I have no idea why there is so much projectile hate now.
Engies reflect projectiles by breathing. And since a single reflect breaks the table upside down (by 200% literally) – that’s something you just cannot ignore if you are holding onto a projectile-based weapon or build.
I was trying out BM/NM/Druid Zerker. With A/A + LB
Getting 25 might is now super easy. Pair it with Quickness from BM and Rapid fire – and you have some nice burst over there.
It’s nothing competitive since it’s hard countered by reflects… But it’s a blast in solo queue.
I think we’ll be staying bunkers for competitive play. That’s my guess.
I do agree with you. However, SB became one of the meta weapons for PvE. And no is going to prove this wrong.
About it’s utility… Yea, still feels underwhelming. But now what I feel is that we finally have a choice.
At this point each weapon has it’s rightful place in the game. Weapons are no longer the problem. (at least for PvE, but few classes have all weapons usable in PvP anyway)
If our traits get addressed – We have the potential to become a rightful DPS class.
(we should be able to achieve that if we ditch Druid for … let’s say BM or NM, either should work)
I’m here to thank you for your changes in the latest update. The changes you made were all a huge help to the community. You hit most of the QoL issues with the weapons we had and I just wanted to say Thank You.
You always have to get through the hate of the community for giving them something they wanted … and I won’t lie, some of the hate is in place but this time you did a job smooth as f@$ß.
So knowing nobody else is going to say it – I’ll say it again. Thank you. Keep up this kind of good work.
I finally feel like I can pick any weapon I enjoy and make it happen without worrying of being a burden.
Can’t comment about PVE but it just lacks utility for PVP compared to LB. LB’s saving grace is the stealth and knockback plus the channeled attack, which let you deal with classes like Mesmers/Thieves and knock classes off points. 900 SB range is much riskier for the Ranger and much easier for enemies to escape from, and you are left with just an evade that does nothing against a gap closer and a cripple/daze which isn’t really meaningful defensively (remember that effects like cripple no longer affect movement skills).
I can’t argue with any of these.
10/10 on all points made.
EDIT: I think people believe SB to be a bad weapon because they don’t utilize around it. It is a bad weapon if you don’t invest into bleeding specifically but you go for conditions all-in-all.
hmmm… food for thought…
Even the top Hardcore PvE guilds do not provide builds that squeeze the most out of it.
Their statistics with their builds provide numbers that tell SB can be better than A/T builds in DPS. And they do not even spec for it.
Which is funny since they use 4 Runes of Nightmare + 2 runes of trapper (25% condi duration). They also go for Sigil of Malice (10% condi duration).
(Or 5 nightmare and 1 black diamond)
Imagine them having Krait Runes (+45% bleeding duration) and Sigil of Agony (20% bleeding duration).
Now that’s a straight 30% increasing in bleeding duration in comparison to their setup while SB goes for almost pure bleeding output. Now we can start talking.
The strength of the sword auto was being able to stick to opponents and suprising them with a fast-hitting dps. I do not like the changes.
The only real gap closer was the 3rd attack of the chain.
If my enemy happened to be under swiftness he was usually able to run away from my kick. If he, however, ported or moved away when executing Pounce – that was a nice 2 jumps worth of 500 range.
But that was a roulette. Nope, I can clearly see the vast majority being happy with the changes. We have been asking for this ever since release. Yet once we finally get it done – people magically start hating it…
… I’m not really surprised since I knew it’s gonna be like this – but it’s a subject for having a thought.
Not sure about everyone else but I was taught to be careful of what one asks for…
I might be the 1st one to be taught this and yet, I like these changes.
A lot of my nightmares and frustration went away traded for … a tiny DPS decrease.
Which is a good change. If anyone intended to go for DPS (PvE) he would have taken condition build anyway.
Plus no one used sword in PvP for damage. It was primarily used for acrobatics.
When the new legendary short bow was announced I read a fair amount saying it sucked for rangers, but was good for theif. I mainly use a short bow as a ranger and was just wondering if anyone could explain the resoning for people not liking it for a ranger. Please keep in mind I’m half a noob.
It’s more or less an assumption from pre-HoT Ranger fiasco.
Shortbow used to be an awful weapon back then.
But now it mathematically has the potential of being a full-time condi weapon. With the new stats, runes and sigils we’ve been made the true kings of bleeding damage.
The only problem that might people think about is that #1 has a flanking restriction. Which I don’t find that harsh. Flank is like 75% of enemies surroundings (rear and sides). I mean I often apply the bleed while strafing in PvP while facing my enemy’s front.
The weapon scales well with Sharpened Edges (skirmishing trait), Krait Runes and Sigil of Agony. And most especially – Quickness.
EDIT: I think people believe SB to be a bad weapon because they don’t utilize around it. It is a bad weapon if you don’t invest into bleeding specifically but you go for conditions all-in-all.
The cooldowns and durations are just not in line.
They are extras but not really balanced.
The weapon is awesome for PvE because it’s DPS is fine. Not because if has stuff to offer. In PvP I remember myself when I started using the weapon. After like 2 days of SBing mashing all buttons up and down left and right ~7 people whispered me that I am a cool #1 spammer.
… And that’s when it hit me. I stopped using all the abilities for 1 match and felt close to zero difference. There was literally no significance in using the abilities. They do not feel rewarding enough and they do (did) not have any true purpose.
I’m still not sure how significant they have been made with the changes.
I’d be content just to get the old attack speed or range back. Longbow’s base range was increased, so shortbow doesn’t need to be a 900 range weapon to be different from it anymore.
And it’s kind of dumb that I can throw an axe the same distance I can fire an arrow.
Axe can bounce much further. 900 is the initial range when thinking this way. Just saying.
The way I see it most people who talk about tricks and jumps of the original sword chain probably think it’s cool because it feels that way (and nothing else).
I mean come on – when we actually finally make the bloody weapon work the way we intended to fight – it’s so awesome that we can’t contain ourselves. Because we are just so used to the horrible mechanics that when we finally actually manage to do something correctly the joy we feel is thousandfold.
It’s the same of just how people say that sword 2>2 is a good gap closer / disengage. While in reality it gives like 150 range advantage in comparison to casual running with skill cap higher than any other class in this entire game. Even less so under Swiftness / Super Speed; while the risk of the ability is way too high for practical use (roots you in place for a brief moment making you vulnerable to CC that often leads to death).
I think most of Pet Swap traits feel wrong.
If we think about Beast Mastery’s Quickness … You potentially trade 25 might, fury and the quickness already in effect on the pet for 3 more seconds of quickness and some random might for yourselves.
The same goes for Poison Master. Having to sacrifice all the buffs and boons from a pet for a single application of poison just feels wrong.
I also think the whole trait could be polished a bit more. 25% dmg increase doesn’t feel enough. It still doesn’t make us feel like poison masters.
“If the target is not poisoned, apply 1 stack of poison for 3 seconds. 5 sec ICD.”
Anything of this matter to become the anti-healing trait would be cool. It doesn’t have to become broken DPS-wise and yet be efficient. It competes with our only non-druid cleanse after all.
DPS wise Shortbow is fine.
It does, however, feel way too … passive. You technically run around applying bleeds. There’s nothing else to reward you from hitting a button.
25sec CD on a microdaze doesn’t really make a difference.
Most our weapons have serious QoL issues. Shortbow is just one of them. Having some abilities adjusted here and there would definitely be nice but I don’t think Shortbow is the alarming weapon.
Regardless of how much you want to argue about the chain – it was statistically disastrous in numerous occasions.
The chain was more harmful than not in most environments. In PvE it prevented (delayed) dodges which cost the player his life.
Same goes for PvP and WvW.
You could do some nice neat tricks but the truth is the majority of players would enjoy the new user-friendly mechanic. There’s no discussion. Yes, the us – veterans will miss it. The rest of ranger community and former ranger community forced to reroll (which is like 95% compared to us) will like the change.
I have to say I have expectations myself. I’ll wait and see.
Reminder that a thread full of ‘Rangers’ demanded that this skill become a trap when they were doing the reworks and just ignored the posters pointing out all the problems that it ended up causing.
No. Rangers wanted it labeled a trap so it could benefit from tap traits, they didn’t want the functionality changed.
I’m positive this is wrong.
I remember people wanting the trap to be ranged just like we had the chance of ground targeted traps back then.
Rangers did want the skill to change into trap. Not just by a cosmetic description. That was one of the things I won’t probably forget since I was among the no.1 opposers of that idea and I got really depressed that from all the changes we could have got – we got an amazing heal destroyed and I called it months before it happened.
We don’t even know what functionality are we going to get. Other sword abilities might get changed as well, such as proposed sequence swap of #2 (gap closer > retreat). I’d wait and see how their changes go 1st.
Why are they not good in fractuals and open world? My ranger was doing great in open world when I played before?
He’s fine for fractals. Can’t really say if meta. People call meta according to how easy it is played, not efficiency.
Math’s wise – Druids are meta for PvE.
I don’t play WvW so I can’t really comment on that one.
I believe that they said that this was intended because : “If they were to save all the pet’s name for each player, it would be a massive amount of data to store”
Almost 1 USB key.
Yea, I remember that one. Even the data break-down measured by some of the guys in here. Cheers to the soul if he’s out there reading this.
If ANet was just to rebalance, the most we would see is some coefficient adjustments on the existing skills. An Elite spec means that fundamental changes to how the class works are not off the table. The fact that the Elite has synergy with the existing Nature utilities would just be gravy.
Besides which, the mutual exclusion sacrifice would be a matter of build customization. There’s 9 other traits to define, 4 utillities, and a new weapon. Surely there’s room for “Marksmanship 2.0” with the remainder of the specialization.
Assuming that Marksmanship has literally nothing in common with being a Marksman except 1 Grandmaster trait … Yup, there is a lot of space to address ranged play-style.
@Mouse
Sacrificed a whole Elite Spec just to fix something that should have been done a long time ago in the 1st place?
Nope. That’s a no for me.
Ideas are nice, but I don’t want them as an Elite spec.
I think he’s saying have the active effect proc when the Spirit is summoned and activating the Spirit again would be just a kill-switch.
Indeed.
Rather than summoning a spirit and then sacrificing it – the spirit would spawn by using it’s active. You could simply kill it with 2nd activation if you need to reposition.
The only skill on the longbow that has that range requirement is the auto attack. Unless you plan to camp the longbow, it works perfectly fine as a burst weapon in a dps rotation. Rangers are meant to swap weapons a lot.
That’s the point.
Longbow not only has the best burst, it can also have the best DPS from rotation without swapping if you are not limited by range (you don’t really need to swap weapons in WvW that often if you are kiting, I think).
So while Longbow is as good of a weapon it is – the only question is the OPs playstyle. In terms of efficiency, Longbow wins against most weapons unless in an organized group content.
You word it like someone said longbow wasn’t a power weapon. Get some sleep/coffee or whatever your excuse is this time.
If you read it again and get some sleep/coffee yourself – you’ll see I stressed and highlighted THE in that sentence.
Longbow is able to beat sword in DPS by itself. So it is THE Power weapon you should choose since it is THE best power weapon we have if you get the combat conditions to your advantage.
Actually…
… Longbow has the potential to be the power weapon of choice. The problem is the Range “limitation”. In order to maximize it’s benefits you have to be 1200 range away from your target. Which is frankly a lot and usually means you are away from your pals and buffs they provide.
If you are a lone wolf going Berserker sniper in WvW – Longbow would beat Shortbow in everything it does. Utility and damage.
If you are more of a party roamer or you don’t like being 1-shot – Shortbow is your best friend since you are not experienced yet. There is a bleeding build that will keep the DPS going.
Important note: 75% of your enemy’s surrounding is flank. Don’t backpeddal. Strafe at all times.
DH is NOT better in any way than power ranger.
if you use druid, youre going to completely destroy dragon hunters.
DHs bring absolutely different way of support to the team.
They bring AoE damage that cannot be compared to the Ranger. They also have some nice tricks that can prevent people from moving an inch (knock, maw…).
This game is not about 1v1.
Just how Ranger can roam with ease, so can a DH bring the target into downed state just like prevent stomps/revives.
We bring objectives. DHs change teamfights. That’s 2 totally different ways of game-play advantage that simply cannot be measured.
Every class is dominant in it’s domain. Druids are just fine.
Oh, now I see, I translated your former post totally wrong. My bad here.
Well, yup, I’m aware I don’t really always say things in the nicest way. But then again, what would devil be if everybody liked him?
You go get’em tiger. I’ll be rooting for you. I like people who follow results instead of “meta”. Even though I don’t particularly like unicorns. I can’t really have my fingers crossed but I’ll keep my thumb up – that’s something I still can do.
But on the other hand, regardless of how much people want to defend the ranger, I’d bet 9 out of my 10 fingers that the Ranger holding onto shortbow had literally no idea how a Ranger is played
What a kittenload of elitist crap. I didn’t expect this from you.
If you say so.
… I based it on statistics. From all the rangers I have ever experienced in my daily fractal runs – I haven’t met a single Ranger with Shortbow who knew what he was doing.
And every single Shortbow ranger I tried to teach something laughed me off for being an elitist and told me he could do anything he wants with his life, so Magi Shortbow with Brown Bear it is (exaggerating naturally).
Literally none of them used the weapon correctly. Vast majority of them were running vitality builds or something while running Signet of Renewal (yes, in fractals) and other stuff.
There is a reason why people never wanted a Ranger in their group pre-Druid. Even though we have been meta long before HoT came here – Rangers were kicked from groups because players sucked. And you’d rather get a mediocre warrior doing his job than risk that tiny chance of getting a decent ranger.
I don’t have to be an Elitist to say the truth out loud. Because you know I’m right.
P.S. @katz if you were the ranger – I’m glad I was wrong. That’s why I didn’t bet all 10 of my fingers.
Yup, it’s pretty much explained already.
The guy was an arrogant shnap who got stuck in a time & space dimension of pre-HoT.
Nothing game-breaking.
But on the other hand, regardless of how much people want to defend the ranger, I’d bet 9 out of my 10 fingers that the Ranger holding onto shortbow had literally no idea how a Ranger is played (which shouldn’t matter since no one proposed a Zerk/Speed run but on the other hand is a nuisance all in all considering that the Ranger wasted some time of 4 other people – which is the same as telling he doesn’t care about them).
And a fact that Shortbow Bleeder is viable has nothing to do with that.
Healing Spring is better if fighting at 1 spot. More healing, traited = perma regen plus players can blast it for even more healing. That’s what you call an easy Astral Bar filler. However, a lot of that regen will be irrelevant since a lot goes into overheal, and if it doesn’t – than your big heals would go into overheal because of it instead.
Glyph sounds much more like a boosting ability and feels much more supportive. You can save a lot by simply blowing a 12K heal on 4 players around you (25% from GoE, 20 from traits, possible 20 additional from rune and sigil). That potential is not to be underestimated.
And technically speaking, that light field can be yet another few cleanses if paired with Projectile Finishers. Or retal/vuln as Light Aura. One way or another – it feels more supportive.
tl;dr
HS = Asral Bar filler
Glyph = Versatile support
Its tooooo hard for me get Electric Wyvern. (AG server)
Ask a friendly mesmer to port you up from that big big root under the hill. There’s a lot of players who have a mesmer with the mastery. Try asking someone in your guild.
In PvE it doesn’t matter which server are you from as long as you are from the same region (EU / NA…)
By pressing the ability – it’s active would take place and near you a spirit with it’s health pool providing bonuses would spawn. Killing it would mean lower buffs uptime. Adjust duration (to let’s say 15 seconds with a 30 second cooldown. Keep in mind that dead spirit provides buffs for roughly 13 seconds after it’s death).
Easy, simple, no new coding or mechanics, user-friendly… Why add so many new stuff when it’s not needed?
Is there even a reason to do level 100’s? Not to familiar on how the rewards scale based on level (other than getting more relics). I’ve always just done the three swamps and called it a day.
There’s no real reason besides the challenge and the bonus Fractal Weapon skin you get for the achievement (doing all scales from 50 – 100).
If you don’t intend to do that – berserker with monk runes should be just fine. You can throw that staff into your bag and just change your playstyle to more healing / more DPS.
If you intend to do raids – you should definitely find a stable group which will tell you which direction they need you to go anyway. Staff Healer would most probably be the answer but you never know.
Thank you for the answers. Many people here and on reddit said that its easier and better to run magi armor, but I am thinking if somebody even wanted a magi druid only for heal for fractal? Because I would like to do both contents raid and fractal, of course I could buy 2 sets, but the problem is the price + the bag slots.
No one needs a healer for daily fractals. Full DPS buffer works there best.
If you want to do fractals up to lvl 100 – Cleric is the best stuff you can find.
Cleric, however, may pose a problem in raids with aggro management.
You can choose from various options.
~Staff alone should fill your astral bar on cooldown assuming your positioning is right (without regen, Signet of Wild, etc)
~If you want to maximize the DPS (without staff like s/a+lb) – you have to go for Healing Spring (Perma AoE Regen) and glyphs. You will usually fill the astral bar a tiny moment after the CD refreshed
~Your heals might be: Enter CAF > if QuickDraw procced – use #4 > #3 > #2 > #4
If QuickDraw didn’t activate > use #4, #3 and leave the form if everyone is healed
What I noticed that a lot of druids are doing braindead – they stay needlessly long in CAF. They heal everyone to full and sleep like morons in the form doing nothing. Leave the form as soon as you don’t need it, and don’t enter the form if it’s not needed.
P.S: my advice is to give yourself those few hours and test what works for you. The best weapon setup I found are Staff + LB. Just because of that amazing utility and bonus heal when CAF is on cooldown. It’s not the highest DPS setup but the one most flexible – it does everything.
I stuck to Berserker Healer (glyph buffer with a Healing Spring instead of Glyph).
You can distribute the most Grace of the Land boost like this while sill going on with the Quickdraw damage spikes.
Condi might get better at lvl 50 and higher. For raids – it doesn’t matter. The DPS is frankly the same assuming a non-professional boss management and it’s mobility.
I prefer Being a Berserker Healer (even though I was thrown down a bit more cleric-y for progression with the new wing).
And the best runes would be … That’s a lot of Math. Scholar is fine. Ranger is like 0,3% behind. If you’re going for conditions – you’d probably want to go for Balthazar. But if it’s a mobile fight …
Well, the point is there’s no such thing as “the best build”.
I don’t remember myself playing the same build, not even on a same day. I swap 3-4 times according to what I do.
But I always carry 1 full berserker and 1 full cleric setup and mix them according to needs. I made an Engineer for Viper DPS.
Dude the top builds for druid in PvP aren’t even listed :/
Depends on how you define “top builds”.
I’m not really a fan of meta-battle. Most other builds are plain outclassed by other professions and the only thing a Ranger excels at is recuperative skirmishing (1v1).
If 2 builds had a same role but one of them was better, I left the weaker one out.
If you drop me the build here, I’ll most probably test it and possibly stick it up there.
I was just playing around on a build site and saw that you might be able to stack around 20s of stealth using trapper runes and Celestial Shadow, have you tried something like that??
I actually used Healing Spring and Ice Trap only. WH in off-hand, Smoke Scale as pet. Yup, it was something similar, but it was rather lots of different types of re-applications than 1 long Stealth.
Berserker that cannot be tracked is a viable form of competitive game-play. For a few days at least – it was a great fun.
I personally think Necros are the ones with best use of Ferocity without precision.
They have passive 50% crit after all.
But yes, Rangers might just be the 2nd best. If we count +7,14% from Spotter, +10% from possible flanking, fury and remorseless we might be right behind the corner.
When I did the theorycrafting, it could be possible to run the amulet as former Crusader replacement.
But then… Cleric does a similar thing but with less risk. Tiger does the high crits anyway.
Well, naturally, there’s way too many things to account for.
But I think mentioning every factor is only a plus. People searching for advice might get a grasp of pros and cons and then decide for themselves.
After all, I’ve been playing a stealth Zerk build for a nice time just because I really felt like playing one – which became my play-style. And anyone could prove me otherwise, I had better results with it than meta builds because I was so bored with them that I literally couldn’t force myself to care.
This game is to be enjoyed, after all. If people can bring results with what they play – anything is fine. It’s just that Paladin’s Amulet does a completely different job and has a different role than Mender’s so it’s hard to evaluate.
Yes, ranger has much weaker scaling due to pet. Up to 40% of our damage comes from our pet. This does not mean you shouldn’t max out the remaining 60% though because even if offensive stats aren’t as impactful as on other classes you wont kill anything with just the pets 40%.
That’s why you take Mender that goes for 50% offensive stats which include the main spike of any Ranger’s there ever has been. Sigil of Air and Fire (High Power and enough Crit).
Yep, it has never been Rapid Fire that did the trick. It was the Sigils that couldn’t be negated due to lots of attacks with high crit chance. Even if people dodged 60% of Rapid Fire, they could never escape the 2-3K spike from sigils.
It’s always about the results. And if I have to choose between boosting my offense by 25 units or my survival and utility both by 40 units while still boosting my offense by 10 units – then it’s a clear choice.
If I really wanted to go for offense – I’d pick condi that boosts offense by 50 units unlike Paladin/Berserker/Marauder. Once I pick a Power Weapon – I already forced myself a utility route, not offense.
(numbers are naturally made up. they were picked for demonstration, not as data, you probably know what I have in mind, though)
Someone said it earlier. If you are healing you aren’t doing damage. That’s why menders is better. Less time healing because you get back to safe health pools easier.
The main point is that Ranger will never have the pressure of other classes (even in full berserker).
And the only pressure we have doesn’t have anything in common with stats since pet is our significant Direct Pressure. If you intend to go offensive, there’s no way you’ll get there through pure stats like other classes. Difference in damage of Mender and berserker is roughly 20%. The difference of survival and utility is like night and day difference.
Which naturally means we scale better from Healing Power. Why? Because we need time in order to deal that damage and nothing helps us achieve that as Healing and Pet at this part of the moment.
Or going condi bomber sacrificing most of our utility for offense. That works, too.
To improve the blind spam I may dump my fernhound for smokescale.
You’d need someone on your team with projectiles, smoke cloud doesn’t actually blind on it’s own (I think the PvE enemy does blind? Been a few months since I’ve been to HoT.)
Nope, the PvE enemy doesn’t blind either. It has to be a projectile.
wouldn’t it need more cover up conditions so chill doesn’t get cleansed too quickly, despite the many times chill gets applied?
This I initially thought about myself.
But with the former Stealth Ice-Trap build I used I realized that with 1 (untraited) trap I forced 3 cleanse CDs out of ele. Which I called a success.
If you bomb 5 people with 30 second chill that keeps reapplying in 3 second interval – you can call it a good CD baiter. Naturally – I would never dare call it competitive – which is why I put it only into the casual bracket.
If anything is to be competitive – it just has to include Druidic Clarity, additional cleanse, CC, mobility, and it has to be dominant at some role. Well, the chill build is outshined in almost everything but is not entirely useless and might be fun to play.
