Guild Wars 2

I am ok with the prices for the most part. I’d just like to know why I am supposed to pay a higher price as an European for the Ultimate Edition, than an American (100€-100$, compared to 45€-50$).

I’d just like to make sure that I get atleast some characterslots as compensation for new players getting the base game for free.

I think he is right about traps and spirits.

And I was wondering why they were pushing the gemstore that hard. If everybody is as stingy as the people in this thread, this game would be dead for a long time now.

Lol, I just imagine all the ones crying about the 50$ purchrasing gems in the next three months for atleast 50$.

Prophet.1584:

@jcbroe: what do you think about where the ranger will fall in the dungeon meta? I definitely agree with you on the idea that ranger is going to be in a good place in pvp. I can see a few builds already that’ll have strong synergy and team support however a lot of that is gained by sacrificing power damage. I’m not sure if those builds or anything like it will transfer to pve.

Dungeoneers will want to run 6/6/x/x/x, but it will be weaker than before.
The Marksmanship Adept choices are not very convincing and a slightly buffed Predator’s Onslaught is competing with Remorseless.
The Skirmishing Adept is simply useless for a zerker Ranger and the only really good thing is the Quick Draw trait.
We lose atleast one 10% damage modifier, which means that the Ranger will drop even further on the scorebord.

[Reserved for weapon changes]

So lets do this. I’ll try to note all skill changes and the pros and cons, aswell as a short statement by the players. If you want anything to add, just leave a comment.
Patchnotes have been pulled from dulfy.net.
I will not go over the trait changes (just yet).

Traps
Changes

• All Ranger Traps now have a 0.5s arming time.
• All Ranger Traps now have a 180 trigger radius and a 240 effect radius.
• Frost Trap: Trap duration once triggered has been decreased from 5s to 3s. The chill duration per pulse has been increased to 3s. This skill has gained a pulse damage component.
• Spike Trap: Now has a knockdown component on initial trap trigger. Bleed stacks increased to 6 and duration increased to 6.25s. Cripple duration increased to 2.66s.
• Flame Trap: Increased the duration from 1 seconds to 2.5 seconds per pulse.
• Viper’s Nest: This skill now applies 3 stacks of poison for 5 seconds every pulse. The pulse strike damage on this skill has been increased.
• Healing Spring is now a trap (unconfirmed!)

Traits

• Skirmishing Adept, Trapper’s Expertise: Boons and conditions caused by your traps last 60% longer. Your traps recharge 20% faster and your offensive traps cause 2s of cripple.

Pros

• Traps being larger is now baseline
• Traps have been buffed individually, Spike Trap the most

Cons

• Traps can’t be thrown anymore

Opinions

Not being able to throw traps will kill a current build, limit the use of traps and will make Trapper Runes for the Ranger obsolete

Spirits
Changes

• All Ranger Spirits have had their chance on hit buffs increased to 75%.
• All Ranger Spirits now have a 30s cooldown.
• All Ranger Spirit active abilities have had their maximum targets increased to 5.
• All Ranger Spirit active abilities are more potent and sacrifice the spirit.
• Water Spirit: The cast time from the water spirit’s active ability has been removed.
• Sun Spirit: This spirit’s buff now applies 2 stacks of burning for 3 seconds. The activate ability now inflicts 3 stacks of burning for 5s and its blind duration has been increased to 8s.
• Frost Spirit: The activate ability now inflicts 3s of chill initially.
• Storm Spirit: This spirit’s buff now applies 9.5s of swiftness. The activate ability now inflicts a 3s daze.

Traits

• Nature Magic Grandmaster, Nature’s Vengeance: Each of your spirits pulses 1s of a particular boon every 3s. Your spirits gain 100% increased health. The range of spirit activated abilities is increased by 50%.

Pros

• Passive buff trigger chance incrased to 75%
• Active now affects 5 targets

Cons

• Spirits can’t be traited to move anymore

Opinions

I expected the spirits to have a more active playstyle. I can’t see more than one spirit in a build being viable, if at all, and only the Frost Spirit being viable in PvE. So in my opinion, spirits haven’t gotten much of an upgrade

Shouts
Changes

• “Guard!” no longer has a cast time
• Healing as One is now a shout (unconfirmed!)
• Rampage as One is now a shout (unconfirmed!)

Traits

• Beastmastery Adept, Resounding Timbre: Your shouts apply 10s of Regeneration and 10s of Swiftness to nearby allies. You shouts recharge 20% faster.

Pros

• The one build ever using Guard! got buffed

Cons

Opinions

Shouts have not gotten much of an upgrade, let alone rework. They still will be fillinf niches at best, or simply being useless at worst.

Survival Skills
Changes

• Quickening Zephyr: No longer reduces healing by 50%. Gain Super Speed in addition to quickness when activating this ability.
• Lightning Reflexes: Movement speed adjustments no longer affect the intended travel distance.
• Troll Ungent is now a Survival Skill (unconfirmed!)

Traits

• Wilderness Survival Grandmaster, Wilderness Knowledge: Survival skills have 20% reduced recharge, grant 6s of fury and remove 2 conditions.

Pros

• Quickening Zephyr now grants Super Speed

Cons

Opinions

QZ got a neat little update, but other than that, nothing has changed

Signets
Changes

Traits

• Marksman Master, Brutish Seals: Activating a signet grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds to you and your pet. Your signets gain 20% recharge reduction.

Pros

Cons

Opinions

Thieves get the trait in a slightly less effective form as minor trait.

I really think that those patchnotes aren’t complete (Like they never were complete really). One of the two in the livestream said it himself that HS is going to be a trap.

Sube Dai.8496:

I am happy about Beastmastery, I feel like its a must have line for power ranger now.

One thing I find interesting is that Beastly Warden will be a buff for the crappier pets like Bears, Moas, Devourers, etc.

Anything that has an AOE F2 will all of a sudden have enemies running into it, instead of easily avoiding it.

And that’s exactly why I hate these changes.

You simply can’t afford to run more than one trap in a build without sacrificing a lot of utility. Yet we have a runeset that seems to be tailored to the Ranger. But after this patch we wont be able to use it anymore. I don’t even know why they are thinking that this is a good idea.
The balance for stronger traps is the arming time. If you see them flying, you can dodge. That is enough counterplay.

I’d rather have the old throwable traps than the new ones. There goes the only condition build I play.

Arnath.2319:

Guardians got nerfed.

The devs proving once again that they hate Guardians. We are now officially the most broken profession in this game.

Rangers are competing for that spot. And I can tell you, the competition for the Guardian will be tough.

For all those who are saying that traps now function how traps “meant to be functioning”, ergo not being able to throw them anymore, I don’t even know why you try to argue this way. Maybe you shouldn’t be so hung up on the name, but actually treat traps as what they are: AoEs. And any other class who can use AoEs as utility skills can currently groundtarget them. The simple fact is that traps wont be versatile enough anymore to run more than one of them per build.
Traps may be pretty potent if someone steps into them, but other than that, they are not more than an area an enemy might want to avoid. And that is not very versatile. Survival skills on the other hand are pretty versatile. You can load up your whole build with survival skills, because they bring something to the table for almost any situation you encounter. Traps will lose that momentum. They never really got it, the changes now would actually make them more versatile, but without being able to throw them in front of your target, you wont be able to hit reliably with them.

mistsim.2748:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Protect Me isn’t as useful as it seems to be. When the pet us soaking up damage for you, it is using your toughness for the damage calculation. So Protect Me is not more than a reliable way of killing your pet as zerker.

couldn’t disagree more. protect me with Bear, maxed out BM and Beastly Warden will be super useful for frontlining. you get an aoe stun, stun break, invuln, and 2-condi cleanse on a fairly low CD. I honestly think shouts (RaO, HaO and Protect Me) will be go-to for frontline builds (6/0/6/0/6)

With the small problem that you ignored that you have invested into toughness as frontline. So if your pet soaks up damage based on your toughness, then you wont notice any difference. But the ones who arguably need the most active defense, the ones without toughness, will not get huge benefits from this skill but rather kill their pet with it.

For each profession I could watch during the livestream, I thought to myself at one time atleast: “That is a cool mechanic or a cool combo”. For each profession except the Ranger.

Durzlla.6295:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Now Josh, please do as I instruct:
Step 1: Take all the Ranger changes
Step 2: Make sure you really got all of them
Step 3: Throw them into the bin
Step 4: Start from scratch, and this time, please visit the Ranger subforum from time to time

Sincerely, a former diehard fan of your game.

Uh, no, the ranger changes are amazing, I don’t think I could be happier with them unless they made guard an aoe taunt.

Ok
…
…
…
You have to explain yourself.
May I suggest you create your own topic about your view in the Ranger sunforum?
Because I seriously don’t know what gets you all that excited.

Well, do it without the use of swiftness or superspeed to show them that the reasons they are using to nerf those two are flawed.

There is no need for such a build. This build would be viable only in a highly skilled group with dedicated roles, and not even then it would be favorable.

Now as it turns out, many other classes have lost their damage modifiers aswell, atleast some of them. I don’t know right now how much that affects the damage of the other classes and I don’t even know if this was the thread it was relevant to, but now you know.

Well, I use that technique, and I’m faster with it than without it. So I guess it works.
Not that I’m a fan of the sword, but still.

anduriell.6280:

For that i’d choose the signet that is still a waste but at least only one utility.

The funny thing about that is that you can switch the signet out for another utility before you enter the fight.

Now Josh, please do as I instruct:
Step 1: Take all the Ranger changes
Step 2: Make sure you really got all of them
Step 3: Throw them into the bin
Step 4: Start from scratch, and this time, please visit the Ranger subforum from time to time

Sincerely, a former diehard fan of your game.

I’m not insulting anyone here, but I just want to point out that you now have to press F in front of cows to make them happy, to complete the first heart in Queensdale, because there are obviously people out there who are otherwise overchallenged.

Or you could simply remove the damage portion of the pet and you wouldn’t have to deal with balancing that kitten thing anymore (see my thread further down in the subforum as example)!

Well, I might state the obvious, but you can turn around before using the sword leap. It is not perfect, but it is something. You can also get swiftness from RaO, from sending a bird into combat, from swapping weapons in combat if you have traited into the right traitline and you can use runes to give you swiftness, ontop of the stupid idea of using Guard! and the trait to get perma-swiftness.

Ehecatl.9172:

In WvWvW you’ll probably have trapper’s runes and so can turn invisible while laying down the traps, so the enemy won’t be able to see where they are. Then you just lead/fear/knockback the enemy into the traps as you see fit. The arming time will likely work better with this set up since you won’t risk being immediately revealed after placing a trap.

Now granted it may be harder to land your traps, but to say it’s outright impossible before even trying with the new set up is a bit dramatic.

You are not truning invisible while laying down the traps, you turn invisible after you have layed down the trap. That will be an even bigger sign to enemies that you just have placed a trap.

Mesmers have only very limited access to swiftness, while Necros are lacking any leaps or blinks.

You know what is funny? The Ranger wont suck. The Ranger wont get absolutely demolished in PvP. The Ranger has still things going for it.

But the Ranger will be the worst class out there when it comes to damage as example.
You wont suck in PvE, because PvE is kindergarden mode. You wont suck in PvP because you can play better than others. But all those things are no excuses for the simple fact that the Ranger will come out as last. Each and every profession will get damage buffs, while we are losing 20% damage modifiers. Other classes get new mechanics while the Ranger gets mechanics stripped away. I don’t have to playtest this change to tell you that every other class will have more to bring to the table, while the Ranger gets some tweaks here and there.

Maybe the Druid will give us the utility or the damage we all have been missing. But the name alone lets me think that this wont be happening.

bug………………………

We have? Last time I checked the Necro and the Mesmer had worse mobility. Maybe I’ve missed something for their specialisations, but I doubt it.

Quarktastic.1027:

+25% movement speed should be baseline for all classes.

No it oughtn’t.

Yeah right? Good that they got rid of that unrealistic stuff. Now just let me get my Omega Siege Golem out of my pocket…

PvE: sounds nice. PvP: I guess the condi meta is back.

Please keep in mind that the actual skills are only suggestions I just pulled off the top of my head.

I should also mention that this cleaup would make room for some real shouts.
Right now the shouts are not more than just pet commands that got ditched into shouts someway along the creation of the Ranger. With the possiblity to give the pet those mechanics directly, shouts could now actaully made worthwhile.

So we are getting closer to the first expansion and the Ranger profession mechanic unrealiable.

I’ve started to present my idea how to rework the pets in an earlier thread, but I wanted to create this thread to get ot the meat of this idea.

So here it is:

- The new mechanic will use F1 – F5 keys
- Pets will usually not deal damage
- Instead, the Ranger is getting back the damage that was cut to justify the pet as damagedealer
- The first Minor in Beastmastery will give the pet damage modifiers (and strip some power away from the Ranger if it is necessary)

• F5 will be the pet swap
  • You can still have two pets to choose from
• F1 will be a ground target, long range movement command
  • When used as ground target, the pet will run to that point and stay there until it is told otherwise or the Ranger is leaving the range.
  • When casted while an ally or an enemy is selected, the pet will follow the selected unit until it is told otherwise or the unit is leaving the range.
  • When casted out of range or with no target and groundtarget selected, the pet will follow the Ranger.
• F2 and F3 wil be race specific
  • Each race will have its own niche. Each race will have induvidual skills and each pet of that race will have access to that skills.
• F4 will differ from pet to pet
  • F4 could keep the functionality of the current F2 skill or get a new mechanic that is more suited for the niche this pet is filling.

Now let’s get to some examples.

- Moas
Moas are very lightweight and have long legs.
One of the two race specific skills could be a significant movement speed boost (way more than 33%) and a charge attack that cripples if an enemy is selected.
The other skill could be a 360° projectile block until the time runs out or the pet is defeated.

- Bears
Bears are very heavy and can hit hard (oh no, dem kittens)
One ability could be the invulnerability bears currently got as one skill the Ranger has no control of.
The other ability could be an AoE knockdown for example.

- Spiders
There are spiders who build their web on the ground to detect movement to spot their prey.
One ability could be mark enemies on the minimap of the Ranger around the spider.
The other ability could stealth the spider or make her untargetable.

- Porcines
Porcines have usually a good nose.
One ability could let them “see” stealthed targets and make them follow the nearest one.
The other one could be a charge, like they have currently as random attack.

- Canines
Canines could have their knockdown charge as one ability and remove stealth in a small AoE around them as another.

- Devourer
Devourers could have one ability that lets them move underground, untargetable and invisible for enemies and a knockdown if a target was selected (the devourer bursting out of the ground when it’s under the target)
Another ability could let them dig a single-use tunnel for the Ranger, which lets the Ranger travel the distance unseen and unharmed. This skill can obviously only be used if both start and end of the tunnel are in line of sight, so it’s more of an preemtive measure than a reactionary tool.

- Drakes
Drakes could get one ability that knocks back enemies if they run into them, which lets you block small passage ways for a short time. If an enemy is using stability, the drake could instead snare him for a short duration.

- Birds and Feline
Those two pets would be focussed primary on damage, so beastmasters would most likely want to use them.

well, I don’t know about you, but if one just wants a skill that applies swiftness and regen, then he should ask for it. A skill that has no more use than to get the trait effects is an utterly useless skill and it’s laughable that this is still in the game.

We are going to see a tremendous amount of healing engis when this update goes live, I guarantee it.

Yamsandjams.3267:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Levetty.1279:

Shouts not touched.

Actually, guard did get it’s cast time removed, which is quite nice for shout builds.

Wonderful. So the only build ever utilising Guard! as a way to get swiftness got slightly buffed. if that isn’t something!

Perma swiftness, yes, which is quite nice since you can ditch the signet. Plus it’s also perma regen, which can mean a perma 5% damage reduction with the new traits. It’s not the be-all, end-all of buffs, no, but it counters the claim that shouts didn’t get touched.

With HaO and RaO also likely to become shouts, it opens up some nice possibilities for them, although I still think a dedicated shout build will be much weaker overall compared to more conventional builds.

So you say the skill is fine, even if it’s utterly useless in 99.9% of all fights, because the trait that affects shouts is good?

You make it sound like zoning will be so much more effective when this patch comes. After the patch, people will only fear to melee the Ranger. Right now, the Ranger can catch them with traps even if they aren’t in melee range.

Protect Me isn’t as useful as it seems to be. When the pet us soaking up damage for you, it is using your toughness for the damage calculation. So Protect Me is not more than a reliable way of killing your pet as zerker.

Because throwing them slightly in front of your target isn’t possible? Because the whole zerg when throwing traps from a wall will dodge them? Is that why we don’t need to be able to throw traps?

Yamsandjams.3267:

Levetty.1279:

Shouts not touched.

Actually, guard did get it’s cast time removed, which is quite nice for shout builds.

Wonderful. So the only build ever utilising Guard! as a way to get swiftness got slightly buffed. if that isn’t something!

Yamsandjams.3267:

Wuselknusel.4082:

Yamsandjams.3267:

Meh, doesn’t really matter to me. You can still trap bomb someone by being close them. Plus the traps should be more powerful overall considering some of the other trait changes.

I like the fact that they make them non-throwable, they were basically just grenades at that point. Also encourages more defensive style play like they were intended for.

I think the new healing spring will also work out quite nicely. That would be a little weird as a throwable trap.

Now if we just had an elite trap…

How the heck to you expect Rangers to do that? Traps now have a trigger delay, so you just chase your oponent and hope that he wont run out of your traps fast enough? That is a stupid change and it limits the effectiveness of traps tremendously.

That’s exactly the point, you’re not supposed to be able to chase someone with a trap. It’s like engineers that use bomb kits and run at people trying to hit them with it.

If you want to use them effectively, then you have to have a semblance of control over the positioning. Obviously they might not be as useful for, say, WvW roaming where people can go on auto-run for a week and not hit the edge of the map, but that’s more in line with how they were always supposed to be used.

I’m surprised people are so up in arms about the loss of throwing more so than the arming time. The latter seems like a much more significant change as far as trap effectiveness is concerned.

If you’re playing a trapper build, then you need the traps to hit, otherwise you’ll never kill someone. Trap bombing wont work. Either you have to lay down your traps before the fight in anticipation where the enemy will be, or you have to lay them down with the enemy knowing where they are. The enemy will simply dodge your traps or play around them. The Dragonhunter’s traps are atleast potent enough to burst someone down if he manages to deive them into his traps. The Ranger wont be. The Ranger is reliant on hitting the enemy with traps more than once. This change will kill trapper ranger.

The Ranger is already lacking AoEs. The traps were the only AoEs the Ranger could use properly, like throwing traps from walls in WvW. Now that’s gone. Now it’s dull.

Traps: disappointing. Spirits: disappointing. Traits: not competitive from what I could see. We are losing many percentage damage modifiers. Yeah, this will be great.

Moreso, if you dodge, you lose a 10% damage modifier.
Traps wont be throwable, so you spend your whole time chasing your enemy hoping that he steps into one of your traps one time.

Many traits that give regeneration and one trait that gives 5% less damage while under the effect of regen. So we have perma regen? But we lost 3 damage modifiers if I’ve counted correctly. All in all I have to say that everything got better, but just to a very minor degree compared to the other classes (exept for the traps. If they are not throwable they’re borderline useless).

Yamsandjams.3267:

Meh, doesn’t really matter to me. You can still trap bomb someone by being close them. Plus the traps should be more powerful overall considering some of the other trait changes.

I like the fact that they make them non-throwable, they were basically just grenades at that point. Also encourages more defensive style play like they were intended for.

I think the new healing spring will also work out quite nicely. That would be a little weird as a throwable trap.

Now if we just had an elite trap…

How the heck to you expect Rangers to do that? Traps now have a trigger delay, so you just chase your oponent and hope that he wont run out of your traps fast enough? That is a stupid change and it limits the effectiveness of traps tremendously.

I agree that the rebuilding comes pretty sudden and could have been rolled out more intelligently, but I don’t want to wait any longer than I have to to see LA being rebuilt.

Is it just me or does the community grow more impatient? I didn’t hear that many complains about the lack of updates before the living story was a thing. Or maybe it’s just that all the players now notice that there isn’t much to do in PvE outside of farming gold or going for achievements. Maybe ANet will start to work on content that is challenging and fun to play for more than just the first time, instead of focussing on content that only has the notion of having new content going for it (speaking of living world). But to be honest, this text already contains too many "maybe"s to be ever be heard. But a little tip if this ever gets read by a developer: Adding a bunch of Achievents does not equate to good replayable content.

Julie Yann.5379:

Wuselknusel.4082:

What if they just leave it as it is?

Then guardians will have to keep being forced to look at something that isn’t nneeded and not wanted.

I could go full Vayne mode on that comment, but I’ll leave it as it is.

You want to know what I want to see? I want to see the systems they themselves have implemented brought to the next level.

I want them to rework the maps and add events and event-chains. This will not be done in one or two weeks, probably not even in one or two months. But it would finally give us a reason to do events outside of just the rewards we get from doing the events.

Right now the most event mechanics are dead simple and have no story relevance. That should be changed.

On each map, there should be multiple layers of event-chains. Event-chains should influence each other, the failure of one event-chain should prohibit the progression of another event-chain (think about Snowden Drifts. One event-chain dealing with Svanir, one dealing with an escort mission through the whole map. If the Svanir manage to destory the bridge in the middle the other event-chain can’t progress).

Each layer should contain two event-chains. One that offensive chain and one defensive chain. As just described, those layers should also interact with each other.

Each chain should focus on a specific part, so you can grow accustomed to the introduced characters and care about the. There are two main crucial points you need to keep in mind when designing this chain.
- It mustn’t look silly
- It mustn’t be redundant
The first point is easy to explain. If a character you protect says that this will be a dangerous fight, but only very few mobs ever attack you or the mobs are too easy to kill or the mobs spawn in too long intervals, the character and the story associated with them will look silly. You need to avoid that at any cost. It is better to have one eventchain fail more often than not, than to have too easy chains and the players just don’t care about them, like it is currently. NPCs should be distinct and not generic, they should not use generic one-liners.
Tuhe next point isn’t hard to understand either. Take the event in Dredgehaunt Cliffs near the entrance to Hoelbrak. This event, where you have to beat up the svanir and then save him respawns roughly every 10 to 15 minutes. This is utterly disappointing from a story perspective.
Event-chains need to be very long, ergo, have to contain a lot of events.

Let’s talk about the offensive and defensive event-chains. Each map has one or more main “villians” associated to them. The main event-chain, which should be the the most complex event-chain and usually end with a huge endboss (you could tie all current worldbosses into those event-chains). To not invalidate the progress players have made during those event-chains, an defensive event-chain should start a while (maybe minutes, maybe hours) after the offensive event-chain has finished. During this event-chain the allied forces gat slowly pushed back while it is the main task of the players to prevent casualties and to keep the escape route open and secured.
To further enhance the investment of the players in those chains, the characters should recognize the player and react differently based on how often the player has helped to push the event-chain. (Please let it be more variety than just “did or did not help during this chain atleast once”).

At last, the rewards have to be adjusted too.
The event-chains require hugge time investments and favor those more, who helped to push the entire chain. It should also incetivice to push event-chains that are not as popular as other chains. At last, worldboss rewards have to be buffed significantly for those who helped pushing the event, since worldbosses should be tied to chains.
There should be also local rewards, based on the area you are in, who you’ve helped and who you fought against. These rewards should also (and definitely) contain unique skins you can only get through those event-chains.

That is my idea on how this game, especially open world PvE can be made more fun to play.

tl;dr Read the whole post kitten, this is how GW2 should have been from the beginning.