Guild Wars 2

I also think that one of the best rotations of CAF is 3>5>3>4>leave when going for thrash mobs.

It negates an enormous amount of otherwise deadly damage, while also keeping the NPCs rooted at place.

You see, there are times when you want to destroy boss’s Break bar, other times you want to heal your pals and times when there’s literally nothing to do.
According to that you either go with 3’s CC QuickDraw, or you maximize healing with 4 QuickDrawed (4>5>4 if the enemy is immune to CC).

These would be the ones you want to try out. But the best teacher at higher fractals would be – go out there with a patient group and try different things. Then decide which one helped the situation most.
Heck, I once played without GotL and went for the roots since we all agreed that we are way too squishy – so we focused on kiting. That’s just how things work. There is no such thing as “the right answer for every situation”.

bloodpyrope.8630:

Razor.9872:

What about Zealot Druid?

That’s fine too. But I vaguely remember someone crunching the numbers and figuring out that full zealot dps/healing wasn’t significantly better than either magis or zerk and it wasn’t worth it for most players to craft a whole new set of zealots armor.

I guess it you’re rolling in gold maybe. But my experience is people either want you in zerk if they’re good and don’t take that much damage and want to squeeze out as much DPS from you as possible for speed clears. Or they run magis to keep everyone constantly topped off at 90% for scholar runes and healer doesn’t need to worry about anything else.

This.

I remember when raids came out and we literally took calculators in our hands and calculated the difference.
From a healing ranger perspective (Zealot goes for healing power which already assumes you spend time in CAF instead of dealing damage) – Vale Guardian fight will end 1,3 seconds sooner (assuming killing the boss at 0:00 enrage timer) if you swap out of Cleric into Zealot.

It’s a nice niche to have but … In reality, anyone calm-minded will tell you Zealot is not a necessity. It’s way too expansive for the reward. It really is only for min-maxing the content that already is not min-maxed since they need you to heal.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Uhm, i don’t make up some random numbers. Of course I tried it out against the dps test golem. And I reached 13k dps against the small one (1 mil. hp) with this build, despite not having viper trinkets and using cheap food.
(with the known WS variant, which should be better vs multiple targets, because the vuln stacking from Remorseless is only single target, i got about 12k dps).

Okay, I think you got me on this one. I wasn’t thinking of Remorseless, which might add up a nice bulk to he numbers I got.
For me it just seemed like way too illogical choice to go for the traitline that doesn’t add anything for your main source of damage. But it seems like it can work.

StickerHappy.8052:

How is that a nerf? I took in what you suggested and added an extra effect? It would be a buff tho lol.

SO its “10% damage and gain 2 stacks of might when you swap weapons”

Oh, I’m getting you now. I thought… you just wanted to make it 2 might on weapon swap only. I’m silly. My bad.
That would be lovely. Not sure how much of a difference for non-competitive content it would be but… Yes, it would feel nice to feel buffed when swapping weapons even more.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

I know, it is not relevant for 99,9% of the game (basically only for soloing instanced content). But it is still interesting for me. Mostly out of curiosity. A bit because i’m sometimes trying to solo stuff (if i fail, it is because of my lack of knowledge/practise, not because i’m playing ranger).

Edit: Even those “selfish” 29-30k dps aren’t far away from classes like rev, guard, engi … It is not worth taking in an optimal setup, but the same is true even for thieves, because they are “only” 2nd best dps class.
And 7-8k might be the max for power ranger, but condi has significantly higher dps (11 – 13k solo dps, depending on build).

Nowhere near 13K …
Just go and try it out. You will never get to 13K with a “solo” build. I sincerely doubt that. Your best go at solo builds would be abusing Companion’s Might and WHaO synergy.

Otherwise you can wave goodbye to your DPS without might.

StickerHappy.8052:

Tragic Positive.9356:

StickerHappy.8052:

Any ideas for Hunter’s Tactics?

Cmon people do not let the thread die!))))

Hitting off with reverting it back to +10% damage instead of crit would be a good thing.

Why not let’s go with that and Add “Gain 2 might stacks when you swap weapons. ICD 7 Seconds”

It is a GM after all. Also The flanking mechanic is very hard to pull off.

It would be a nerf to our PvE environment. Nope, we don’t want neither need that.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

@ Tragic
I know about the “scaling issue” and yes, it is an actual issue that should be adressed somehow. But this topic is about solo dps, so self-buffing capabilities are more relevant than scaling with other classes’ buffs.
And while even a selfish condi ranger won’t have better dps than most other classes in a full buff setting (and therefore isn’t meta), it isn’t far away from those (less than 10% – excluding ele and thief, which are outliers dps wise). And might be better than some in a solo setting.

Ahem… So … Are we talking about soloing personal story or another PvE content?
Because there’s no reason to ask for a class “solo” DPS… When you will never be in a solo situation. Not even in open world. You could actually ask what outfit is best for PvE content and it would have similar meaning.
If you don’t intend to interact with anyone – no one cares about the DPS.

If you do intend to interact with others – you already have to accept that you will be receiving and providing buffs. There’s no point in trying to ignore that.

The DPS tests data we have are all taken with full might, fury and quickness. If you really think there will be any more than 7 or 8 K DPS with a “solo” build where every buff you get is only the buff you provided … Than you are miserably mistaken.
And we fall off at AoE even more so.

Edit: This topic was about “selfish” DPS. Not solo DPS. Which means maximizing personal DPS in terms of choosing personal boosts, assuming these buffs are already provided by a ranger other than yourself.

Swagger.1459:

<snip>

These numbers are meaningless unless you put them in a competitive environment. Who can kill what PvE boss faster by the numbers is a silly argument you were looking to have. Go spvp and wvw against top players and let me know how it goes.

PvE has it’s own competitive setting, from which time efficiency, or challenges such as playing content in less than full group or without food / nourishment or playing achievements or whatever is a merit.
Where damage is the most essential one. What you just said makes no sense, neither does it help the guy who came here to learn/find out something he didn’t know before.

I could just as easily say that damage, neither survival or utility matters in PvP. You just need to stand on a point. And I would be correct. So please, try to give people your answer or opinion on what has been asked. If you dislike a certain content, respect those who like it.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

Power ranger’s sustained dps is indeed not very high, i know. But is it really so much worse than most other classes (there is not only ele)? By much worse i mean about half of the dmg, like some here are claiming.
And then there is the condi build, which is imo quite decent (solo) dps wise. Better than ele? No. Better than some other classes? Maybe. I don’t know. But i would like to know. Because i’m a curious person and interested in this topic, even if it is not relevant for actual gameplay.

It is indeed.
You see, we simply do not scale. Rangers are extremely powerful and efficient at open-world combat because we are technically self-sufficient when it comes to buffs. We have easy access to fury, might, we can actually get some easy access to quickness if we need to…
…
But we do not scale. All our abilities’ coefficients are hindered by ANet “because pet” and that pet ignores most of our traits and ignores all our buffs (if we want to talk about DPS spec).

The numbers that are 100% theoretical at the most perfect scenario are still lower than other classes (rev, DPS warrior, thief or DH) at real life data. And our pet simply sucks at moving targets.

StickerHappy.8052:

Any ideas for Hunter’s Tactics?

Cmon people do not let the thread die!))))

Hitting off with reverting it back to +10% damage instead of crit would be a good thing.

UmbraNoctis.1907:

QZ + SotP + SotW + LB5 + LB2 + Axe4 + Axe5 -> there is your burst.

@ everyone: Feel free to prove me wrong and provide some actual numbers of other classes’ solo dps/burst/whatever for a comparison. For now i only know about the test from qT, where they only used support focused druid builds with raid settings/full buffs.

Please, do not go that far.
…
I already created an excel equation that calculates the DPS of a ranger at the most ideal situation (stationary and perfect execution of a rotation) with only input required to be enemy toughness.
I used stats of full berserker.

It was roughly 95% accurate to my immobile gollem testing. But the real numbers can only go lower.

And even at maths that ignores time used for dodge rolls and everything that would decrease your damage in real time combat – our DPS was bad. Without a doubt.
I wouldn’t dare people to bring you the numbers, because there are still people who do have them and they are not something you want to see at this moment.

When it came to a quick 8- second burst … We have been dominant for a very very very long time. But cooldowns for that to happen are way too long to make us reliable DPS users.

Actually it can make sense.
In case you have no other classes to bring and happen to go with … Like 3 or 4 rangers – where those dedicated to DPS don’t have to sacrifice +30% bleeding for Spotter and can go traps instead of spirits etc – then the build is viable.

If there’s no more than 2 rangers – you are anchoring the squad. Because you literally trade like 20% of the damage output of 5 people (you included) for 7K dps.
And that reeks of role-play aka being selfish, just as the build claims.

Hmmmh… Yep, this is the very same issue we’ve discussed ever since reveal.

We just don’t have the DPS. We have never been loved. We have never been taken equal. We have always been the one who “braindead class 11111, lol”-ed our enemies or “Kick the ranger, it’s useless”-ed.

That’s who we have been in pugs ever since I can remember. You either have to stop associating yourself with egoistic people or you have to stop being a selfish role-player. If you join the group that strives for results with a role-playing DPS build that literally SUCKS compared to any other class – you’ll naturally be thrown out. That’s common sense.

Technically… Adapt.

… If you want a specific answer you’ll have to ask specifically.
Power for dungeons, Tyria and Fractals up to lvl 40
Viper several HoT areas and Hardcore (full DPS with experienced premades) Raiding
Zealot / Magi / Cleric for casual raiding.

The meta includes Spotter (skirmishing), Spirits, Glyph of Empowerment and Grace of the Land.
Everything else depends on your setup and people you play with.

Ryou.2398:

Ok I can tell you don’t know much about teal life druidism but it has to do with not only nature but the universe as well they studied astrology and othet areas as well. They bekieved in the connection of the universe not just nature. Also fantasy does dive into like you say space and time in certain druid lore, the druids from the shannarah series cor example is more related to a mix of real druidism and a battlemage.

As far as rangers being connected to nature magic that is actually true in alloy of fantasy even one of the first mmorpgs everquest in 1999 had a ranger they could do light nature magic.

I was actually interested in druidism and shamanism at one point, so I do know some stuff about it (and what RL druids did has very little connection to any fantasy druid we have, actually). My point was that no such thing as this has been mentioned in GW2 lore. And their teaser as well as their statements promised a nature themed “florist” who would shoot vines, spawn seeds and heal people.

Just like you have N different types of Elf language, so you have different types of druidism in games, depending on who is the author.

And from what we were told a druid would be, very little actually matched and even less was explained.

As much as I was keen on playing a druid for it’s story and “theme”, I actually kept playing it because … I decided it would be my main. And nothing else. Plus it finally became viable. Unfriendly has hell, but viable.

LughLongArm.5460:

I thnik you dont grasp that in real situation you- a) dont run rull zerk build. 2) dont dps all the time, you use CA , run around etc.. your pet is on target most of the time. So my prediction for pet DPS is quite accurate. If you do want to full zerk dps all the time you won’t be taking druid traitline so you dont have access to glyphs, making all your remarks regarding this post irrelevant.

I have to agree here but from a completely different point of view.
Power is not taken into content because of personal DPS. Most people know that. Which means if the discussion is only about hardcore meta PvE content where you do nothing but maximize DPS (both support and personal) – you would have never taken MM to begin with and you’d definitely go for conditions.
Which makes most of what he said contradicting.

And I do believe that the game should not be balanced around only the top 5% of the elite players but for everyday players, too. Where Nature Magic dominates MM by both DPS (Druids will spend most of their time in CAF), offensive and defensive support. So his statements aren’t truthful for Top Tier experience, neither for casual gaming.

The only glyph that needs attention is Unity. Period.
Glyph of Rejuvenation needs nothing but a fix to work with pet. It’s an excellent burst heal for your party. I am able to blast a 11K AoE heal on my fully support (healing) dedicated Druid.
Nope, you can’t compare it with Healing Spring.

I mean … Where was this guy when we had Guard on the old functionality where like half of the WvW rangers and before that half of PvP rangers used it solely because of the Resounding Timbre trait ?

Zenith.7301:

Tragic Positive.9356:

snip

You do realize you just bunched up all other utility categories with a single glyph, right?

Spirits, spotter, GotL are entirely separate categories from glyphs that are not dependent on glyph usage to exist or be taken.

And in between serpent strike and monarch leap you shouldn’t be losing Steady Focus in raids often.

Not to mention you missed out on the 15% to YOU AND YOUR PET from Predator’s Onslaught on top of Steady Focus. Losing marksman is a pretty significant damage modifier loss.

By this logic – we will never be a subject for GotL because we are not allowed to do anything but deal damage. And if you don’t enter CAF – there is no GotL, since you refuse to connect Verdant Etching to their utility (which is kinda … ridiculous, since we have the option and reason to do so).

And you are using Hornet’s Sting and Monarch’s Leap, do I read that right? By this logic you shouldn’t use those either, because they cause a damage loss.
(naturally, this is a sarcasm)
And I have to salute you for not needing dodge roll in this game. You are the very 1st player I know to be able to do that. Elitists actually maximize that mechanic.

So I’ll say that again. 2 glyphs are amazing for break bars , 1 is a party damage bonus that mathematically beats all our utilities except Frost(and/or Sun) Spirit, 1 is useless and 1 is a very rewarding AoE burst heal if you are playing a healer.
Unity is useless and Alignment is situational (It’s still the best and probably the only Glyph I use during CAF)

Zenith.7301:

<snipped>

A boss has an health pool that requires x amount of damage to be depleted. What matters is how much contribution a utility makes to that required number.

Which means:
7,5% raw damage – Frost Spirit
7,14% Crit (roughly 7,5% raw damage: Ferocity exceeds 200% crit damage) – Spotter
3,5% raw damage – Empowerment
Roughly 8% Raw and Condition damage – GotL (it doesn’t have 100% uptime)
and ability to hold 15 AoE might for 5 people with permanent Fury

is nothing worth mentioning… ?
Sir, Glyphs are fine. There are hundreds of other useless things we currently have. Auto-attacks included. Glyphs have a reliable use in both environments. And likewise – utilities are not supposed to be the go to option for every single content. You might as well sue the company because thieves do not play 6 Physical utilities, Reapers don’t go 6 shouts, all of that for all WvW, PvP and PvE at the same time etc.

And as an off-topic, Nature Magic gives your pet permanent 25 might, fury, occasional quickness, gives both your pet and you roughly 8% more DPS (which is more DPS than Steady Focus from MM in real situations since you have to dodge), and provides party support in terms of a lot additional might.
I personally dislike opinions of people who ditch a certain traitline just because the headline doesn’t say “I increase your damage”. Nature Magic has increased my realistic damage output more often than not. We finished fractals almost 20% faster then me running “Meta” thanks to me adapting into NM (not a meta group – but if we are talking about meta groups – we have been meta for a very very long time already – so those points would not be valid).

Meta is a lie. If you claim a whole category of abilities useless you have to provide data in order to prove half of the community using them wrong.

“Without data you are just another person with an opinion.”
-W. Edwards Deming

AnariiUK.7409:

Fully agree with everything that Tragic mentioned above.

I would like to add that power builds are often brought to cover fury downtime in a group also. This is because of the clarion bond trait proccing on pet swap. You also have the option to run an offhand warhorn if there are literally no other sources of fury, however it’s usually better to just ask the ele’s to heatsink every once in a while.

About Fury, a Tiger can technically just fill 80% of the uptime by itself.
The rest, yep, Clarion bond or Warhorn can do the trick.

There is.
If you are filling a role of support or utility in the raid (aka you are not participating in a hardcore PvE guild meeting or something) – Power opens the use of Staff for you. Once you decided to equip the weapon – power has already increased your DPS spot on.

But to be honest – both are equally viable. The only thing you need is to know why did you bring the setup you did.
~If your squad is good at mechanics but sucks at rotations or don’t have the equipment for DPS – you might as well go conditions to maximize the damage and use heals only as an emergency.
~If your squad has problems with mechanics – you definitely want to ignore your personal DPS that is extremely low regardless, and go with Power and Staff to maximize CAF uptime.

If we ignore the “situation”, then Power builds also bring a lot more utility and CC to the table. LB brings knockback for BreakBars, Seekers at red, can Stealth-shake off NPCs (like at Sebetha) or OH Axe can pull spirits at Gorseval that were left behind; offers reflect / deflect…
So if you need mechanics, Power definitely brings more of it at a slight cost of DPS.

I agree that Druid has almost no love for condi builds… But I believe that part is fine. Guardians were not supported to be condi with DH either, I believe Reapers are the same (??).

While I agree with you on this – I’m not yet sure if it is supposed to be that way.

@Ehecatl
Yes, I think I can fully understand your point of view now. It kiiiiind of makes sense but I’d much rather appreciate some connection to the story. It was the main reason why I fell in love with GW2. Anyway, nice talk.

@Daddicus
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/PvE-WvW-Bleed-druid/
This is a build that has been shared a lot across the forums and a lot of players offered a very positive feedback about it. And I’m pretty much sure it uses your choice of armor (it can naturally be adjusted later on).
But for solo content – this is one of the most fun things while being very efficient at the same time. Give it a go.

Alexander.6250:

Can you tell me in what situation/build in pve they would be usefull then?

How about Break Bars, damage mitigation in fractals, Glyph of Empowerment, and the meta Glyph Buffer build?
Which is like 3/4 of situations I can possibly think of.

Unless you don’t specify which glyphs are useless – like Unity – then your statement will not probably be correct. For I think glyphs are reaaaally the last thing on the ranger that needs a change.

EDIT: I’m not sure how do you classify anything… But if you believe anyone forbids you to use staff in melee range than I have doubts about your suggestion overall. You are searching for problems at places where they do not exist. Literally.

@ Ehecatl

If it’s okay to continue with the topic – Rangers had no connection to magic. Whatsoever. They are much more like using the power of beasts they learned in the wilderness (I guess I read that somewhere, not sure if it’s canon but I believe so).
Reflecting projectiles with the skill of weapons sounds logical. We are in Fantasy world. Creating a healing spring is connected to the wilds. And when it comes to spirits – ranger just calls them, summons them. He doesn’t control the magic they offered. Everything that ranger did was connected to the wilds and nature.

What druid is pretending to be is not a protector of forests, nature and whatnot. It’s a sci-fi action movie. From where did rangers actually learned how to use magic themselves? Druids are able to disturb the time and space continuum, for love of god. That’s not nature anymore and has nothing to do with it.

Other classes at least make sense. Thieves didn’t dress up to plated armor wearing 2 handed hammers and stuff, either. Other elites were like “a new way to fight”. Our was a “well, we can’t really explain how it works but it will become our selling point”

HeadCrowned.6834:

What needs immediate attention:
Axe #4, Warhorn #4 and Frost trap.

I might be off-track but …
… What’s wrong with Axe #4? I believe they improved it with the ground targeting. Is it worse than Axe #5?

@bearshaman

This is just my personal opinion but…
… How in the world does a traveling skirmisher trusting only his pet connect to the outer space, black holes, solar magic and spiritual world of wisps?

Druid has been the most viable thing we ever experienced. But the worst designed idea I have seen in the whole gaming industry. It doesn’t match the story, doesn’t make sense, does not match the archetype, it wasn’t explained at all, it just plain sucks. Whichever way you look at it.

LughLongArm.5460:

The only problem I have with swoop is that, if swooping while rooted(Immobilized) you will most likly get the immobilize bug, that is very annoying.

For those who do not know – the immobilized bug means getting more than stunned. A character gets stuck rooted “in the air” which makes it impossible to move or perform other abilities, including cleanse and stun breakers.

OGDeadHead.8326:

This…

“Profession function F2(pet special ability) and F3 (return to me) change to a 2 different pet skills, so the player decide when to cast them.
- One of them will became the pet’s utility skill.
- The other the pet’s burst skill.”

…would be most welcome, and something thats been asked about many times. I would like to add the ability to set either F2 or F3 to autocast though (a toggle, like we can on one of our skills).

Yup, I’ve been thinking about it myself.
Other classes have their class mechanics in terms of 4 bonus abilities at minimum. Eles get access to bonus 15 skills, etc.
…
And we got 1 bonus skill and 3 other buttons to make 30% of our class behave itself the way we want it to instead of blowing our position in stealth, or pulling unwanted NPCs or simply attacking the target we want it to attack – all of it still in an uncontrollable way which we can call roulette.

There’s been several suggestions on how to remake pet controls (F1-F4) into something better with At least 2 controllable abilities, I think I did some myself pretty long ago.
One of the most appropriate and helpful ideas would be removing attack and return commands completely – having only the toggle Aggressive (attack when I attack, ignore when I’m attacked) / Passive button. We would loose the ability to send pets without attacking ourselves and getting back our instant pet response to stealthers but we will gain access to 2 bonus abilities (which is like a huge improvement).

One way or another – there’s already some good ideas forgotten in the old threads. If anyone feels like it he can dig some ideas up.

It also usually goes near your target, then turns back from where you cam from – executes the attack hitting absolutely nothing at all – and then turns back to your target to receive some free slappage.

StickerHappy.8052:

You still haven’t given me your ideas on Brutish, Honed Axes. I think Enlargement should be Signet of the hunt for 5 attacks. SIgnet of stone is nice but MM is a DPS line, it would be weird to put a Defense trait there.

I … did actually give you an idea about Honed Axes. At the end of my former post. The last paragraph.

I personally think Enlargement as such is not a bad trait. It’s a nice utility one. What I think is the problem are the Signets themselves (no one uses signets – so no one uses the trait). Long Cooldowns for mediocre effects.
If you imagined a simple change such as:
Signet of Hunt active now increases your and your pet’s damage by 25% for 3 seconds.
Signet of the Wild active now only procs Stability and +50% movement speed, is now instant and cooldown is reduced to 40 seconds.

This would make signets much more appealing and Brutish seals would be perfectly viable. I mean, having Signet of the Hunt as offensive, Wild as utility and Stone/Renewal as defensive ones would make solid choices. And you might as well need that might it offers.

Playing the druid as Condi is probably the most preferable way you can play. It is not as efficient in Dungeon speed runs but it’s amazing for fractals and HoT content.

What you provide for party is Frost Spotter (as usual) and now you can buff the DPS further by glyphs such as Empowerment and others through GotL.
But that’s not all. Your magic comes through negation of a huge lots of damage (Verdant Etching procs blind, too, then you have the Daze in CAF on emergency) and you are amazing at destroying Break Bars. The emergency CAF is just an icing on the cake.

Zenith.7301:

Signet of Renewal needs to have its cd lowered to 30 seconds, and conditions cleared per 10 seconds be increased to 2. We have no good stunbreaks.

The shouts still need serious help, they’re all terrible.

You can’t really buff Signet of Renewal’s active by so much. You overbuffed it into oblivion. It’s an AoE full cleanse. And that by itself is a powerful tool. And there are other classes that don’t have this luxury on such a short cooldown. Similar counterparts are for the caster only.
We probably only have to make it more reliable and less counter-productive (like not sacrificing the pet for it as well as removing the range limiter for the caster but still having it for other targets)
The passive might welcome a buff. I’d personally welcome reduced the trigger to 5 seconds rather than having number increased. But that’s just methinks.

When it comes to shouts – I believe they are not necessarily bad. Protect Me and Guard are both viable ones. Protect Me is exactly the example of a wonderful low CD stunbreaker you are looking for. And an AoE, up to that. WHaO is also our best healing skill if you count it as a shout.

Thank you Shadelang for taking the initiative for this.

Any good looking layout will do. If you make headlines in bold and sort longer paragraphs by spoilers, I guess that’s pretty much fine.

I personally think Signets might need a look-at, too.
If you check
Signet of the Hunt – the ability is horrible. Ranger as the master of multi-hitting of very low attacks has a bonus 50% damage on next attack – useless.
Signet of Renewal – flawed design. The only pet it works with is SmokeScale in it’s F2. Everything else is just a TnT explosion on your pet in case it works which it doesn’t most of the time because it has short range.
Signet of the Wild has way too weak passive. I don’t remember it making a difference.
Signet of Stone is … Fine, I guess. But having the CD halved just as duration would make it more appealing. Everyone can see you activated the skill, so they’ll just kill someone else instead and you have to wait 80 SECONDS (which is more than 2/3 our elite skills) to make enemies target someone else again (because they won’t waste any more cooldowns on you.)

When it comes to Honed Axes – 1st of all I believe some of the suggestions should just become baseline. The AoE on #3 could / should become baseline. As well as #5 cast on the move. What I personally think the trait could do is plain and simple swap of Ferocity into Precision (synergy with Sharpened Edges) with a feel of an active or trigger effect on it (if you hit more than 1 target with an Axe skill, your movement and attack speed is increased by 5% for 3 seconds, stacks up to 5 times). This is just a suggestion. Numbers are not important.

StickerHappy.8052:

Yes I HATE class comparisons but again, it is very evident that we are missing something here.

You need class comparison in order to bring balance into a game. The balance can never be perfect but you can always achieve a situation where it feels right.

You cannot compare individual skills. But you have to compare classes (their general contribution) if you don’t want a group of people feeling robbed.
And rangers have been treated extremely unjustified for a very long time. I’m glad we can all agree on that.

It’s not wrong to fight opinions with data.

anduriell.6280:

• Verdant Etching seems to reset the Glyphs CD when it triggers, making the Glyphs to take 2 seconds longer to recharge.

The same mechanic as this is applied to spirits (this happened as a sneaky stealth-nerf as a band-aid fix for the unlimited activation bug in those few seconds till spirit died).
If you sacrifice the spirit for the active effect, the CD triggers on cast and refreshes when the spirit actually dies (which is roughly 3 seconds delay).

Apart from that, I believe we still have Jungle Stalker whose F2 CD goes on full 25 second even if it’s cast was interrupted before any or even partial effect took place.

Dadnir.5038:

The only thing needed for pet to be able to connect with their target is to allow them to perform action while moving. We know that the engine is already here since except for a few skills our characters can do it.

They do not need to dash, attack faster or whatever, they just need to be able to continue to track the target while using their attack. At the moment, they have to :

- reach the target
- stop
- use a skill that root them.

The idea would be to just change the damage to be done periodically in front of the pet without bothering with the animation that hurt the whole process for who know what reason.

This would be ideal.
But I was afraid ANet wouldn’t like it because of aesthetics. After all, pets already have a locked animation, that would cause an unrealistic broken system where pets would moon-stand while running.
During their Reaper reveal they mentioned the only reason why the GS ability locks you in place for a split second is because the animation would look broken if you could cast it on the move.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Imho, pets being able to land their attacks vs other players is of a higher priority than having FB baseline.

Yes, I agree it’s just as important, since it’s the core problem of a different environment (buffs are mainly PvE, WvW / tracking is a core PvP, WvW feature).

But for one thing – I am afraid that a perfect tracking in PvP would cause a huge backfire from other classes. So in case we get something as “your pets will dash up to 300 range when performing a melee attack” that will be a night and day tracking difference – it should be glued into a choice. Like a BM minor (choosing a traitline) – which would thematically fit a dangerous pet.
But whichever way I’m looking at it – Wyverns, Drakes and some others would have to be fixed manually. Their problems wouldn’t get fixed by dash alone.

What suggestions do we have for tracking targets, so far?
~Dash for melee abilities
~Pet attacks are performed faster
~Damage is applied instantly, attacks have after-casts rather than cast times
…?

Well, since I didn’t really think of many other ideas and I’m glad others liked mine I think I’ll leave place for suggestion to others but rather elaborate why Pet Buff-linking is such an important, a must-have even for us at this moment.

Most of it concerns DPS, so I’ll start with that one.

• Our class is being held back by lots of coefficients that are lower, auto-attacks included, just because as it was stated – Pets are supposed to be a set percentage of our DPS.
  But that has never been the case. In a game full of multiplied factors in our DPS, our pet is a set-in-stone number of DPS that will never be increased unless we sacrifice a lot of our personal DPS to trait into it (2 traitlines, actually. Two of them). Not only that – but it mathematically makes us scale only by 70% of other classes with all the buffs and boosts – because our pet is just not affected.

Which is why we need these buffs copied to our pets baseline

• Secondly,
  It logically makes no sense. Why is a character mechanic set to ignore any and every boost / buff / boon / advantage (utility) / scaling when we can’t trade it to come to Power level of other classes. Our pets are not companions. They are our anchors. And as sad as it is – this can’t be denied.

• Furthermore,
  This game is based on a 5-man-sharing system when it comes to buffs. Pets being the 6th target is out of place. If we just hypothetically speak of playing a 4-man content just to have the pet fully buffed… We achieved nothing but bringing the Ranger to the level of other people. And we had to sacrifice 1 whole person for this only.

But it naturally brings a question.
Wouldn’t it become too overpowered?

Yet the answer is a clear logical, mathematical and friendly:
There is no possibility it would.
~Pets benefiting from stealth and other various utility is something that can by no means become too powerful. We are currently the only class that cannot stop telling the enemy about our position while in stealth (the only one). Are there ways to prevent that? Sure, but it’s not fair we are the only ones that have to fight our own mechanics.
~When it comes to DPS – we are the 2nd lowest of the barrel. No, there’s no way this will suddenly get out of hand. In PvE, we need all the love we can.
In PvP, nobody plays purely buffing traits at a cost of utility. No one is playing Frost Spirit, Banners, neither Grace of the Land nor Glyph of Empowerment, food is prohibited… This change would only affect utility and not damage by any means. If anything – this would be a direct nerf to current NM/BM builds that focus on mighted pet, rather than personal DPS.

The only thing that stays in question is what should Fortifying Bond and We Heal as One become once we get this feature applied (and with all due respects to our Developers – this has to come to reality).

• Which now opens windows for you guyz for further suggestions on how to improve our pets via these two features that will surely loose their meaning if this comes to patch notes. I guess a huge majority of Rangers would agree that we need this to happen.

Now that’s a lot to be read here.

I personally think focusing on Pet Sharing boons, buffs, traits, auras and effects from it’s master should become priority.
Pets should simply have all the boons and buffs we have. At all times and at every moment. If we enter stealth – so should our pet (they are more of a harm than help currently). And since it was declared to deal a certain % of our damage – they should. It’s our source of damage. Just like mesmers’ illusions scale, so should our pets.
Once this is implemented – WHaO can just go and have it’s function completely changed. With this change – all counter-productive traits and unfriendly design will disappear, too. We wouldn’t need Pet UI this way since we’d know which effects our pets have from looking at our own.

We need our pets to scale with everything we do since 30% of our existence (dmg, utility) is rooted into them.

The second very most important topic is tracking targets.
Pet attacks having a mechanic similar to Moa that makes a short dash (aka former sword) are a clear and probably the easiest solution that shouldn’t be that hard to implement. Only for melee pets, obviously.

By implementing these two changes – we’d erase most of our problems we currently have. Others are not as important. Definitely helpful, but not crucial to our gameplay.

If you’re looking for a stable group – they should be the one giving you the verdict.

You summarized it decently and you are right about … well, technically almost everything. But the problem is that every single group needs something different.

Some groups need some healing, others don’t need you to heal at all and full ham DPS is their goal… And that’s something we can’t really help you with, we can just guess what will work for you.

Zealot is something that people like to have in squad but I personally think you were never taken into the raid for personal DPS anyway. You should be fine with Magi.

If you are experienced with Ranger, then you just might go Berserker with healing sigils and runes. That one works, too. Berserker has never yet been seen as a threat (even though might not be optimal for some groups, depending on composition).

Zenith.7301:

Yup, it changed. Vale Guardian is actually a place where you might go Viper’s since you can contribute to the condi team without having to cut down eles to bring in condition classes

…

Well, that makes sense.
I still think that none of the options would lower the DPS more than slotting staff but it’s all as it always was. Utility traded for damage. I usually played Staff myself, since I mostly played with my RL friends that were decent but nowhere near HC.
We all preferred another water field, heals, my mobility and easy access to CAF. We didn’t really go for the maximized DPS. But then again, I was playing half-cleric anyway.

Zenith.7301:

Berk or Viper depends on fight. You user berserker on raid bosses that move, Vipers on those that don’t. Mostly because all the condi druid’s DPS is from the stationary Bonfire.

Vipers do more damage, but they also recharge astral form slower since staff is a power wep and viper druid runs A/T+SB.

WoW, seems like a lot changed since I stopped playing, and that’s not even that long and nothing affecting PvE appeared in patch notes.

Best results were LB+S/A Glyph Buffer (zerk) or Viper SB + A/T… SB scales much better with Quickness than Axe does (which brings another flaw to Axe Design)
You can get some very easy CAF access by slotting one pet as Fern Hound for Viper, or in Berserker slotting Healing Spring + Trapper’s trait for perma AoE regen (perma ticket to CAF).

People I talked to told me the only fight that went better with Berserker was Vale Guardian and that’s it (the DPS calculator that used the combat log). He was the only boss constantly moving with very low toughness (like 1300 armor?).

No one’s using staff in hardcore groups. It’s a “training wheels” weapon. Just like healing druid in general.

Wondrouswall.7169:

Tragic Positive.9356:

Either that or change the function of the trait into something that doesn’t kill the purpose of the ability cast (S&R is supposed to pull allies out, but this trait makes you go in instead).

I personally want to see the trait work like Scrapper’s Function Gyro. If a downed ally is within range, you can select them and an interaction prompt will appear. “Press F: Search & Rescue”

Then S&R can be activated for that specific ally and teleported to you while the pet starts reviving them. At that point, cooldown reduction to match S&R’s and have an icon for Allies’ Aid so we know when it’s ready to use.

This would be amazing to have, indeed.

Zenith.7301:

…

If you honestly think people take 2 druids because they need the heals, you have no clue. These druids are being geared in Berserkers stats. They’re brought in for the base buffs of GotL and spirits, otherwise a Tempest with Wash The Pain Away and Elemental Bastion is more than sufficient.

…

All excellent points here. Up to 1 thing, and that’s the meta Druid goes for Viper stats, not berserker but that’s just a tiny difference.
Berserker is used only in dungeons and low level fractals (up till 40 I guess).

I’ll also add a needed fix (since ANet is probably not aware it’s been bugged since shout rework and consider it a feature)
for Ally’s Aid (reduced CD accordingly to our ability) and probably changed function of the trait.
It’s counter-productive.

I’d actually see it reasonable to change it into Spike Trap like it functioned a few whiles ago.
Either that or change the function of the trait into something that doesn’t kill the purpose of the ability cast (S&R is supposed to pull allies out, but this trait makes you go in instead).

Artaz.3819:

Holy crap – do I really need to explain how flawed that DPS testing is?

Again, I’m not saying Ranger doesn’t have a need for improvements but if you think it is night/day (3x) difference in DPS, it’s not helpful to spread clearly false statements as no one believes that either.

I agree that DPS testing is flawed. A lot.
But even from first hand experience, one can tell that elementelists are just from another league. All the fields, finishers, reflects etc. they have on top of being the top tier DPS is hardly a compensation for having low base defenses.

The data we had showed these results even at real-time raids. Some classes are just way ahead. Sadly, we are the worst designed class with worst designed Elite Spec with one of the bottom-tier DPS and lowest constructive PvP performance.
(I can already see the replies "we are fine, blah blah… But this is what people call comparison. When compared to other classes – this is just where we are)

StickerHappy.8052:

Stop being agressive. 50% crit chance is GM trait Unique to them. Fury is not. Fury is affected by boon duration too. Deathly perception is also on DS only. Fury is not dependent on criterias like Vuln stacking on Necro, threshold and slow on mesmer. All of those you need to trait them or requires a secondary option to proc or maintain.

You are comparing two different things. Traiting for a GM trait is not a luxury man. Fury on ranger on the other hand is accessible even WITHOUT traiting them (Tiger, WH, RaO, etc)

Fury also gives you 20% Without any criterias to maintain, you do not have to maintain stacks of vuln, slow, etc.

Please you are okay with conversing about some of the ideas, stop being so melodramatic and let us continue to be civil and creative here.

Your idea will give you 40% crit permanently with boon duration almost 40% damage with remorseless if you take Rune of Rage.

And you are telling me that is fine?

Yes.

I already explained why. You just said that having a Ranger Grandmaster improving our Fury with +20% bonus crit is overpowered, while Necro Grandmaster providing 50% is absolutely fine because it is a Grandmaster.

So I admitted that I lost because I have no other way to compare classes or explain why my idea would still be inferior as a DPS increase compared to other classes. Which literally means I suck at explanations, obviously.
I ran out of ideas, so I’m leaving that particular subject and I’ll join the next one looking promising to implement. That’s all there is to it.
(P.S. taking rune of rage which everyone can slot as an argument against class balance feels unreasonable).

StickerHappy.8052:

Completely get your point, but we have very good access to fury sources already to begin with. Necro and Mesmer don’t have that luxury. I mean I think we are better off with a different effect on top of the 25%

I just told you Necromancers have 100% crit chance without a single boon or crit chance… That 100% crit comes from traits alone.
And they don’t have the luxury?
Okay, I’m officially out. I lost this game. I’m a horrible person and now even a horrible teacher.

Zenith.7301:

Tragic Positive.9356:

This.

Also, our DPS is that way because we boost our people’s DPS in a unique way.
Mesmers can keep 100% Quickness uptime and provide Alacrity.
We bring Spirits, GotL, Spotter and Glyph of Empowerment.
That’s the reason.

No, you have no clue either.

Then I’m terribly sorry, Sir.

Let me know which of my statements were incorrect so I can learn.

I’d dare to say your vision is way too narrow-minded. The true, real reason why we have DPS in a state we have is because this game has not been balanced ever since release. And it didn’t have to be. All we had was friendly content beaten by power of friendship that one day changed to MetaZerk speed runs.
And here is the time to take your clues back because some dungeon world records included a ranger.

HoT introduced a completely new Raid and Fractal system … that is actually based around numbers rather than friendship at boss fights lasting for 10 seconds straight. And they haven’t adjusted classes to it. So instead of having classes similar DPS, they glued the support portion on classes that suck on long-term personal DPS. That’s all there is to it.
Because I’m not sure if you are aware but we are so meta that almost every hard-core raiding group has 2 Druids. And currently there’s no way to make 3 other traitlines increase your personal damage by 120% (in addition to what we currently get) without allowing Druid to trait into those lines as well – buffing it further.