first place. :P)

Basaltface.2786:

Toolbox.9375:

Daniel Handler.4816:

They might not be ai. They might all be kits that can be controlled like the ventari tablet.

Like a Ventari form per Utility Slot? That would be AMAZING. O_O

…ehhhh… that would be a lot of micromanagement….even for an engi

I wouldn’t mind! I play Ranger a lot, and love effectively playing two characters at once. X)

Daniel Handler.4816:

They might not be ai. They might all be kits that can be controlled like the ventari tablet.

Like a Ventari form per Utility Slot? That would be AMAZING. O_O

Deniara Devious.3948:

Toolbox.9375:

Med Kit’s Bandage Self is the most suited to this due to its 17 second base cooldown, which becomes 14.45 seconds with the Tools specialization

Except Bandage self is NOT classified as a tool belt skill, but it is counted as a healing skill.

Thus the tools specialization trait line Mechanized Deployment will NOT reduce it’s cooldown:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mechanized_Deployment

But bandage self works with automated medical response
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Automated_Medical_Response

Hm, you’re right, I hadn’t ever noticed that. Just another thing throwing Medical Dispersion Field into triviality. X)

Do they require any decent skill to play?
Arguably, yes. You’re basically controlling two characters at once, so there’s a good deal of micromanagement. They CAN be played in a braindead fashion, like any class, but they won’t be as good as a Ranger played with more effort and experience.

Are they liked or disliked by the community and for what reasons? Bad players?
Unfortunately, they’re generally disliked. Bad players are certainly one reason, as poorly-managed pets can cause problems and many Rangers cling to their Longbows even in situations where it’s a terrible choice. But, they’re also disliked because they bring less to a group than other classes might.

What can they offer in groups?
Not much, sadly. In high-end groups where everyone knows what to do, their damage is fairly subpar and they lack potent support options. The two best things they can bring to an organized group are their Spotter aura (150 Precision to the team), and Frost Spirit (effectively a 7.5%-or-so direct damage boost. I can’t remember the exact number, but it’s around there). Compared to Might and Fury and other such things from other classes, it’s just not terribly impactful.
In LESS organized groups, however, they have tools no other class does, and can save a botched run if played right. They’re extremely self-sufficient, so there’s a wide variety of problems that they can solve.

Do you tame pets or do you just get class choice pets?
You get to choose between three pets at character creation initially, depending on race, and then you can tame every other pet out in the open world. The only pets you can’t necessarily get are ones tied to GW1 achievements.

What race has the coolest ranger animations? No asura please weapons are to small.
I never really play anything but Charr, so I can’t say for sure. I like the animations, at least. :P

Are the melee skills cool to?
Definitely. Ranger is probably the most animated melee fighter available, up there with a Dagger Elementalist. The Sword’s autoattack can feel a little clunky, but if you disable the “auto” aspect of it, it gets easier to control.

And do all arrows look like wooden stick or can they look like elemental arrows when you use an elemental bow for example?
I know that the Legendary bows change their projectiles… Longbow shoots pretty yellow arrows, and Shortbow launches rainbow unicorns with the ArenaNet logo on their haunches. Beyond those two, though, I’m not aware of any bows that change your projectiles.

How popular are they? I do not care for using over populated classes
Unfortunately, they’re pretty-… Extremely popular. I’ll admit to being put off by this, myself. When you hear the "pfew"s from your Longbow joined by half a dozen other pfews at the same time, it gets a little hard to feel like anything more than a nameless archer on the backline.

dancingmonkey.4902:

I was referring to all the other off topic traits that were posted in that thread, not the topic trait with already hashed out numbers and discussions that explained reasonings before that post declaring all those other traits as “bad”.

Ah, it’d seemed like you were talking about Medical Dispersion Field.

As far as those other traits go, I agree on some and disagree on others.

Energy Amplifier seems fine to me as it is, partially because it’s a minor trait and thus isn’t competing with anything. It won’t make a gigantic impact, true, but that’s a problem with Healing Power and the things that scale from it rather than the trait itself.

Soothing Detonation isn’t majorly impactful, and it’d be nice if it could affect the Engineer as well given that team-healing isn’t usually very important, but you’ll still feel its presence on occasion.

Automated Medical Response is one that needs some tweaking, I agree. The main move that would benefit from it, A.E.D., is rendered nearly incompatible due to the fact that the trait will activate and go on cooldown whether your Healing Skill needs to be refreshed or not. Combined with the fact that you want to save A.E.D. until you’re low on health given it’s relatively meager duration, you aren’t going to be able to make good use of it in most realistic situations.

Automated Medical Response also doesn’t affect Healing Turret’s Cleansing Burst, as far as I’m aware, which removes over half of the ability’s healing potential in most cases, as well as the Condition removal portion of the ability.

Elixir H and Bandage Self are thus the only ones that are really compatible with the trait, and with their low cooldowns and matching low heals, there’s not much to gain from it. The trait isn’t going to trigger in most run-of-the-mill PvE combat due to the 25% health requirement, and it’s highly unreliable in faster-paced WvW and PvP combat. The main thing leading to it being a valid choice is that one of the traits competing against it is similarly lackluster, and the other is only useful to one weapon set.

dancingmonkey.4902:

Just blurting out some random declaration that they are too weak is sensless. Unless you constructively offer some reasoning as to why you feel that way.

But-… They have.

As stated by nearly everyone, the trait is rendered trivial due to the amount healed, the internal cooldown, and the range.

Let’s look at the best-case scenario, which is nigh-unobtainable due to the presence of smaller heals triggering the internal cooldown.

Assume full Ascended equipment and trinkets with Healing Power as the main stat, along with Runes of the Monk for Healing Power and Outgoing Healing, and Healing Infusions just to really optimize this thing. Heck, a Delicious Rice Ball and Furious Tuning Crystal, too, so we’re REALLY going. A total of 1827 Healing Power according to the usual Build Editor. Add 250 for Energy Amplifier, a total of 2077 Healing Power. Then, take the 10% Outgoing Healing from Runes of the Monk, the 10% Outgoing Healing from the Delicious Riceball, and the 15% Outgoing Healing from Health Insurance in Alchemy, topped off with 12.5% more Outgoing Healing from a fully-stacked Sigil of Benevolence. A total of 47.5% Outgoing Healing. I don’t even know if Outgoing Healing has an effect on Medical Dispersion Field, but we’ll say it does just to get the absolute highest number we can out of it. That’d mean that the 12% from Medical Dispersion Field basically becomes 17.7% instead.

Med Kit’s Bandage Self is the most suited to this due to its 17 second base cooldown, which becomes 14.45 seconds with the Tools specialization. That makes it usable for one out of every three Medical Dispersion Field triggers. With the above stats, that makes it put out a heal of 6997. With the 17.7% heal out of Medical Dispersion Field, that gives 1239 health (rounded up from 1238.469).

Now, we have to fill the space between those Bandage Self casts. The next highest heal we can put out is a Cleansing Burst from Supply Crate’s Healing Turret. With the above healing stats, that’s 3558.5. From MDF, we trigger a 630 heal (rounded up again).

One last heal heal before we can bring Bandage Self back in. We’ll leave Supply Crate’s Healing Turret up so that we can use Cleansing Burst again next rotation. That means our next largest heal is the initial heal from Elixir Gun’s Super Elixir. With our equipment, that puts out a heal of 2530.8. Via MDF, we heal allies for 448. That is, if we can switch back to Med Kit for the Outgoing Healing before the Super Elixir actually lands, which is difficult since we’re shooting it right next to us.

Now, the rotation starts again, though Super Elixir wouldn’t actually be available for the third heal and Supply Crate’s Healing Turret wouldn’t consistently be there once it dies or the timer runs out. We’ll ignore that and be as forgiving and optimistic as possible, instead.

We end up with a total, barely-realistic healing amount of 2317 every 15 seconds, or 155 per second. Rounded up, of course.

Or, you can scrap all that gear and just take Healing Turret with no Healing Power or Outgoing Healing whatsoever, and heal all those allies for 2520 every 15 seconds, instead, not to mention the availability of the Water Field and Blast Finisher, as well as the fact that you’re healing in a radius of 480 instead of 240 and don’t have to worry about a tick of Regeneration wasting your 1239 heal for a 70 one instead.

Medical Dispersion Field’s healing is negligible. Hopefully the wall of theorization makes that clearer.

Ooh, that Overload idea is really cool, yeah. Though, as mentioned, some things might be a bit overboard. XD The Obsidian Flesh example is particularly potent. Perhaps, as a balancing factor, the skills in that slot suffer the cooldowns of any moves used? Using Obsidian Flesh in Water Attunement after Overloading Earth would put Comet on a 50-second cooldown, for example.

Maybe a new Elite down the road could use that mechanic. It certainly sounds like fun!

I never tested how it works. Does it remove the Stability before or after applying its control effect? If it’s before, that’s definitely a potent Grandmaster. If it’s after… I’m gonna have to agree that it seems like a bit of a poor choice.

Calcifire.1864:

imagine if Thor were to throw his hammer but it slowly moved towards the enemy rather than quickly, it would look ridiculous.

No more ridiculous than when he throws himself with the hammer. XD I swear, any time he takes flight in those movies, I can’t help but giggle.

Ohoni.6057:

It’s a metaphor, just like the Tempest. The Tempest is not really about controlling storms, and I don’t think that would be a great fit for using all four elements. It’s instead about the the idea of the tempest as a raging storm, the Tempest player is the eye of that storm, projecting chaos around themselves. It is not literal thunder and lightning storm (except in air attunement), it is the metaphorical “storm” as a generalized roving source of destruction.

Maybe so… But even with that perception, chaos isn’t really how I’d describe what was received in-game.

The V.8759:

Im sorry to say this but be glad that you can choose between condi or power main hand. On engi I would love to use shield in a power build, but then pistol comes in…

You can’t really use Mainhand Pistol for a Condition build, either. :P Offhand’s alright, but Mainhand gives barely anything compared to Kits as far as damage goes, and certainly isn’t equivalent to Rifle in terms of relevance to their respective builds.

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Anet has learned that if anything is said players take the information and run with it. When what has bee said changes it causes more problem then remaining silent (players rage some quit and forums blow up).

I’d argue that more communication would make most people be less likely to cling to what little communication they DO get. It gives a sense of comradery and trust, and simply makes them seem more human. People aren’t as rigid with friends as they are with strangers. ArenaNet needs to be less of a stranger to the community, Ranger or otherwise.

Rym.1469:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/revenant/Revenant-s-MH-Condition-Dagger/first#post5466623

Here you go, couple threads below.

I’m quite in favor of this one, due to nice design and moreso because I wanna be able to use a Dagger on Revenant for the Incinerator skin. :P

Just slap weapon swap onto Tempest, might be more worthwhile then. :P

SkiTz.4590:

please please please please be in charge of Druid, Roy.

Seconded! I loved playing Revenant over the weekend, but I also love my Ranger. Just, not as much as the Revenant. I need something to tip the favor towards Ranger again!

Ryn.6459:

And what about dashes, rushes and teleports?

If you’re using Assassin Stance (Shiro), you can target a distant enemy and use Phase Traversal to teleport 1200 units in their direction. So long as you don’t actually hit with it, you won’t be put into combat, and you recover the energy used for it in just 4 seconds.

There’s also Surge of the Mists on Staff, but it only dashes you forward 600 range and has a 20 second cooldown, so it’s nowhere near as effective.

Demon Stance (Mallyx) has a jump-forward ability, but the windup time, winddown time, Cripple, and being placed in combat make it a hindrance rather than an asset. Not to mention costing 35 energy, thus taking quite some time to recover and use it again. Kinda nice for certain jumping puzzles, though, so long as you’re not jumping to a platform that’s at a higher elevation.

Aside from those, there’s just Shiro’s Superspeed and Glint’s Swiftness. Superspeed isn’t really that big an improvement over Swiftness out-of-combat; its strength lies in moving unhindered after having been attacked by a random jerk monster. :P

…I meant Regeneration.

I wanna see a trait that gives Resistance Regeneration the Burning/Poison treatment, where it stacks in intensity rather than duration. >:)

I certainly prefer the straightforward “dash” approach. X) The only way you’d get an escape tool out of leaving a poison trail in your wake is to also give it Superspeed, which Revenants already have amazing access to via Shiro.

Well, that or making the trail apply Blind or a movement-impairing condition, as well, but the dash sounds way more fun.

I’d approve just for the fact that the lack of dagger (and thus the delicious Incinerator skin) is one of the few things keeping me from ditching all other classes and jumping straight at Revenant. XD

But, it’s also a very neat concept. The AoE-on-AoE effect of Wailing Dagger reminds me of Engineer’s old Coated Bullets trait, being able to fire into a crowd to make each one explode and really pile on the damage (theoretically) the bigger that crowd was.

The direct damage seems pretty high for a condition weapon (or for any weapon, really) if that’s what it is at base Power. 1950 damage for a one-second auto-attack chain kinda overshadows the Poison and Torment. Though, I’m sure the direct damage wasn’t the focus when making the tooltips, and thus isn’t really representative of what you were after. X)

Anyway, I’d certainly use it. Would maybe want to see a bit higher range on Sadist’s Trail, as it’s not really enough to use for escape, particularly when movement abilities of that sort have a tendency to make your character pause at the end to “get their bearings” if you have any sort of lag whatsoever. For comparison, Elementalist’s Burning Speed has 600 range, and still often feels like it isn’t really enough to escape with.

Otherwise, I like it. XD

I wonder how that’d work out with Strength of the Pack and Fortifying Bond. XD

But yeah, that sounds neat. Would open up some interesting possibilities. Jaguar would definitely be even more of a go-to pet, if you gain the unbreaking critical-bestowing stealth. XD

Archon.6480:

Mossman. I hope Druid is like mossman with invisibility, teleport, and vines that can block paths. I would love to be able to drop trip wires and bear traps as well. LoL, the QQ would be a sweet chorus!

I hope we get a skill to swap places with pet, as well. F5. Please ANet!!

Switching places with the pet could open up some really cool opportunities, yeah. So long as it’s not a boring Shadowstep like Necromancer’s Flesh Wurm switch, anyway. If only we could have the old get-up-on-walls Guard, back, too. Imagine the possibilities. >: ) …Granted, exploit-y overpowered possibilities that would be rightfully nerfed, but IMAGINE ANYWAY. It’d be so fuuun.

Our Spike Traps could be like Mossman’s tripwires if we could just set more than one at a time! Would love a trapper playstyle that lets you really deck out an area to be YOUR turf. Though I imagine most people would just put every available trap onto whatever point they want to guard rather than setting up a wide expanse to be a danger zone. X)

Zenith.7301:

Sube Dai.8496:

I’m only talking from a PvP perspective.

Why would you ever use them for pve/wvw…

…..Because they’re the only group utility a ranger brings outside the spotter trait?

It’s not like ranger brings top DPS so why else would they bring you if not for the spirits.

For the pet shenanigans!

10+ target limits, and way larger range. Maybe different AoEs per each Overload; 1500-range cone for fire, 800 radius for air, same-as-now-with-more-targets for water, 360-or-something left-behind-Elementalist-AoE for earth, like Engineer’s Slick Shoes.

Still lacking Stability, but with a range that makes it actually-usable without fearing nearly as much crowd control. :P

Way too late for such a drastic design change, but gar durn, I’d have had fun with them, I think.

Kodama.6453:

Durzlla.6295:

Kodama.6453:

Sube Dai.8496:

You know what they need? Reflect projectiles.

First copying experimental turrets and now advanced turrets? Really? You want to clone turrets completely? XD

Anet did say that they wanted spirits to be the buff version of turrets…

I doubt they meant that spirits will have the exact same traits, they meant them to be stationary buff machines, turrets are stationary damage machines, that’s all. ^^

Oh, no… If Spirits are supposed to be as adept at supporting as Turrets are at dealing damage, they need a LOT of nerfing.

A little lower than 0.5 seconds, then. XD So long as it has an ICD of any sort, it’ll stave off feedback loops. Or, they could find some way to code it so that the trait simply can’t feed into the same trait on someone else. Not as easy of a fix, but a fix nonetheless.

Taking the trait’s ICD down to 0.5 seconds would be adequate for preventing an MDF feedback loop between two Engineers, while making it spread out virtually all healing received by the Engineer. It would certainly be interesting to see Elixir-Infused Bombs integrated into it, though I’m not sure if that’d be overboard or not if the bomb healing itself makes it to allies, as well.

However it plays out, I just want Elixir-Infused Bombs back.

Personally, I like stationary Spirits, as they do indeed allow for tactical placement involving the use of their actives or the range of the passives, along with positional vulnerability. Unfortunately, personally moving to where you want them to be is extremely problematic. I like the suggestion that they be ground-targeted, giving them extra value in that you can place them in safety for their passive effects or place them beside your target for their active effects.

Unfortunately, there’s not a lot of value in their active effects so long as the activation time is so long. Some of the active effects themselves are pretty lacking, too, even if they were instantaneous.

As far as passives go, it’s sort of half and half. Frost Spirit’s not too shabby, and Stone Spirit is quite nice when defense is the goal. Sun Spirit is fairly decent, though I think it could use a little bit of numerical tweaking. Water Spirit absolutely needs improving, and Nature Spirit is pretty much what Water Spirit should be in the first place in regards to passive effect, so it’d likely be a good idea to rework its passive overall so that they don’t fill the same purpose. Storm Spirit most certainly needs a different effect altogether given the rooted nature of it. Super Speed could work out, though, giving improved combat mobility while in its area of effect.

The fact that the Spirit’s corpses (and thus passive effects) remain for ten seconds after their death is a huge asset, and something that could mesh extremely well with their active effects were said active effects to be made more worthwhile and/or usable. I definitely would not want to see this part leave. It also makes me approve of the active effect killing the Spirit, as you don’t lose the passive effect for long, and the on-command death makes it easy to reposition the Spirit when needed.

Nature’s Vengeance is a nice concept, but most of the numbers (and boons, in some cases) definitely need tweaking.

Stone Spirit’s duration and boon are fantastic for their purpose, giving a substantial 33% uptime on Protection in addition to the theoretical 30% on its natural functionality, not including any Boon Duration (which is granted by the very specialization tree that contains the trait).

Water Spirit’s Regeneration is quite lackluster, particularly given the minuscule duration as well as the myriad other sources of Regeneration available. I saw someone mention pulsing Resistance, instead, and I feel that’d be an excellent idea. Resistance is in pretty low supply overall, right now, and 33-ish% uptime on it would give Water Spirit a definite role to fill. With the fragility of Spirits (which I feel should remain, though with ground-targeting to allow for strategic placement), there is some definite counterplay available. Granted, the fact that Spirit corpses remain after death could make said counterplay a bit ineffective. A Resistance duration lower than 1 second base or an application interval higher than 3 seconds might be in order to ensure that Water Spirit doesn’t jump into overpowered territory.

Sun Spirit’s Vigor boon doesn’t mesh terribly well with its base functionality. A better choice might be to give it Frost Spirit’s Might, instead, though at a much higher duration that would allow the Might to build up and actually be impactful, say 12-15 seconds at base. With Might being the only boon that really affects Conditions offensively, it’s honestly the only boon that makes sense from a synergy standpoint.

Storm Spirit’s Swiftness really isn’t a big help in combat, particularly at that duration. Were the base functionality of Storm Spirit switched to Super Speed, the Swiftness would be rendered even more pointless. Transferring the current Sun Spirit’s Vigor over would make more sense thematically, and mesh overall with being a Spirit tailored to improving in-combat mobility. It wouldn’t even necessarily need to be given a duration increase, though 1 second of Vigor is still admittedly a little bit underwhelming.

Frost Spirit’s Might is a total joke in its current state. There’s the minor synergy with the Fortifying Bond trait, but that’s hardly enough to give the pet any sort of real power. And were the Sun Spirit to receive Might, Frost’s boon would need to change, anyway. Fury’s probably the only boon that’d really match up at this point, being in the same realm of simple direct damage increase as the Frost Spirit’s natural functionality. With a duration and application interval that doesn’t give 100% uptime, it could pair well with Ranger’s Warhorn for providing 100% Fury uptime to allies. Granted, you can already reach that point when traited for it, but it could potentially free up some options.

Lastly, Nature Spirit’s Stability could certainly be useful… Were it not for the 30% base uptime. That window of time without Stability makes it very unreliable, turning its effectiveness into a game of chance. I don’t think it’d be overpowered to give it 100% uptime, given the potential for a one-two crowd-control combo or the possibility of simply killing the Nature Spirit and triggering its long cooldown.

As far as the active effects go…

Overall, the activation times need to be faster. By the time their effects trigger, your target has long since moved from the Spirit’s location. The active effects lose their potential as strategic decisions, and essentially become panic buttons for when you think the Spirit is about to die, where you hope that something happens to be in the radius when it finally goes off. A little activation time isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but being able to escape its area of effect by simply backing away regardless of your original position makes it near-impossible to get any real use out of the active effects.

Water Spirit would probably be fine, if it were to receive Nature Spirit’s passive functionality. Triggering the active effect would essentially be a tradeoff of ten seconds worth of passive healing (given the lasting corpse) for nearly the same amount of healing there-and-now.

With ground-targeting and a faster activation time, Frost Spirit’s active would probably be alright, too. It doesn’t really mesh with the overall role of direct damage dealing, but a lasting Chill zone could certainly have its uses. It could perhaps apply Vulnerability so as to have better synergy with its natural passive effect and suggested Nature’s Vengeance effect, but it could function fine on its own.

Stone Spirit’s active could work out alright with the base Spirit changes suggested, too, though admittedly it’d be similar to Frost Spirit in that it slows the enemy down. Giving it Weakness could perhaps mesh well with its inherent role of assisting survivability.

Storm Spirit’s active effect’s Daze wouldn’t be too shabby at all with the suggested changes, though I admit I’m quite fond of the idea I heard for making it cast Elementalist’s Swirling Winds as an active effect instead.

Sun Spirit’s active effect isn’t inherently bad, but it is admittedly a little bit boring. Frost and Stone Spirit’s actives both create lasting danger zones against opponents; it might be interesting to make Sun Spirit’s active create a Burn and Blind zone, as well.

Nature Spirit’s active effect would also be just fine with the suggested changes of ground-targeting and faster activation, really. It’s a good effect, it’s simply hampered currently by how abhorrently long it takes.

My thoughts kind of went all over the place in this post, I apologize. :P I realize I’m no more qualified to give my input than anyone else here, but I thought I’d voice my thoughts. I really do like the idea behind Spirits as they are, as well as a large amount of their implementation, I just feel they could use some tweaks to give them more strategic value.

One last thing, since I don’t recall mentioning it earlier in… It’d be fantastic if the ground-targeting could follow the same system as Engineer’s old Deployable Turrets trait, allowing the Spirits to be placed on walls and the like. :P The models may need to change simply to avoid the funky appearance of having an Oakheart half-embedded in the side of a cliff, but it could be something as simple as a glowing ball while still getting the point across of what it is.

It’s really more of a gentle nuzzle in their case.

A gentle nuzzle with a head that you covered beforehand in aspercreme.

Malchior.5732:

Toolbox.9375:

OneKlicKill.4285:

We gave mountains of feedback for weeks and everyone got tired of giving all this useful feedback and the devs not saying a single kittening word.

Yes, amongst a bunch of “you guys are idiots” and “they don’t even care”. Unfortunately, a huge amount of people started off with such behavior, and it spread to others like a plague. There’s not much that could’veven been done about it, admittedly, as no one can truly control the actions of another, so the insta-whiners doomed things from the get-go in that regard. It is a very unfortunate and unfair position to those who are/were courteous and constructive, most assuredly. But abandoning civility and taking after the rest of the apes screaming and beating their chests is even less likely to help than continuing trying to be a calm voice amongst the ruckus.

Well I’m sorry, I thought the Devs were adults and could ignore the whining of some members to be able to read the real feedback, of which there was plenty.
They already do that on a daily basis, so why not for Elementalists?

Because for Elementalists, the whining is the norm. Just look at the disrespect being shown for the developers in this very thread, and from your very post. It’s no wonder they want nothing to do with it.

OneKlicKill.4285:

We gave mountains of feedback for weeks and everyone got tired of giving all this useful feedback and the devs not saying a single kittening word.

Yes, amongst a bunch of “you guys are idiots” and “they don’t even care”. Unfortunately, a huge amount of people started off with such behavior, and it spread to others like a plague. There’s not much that could’veven been done about it, admittedly, as no one can truly control the actions of another, so the insta-whiners doomed things from the get-go in that regard. It is a very unfortunate and unfair position to those who are/were courteous and constructive, most assuredly. But abandoning civility and taking after the rest of the apes screaming and beating their chests is even less likely to help than continuing trying to be a calm voice amongst the ruckus.

SchmendrickTheMagician.8247:

Yeah watching the Daredevil points of interest I was SHOCKED to learn that Karl was the dev on thief elite spec too. How could one developer so epically fail on Tempest yet deliver what looks like the most fun and unique elite spec right now?

Seems even more that Karl simply doesn’t care about Eles…

I mean seriously, just look at it. Thief spec was VERY well received, and they have 2 (TWO!) Developer responses from Karl already, yet Tempest reception was mediocre at best, kitten ing at worst, and we don’t even have a single response from Karl?

“I really like this Elite Specialization! The only problems I have with it are this, this, and this.”
-> “Oh, some constructive criticism! That’s wonderful. Could you elaborate?”

“THIS ELITE SUCKS AND I HATE YOU AND YOU’RE STUPID AND YOU DON’T CARE”
-> “Screwwwww this, I won’t be getting anything useful out of these raging juveniles.”

I know there’s plenty of suggestions as to how to do it “right” on the boards, and I know that not everyone is being a whiny child about it, but it’s near-impossible to sift through the garbage to find any of the genuinely helpful posts.

“HE SHOULD HAVE DONE IT RIGHT FROM THE BEGINNING”

Elementalist is ridiculously complicated compared to Thief, it’s a lot harder to determine every facet of the class without spending copious amounts of time researching the meta, and the poor guy works on the game day in and day out already. You know how you get sick of a restaurant’s food when you work there? The same applies to games. It’d be soul-crushing to devote every waking moment to it, and even moreso to then have to deal with the hordes of ungrateful kids who have nothing but vitriol pouring out of their mouths.

I’m not saying Tempest should be left as-is, and I’m not saying people should stop voicing concerns and opinions on it, but Jesus Christ, give the guy a little bit of a break, stop acting like he’s Satan for not getting it right. (Oh, God, two Christian references in one sentence. That wasn’t my intention, cross my heart.)

From a “get through in one piece” standpoint, I’d say Ranger is perfectly fine. You’ve got the tools to handle most of the bad situations you may find yourself in, and there’s a lot of room for tactical improvement beyond just a skill rotation like many other classes.

Any sort of PvP is a big toss-up. The biggest thing I see repeated time and time again is “skill > build”. While a good build will beat a bad one in the hands of two perfectly-equally-experienced players, you’re not ever going to FIND two perfectly-equally-experienced players.

As far as PvE, including dungeons and fractals… Again, Rangers do just fine. The “problem” is that they don’t speedclear like other classes when thrown into whatever perfect-map-and-AI-exploiting-position is set up for this or that boss, nor provide the tools to skip massive portions of dungeon content. If you end up in a band of elitist powergamers via the LFG menu, yeah, you’re going to be hated. But if you find a party of people who are in the game with the radical notion that playing and having fun is its own reward, you’ll be just fine. Personally, I don’t want to be a part of the mind-numbingly systematic and stringent crowd, anyway, so Ranger works just fine for me.

So, in a nutshell: If you’re playing with friends without the exclusive goal of meeting this or that Gold-per-hour rate, Ranger will treat you just fine. If accounting and spreadsheets are your idea of a good time… Maybe look elsewhere.

Durzlla.6295:

Well the real question is do you even want to play an AoE supporty build? If not then you probably wouldn’t want to play Druid if they stick to what they originally were saying.

They said that? Where at? o.o

Tora.7214:

there might still be a chance for another specialization reveal next week, even if it doesnt actually (and probably wouldnt because it would cause the rage of the last remaining class spec) make it into BW2.

i mean, they didnt let PAX stop them from doing a PoI reveal, i dont see why a BW would stop them from doing another one and leave it for BW3

I kinda doubt it, given that their Beta Weekend announcement specifically mentioned the unreleased Thief Elite without saying anything about Engineer or Ranger.

You’ll be able to try out the chronomancer, dragonhunter, reaper, and tempest, as well as the newly announced elite specializations: berserker, and herald, as well as the thief specialization we’ll announce later this week.

It would definitely be neat, though! One person theorized (maybe here, maybe elsewhere, I can’t remember) that they’d release both Ranger and Engineer at the same time, so that no one has to be “last”. It’s unlikely that they’d put that much thought into it, but it would be cool. :P