Guild Wars 2

Yes, you can level in condition gear.

Rampager (precision/power-condition) or Rabid (condition/precision-toughness) is what you want while leveling. It’s cheap and does what you need it to.

If you don’t have access to Viper gear, use Sinister (condition/power-precision) once you’re level 80 or just stick to Rabid.

I just want it to work like “On My Mark!” where it can be used without a target, which ends up revealing the closest foe within range. Add a boon like Fury as Eleazar mentioned since it was the only shout left out of the rework and does not provide a boon baseline.

It’s probably not a high priority on Anet’s list since it’s a tooltip error only. Damage still increases by 5% with THT.

My main point was that many other companies overlook using this kind of system in their game and don’t.

When I say “other,” I mean all the others except Blizzard lol

Blizzard knows what’s up, but the rest of these new companies and developers showing off their new MMOs don’t have this kind of feature planned in the works.

I have toss around my fair share of criticisms and complaints; so I’ll bite.

1. Map Design: One of the best ways to design and create a solid map is to give it a story, and each map (especially core) is packed with these subtle touches that are well crafted.

2. Wardrobe System: I’m not even sure why other MMO developers neglect to copy this feature for their game. It’s convenience and simplicity is what makes it brilliant.

3. Updates to all Game Modes: Recent updates to PvP, WvW, and PvE – new maps and LS for everyone and Raids & Fractal updates for the hardcore.

4. Good Skins: Amidst the trenchcoats and buttcapes are some ace stuff being cranked out like the recent Foefire skins and God-Slayer bows, to name a couple.

5. Balance Dev Irenio: Rangers didn’t have a dedicated developer for 2 years since Robert Hrouda’s departure. Even through the criticism, Irenio brought Rangers a buffed shortbow, reworked shouts, improved pet performance, and so much more in a single year compared to the previous 3 years combined.

While we Read the Wind, you Lead it. Cheers, to you, man.

One of the best ways is to do fractals for Ascended Drops and convert the stats to Viper’s. It saves a lot of coin and you also accumulate coin while you do it.

Alternatively, Silverwastes farming is also good, as the RIBA rotation still hauls in a nice load. Farm Winterberries in Bitterfrost Frontier on alts for easy ascended Rings, Accessory, and Backpiece.

Save yourself the trouble of farming a spare ring elsewhere by attuning or infusing a 2nd identical ring from there to avoid the “unique” criteria. Use Ember Bay for the final ascended accessory.

It’s easier to farm Petrified Wood there since the Hearts are easier for receiving a bundle of 3 while on alts, bosses are not much of a hassle, and the map space is condensed with thermal tubes placed that land you near or send you right on top of key events.

85s/Yes

Obtena.7952:

I get your point. I’m saying it doesn’t really make much sense if you look at the history of the game. Engi’s have got lots of changes over the last 5 years, so to look at a very short period of time in that, and conclude Anet doesn’t care, or aren’t competent is a disingenuous statement to make.

To be fair, a lot can happen over the course of 5 years. Staff, direction, and priorities change. Anet might not be (completely) incompetent or disregarding to balance, but there is a possibility it’s just not a high priority as of late.

Nothing can be done. People would still join “serious” meta LFGs during dailies and leave if they want to. Just keep the LFGs active.

It’s perception and balancing. People usually have a mix of outdated and misinformed conceptions, while the developers have just an odd and seemingly disconnected sense of balance.

Take your above comment. It’s outdated and scope limited to PVE only without stating so. Now check out Eleazar’s responses: that’s someone who knows the current State of Ranger.

As for the developer side: Strength of the Pack, unnecessary nerfs to conditions, Druid heals reduced 3 times, and axe damage increases exclusive to PvP. But hey, we still have Most Dangerous Game?

If you think Druid remains untouchable for heals, you need to try Ventari Healer. Pure healing to healing, it burst 10-15k heals reliably every 3-5 seconds. Druid barely holds a candle to that, especially in other modes where Celestial Form’s cooldown was increased which further hinders its healing capabilities.

Fractals are alive and take Rangers/Druids. Small percentage plays Raids, but there’s a raid community. Find a guild that offers raid training and stick with them if you can.

Dungeons are near-dead. You’ll mostly find AC being ran the most, but for other dungeons, it’ll be more difficult depending on your time of day and expectations. A lot more story mode runners, though, unless there’s a daily for a certain dungeon.

I only want 2 things to changed in dungeons:

• Go over the inanimate objects in those instances to be affected by conditions so condition builds aren’t hindered in certain paths.
• Bring back Twilight Arbor’s Forward/Up path. I don’t recall the Aether path colliding with the F/U path, but if it does – shift it over. I miss that path so much and it was fun to do and have.

Zsoak.5409:

The second is for blob fights / big zergs. As I read the general consensus about rangers is that we’re not needed and/or not very welcomed in big scale fights. I was even kicked from a zerg once, right after joining because the commander did not want any rangers (calling us “rallybots”).

My other zerg experiences were nice though, I didn’t feel squishy at all and did a lot of heals (e.g. helping to mitigate siege damage etc). So why is this opinion about rangers afterall? Should I feel bad when joining zergs and/or should I just stick to roaming and small-scale fights?

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/wuv/commanders-kicking-Rangers-and-Thief

To point out the best answer to that question from the thread:

Crescendo Forte.4821:

Rangers and thieves aren’t really good classes to bring for Zerging. (theyr’e great for roaming though. You should try it!) If you were to bring a power rev to a PvE raid, you’d be laughed out of the squad, unless the squad decided they wanted to kitten themselves by accepting you.

In WvW, zerg compositions have a set meta, with subsets in that meta. Guardians, support eles, condition necros, and revenants are high valued classes. Guardians provide stab, protections, and moderate damage. Support eles provide cc, consistent healing, and great condi clear. Damage eles (usually a hybrid build these days) provide great damage potential. Necros strip boons and deal great condition damage. Revenants provide resistance.

In comparison to all those useful classes, why would I want a thief? Thieves have little defense against bombs that will always at least clip you, since no commander and no person dodges perfectly. Thieves have no team support and deal very little multi-target damage at range. They’re there to flank zerglings that get too far from tag, not fight with the zerg.

Ranger is considered the “beginner” class. The majority of people new to mmos or new to guild wars will generally pick a warrior, ele, or ranger, as those are class archetypes shared among mmos. A ranger druid has to be good at healing and have a set build specifically tailored to surviving at close range to work in a zerg, and most rangers do not have that.

So why kick you from squad? If you are playing a “less useful” class, most commanders don’t want to waste their stab composition on trying to give you boons when you’re probably going to be the first to die, even with stab.

Is it prejudiced? Yeah. Will you have to work hard to prove yourself? Yeah. Can you fix the problem? Yeah.

Your solutions

• Join a WvW guild and tailor your ranger/thief build to fit in with their needs
• Swap classes

Kain Francois.4328:

If they could move they would be OP.

That’s a laugh. They weren’t OP before, and they wouldn’t be OP if they could move now, even with the current Nature’s Vengeance since they took off the active on-death.

Yeah, but then again, open world and a fair number of dungeons deal with inanimate objects that are still immune to condition damage. That annoyance starts to become a hindrance if one were to share similar preferences with the OP of just doing open-world and dungeons.

And even though condition Ranger can stack up conditions rather well with relatively short cooldowns, its mobility is low. GS/LB helps out a lot in those cases, especially when trying to make it to events where waypoints become contested.

That doesn’t make sense that they would base it as a hybrid off of armor stats. It was hybrid at launch when all we had were Dire, Rabid, and Carrion.

It’s a hybrid weapon, but what it needs is a run through the purity of purpose filter on ricochet so it’s a 1-handed ranged full-condition weapon.

For pete’s sake. I’d be up for a bit of self-synergy on that weapon like what Gee added to Necro’s main-hand dagger or Karl did to Thief’s shortbow.

If they could just apply the skill 2&3 damage increase to all modes and have Ricochet bleed foes for like 3s when it strikes a chilled foe, it would work really well with Winter’s Bite and make that AOE effect on Honed Axes worth more the while.

A change like that could bring back the frost Ranger build and give Frost Trap a niche use. Pets like Snow Leopard, Alpine Wolf, Frost Drake, and Polar Bear (well, maybe not since its F2 cooldown is pretty absurd) would have a use without ever being touched.

It could really add some options from multiple angles… which means it will most likely never happen. :|

On a side note: Drakes’ AI is still busted. Just auto-attacking without ever using Tail Swipe or Chomp. 4-months and counting…!

Just thought I’d see since, ya know, maybe whatever it was that broke them before was accidentally corrected in this patch. Oh, well!

This entire patch had a lot of “PVP Only” splits on a lot skills. These axe changes are something that should have been applied to all game modes.

Though, I can’t really be salty about these changes overall since Engineers saw 0 love this patch. Mesmers didn’t receive any updates either, but they’re in a better spot.

Edit: Also, this bug was fixed.

Fixed a bug in which player pets, clones, and minions would scale their stats based on the fractal scale.

This bug was one of the best things to happen for the above listed. One of the few things that should have been a “feature” in fractals. Oh, well.

Obtena.7952:

For instance, you haven’t considered that doing so would lead to paralysis by analysis. I mean, if Anet took every change they made, then looked at how it affected ALL the other classes, then made decisions to proceed if something wasn’t ideal, nothing would ever get changed.

When you put it that way, that’s like how Anet does things already.

It was stated a few times on livestreams in the past that they also take into consideration perfect-case scenarios, which include how a change affects and is affected by other classes.

It’s a plus and a minus, but they do it. In the case of Elixir X, Plague, and Plaguelands; it’s more likely to be an oversight – which happens. It’ll either be removed or left alone as a forever-intended effect.

Rauderi.8706:

Donari.5237:

That is an unfortunate side effect of the scaling not really pulling higher levels down to map level, thanks to their better gear and full array of skills and traits, combined with the occasional “do 4 events in this starter map” daily.

You are most likely seeing that when level 80’s have a do-four-events daily; otherwise they don’t have much incentive to speed-roll the low level events.

This and beyond this.

ANet really needs to change that zone-specific daily to a regional daily so we’re not cramming tons of players into overwhelming the events.

For real. I miss the old times where it was simply “Shiverpeaks Event Completer” instead of map-specific locations. It still had people spread out into those regions without locking out players that don’t have higher level characters when the daily is a mid-high level zone.

Nah. Boon corruption is a powerful tool. Rangers have been asking for access to a boon removal without external means (sigils) for a long time. Since Thieves are kings of poison, shifting the poison damage modifier as Refined Toxins and altering the way we are Poison Masters, in competition with Wilderness Knowledge, is a finer fit.

As for your Empathic Bond suggestion, I’m not keen on that idea at all. It’s plain, uninteresting, less pet interaction, and reminds me of 3 Daredevil traits combined. The stipulation for the buffs is worse than Light on Your Feet since not having a condition will rarely happen in competitive modes and will have a low uptime in PVE.

Edge of Extinction suggestion retains the passive condition cleanse, adds a way for the pet to cleanse all conditions on itself, a way to prevent it from being a ticking time-bomb with an Epidemic, and creates an additional niche with Signet of Renewal’s active. Worthy of being a Grandmaster trait in so many ways.

draxynnic.3719:

I think it might be because the AI-activated skills for canines are leaps, which wouldn’t work well graphically underwater.

Doubt it. Have you seen the Tiger’s F2 underwater? It does the same animation as the one on-land. The only leap they bothered to change was Snow Leopard’s F2 to a swipe.

If they’re as lazy as they were with the Tiger F2, then they might as well let Canines do their on-land animations underwater. Would at least give us more underwater options.

“I read the wind. Shots were fired, and there is salt in the air.”
- The Legendary, Bearbow Bandit.

Daddicus.6128:

What if they turned off auto-loot for any character which hasn’t moved or used a skill in the past X seconds?

This suggestion might be onto something. It could work fine even if auto-loot was activated only while moving, especially when there’s a keybind to AOE loot. So, if a player is present and not moving – just press another button to loot or move for auto loot.

Longbow & Greatsword with berserker gear. Slot whatever traits and utilities meet your needs.

Well, to be fair, most pets got their attack ranges increased. Wyverns were the only ones to get a reduced aftercast on their skills. Meanwhile, Polar Bear’s Icy Roar is still has a ridiculously outdated 45-second cooldown and Jungle Stalker still roars for 3-seconds.

As for the rest, yeah, it’s kind of a shame. I really thought they would at least update Sublime Conversion’s tooltip with the ½s cast time. Updated the list with the Two-Handed Training and Clarion Bond suggestions from before.

Edit: Added in placing back the extra bounce on Ricochet in there. The list was so old I forgot that the reduction happened afterwards.

A new proposal for Windborne Notes, though. I’m not fond of traits that only improve 1 weapon skill (see Honed Axes), but I think something cool can be done here since Glyph of Unity was left out during the reveal update on skills that tethered foes.

So, what about: Windborne Notes: Warhorn skills recharge 20% faster. Hunter’s Call applies Revealed (4s) on its target and Call of the Wild grants Regeneration (10s) on affected allies.

Would give a bump to the utility of Core Rangers while giving both our Warhorn skills that extra bit of “oomph!” support when traited for it. Not placing it on the list (for now), but it could be a nice alternative if Glyph of Unity doesn’t apply reveal.

With how weak “Strength of the Pack!” has become, I’d rather see that bug that was on Signet of the Wild’s active that made attacks unblockable placed onto “Strength of the Pack!” now. It’s a weaker version of SotW, so it really needs something to make it “elite”.

They could always do a bit of skill swapping so it’s a win-win. Change the F2 on Pink/Black Moa to provide a boon like the other Moas (except White) – maybe something powerful like AOE Resistance (2s).

Then, give us a tamable Raptor with a Dazing Screech. All good from there.

TexZero.7910:

Blaming the community when the real fault here is the designers choosing to use band-aid fixes for problems that need much different solutions.

Farming by itself isnt bad, however when the problem could be solved without needed to create designated farm spots you should do that. In short fix the economic issues with numbers not by creating “Farms”.

+Infinity Preach it!

I can see the patch notes already…

Engineer

Since Plague was recently changed to Plaguelands on the Necromancer, we wanted to update the underwater skills provided by Elixir X.

• Elixir X: Plague duration reduced from 20s to 15s to be consistent with other transformation durations.

Ravenhunt.2735:

Was there a patchnote about that?

Never an exact patch note. The tracking on non-tracking projectiles are a side-effect of when skills were updated with increased projectile velocity.

Too many people complained about not being to hit a moving target with projectiles, so Anet cranked up many ranged skills and this is the unexpected result.

Projectile physics on non-tracking projectiles with AOE have some tracking. Fireball is one of those. It’s more comparable when testing Winter’s Bite on Ranger’s axe.

Untraited, it’s a single-target projectile that won’t curve as much. When traited to become an AOE, it’ll start to track target movements when within a certain range threshold of the target.

Zaoda.1653:

-snip-

Would this solve the problem?

Yep. That would do it. +1

Still waiting for that Legendary Bearbow Longbow that fires bears. It seems like something that would actually happen, so, maybe I shouldn’t joke about it. :s

What I forgot to mention and that you also left out was before the 25s → 20s cooldown adjustment, it was planned to increase Spirit cooldowns from 25s → 40s before Rangers flipped out about it on the livestream and everywhere else.

Our boy, Irenio, had our back and made sure that didn’t happen and gave us additional minor buffs after it was all said and done.

And as I said suggested before: If Spirits Unbound can return and replace Instinctive Reaction, that would be swell. Doesn’t have to remain in adept. I’d prefer it to be in a Master tier competing with Windborne Notes and the now sweet Evasive Purity instead.

Vigorous Training and be dropped in Adept as a second boon on-pet swap trait along with Clarion Bond. Instinctive Reaction is not a trait many will miss and is statistically inferior to Bountiful Hunter, anyway.

No reason to lose Nature’s Vengeance, though, it could use a rename to “Nature’s Bounty” for thematic purposes – which was also a former trait Rangers had that increased regeneration by +33%.

Also, note that sometimes an old “solution” to help pets from taking damage still lingers today and ends up being an hindrance in all modes. This is where the AI will attempt to flank a target from behind rather than attacking right when they are in range.

A solution 3 years before reduced NPC damage was implemented in PVE and ends up having the pet act wonky in PVP and WVW when attempting to flank a moving player. Kind of frustrating when you see this occur where the pet is able and well within range of a target, but doesn’t attack it because it’s trying to go around them first.

In PVE, this sometimes becomes hilarious, like during the Auric Basin meta event where a pet will just stand there since it can’t flank an Octovine. I once saw my Wyvern repeatedly knocked back against one of the giant spitfire worms in Dragon Stand because it was trying to move through its hitbox to flank it.

By all means, Irenio. If you can remove this function, it would be great. Or, you can leave this function alone and let the Skirmishing Grandmaster Minor trait, “Hunter’s Tactics” apply to the pet so this AI behavior can be more beneficial. Just tossin’ that out there.

Pet flanking AI really shines against “obstructed” targets, too.
https://youtu.be/xwUIgMywXes

Or, you know, lower the amount required to refine into cured T6 leather squares and then nerf the spawn rate so the farm is only somewhat worth it.

Well, to be fair, this outfit did address the issue of an over-abundance of trench coa-….

Lemme try this again. This outfit did address the issue of hair disappearing while wearing ha-….

Nevermind.

Not really food for thought at all. Maybe back a couple of years ago or on-paper, but not now. Damage reduction in PVE negates this issue. In WVW, any Spirit Ranger would (and should) hang in the back or mid. If you front line with fragile Spirits, that’s on them.

As I suggested above, lump it in with Nature’s Vengeance for the 2 game modes that could benefit from it the most as they once did or make room for it by tossing out Instinctive Reaction and shifting some traits around. I’ll be kitten ed if NM is going to have 2 GM traits related to Spirits. That’ll be one shoddy way to layout traits.

There’s not much to think about it balance-wise. Active on-death is gone, so some of that is already taken care of in competitive modes. Would have been nice for PVE, but with the damage reduction, it would have also been counter-intuitive.

I really wished they would add back Spirits Unbound, too. Even if it was a trait-split that only applied in modes that didn’t complain about the petting zoo.

Like, if Nature’s Vengeance for PVE & WVW only additionally made it so Spirits could follow us around. Man, that’d be swell.

That would be the simpler way to go about it.

You should look into our base damage and coefficients then. If Anet did more PVE-side tweaks to power weapons, then maybe Rangers can have some semblance of a DPS option rather than sub-optimal viability.

But instead, they make odd – even stupid (to be blunt) – choices like increasing Mesmer’s Blurred Frenzy by 100% in PVE only (for…?) and giving Whirling Defense a damage boost.

Still not sure why we can’t have 2 traits and expand on Spirits. Seriously, replace Instinctive Reaction with Vigorous Training, split Nature’s Vengeance into another master trait, and buff both of them to compensate so each trait isn’t too weak.

Something like:

Nature’s Bounty (Master): Spirits periodically grant boons to nearby allies (same ones as the current Nature’s Vengeance). Spirit active AND passive ranges are increased by 50%. An increased passive range would help when Spirits Unbound was removed, and it also makes their effective range span a wider area like the GW1 Spirits.

Nature’s Vengeance (Grandmaster): Spirits automatically use their active skill when defeated. Spirits gain retaliation (3s) and stability (3s) when sacrificed. This brings back the “vengeance” part of having Spirits use their active when defeated, and also introduces a bonus if the player is willing to sacrifice it.

Added stability so the Spirit can sustain 1 CC in order to execute their active without being interrupted, and minor retaliation to deal damage to those that strike it while it is sacrificing itself. Pretty thematic and solid as a trait.

bearshaman.3421:

It’s not that power ranger is bad (It’s not), it’s that condi for rangers is really good.

It’s not that power ranger is bad, it’s that power scaling and coefficients are low while conditions are not limited by skill coefficients.

FTFY

Not really.

Though, I’m kind of surprised we didn’t get the chance to have a Juvenile Smogscale in the new map.

Even though it’s just a color palette swap of the Smokescale, at least its version of Smokescreen blinds foes instead of being evasive while inside of it.

Would have been a nice addition to have that pairing. Kind of like in the old days when slotting an Eagle/Hawk or Raven/White Raven was a thing.

anduriell.6280:

Buuut i can promise you we won’t see anything from this thread applied to the game like ever.

Nah. You’ll see the great ideas here and throughout the Ranger subforum used for other classes and their elite specs instead.

Roots are deeper than that. They reduced the boons from Resounding Timbre because of lack-of-creativity. It makes every shout grant regeneration which powers up Druid – it was bound to be nerfed.

I’d go for none of those options proposed. Instead, remove the one-time stability, swiftness, and fury. Reduce the duration effect from 10s to 8s, cooldown to 60s, and have the effect grant might (8s), fury (3s), and stability (2s) when the player and the pet attacks to each other.

Just front load 3 boons onto the effect and base it off of player and pet performance so we can at least have some synergy back with Remorseless and extra stability application if the pet is able to land attacks.

Shorter cooldowns and stun breaks are nice, but if there’s no Remorseless synergy, then there’s no point. It might as well be converted into a Signet. Also, Resounding Timbre could use a change, too.

It’s lame for every shout to provide the same 2 boons. Having each one provide their own separate boon like Mesmer’s Bountiful Disillusionment would have been the better thing to do.

Heal as One – regen (6s), Protect Me – vigor (5s), Sic ’Em – fury (6s), Search & Rescue – protection (3s), Guard – retaliation (3s), and Rampage as One – quickness (5s). The trait should be more than just another fuel source for AF.

All it needs is a 2s Resistance on it and it would be fine. It would become 3s due to Lingering Magic.

I’d like to see “Strength of the Pack!” done right. Rename it back to “Rampage as One!” and ditch the one-time stability, swiftness, and fury. Have the “Rampage as One!” effect altered so the player and their pet grant each other might (8s), fury (3s), and stability (2s) on attacks.

I want that Remorseless synergy back and better stability. Not this block of stability, and a compromise instead of returning to a pulsing one; since this will depend on the pet landing its attacks.

This current version irks the hell outta me.