Guild Wars 2

Xeph.4513:

Chaosky.5276:

Xeph.4513:

Both the mesmer GS auto attack and Ele scepter do significant damage; its the first time I have seen someone claim otherwise, they may not be the best auto attacks in the game but they are far from being weak.

Ele and Mesmer already deal a large amount of aoe damage, I never understood why they should get a buff to their aoe damage if its already border line op.

Also please don’t try and compare a range skill to a melee auto attack.

I can’t speak for Spatial Surge, but you do realize that Arc Lightning only hits for about 1.8k over 3 1/2 seconds with the standard build, right? That’s also only if you even channel it for that long, which you won’t, because you need to switch to other attunements to use other skills and keep fury up. That’s not even considering that the scepter’s fire skills are absurdly easy to dodge, and that the earth attunement lacks offense.

I’m not saying that I want more AoE damage – I actually want less so that our ranged single-target capability can be improved – but the elementalist’s scepter is not an effective weapon for ranged damage as-is.

http://www.twitch.tv/phantaram/c/1932538

You can see Arc, doing over 3k in the video (with about 1 crit in the channel), I have also had it do over 4k; just because it doesn’t do damage in a bunker spec doesn’t mean that the spell is weak, you can also use lightning strike and a blind without breaking it channel.

You do realize that’s 3-4k in a 3 second span? In a single melee strike an axe warrior can do more than that, and even my mesmer’s melee chain 3rd step does that number and removes a boon.

Acandis.3250:

Jax.5261:

I think quickness kind of needed a nerf, most of it was telegraphed completely and when burnt it meant you gained the advantage if you kept majority of your hp.
But they definitely need to improve the other skills so that the classes still retain the dps.

I’ve already expressed I didn’t think quickness needed a nerf in SPvP, I think the only thing this nerf has accomplished is making Eles even harder to kill.

Quickness didn’t kill eles nearly as well as a good, consistent chain of boonstripping did.

I love how you say rangers were unfair with quicjkness when it was the only period of time where they did any form of burst that other classes didn’t need quickness for, and the only reason rangers exist in spvp is because you have to stand on their traps when they throw it at a circle.

Introduce any format besides conquest and rangers go in the garbage bin as they were only decent at debunkering/roaming and haste stomping.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Rhysati.4932:

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Nachtz.4930:

Isaac.6041:

Did quickness nerf affect PVE bosses too?

Logically, they should hurt less now. Hopefully, the nerf wasn’t one-sided and it should make bosses less deadly too.

Specifically, I remember the CoF p1 boss using quickness. Does he seem to hurt less now?

I did not notice any difference, but it’s more a feeling that some real calculations on the damages I have taken.

TheBlackLeech.9360:

Isaac.6041:

Did quickness nerf affect PVE bosses too?

Logically, they should hurt less now. Hopefully, the nerf wasn’t one-sided and it should make bosses less deadly too.

Specifically, I remember the CoF p1 boss using quickness. Does he seem to hurt less now?

I don’t think we have been fighting the same Cof Path 1 boss.

The first boss uses quickness

You mean the first champion you encounter in path 1?

Legendary Searing Effigy = boss
Champion Slave Driver =/= boss

Slave Driver drops boss loot when you kill him. So…yes, he’s a boss.

define boss loot.

The silver reward dropped by all bosses plus the bag of wondrous goods. Don’t be dense.

It’s a boss for all intents and purposes.

So scepter elementalists never needed a buff? You do realize spatial surge and especially arc lightning are paltry damage in most circumstances, and that many mesmers don’t even run greatsword?

The change to arc lightning in particular changed nothing. It does terrible damage like all of the scepter’s autoattacks. It does in a 3 second channel what an instant melee strike does while cleaving.

But since apparently it’s a slight buff to weak weapons of dominant classes, it’s an unnecessary buff?

Beeca.9467:

Well how else are they suppose to make money as it has no monthly charge not that i bought any but just saying

$15 monthly subscription.

vs

~$15-20 dollars for enough keys to do 47 attempts (he got none at 40)

then a couple more bucks on fine transmutation stones unless you care to farm the gold at the very high gem prices.

and a couple on more money on total makeover/hairstyle kits. WoW gives you a haircut for about, what 3 gold? That’s less than half of a low lv daily quest gold reward.

F2P games always end up being more expensive because they suckerpunch people into thinking everything they’re given is free while all the grinds are actually worse enough to encourage people to exchange gems for gold or use exploits in dungeons to make money.

It’s also why they are so harsh toward their competitors, the gold sellers. Subscription games fear less of gold sellers because most subscription games are not balanced around the economy — WoW never has drops costing the same proportion as precursors, and the prestige items (armor/weapons) outside trading card game mounts are not tradable. Instead on GW2, every major decision you see is carefully tailored for the economy like the rare loot nerf from open world chests — they don’t want too many people getting what they need for cheap because then they don’t buy gems and exchange it for those 250 ectoplasms they need to make an ascended infused backpiece.

Archaon.6245:

Xsorus.2507:

Archaon.6245:

Wanderer.5471:

Archaon.6245:

kaplis.7195:

Should this be acceptable? Especially when the ranger can build super tanky and remove all the risk that glass cannons should have.

Pets going backstab now? Can we please drop our glass thief a take a pet instead? It deals same dmg, survives more and can get stealthed ppl…oh, and we don’t need to revive him every 30 secs…you just aim and forget…accordingly with ranger’s high skill cap..

1. this is 1 ability on a 20 second CD, compared to the plethora of skills thieves have which do as much dmg
2. of course thieves are far more durable even with 30 in BM
3. Birds can’t stealth, one cat can for around 10% of the time, but can’t do such high bursts.
4. oh and a thief can’t be countered by running in a circle or casually dodging ~ every 5 seconds. I could go on…

This would probably sound weird to you…but…do you know that behind those pets there’s also a ranger spamming traps everywhere? I know that you can be as bad as you want and those pets can still kill stuff for you but, we’re talkin’ about a pet…wtf at the moment, after this patch, pets alone are better than warriors…thx god those terrible pew pew noobs (Even worse than hs spammers) have troubles with quickness nerf too…at least they did something about that bs spec..quickness and just let autoattack go 24/7….just….lol

Hmm..

Is this the Mythical 30 Skirmishing/30 Wilderness/30 Beastmaster with i’m guessing that was Greatsword/Sickem/3 Traps/Signet of the Hunt and/or Signet of the Wild

Cause Beastmaster build is different from Trap Build.

You got killed by a Beastmaster, judging by what you were hit for, I’m guessing you were glass cannon with zero toughness.

Dps pet’s dmg is roughly the same for every spec…you can run whatever you want you can always have a stupid cat or something doing dps for you, even if you run bunker…pocket warrior on demand? I want a pet too with my guardian…dear j sharp can i have a little monkey killing ppl for me while i’m bunkering? Would be awesome… <3<3

Oh well nwm…you just can’t get the point….

No. DPS is not about the same. However many points you have invested on BM matters. Whether you have the 30% crit dmg bonus for pets matters. Whether you have Signet of the Wild and Sic Em matters.

The bird simply does not hit for those numbers without heavy stacking of modifiers. My bird on my knight gear ranger at best crits for 4-5k normally unbuffed. You have to majorly pump it up with cooldowns to get that number.

Which, by the way, a mesmer can do every 12 seconds or a thief every time he stealths or a warrior every 8 seconds. While it takes the ranger 120+ second cooldowns stacking to do.

faeral.7120:

considering they just buffed white raven so we can have legit double blinding slash burst, i’d presume ANet says this is working as intended.

mesmer clones were considered OP at first until ppl learned to play around them. ranger pets require the same attention.

( that being said, double raven is pretty strong. ppl will have to adjust to it like 100b if the build becomes more popular )

The cooldowns are linked. Just like how you can’t double daze with black and pink moa, you can’t use blinding slash twice with double ravens.

The only bad PvE classes are necros and rangers. The rest can get by pretty well, although the engineer is just overshadowed in utility and everyone else is overshadowed by the warrior for speed runs.

Mesmers have to trait into multiple lines to stack confusion and have to use specific utilities.

All the engineer needs is Pry Bar and pistol mainhand, which both last longer on their confusion application and apply more confusion/damage individually.

Which is kind of funny since you’d expect confusion to be the mesmer’s main debuff.

Sorry I don’t want to spend 1.5 hours in Arah for the same reward of a 25 min cof/coe (non-speed) run.

So, we skip.

obal.3218:

Kirbyprime.2645:

Ummm…. not to downplay your argument, but given that the greatest issue in FOTM is the reliance on projectile reflect / null; Wouldn’t you being a guardian completely invalidate your argument that you don’t need X comp for Y.

Three of the most useful areas of fractals for a guardian are ones listed too. I don’t get the argument either. Theives are useful in a bunch of the fractals too which I guess he doesn’t realize either. Wait until you get to 40s and you will see being able to dodge is more important than your class, but having some professions with block/absorb projectiles that can dodge makes things easier.

Perfect fractal group compostion: One or more guadian/mesmer/ele/theif with reflect/absorb projectile skills that can dodge + any other professions that can dodge = win. That is pretty much the composition of every random fractal group you will get except the dodge part varies.

Thieves have projectile destruction as well, in addition to dagger storm…

Mesmer/guardian/ele/thief/warrior are your good fractal classes. Eles just need to get our of their crappy staff phase — dagger dagger or dagger/focus is supremely better for burst aoe, cc, and utility. Everything staff does, dagger/x can do immediately and with more mobility.

After the Braham scene. She had clarification text I was about to read, and she walks out….

Pets will still get 3-shot at 30-40+ levels. The problem wasn’t the agony, it was the damage intake from cleaving mobs.

Maul will not make up for the difference in sustained DPS from autoattack.

Sword is still better DPS wise.

It’s good to know indestructible, portable stat sticks with unique group buffs nobody else brings were buffed, while traits that boost groups still only stay at +70 a stat.

The ranger’s output actually went down this patch since pet swapping for quickness was our only real burst and that was halved.

Jesus, yet another game that applies Blanket nerfs as if all classes were affected equally.

It does crap damage and doesn’t offer utility that an elementalist or guardian can’t do better.

You can spec for prot on wells, but a guardian can do the same effect at 100% uptime, and an elementalist can do it with a single trait at higher uptime and no sacrifice of utility slots.

Most importantly, the staff is not an optional ranged weapon. It’s your one and only aoe weapon. Necro melee doesn’t cleave like the rest of the classes.

Patch 5.3, read the notes.

Resilience didn’t kill WoW, wth are you talking about. Now this patch people will have a 65% baseline damage reduction in PvP. The problem with WoW has always been the competition between healing and burst. If healers are able to reset bars constantly, then whichever team has more healers tends to have the upper hand. If it’s too weak, people just stack on burst. It’s a very tenuous balance, but far better than the current gw2 pvp where you just tunnel aoe into a point and do a finisher race for who can stomp before the other.

Empiren.6401:

Zenith.7301:

If a thief doesn’t want to die, he won’t die.

All he needs to do is get you to blow your ver long cd stun breakers, and reset the fight and come back at you once your stun breaker is gone.

Hell, a sword/dagger stunlock thief in wvw is a nightmare. He can pretty much spam daze and you’ll need to try to deny him your back so he can’t, but many thieves have increased movement speed in stealth to help with that.

The problem with attrition thieves is that they can reset fights at will.

What necro actually carries stun breakers though/?? The cooldowns are way too long for any reliable use.
————————-
WvW, and i’ll repeat myself for the 100th time : Classes are not going to be balanced.

The crit damage and burst capabilities are simply too high at this moment in the game.
————————

The necro that doesn’t want to die to a competent opponent? Wasting your death shroud on a basilisk venom when you could break it and dodge is such a foolish decision.

Also, golem charge won’t affect any properly traited thief. Most wvw thieves carry the traits that when they’re cc’d they shadow step away and when hitting low health apply blinding powder, in addition to the stunbreak utility they bring.

The best tool against thieves is a root, but Dark Pact has such an obvious cast time most thieves will dodge it.

Sustained damage, mainhand sword>>>>>greatsword.

The only cleave missing is on the 2nd part of the chain, but the attacks on the sword hit both harder and quicker than the greatsword, so over time the difference isn’t much on groups and single target the difference is significant.

If a thief doesn’t want to die, he won’t die.

All he needs to do is get you to blow your ver long cd stun breakers, and reset the fight and come back at you once your stun breaker is gone.

Hell, a sword/dagger stunlock thief in wvw is a nightmare. He can pretty much spam daze and you’ll need to try to deny him your back so he can’t, but many thieves have increased movement speed in stealth to help with that.

The problem with attrition thieves is that they can reset fights at will.

Geshque.1326:

It’s always the easiest way to give up and roll to other professions. And then the game will consist only of Warriors and Guardians. Yes, it may be true if you enjoy the numbers under mobs’ heads. But if you dig deeper into the mechanics and you enjoy something slightly more difficult than clicking one button – just stick with Ranger and resist the temptation to play other classes cause that will just signal your loss.

LOL what is difficult about ranger? The weapons are simple, and 1/3 to 1/2 of your damage is delivered automatically by AI. If you think babysitting a pet makes the class more challenging than a well played elementalist or engineer, I don’t know what to tell you. Even a hammer guardian takes finesse to play to control mobs properly.

KensaiZen.3740:

Which class can bring 60 minutes of protection and 10% dmg boost AND burning on attack whilst specing for Damage? not to mention the massive healing from healing spring and pets.

That right there, is a support style that requires NO TRAITS. Which class can do that?

Let me tell you a simple combo that you may want to use. Use the torch 5, then use LB2 and fire into a group of people. Make sure you have piercing arrow and eagle eye traited. Watch the numbers each shot adds burning duration. Same with other combo fields.

You can build however you want and still be able to use most of the utilities without reduction. You can change skills and play style at will mid way through dungeons. Without having to be forced into 1 build.

Rangers are so versatile. Not all people who play them are. This is the issue.

60 minutes? You do realize that the effects have a 10 second internal cooldowns, the prot buff is 3 seconds long every 10 seconds, except it’s less because it’s a 35% proc chance, so it won’t be immediately up after the internal cooldown ends.

The prot uptime is not even close to 30% of the time. A hammer guardian can permanently keep protection on his melee with larger symbols. An elementalist gives his group 5 seconds of protection every 10 seconds he switches to earth attunement. Without using up utility skills.

You go make a video of the spirits staying up in high level fractals and then we’ll talk. You are so full of it.

Leo G.4501:

Zenith.7301:

Blurred Frenzy is 2 seconds and hits for around the same, has shorter range, and doesn’t even heal allies.

It’s that simple, the DPS of cone of cold is that much better than Rapid Fire, while being aoe and having a healing component.

No, blurred frenzy does quite a bit more damage. I don’t even know why you’re mentioning mesmer skills in comparison to Cone of Cold. They aren’t the same thing.

But then I guess if you’re going with the sheep approach of listening and blindly following what a mass says, why not just ask them? As them which is better, Cone of Cold or Rapid Fire. AFAICS, you’re just blinded by bias and that whatever aspect of Ranger you hand pick, it has to be worse than something else (and completely dismiss the fact you’re hand picking what you’re comparing to from a profession that has the best of a particular type of skill).

There’s a reason I don’t listen to stuff like that. It has little to no context, sidesteps a football field’s worth of circumstances and justifies its stance with “because everyone agrees” without pointing to how they came to that conclusion.

Keep calling your opinions facts however much you want, but when the consensus runs against you, all this bs you’re spewing will not appeal to people. Because warriors didn’t just become popular due to some post on a forum.

Um, you’re the one calling your opinions facts (as well as a few other trolls here). While Warriors may have become popular due to trials and testing, that doesn’t mean Rangers became unpopular for the same reason. I know it must be hard to wrap your head around such a complex concept but give it a shot. The likelihood Ranger stigma will change is very little, and the only thing I could see changing it is improvements to the profession, not because it currently can’t perform at all but so that players will push aside their previous misconceptions and give the profession another try.

But feel free to answer the question as to ranger utility being comparable, and do show the math about condition damage specs outperforming knight and berserker stat combos. So far you just make a statement and expect people to take you on your word just because you contradicted the majority of posters.

I’ll make a list of some of the things you side-stepped here:
-You’ve jumped around to so many professions to badmouth Ranger utility. From guardians to elementalist, warrior to mesmer and so forth.
-I’m not expecting anyone to take my word for anything, I’d rather you question your own concepts about the game as a whole.
-You must think a condition spec cannot do 2-3k auto attacks with 130+ bleed per stack and 1k+ burn every second.

All that hot air has got to carry about a city worth of people on a balloon ride.

Yes, everyone else is a sheep and you’re the erudite. I’m done with you avoiding to discuss ranger utility other than “we do both pretty good at the same time while other classes do not”.

I’ve ran fractal 60+ as a berserker ele with only 1k toughness. Berserker is fine in PvE. With that said, you will still spec into 20 water and 20 arcane for a very simple reason — boon duration provides a greater DPS return with might stacking and fury uptime, the crit on vigor trait is pretty much mandatory in PvE for extra dodges, and water provides you an invaluable group heal/condi removal. 30 points go into air for the crit dmg bonus.

Bunker builds are only necessary for PvP for a very simple reason — ele burst is long cooldown based, and most classes have stalling cooldowns like invulnerability or stealth to waste your burst cooldowns and then cut you down.

My mesmer gets 12 sec cd shatters and similarly short cd blurred frenzy. The thief really has no cd on his burst.

My ele has a 45 sec cd on Fire Grab, a 30 sec cd on arcane wave, and a 20 sec cd on arcane missile. Burning Speed is easy to dodge and at best hits for 4k against a player with any toughness.

Landing burst as an ele is much harder than a mesmer or a thief that with 1-2 button presses do the spike damage it takes an ele 4-5 different button presses to do.

Chopps.5047:

That’s news to me after 300 dungeon runs (at least) on ranger, dungeon master before the simin nerf (used to be a hard DPS check now it’s cheesy easy) in a group made up of engineer, ranger, elementalist, warrior, and guardian, and now playing high level FOTM. Read my post history to learn about my dungeon build.

Regardig ranger brings nothing to the table: group wide stun break / condition removal of ALL conditions in Signet of Renewal, search and reacue for when PUGs go sour, healing spring—the best water field in the game—up literally 50% of the time with blast finisher AoE heal with drakes on swap for tons of health to the whole party…you guys need to open your minds a little and forget this profession vs profession nonsense.

Who needs group stun break (everyone already brings their own)? Guardian does that+stability and retal on a 30 sec cd. Search and rescue doesn’t work half the time — on Lupicus the pet will go rez the npc even if the dead players is next to you and your pet and you have him targeted.

How long do you need a water field? If your group is worrying too much about damage it’s because it’s not killing fast enough. What’s your highest lv fractal?

You’re not the only one who’s had to beat simin prenerf. We’ve all done it — doesn’t make you special.

Geoffroy.3685:

I’ll summarize what I’ve already said in similar threads here. The so called OP team of zerker war / guard / mesmer is only OP at speed running content in a highly organized group dedicated to this kind of gameplay.

The 4 zerkers war + 1 mesmer is only viable at speed farming easy content such as the popular CoF1 farming spot.

Don’t worry about playing an ele, you’ll be welcome in most Pugs anyway, and if a group insist on kicking you out, don’t worry either, take the next one, you won’t be missing anything for avoiding these parties.

You can run high level fractals fine with 4 zerker warriors and 1 mesmer…. stop misleading people. The biggest factor to dying is not dodging at the right times and not coordinating abilities/aoe.

My only complaint with that troll was the outdated circle. I had only fought him pre-change, so I was surprised when I got out of the red circle and received a shockwave to the face regardless, very misleading.

Other than that, yes, the daze is annoying, but it’s a lot better than his previous hard hitting melee with 6 bleed stacks each that overly punished melee. His ranged daze doesn’t let range just kite him peacefully, and the fight is more balanced for it.

Also, the fears you deal with by being coordinated and using condi removal at the right time. If you have an ele, all you need to do is having switch to water attunement when fear begins and his aoe condi removal from the switch should break the fear. Same for warrior Shake It Off.

Urxx.6840:

You do have an indication in which phase she is: after the first time she disappears the fight is in phase 2. And of course when she reappers she will be above 50% health, since she disappeared at 50% and you can be as quick as you want but she will regen a bit.

Now if she disappears every time she goes down to 50% instead of being on a timer, it’s impossible to kill her, time warp or not.

Also, it’s been aknowledged by the Devs this is indeed a bug:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Simin-is-a-DPS-check/1649696

So please don’t try and teach how to do Simin because that is off-topic.

No. I did this path last week. You just need big burst when she reappears so you’ve dipped her low enough before her 50% invuln animation sets in.

Our fight kept reseting at 50% because I brought a ranger. I switched to my mesmer main, and popped a time warp. Between me and the warriors we did a spike that even as she went into stealth at 50 we had dipped her below that before invuln kicked in, and we ran sparks quick enough to get her to not stealth back above 50.

You just need a big push. So the fight is still a DPS/burst check regardless of the intentions.

Zerker warriors runs fine everywhere. Did a lv62 fractal today with 2 and they did just fine — so did my berserker ele that had 4k less HP than them and cloth armor.

Yeah, we had a Guardian. But at that level the damage is so absurd that you’re better off just tunneling damage and CC on groups of mobs instead of trying to mitigate it, because even a Guardian won’t be able to tank for long.

Berserker or a mix of Knight+ Valkyrie is about the best stat set you can bring to any encounter because the longer you take to kill mobs the more likely you are to wipe.

This game has no real healer that can reset HP bars for long periods of time, so it’s not a game built around outlasting veterans that have more HP and armor than all of you and hit you for 1/3 of your HP. You just have to blow them up with burst and CC.

Just try and run a full soldier or toughness/condi build on high lv fractal and see how much less efficient it is.

The biggest mitigation you have in this game is called dodge and reflection. Especially dodge. With vigor on crit it will provide far more mitigated damage than anything else.

Leo G.4501:

Zenith.7301:

Cone of Cold is bad damage, like 5k conal aoe damage plus the healing (around 1.2k, on a low cd) is bad! What a sad troll.

Ice Spike is not instant because it crits for 5k and applies 5 vulnerability, that’s why.

You’re exaggerating your numbers. In and of itself, there’s nothing wrong with stretching numbers because of differing builds and boons, but statements made without context like this can be viewed as lies. So stop lying.

I generally have a more offensive focused build on my elementalist with 95% crit damage and I’m likely hitting for upwards of 4k when everything crits and no might stacks/vulnerability…but I’m not specc’ed to heal. It will not heal for 1.2k as its base heal is only 740. Mines heals for 850. Also, it has a cast time of nearly 3 seconds. Even 7k damage on that cast isn’t huge.

And while Ice Spike can crit for quite high in a large AoE…it has a long delay (longer than 3 seconds).

But I’m the one who doesn’t understand how mesmers work, when my main is one, and I certainly don’t get asked to groups for restorative mantras. I get asked to groups for the 6-7k damage berserkers, 10k shatters, feedback, null field, and time warp. Occasionally the stealth utilities.

So keep talking, but until you show us a video of yourself doing 48+ as a ranger useful to your group in a way other classes are not you can shut up. Because so far I’ve yet to hear your PvE qualifications such as fractal level playing experience instead of you dodging the issue of Ranger utility. And communities rarely discriminate without reason despite what white knights like you would say.

I guess ‘saying’ you do stuff is considered qualifications? Saying what you main while spewing nonsense about other professions is the point of contention here, sir. And there is a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooong (loooOOOOOOooOOonnng) history of communities discriminating for no reason or for little reason to justify their behavior. Label me with whatever TVtropes title you want, doesn’t change these facts.

Nike.2631:

While I enjoy my Ranger and do Dungeons with it, I have no doubt I’m having to work harder and be far more cunning to contribute as much with my Ranger as I do with my Warrior or Guardian. There is nothing relaxed about optimal Ranger play – if you aren’t lining up 2-3 targets for piercing shots every second there is more than 1 enemy on the field, you aren’t doing close to enough damage. Shortbow 1 is tracer fire – it lets you know you are lined up so you can put the 2, 4, and 5 down range when they will hit several targets.

This, I can see. The same rings true for Elementalist or Mesmer although those professions work different niches from the other professions discussed (especially the Warrior/Guardian). Although it’s likely that one can even work harder and still get less performance from Ranger comparatively, I still think much of what has been said about the profession is overstated, just like players will overstate their personal performance on other professions.

110% crit damage with sigil of life….standard 30/0/20/20 spec. You know nothing about ele it’s not an exaggeration. You say it’s a 3 second skill as if that was bad. Blurred Frenzy is 2 seconds and hits for around the same, has shorter range, and doesn’t even heal allies.

It’s that simple, the DPS of cone of cold is that much better than Rapid Fire, while being aoe and having a healing component.

Keep calling your opinions facts however much you want, but when the consensus runs against you, all this bs you’re spewing will not appeal to people. Because warriors didn’t just become popular due to some post on a forum.

People went out, tested them, and liked the results. And similarly, the ranger was tested, and people didn’t like the results nearly as much.

But feel free to answer the question as to ranger utility being comparable, and do show the math about condition damage specs outperforming knight and berserker stat combos. So far you just make a statement and expect people to take you on your word just because you contradicted the majority of posters.

The story in this game:

a) You don’t need it for your legendary.

b) You don’t need it for any skin, since the Pact weapons are tradeable, and tbh the skins themselves aren’t that impressive.

c) Pretty much all of the endgame goals are removed from the story. What I did on a heart on one map, or how I moved the war effort has no bearing on me. Endgame PvE revolves around farming gold for your legendary, fractals, or explorables. You never hear from Destiny’s Edge again, and quite frankjly to hear the Priest of Grenth in explorable Arah p4 say “no one dare stand against Zhaitan” when Zhaitan is already dead by then hurts my soul.

d) I’m actually surprised that the home instance was just abandoned. I get a refugee’s drawing from this living story, and it’s a consumable for karma instead of a drawing you could see appear on your home instance. I thought the entire point of the home instance was to add trophies and keep track of what you accomplished in the game. Yet, it’s barren.

e) Why did you need to create more characters for the living story when there are plenty you have not revisited? For the sylvari, those twins or pretty much the NPC’s/tribes from the racial and order storylines could have been brought back. Your order members could have continued to be a presence.

f) Orders don’t matter. They each had a theory about dragons, such as putting dragons to sleep like the Order of Whispers, yet we never got the question of the dragons answered or explored — Zhaitan died to the same cannon regardless of what order you were.

Why label this game an mmoRPg when the RP part is going to be put in the dustbin? Why not just a mmog if the story is so unimportant/optional?

Why do we have races if we’re not going to explore their cultural distinctions in their storylines, and instead after lv20 we start getting the same story regardless of who you are? Creating a unified front does not mean you have to lose the nuance of your racial and order choices and how they impact your perspective and actions on the world.

Leo G.4501:

Zenith.7301:

But hey, popping 3 shouts for 4k health when someone needs it immediately, because they are instant, and on top provide other benefits is “overestimating” value.

Yeah, it is overestimating. I’m glad you finally understand. Using shouts for heals diminishes their other uses, like being a stun breaker or to keep perma fury going. At the same time you understate build options you obviously know nothing about. You don’t know how Restorative Mantras work, what makes any of us think you’re competent with Ranger?

Zenith.7301:

By all means, feel free to offer that demand for “heal” mesmers. Saying that an elementalist can’t do damage while healing is the stupidest thing I have heard so far, considering their group heals come from traits that switch into water attunement, that their heal abilities such as Cone of Cold and Ice Spike do substantial damage, and that all of these are instant and so is switching back to a damaging attunement.

Cone of Cold doesn’t do substantial damage although it does decent damage but it also doesn’t heal for much either. Neither that nor Ice Spike are instant either. Swapping attunements isn’t “doing damage while healing” since the act of swapping is instant. It’s the same as pressing a heal button.

But now I think I’ve talked you into a corner. Now you’re just trash talking. It’s all beside the point though, I’m confident Rangers will be improved over time. What they may lack in optimization now will be compensated for as changes roll out. Specifically aiming trash talk at the specific supportive skills of Ranger while pointing at 3 different professions rather underminds the argument as no profession is really going to be outperforming or even evenly performing 3 professions all the time.

Cone of Cold is bad damage, like 5k conal aoe damage plus the healing (around 1.2k, on a low cd) is bad! What a sad troll.

Ice Spike is not instant because it crits for 5k and applies 5 vulnerability, that’s why.

But I’m the one who doesn’t understand how mesmers work, when my main is one, and I certainly don’t get asked to groups for restorative mantras. I get asked to groups for the 6-7k damage berserkers, 10k shatters, feedback, null field, and time warp. Occasionally the stealth utilities.

So keep talking, but until you show us a video of yourself doing 48+ as a ranger useful to your group in a way other classes are not you can shut up. Because so far I’ve yet to hear your PvE qualifications such as fractal level playing experience instead of you dodging the issue of Ranger utility. And communities rarely discriminate without reason despite what white knights like you would say.

Have you guys considered removing the 45 sec cd on pet death? The experience in dungeons would be much less aggravating if we didn’t have to endure almost a minute of halved damage.

I mean, the whole point of the 15 second swap cd is as a roundabout way of providing pets the heal they don’t have so the ranger doesn’t have to waste his.

I just don’t see the point in the 45 second cd.

Also, why not have the attribute bonuses given by the other trait trees apply to the pet in addition to food? You could have the crit damage bonus line give the pet 80% crit dmg bonus so that with the 30% extra crit trait the pet can have 110% crit damage bonus just like a berserker geared player would.

The problem is that the pet is a considerable proportion of the player’s damage that doesn’t benefit from all these sources players benefit from, and it’s also part of the reason why this class falls behind other classes who get the full benefit of their gear (for other classes, their gears applies the bonus to 100% of their damage, not 50-60% of it like the ranger).

Damage difference between pets is huge as well. Moas and bears do significantly less damage than other pets. I can sort of see why on the bear, because he’s much tankier so he shouldn’t be hitting like a jaguar, but in the case of moas their damage is mediocre and the utility offered in a couple of vulnerability stacks and a high cd shout heal doesn’t compensate.

Also, the moa’s chain peck attack, for example, has them stand still so they often miss on a moving target.

LOL, because FGJ and Shake It Off are not popular dungeon/fractal utilities. Giving a group fury and aoe condition removal+ a heal is sooooooo bad. So much worse than cycling a useless mantra for 2 seconds just to heal for 3k and foregoing 3k autoattack crits in the process.

But hey, popping 3 shouts for 4k health when someone needs it immediately, because they are instant, and on top provide other benefits is “overestimating” value. Nothing to see in fury and 3 stacks of might, 10% extra damage for the group, and condition removal is too costly.

Keep peddling that tune that in order to use healing shouts a warrior needs to spec into healing power. People see it for what it is. It shows on LFG posts, alongside demands for Guardians.

By all means, feel free to offer that demand for “heal” mesmers. Saying that an elementalist can’t do damage while healing is the stupidest thing I have heard so far, considering their group heals come from traits that switch into water attunement, that their heal abilities such as Cone of Cold and Ice Spike do substantial damage, and that all of these are instant and so is switching back to a damaging attunement.

Hell, Guardian’s Altruistic Healing builds with hammer actually only function when the Guardian is dishing damage lol.

What did the Ranger bring again? Oh, a 30 sec cd water field with periodic condition removal, how unique. The end.

Leo G.4501:

Zenith.7301:

Mantra of Pain does less damage than your melee autoattack. It’s a waste of a slot.

It’s also a 2sec recharging mantra that can heal in an AoE for over 3k health without devoting anything to healing power.

I’m even appalled that you would suggest the staff as a PvE weapon. Its damage is horrendous in dungeons.

Staff = clones can shatter before being destroyed without investing in toughness or devoting traits/utilities to heartier illusions.

I also like how you completely lost track of the conversation.

When did we start talking about DPS mesmers? We’re talking about healing mesmers. Staff is a very good weapon in PvE for it’s overall utility. Are you arguing against that?

In full berserker a shout warrior will still heal for around 4k total, remove conditions, and offer boons like long duration fury to his party while doing substantial damage. Even in knights gear he’ll be outdamaging most specs that aren’t a thief.

Again, that’s sacrificing utility slots, runes and likely stats for healing. I’ve no doubt a warrior twinked out to heal for more than 2k per shout can still deal damage, but you overestimate the output if you think you can outdamage a decent condition warrior build or even a ranger pumping out consistent damage. Believe me, I’ve ran healing shout warriors and regen banner warriors in dungeons. Even in zerker gear, it’s tough making up that gap in damage that a non-support can do.

You might have a perfectly balanced and geared out (likely ascended) healing shout warrior build, but your insistence it still does competitive damage to a condition build (scoring 2k crits with 120+ bleeds and nearly 1k burns a tick) make me leery to take your word for it that it will outdamage a balanced elementalist build, a damage focused ranger build, etc.

Your claims are just way to dramatic to bother trusting.

A 2 sec recharge that heals for 2k, not 3k. 2 secs of doing nothing but casting the ability, because there’s this thing called opportunity cost. And that’s coming at the cost of an ethereal field/group condi/boon removal, Decoy (stunbreaker/safe rez), or the critical utility of reflection (and confusion for projectiles).

There is nothing valuable in a healing mesmer. An elementalist can do the job better while not gutting his damage in the process.

DPS is the premium of this game. You don’t have it in grawl shaman 48 fractal? You wipe. Don’t have it for cliffside fractal? Expect to die a lot. Don’t have it for mossman? Expect a 20 minute fight.

Quite frankly your responses strike me as ignorant and iconic of people who don’t give a kitten about efficiency. A warrior doesn’t need to build for healing power to heal substantially — you’re lying. Healing power scales horribly as a stat to begin with.

It’s very simple. You bring the guardians for reflection/group mitigation/healing. You bring elementalists for group mitigation/fields/aoe/control, and you bring warriors for their damage. Switch inb a thief for the dredge fractal to shadow refuge the panel. A mesmer is brought for deflection and time warp alongside 3rd best dps after warrior and thief.

There is no reason besides bringing guardian reflection skills to replace a DPS spec with a support spec — it’s just inefficient.

The Attack of Opportunity granted to your pet by this trait replaces, and is replaced by, the Attack of of Opportunity granted by Hilt Bash and by Signet of the Hunt, according to which is applied last. They do not stack.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Moment_of_Clarity

The trait would be much better if it stacked and the daze/stun duration was increased by 100%

Taran Redleaf.7912:

So, if pets are supposed to do roughly 30-40% of the Ranger’s damage, then Ranger GS is working like its supposed to… about 30-40% less damage than a Warrior with no pet. Correct?

That’s assuming the pet actually makes up for that 30-40% damage gap, and burst.

It’s not just about sustained damage. The ability to burst in pve and pvp environments is very important. Grawl shaman fractal for example it is key that you bring burst for elementals.

And if you want a pet that survives in most dungeons, cats ad birds will not be it, so you’ll never be at peak DPS unlike a warrior.

Also, cleaving only happens for drakes, and the projectiles of ranged pets are painfully slow.

You also need to be able to calculate the impact of food buffs/shaperning stones. For any additional stats you get, a hefty source of your damage does not benefit from it, while the warrior does.

It’s why a warrior can 100b for 30k AoE damage, and you will never see any class, let alone the ranger come remotely close to that burst.

It’s also easy to frame 100b as only slightly better than autoattacks, when it isn’t used with frenzy, and particularly when we fail to discuss just how much stronger warrior atuoattacks are to begin with. The mainhand axe even has far more potent autoattacks.

With vigor on crit, Blurred Frenzy, and counterattack, the mesmer is pretty much the one melee that can stay on melee against bosses at the least risk. Stuff like Subject Alpha and the Jade Maw tentacles, you don’t even need to dodge, just weave between Blurred Frenzy and Counterattack and you’ll do good damage on top of evading damage.

The ranger greatsword and mesmer scepter block are the only weird ones that don’t do much damage.

Yes, hammer may be a control weapon, but so is the greatsword in some aspects. I feel this weapon is overshadowed outside WvW/sPvP.

I would suggest a couple of things:

- Trait support. I can only find one trait specifically for the hammer. The amount of traits supporting the greatsword is about 3.

- The single trait that supports the hammer is garbage. A 4 second chill okitten0% chance from a crit with a 45 sec ICD is just awful. Reduce the ICD to 7 seconds and make the hammer chill 100% on crit damage.

-Introduce a trait for hammer and mace that causes weakness on an opponent upon crit.

The final tweaks are to weapon abilities themselves. The third chain of the hammer needs to be much quicker and could use a damage buff. If not move that damage buff to Mighty Blow.

Zealot’s Embrace could afford to apply 5-10 stacks of vulnerability as well.

Banish would be so much better as a knockdown instead of knockback. If not, just make it a knockdown split for PvE. The last thing good for a group is a knockback. Everybody hates it because you break up the balled mobs a group just gathered to burst AoE down. It hurts your group more than it helps.

Circle of Warding could afford to apply damage to foes caught in it and heal allies in it. Or at the very least it could afford to be made a combo field.

Leo G.4501:

Zenith.7301:

Except mantras are horrible and you are either sacrificing null field/feedback/stunbreaker for it. It takes a considerable casting time — warrior shouts are instant. Oh, and most mantras outside mantra of recovery are terrible in dungeons.

You only really need 1 mantra for a mantra healing build: Mantra of Pain. You can still pick up one mantra and be judicial about the other two slots. If you need a stun breaker, Staff has one built in (pretty much).

And LOL at a ranger outDPSing a shout warrior. You put up a youtube of it and we’ll talk. A warrior even with shield/axe will outdamage anything a ranger can put out in most dungeon encounters. Testing on golems doesn’t come close to reflecting the damage of the pet in most encounters given that in Arah/fractals you can’t even run high DPS pets and the amount of time you’ll spend calling them back to you so they don’t die — cutting your damage in half.

I like how you put in those qualifiers like “in most dungeon encounters”.

I also don’t know in what world you live where a condition build will ever beat a berserker geared player in burst and sustained, let alone the stacking effectiveness of berserk vs. condition builds.

If you’re in berserker gear, then you’re not a shout heal warrior. 1.1k healing shouts is practically a waste of traits. A good condition build can come in a couple of varieties, being tanky while dishing out good condition damage or just really painful and long conditions with decent direct damage to supplement it. I’d have trouble believing a real healing shout warrior could out DPS a good condition build (as conditions serve usually as a supplement to the decent direct damage).

Mantra of Pain does less damage than your melee autoattack. It’s a waste of a slot.

I’m even appalled that you would suggest the staff as a PvE weapon. Its damage is horrendous in dungeons.

In full berserker a shout warrior will still heal for around 4k total, remove conditions, and offer boons like long duration fury to his party while doing substantial damage. Even in knights gear he’ll be outdamaging most specs that aren’t a thief.

Vayne.8563:

I wasn’t aware that a primary purpose of dungeons was to provide more story.

Different paths give different experiences to people. The dungeon physically doesn’t change, but the area you go to may, as in Twilight Arbor. The dungeons are showing what happened to that area after you did what you did in it the first time.

In AC, King Adelburn warns you there are things much worse than ghosts deeper, and those things become a problem when he’s dead. I’m not sure I need much more of a story than that.

Dungeons are supposed to be challenging play…that’s it. The place where people go with a team to challenge themselves. Sometimes this works well and sometimes not. The thing is the most popular path is CoF path 1 because it’s easiest and fastest so people farm it. The rest of the dungeons are there for tokens to get armor or weapon skins…that’s what they’re designed to do.

I don’t love the dungeons as they’re laid out, but then, the redesign of some of the bosses might help. There are dungeons I like more and dungeons I like less. But they all have the story in common. CoE is about shutting down an Inquest lab, after the inquest have been defeated. You’re fighting the experiments they left behind. Three paths, all of which lead to different challenges. I’m not sure I’m seeing a problem here.

To be sure, the Destiny’s Edge story mode dungeons were not done as well as they might have been, but having read the books, I know there’s a story there, even if they didn’t do a great job in translating that into the game. Actually the best indication of what happened is the kids on the steps in the beginning of one of the personal story missions (level 30 I believe) when you go to Lion’s Arch. Just listen to the kids and you’ll get the substance of what happened.

But once dungeon bosses become more interesting, dungeons will server the purpose for which they were designed.

What part of mmoRPg isn’t clear? RPG’s have story elements pervading them. If storytelling isn’t going to be central to what the player does, then perhaps it’s time to change the genre you define your game under?

Leo G.4501:

Zenith.7301:

Don’t be a moron. A shout healing warrior will do more support, damage, and healing than a ranger will do.

How much damage can a shout warrior do? Once one figures that out, you can compare that to the potential DPS of a ranger. There are other variables, like sustain via defense, dodging and condition removal but you can leave that out to just compare DPS and healing. Once (if) you can get DPS around a shout warrior (I don’t think it’s going to be that hard) then you can start putting heals in the Ranger to see relative effectiveness.

I would guess that a Ranger can do more DPS than a shout healing warrior if built/played right (a condition warrior can outdamage one, so don’t see why a ranger couldn’t) as the Warrior would have to sacrifice quite a bit for effective shouting (30 trait points, 2 utility slots, some healing gear, maybe even runes). If the Ranger can be built to support by simply swapping a utility swap here or there, that’s a big difference in overall build flexibility.

Pretty much every class but the mesmer and thief has a decent way of healing others.

I’ve seen mesmer mantra healing builds that heal for more than shout healing without investing in healing power gear.

Except mantras are horrible and you are either sacrificing null field/feedback/stunbreaker for it. It takes a considerable casting time — warrior shouts are instant. Oh, and most mantras outside mantra of recovery are terrible in dungeons.

And LOL at a ranger outDPSing a shout warrior. You put up a youtube of it and we’ll talk. A warrior even with shield/axe will outdamage anything a ranger can put out in most dungeon encounters. Testing on golems doesn’t come close to reflecting the damage of the pet in most encounters given that in Arah/fractals you can’t even run high DPS pets and the amount of time you’ll spend calling them back to you so they don’t die — cutting your damage in half.

I also don’t know in what world you live where a condition build will ever beat a berserker geared player in burst and sustained, let alone the stacking effectiveness of berserk vs. condition builds.

laokoko.7403:

Orion the Cursed.1206:

Warrior damage is fine… the problem is CoF is short, bridge content can be skipped, and the boss is too weak. Make it so that an average run would take 20 minutes.

actually many cof runs for me do infact take 20 minutes. The problem is it don’t help that the premade speed run group do it much faster.

and if you make the speed run group take 20 minutes, what do you think happen to other pug? make them take 1 hour?

Pretty much. If you make the dungeon longer because speed groups made of warriors and a mesmer are farming it too efficiently, you screw over everybody else.

Replace that group with one containing several necromancers or rangers or engineers or even elementalists, and you’ll see that the clear time easily goes up considerably.

It happens when one class hits for 3-5k normal autoattacks and hits spike skills for 12-30k on a very short cd while having heavy armor and the highest base HP to offset the disadvantages of berserker gear.

There’s a reason you don’t see berserker thieves speed runs even though thieves can get close to warriors in damage.

Speed run =/= 2man. You can also 2man arah and coe, even TA. You can 2man some fractals.

Efficiency is the key, and warriors easily do three times the damage of other classes. The difference in autoattacks and spike abilities between the warrior and the other classes is absurd.

It’s acceptable with the guardian because the guardian is the god of utility and control, but that isn’t the case for other classes.

Zoef.2761:

Trollhammer: U are simply not capable of making the distinction between facts and your own narrowminded opinions. Calling your opinion a fact doesn’t make it a fact. It just shows how shallow your reasoning is and how weak your arguments. That’s the reason you call your opinions “reality”, “facts” and so on.
I have already admitted that warrior has better DPS than ranger. No argument about that. Why does warrior have better DPS? Because that’s typical for warrior.
I have already admitted that guardian has better healing than ranger. No argument about that. Why does guardian have better healing? Because that’s typical for guardian. I can’t see what point you’re making by kicking in open doors.
My point is that ranger does both which makes the class a valuable supporting class. You dont seem to get that.
Btw: i got a fully geared up warrior. What exotic armour or ascended armour has got to do with reasoning in a decent way I dont know. But then again, your opinions are “facts” and you definitely dont like them to be questioned. Not a very sound base of thinking, and that’s just my opinion, not a fact.

Don’t be a moron. A shout healing warrior will do more support, damage, and healing than a ranger will do.

Pretty much every class but the mesmer and thief has a decent way of healing others.

The ranger is fun in animations and visual appeal, but as a class it doesn’t do anything that another class doesn’t do better. And hell, all you need for dungeons is raw damage and a damage soaker like guardian or bunker ele sharing boons/healing with the group.

In some cases group reflection, of which the guardian is king followed by the mesmer. The ranger doesn’t have that either. Its damage is bad, its utility is mostly selfish and what isn’t selfish is kitten

Nerf warrior damage and path farming will decrease.

Figures. You’d choose your teammate and be next to him on lupi, but the pet makes the trek to the other side of the arena for the NPC. Lovely.

Nurse.1085:

Elitejelly.7462:

I see this is a hot topic.
I agree with rangers need more attention. I always get teased because i play and enjoy my ranger. would be nice if people would welcome rangers into wvw, dungeons, etc.

Same here. Not by strangers, but by the people I play with (jokingly, not to be mean). My group of friends consist of a Guardian, Thief, Elementalist, Warrior and Mesmer so they chuckle at me when I play my Ranger. When we do group fights in WvW, we usually target the Profession’s with the least “escape/oh-crap” buttons, which is normally the Engineer/Ranger/Necro because we know we can pin them down.

My biggest problem with my Ranger is the fact that a lot of the time I get Out of Range, Miss, Obstructed for NO REASON. It’s frustrating trying to land Longbow hits and I’m being told I’m out of range even though I’m within 1100 range (and spec’d for 1500).

Also, channeling Rapid Fire for FIVE SECONDS is a joke in PVP. The only good that comes from it is tracking down thieves temporarily.

This is plain wrong. An engineer with pistol/shield, toolkit, elixir s, and trait basically has 4 immunities that he can chain for pretty much around 10 seconds of total immunity. If he brings elixir gun on top of that, he gets a backward leap on top of it all.

A ranger with monarch’s leap+lightning reflexes+all his evades should have no issues disengaging either. Of course stealth is the best mechanic, but to put ranger and engi with necr4o is an insult to both — necro has absolutely no escape other than blowing Plague.

I caved in and decided to help a guildie get his p4 achievement. I think I was done with Simin pre-nerf, but besides the vastly improved sparks scenario, she is still a DPS check boss.

The group make-up had 2 eles, 2 warriors, and me as a ranger. I love the fact that they said sparks would not chase pets, yet somehow sparks were stuck like glue on the drake even though I was nearby 24/7.

Needless to say, she kept resetting at 50%. Hit 50%, heal up a bit, and it was just going nowhere or would take centuries.

Lo and behold, I switch to my mesmer, and she goes down with no issues. The effect would have been the same or better if instead of a mesmer I had brought a warrior. It was clear that the weak link in damage was elementalists and the ranger, which were specced for power burst capacity with haste and max pet crit damage bonus and attributes with 20 traits on the crit dmg bonus line (you just need that heal on crit and the 30 BM trait regen if you want your pet to last through splash damage in dungeons for at least enough time for the switch cooldown).

It’s kind of a shame so many explorables encourage stacking warriors because damage is the premium outside high lv fractals (and in the case of the grawl shaman fractal it still remains the most important factor). Something needs to be done about the damage abyss in between classes, or damage checking mechanics in dungeons need to be devalued and give some way to other contributions from classes that do not have warrior damage. Support and rezzing capacity should be more prominent if you’re going to keep damage balance that way, perhaps even giving some bosses vulnerability to condition damage while being resistant to direct damage so as to encourage a variety of classes and builds in PvE.

Quarktastic.1027:

I don’t think our weapons are that much of an issue. The longbow needs some buffing, but I feel our other weapons are in a good spot.

The core problem -including our lower weapon damage- is our class mechanic being a poorly scripted AI which we have minimal control over. All of our weapons are balanced around the fact that we always have a pet tagging along to deal damage for us. Sticking us with a permanent AI companion that cannot defend itself against GW2’s dodge or die mechanics was simply a poor design decision. Why the developers are so fervently adhering to this flawed mechanic is a mystery to pretty much everyone.

The developers seem content to integrate as much of the ranger’s utility into the pet as possible. Two of our four condition removals are reliant on our pets being alive, and near enough to us to take the conditions in the first place. One of those four condition removals is a pet skill. All of our shouts only do things for our pets. All of our signet active abilities only affect our pets unless we take a grandmaster trait.

The ranger’s core mechanic should have been something radically different. Preparations, stances, spirits, traps…anything but permanent pets. I was actually thinking about stances the other day. Activating a stance would grant different abilities, perhaps boosted stats, or added effects to weapon skills. The ranger would remain in his current stance until he either changed stances, or was knocked down/launched/stunned. Changing a stance or getting hit by one of the aforementioned control skills would cause the current stance to go on cooldown. Personally, I would be much happier with my ranger if my pet and I weren’t attached at the hip. And this is coming from someone who normally gravitates to pet classes in other MMOs.

To be honest, even with the pet at full uptime, because it cannot scale with gear and at most gets 30% crit bonus damage with a trait, the pet does not compensate for the amount of damage split from the ranger’s weapons.

2.3k power and 110% crit damage bonus on a class which benefits 100% from that will always be greater than a class that benefits only 40-50% of that and the other half only gets 30% and less power bonuses.