Guild Wars 2

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

The phantasm doesn’t need to stay up, troll. It hits in 0.25 seconds for what it would take the pet 5 autoattacks and lucky crits to do, and the whole point is you summon the phantasm and shatter him with the clones.

But by all means show those lv48+ fractal videos where your pet doesn’t die. My guess is that it will be as real as the 4k rapid fire hits you claimed in a previous thread.

Um, why would i be doing lv 48+ fractals? I’m not some sort of Massochist, everyone knows once you get past lv 30 in fractals it no longer becomes a friendly place for builds and everyone needs a specific build in order to perform at all. I’m talking about in tPvP, Explo Dungeons, and you know, everything where you actually have -some- build variation.

By the way, If you haven’t noticed, pets kind of have this thing called 0 AR, so they’d get completely obliterated at lv 48 fractals regardless of how amazing you are at micro.

PS: I’ve never said anything about rapid fire hitting for 4k per hit, that’d be amazing, OP but amazing, i’ve always said my rapid fires hit for over 10k or over 10k in my GC build (granted over 10k takes a bit of luck from crits and/or other factors like might, blood lust stacks etc).

I can link you the rapid fire comment you made in the other thread if you feel like continuing to lie about your posting history.

Fractals are bar none at the highest levels the most challenging PvE content, simply because you have to specialize as a group.

And pets don’t die at 48 because of AR. Agony has nothing to do with it. It has to do with 5-6 mobs cleaving even 2.5k toughness guardians for 8-9k damage each mob. Dodging and becomes an absolute necessity while maintaining full damage capacity. If you recall your pet you’re not maintaining full damage capacity.

NO. Nothing with pristine relics. That would screw over those who already used them to buy other rings as they had nothing to spend it on.

Instead, introduce fractal tokens with increasing drop rates 30+. 48 should bear a guaranteed token or two, considering the amount of grind involved to get there yourself.

Imagine running a full TA 48 times and only having 6 skins to answer for it. My guildie has leveled 42 times to fractal 42, and he has no skin to show for it. It’s preposterous.

Hell, try completing a fractal 48 daily with PuGs, especially mossman and grawl shaman, and tell me that two or three rares is all you have to show for it as a good reward? Absurd.

The phantasm doesn’t need to stay up, troll. It hits in 0.25 seconds for what it would take the pet 5 autoattacks and lucky crits to do, and the whole point is you summon the phantasm and shatter him with the clones.

But by all means show those lv48+ fractal videos where your pet doesn’t die. My guess is that it will be as real as the 4k rapid fire hits you claimed in a previous thread.

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Jackums.3496:

They need to make the longbow’s #1 fire rate faster or increase its damage or something. Honestly, the Mesmer’s greatsword is a better ranged weapon, and they’re not even advertised as a ranged class. That very fact alone should be a big, flashing sign saying, “Something about this is seriously kittened up.” Really, ANet? Really?

….the mesmer has only one melee weapon. The ranger has two.

The only reason mesmer greatsword works is because of the phantasm that does 6-7k damage after 0.25 seconds of being summoned and mesmer stealth allowing him to recreate distance.

Other than that, the mesmer’s greatsword autoattack is just as bad. It’s equally ranged cap, and it’s a long channel relative to other autoattacks like thief shortbow or warrior rifle.

The ranger longbow simply put has no attack that in the same short time windows of the warrior and mesmer does the kind of damage that a phantasmal berserker or Kill Shot does.

Rapid Fire is BAD. It’s bad damage for such a long channel.

Rapid fire can deal over 10k damage… So idk what you’re talking about with bad damage seeing as how you can pump that out from 2k range…

Then longbow #1 can crit for up to ~3.5k dmg, again from 2k distance, it’s a STRONG weapon, it just lacks in ways to reopen the gap/keep the gap open, sure there’s KB shot, but by the time you can use that it’s already lost a ton of damage from the range being closed…

10k damage in how many seconds? In Berserker gear as well, because in knight gear with 2.1k power it hits 6-7k at best.

Mesmer phantasm hits from the same long range, is aoe, and shatters also are ranged. Your arrow fires slowly at 3.5k in berserker gear max distance — the mesmer beam does the same amount, and it’s 3 hits so it’s even better for proccing crit effect sigils.

Longbow is garbage, obviously you haven’t played other classes if you think 10k on such a long channel is soooo good when you’re sitting in berserker gear and are made of toilet paper.

Hell, a warrior in knights rifle gear will crit on rifle for 11k easy.

Yes I hope to god that the rangers damage is below everyone else’s because we still have this amazing thing called A PET, and a shatter from 1.2k range? Really? That’s like the most obvious thing in the world and is sooooo easy to avoid, like kill shot.

I don’t think half of you realize how ranger works, you see that it doesn’t hit as hard per hit as a warrior and scream that we’re under powered.

PS: phantasms are easy to avoid and easy to kill unless the mes has high toughness, and for the damage you’re saying that’s CLEARLY not the case here.

And the pet isn’t obvious? Keep talking. The difference is that the pet is gone for 45 seconds in wvw and dungeons whereas the phantasm will be up in a third of that.

Durzlla.6295:

Zenith.7301:

Jackums.3496:

They need to make the longbow’s #1 fire rate faster or increase its damage or something. Honestly, the Mesmer’s greatsword is a better ranged weapon, and they’re not even advertised as a ranged class. That very fact alone should be a big, flashing sign saying, “Something about this is seriously kittened up.” Really, ANet? Really?

….the mesmer has only one melee weapon. The ranger has two.

The only reason mesmer greatsword works is because of the phantasm that does 6-7k damage after 0.25 seconds of being summoned and mesmer stealth allowing him to recreate distance.

Other than that, the mesmer’s greatsword autoattack is just as bad. It’s equally ranged cap, and it’s a long channel relative to other autoattacks like thief shortbow or warrior rifle.

The ranger longbow simply put has no attack that in the same short time windows of the warrior and mesmer does the kind of damage that a phantasmal berserker or Kill Shot does.

Rapid Fire is BAD. It’s bad damage for such a long channel.

Rapid fire can deal over 10k damage… So idk what you’re talking about with bad damage seeing as how you can pump that out from 2k range…

Then longbow #1 can crit for up to ~3.5k dmg, again from 2k distance, it’s a STRONG weapon, it just lacks in ways to reopen the gap/keep the gap open, sure there’s KB shot, but by the time you can use that it’s already lost a ton of damage from the range being closed…

10k damage in how many seconds? In Berserker gear as well, because in knight gear with 2.1k power it hits 6-7k at best.

Mesmer phantasm hits from the same long range, is aoe, and shatters also are ranged. Your arrow fires slowly at 3.5k in berserker gear max distance — the mesmer beam does the same amount, and it’s 3 hits so it’s even better for proccing crit effect sigils.

Longbow is garbage, obviously you haven’t played other classes if you think 10k on such a long channel is soooo good when you’re sitting in berserker gear and are made of toilet paper.

Hell, a warrior in knights rifle gear will crit on rifle for 11k easy.

Jackums.3496:

They need to make the longbow’s #1 fire rate faster or increase its damage or something. Honestly, the Mesmer’s greatsword is a better ranged weapon, and they’re not even advertised as a ranged class. That very fact alone should be a big, flashing sign saying, “Something about this is seriously kittened up.” Really, ANet? Really?

….the mesmer has only one melee weapon. The ranger has two.

The only reason mesmer greatsword works is because of the phantasm that does 6-7k damage after 0.25 seconds of being summoned and mesmer stealth allowing him to recreate distance.

Other than that, the mesmer’s greatsword autoattack is just as bad. It’s equally ranged cap, and it’s a long channel relative to other autoattacks like thief shortbow or warrior rifle.

The ranger longbow simply put has no attack that in the same short time windows of the warrior and mesmer does the kind of damage that a phantasmal berserker or Kill Shot does.

Rapid Fire is BAD. It’s bad damage for such a long channel.

What a scrambling mess was Karl dicussing the issue. If they want to be so secretive about class balancing, then maybe they should not talk about it because to be hinest all that meandering and interruption was painful to hear.

The problem with the greatsword isn’t just Maul. A buff will help, but the fact is that the greatsword autoattack did lower damage than shortsword, while being a slower chain. It’s just really bad damage, and on top of that the greatsword has no cripple other than blowing your counterblade, so it’s very easy to kite a greatsword ranger.

A mainhand sword gives you 2 evades and poison. You can get another evade with offhand dagger plus a ranged cripple and bleeding, or another fire field to blast flame aura on plus the strong throw torch for good burning damage. The greatsword’s skills simply don’t match the short sword setup either offensively, defensively, or in terms of staying on a target (greatsword may have initial mobility with swoop, but Pounce is much better in preventing gap creation and crippling a target for your pet).

Also, while people are hearing about how longbow damage was great when geared offensively, it’s just not true. Longbow damage is by far inferior to warrior rifle, barrage is inferior to warrior longbow aoe and elementalist staff, and especially inferior to thief shortbow. There’s a reason why people use even the OK shortbow when not specced into conditions over the longbow. And it’s because its auto damage is bad unless you can hump max range (which you can’t most of the time) and Rapid Fire does mediocre damage for a single target channel compared to something like pistol whip or hundred blades which hits multiple targets.

Bhawb.7408:

PvE you can also Epidemic and drop fields for life steal/blindness.

Thieves do blindness much better than the necromancer ever will.

I do 48 dailies and the occassional 38 every day. Mostly with PuG’s, just me and a guildie. And we complete several of those without wiping.

Strategy is important.

Only a few fractals present situations where the party may have to wipe. One is with ascalon if the NPC’s feel like running into the circle after the siege and aggroing all the groups, so you have to suicide to get the decimated npc’s back, and the dredge require that two players be defeated in the plates because they can’t move and have to tank 3-4 mobs that hit stupidly hard.

Pretty much every other situation can be done with good group coordination. And especially good DPS and reflection skills. Adding a warrior or two to the party and a guardian and a mesmer will do wonders. You can still run an all ranger party, though I expect it to be disastrous on grawl shaman due to lack of DPS, but it should be doable for every other fractal.

Boon removal means very little in pve besides the dredge, and conditions like chilll and poison hardly cause value in most pve content, so you’re left with bleeds and weakness, which don’t compensate for the terrible damage and utility coimpared to other classes.

The only reason the necro is good in pvp is wells and boon removal. The cc is kinda nice, but nothing that can’t be replaced with an engineer or elementalist.

….

You shouldn’t be wiping on 26. You can run a full glass cannon party and not wipe at 26 if you know each fractal’s mechanisms.

For example, many people forget in the ascalonian fractal that npc’s make or break the encounters. You have to play around their presence, not the other way around. Bring condi removal for cliffside, because those cultists only really spike lethally if you let them stack vulnerability. Bottleneck them in the tunnel to aoe them easier and more safely in between spawn waves.

In the ice fractal, run behind the houses as you make your way to the set waypoint (bonfire you were first grouped at) and you won’t aggro elementals that way.

In the asura fractal, have someone kite the asura around one of the pillars while the group dispatches the golems. In the grawl shaman, learn to dodge arrows and keep the elementals grouped by staying together as a group.

I don’t know if this is an issue exclusive to this ring or all new stat combo rings, but a guildie was unable to upgrade a Cirque of Arah he had saved for a thief alt on the MF into the infused version. The ring does not appear on the Mystic Forge list.

They are so sexy! I want to slay people in sheer style and hotness

P.S. Kudos to whoever created the Designer Hoodie~

Sebrent.3625:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Sebrent.3625:

Robert Hrouda, could you please weigh in on whether or not things like the in-game advantages given by having HoM pets, etc. are also on the list of “issues” for the Ranger?

I think it would be beneficial if we knew where the community and the devs were on the same page. I think it’d be beneficial to the community to know what are the sort of things we know to simply “be patient” on. For example, we know to be patient on pet AI and pets have no Agony Resist in fractals. That’s comforting to know that those are acknowledged problems and being fixed.

Robert, it’s the fact that if I want two spider pets that have a stun, I have to have the Black Widow. If I want two ravens, I have to have the White Raven. If I want two Moas with a stun, I have to have the Black Moa.

These are in-game skill choices that are not available without having the HoM pets. It’s similar to saying someone can’t have a particular weapon as part of their second weapon set because they didn’t have enough HoM points. A Ranger without the Black Widow has only the Jungle Spider for a stun on F2. One with the Black Widow can use Jungle Spider to stun on F2 and then swap out to Black Widow to have another Spider pet with a stun on F2.

This is the in-game advantage from HoM that I was asking about.

Is this acknowledged as an issue?

If so, are there plans for:

• Being able to either take two of the same pet (i.e. both my terrestial slots are a cave spider)
• Being able to obtain the HoM pets through other means
• Being able to obtain new pets of the same family and with the same F2 skills as the HoM pets

Thanks.

I WANT TO BE ABLE TO TAME THE GREEN MOAS.

WTT family for Green Moa.

And skelks, let me tame them.

Durzlla.6295:

vespers.1759:

Durzlla.6295:

Beardmonger.4692:

Since someone brought it up already, do you guys think a celestial amulet (outside of PvP) is a wise investment at all for someone who tends to change and try new ranger builds every so often?

If you change a lot celestial would totally be a good idea, will it be as awesome as another set? Probably not, but celestial gear works for literally all builds, it’s normally not the best option if you’re min/maxing but it’ll work.

hey where’s the screens of these 4k barrage hits?

Well i got distracted last night to begin with, but yeah i went to test it on the golems and it was 1.8k was the highest, so now i’m really curious where the 4k hits were coming from because it sure as hell wasn’t my moa, and my rapid fire would be a lot higher than that.

I’ll try it out on my glass canon friend, and see if that does something different, i remember them saying the golems are sturdier than most player builds.

i.e. got caught on a lie.

People who use celestial don’t have a clue about stat scaling. You get a lot more return for stacking stats currently than spreading them out.

Until they bring down the xtremes of damage and survivability, balanced builds will not exist. It will either be pvt (knights if you’re a class with high hp like necro or warrior), tough/vit/condi, or power/prec/critdmg because those stat setups synergize the best.

And in the case of rangers remove berserker because half their damage won’t benefit from the crit damage stat on your gear. They can only get 30% extra crit damage from a trait instead of 100%+

It seems criminal that someone can do 48-50 lv fractals daily, and come out emptyhanded or be handed rings and tokens you long since do not need.

The RNG on fractal skins is ridiculous. 600 fractals completed, doing 38-48 daily chests every day, and still only 6 skins, one of which is a repeat and one underwater.

Why can’t these fractals award ascended backpieces? Why do you need to pay 70 gold to have the proper AR for 30+?

I mean, seriously, 250 ectos is ridiculous, they said they were looking into it, and 3 months later still nothing has been done.

What did they do instead? Oh, they broke the Mossman. He spams stealth now, can hit WHILE stealthed so you can’t even dodge it, and even throws his agony while stealthed.

The grawl shaman is well designed. It requires group coordination and execution. The mossman just cheeses with stealth, so you can’t even know when to dodge an attack he’s doing while in stealth because he’s IN stealth to begin with. And you can’t even melee him, because unlike the ettin his melee is much faster and takes off half your health.

The worst part is that he keeps teleporting so it’s not like you can damage him while stealthed with aoe (most of which is stationary), and what that means is that DPS’ing him down at 48 is a long, annoying process just because of a mechanic that aims to needlessly lengthen the encounter without adding anything related to execution. Everytime the boss stealths, there’s not much that can be done besides run in circles until he appears 10 seconds after only to disappear again in 5 seconds.

I mean, come on.

Same with the kitten harpies. If you don’t carry 2-3 guardians stacking reflections, you might as well accept some people will enter defeated because not only do the harpies spam knokcdown, but they also rapidfire anyone into downstate like a freight train and while you’re knocked off a platform they autoattack you midair and you appear defeated with damaged armor. And god forbid you try to jump into another platform while trying to dodge an orb, because some harpy will cripple you midjump and make you fail the jump after you already made it.

swiftpaw.6397:

For PVE I have doing full glass cannon-

Zerker stats with full ruby accessories, and as you say, all glass, not so much cannon.

I am now after a build that will give the BEST utility value to my group, I want to be appreciated and make a difference in dungeons, in particular high lvl fotms, on my ranger. I thought full glass cannon and try to contribute with max DPS would be best but I’m just not feeling it.

Crazy I know, but I am seeing this class as a real challenge that I wanna overcome.

Anyone got any effective builds for Fotm 40-50?

Traps with shortbow+sword/torch. Muddy Terrain is pretty good for gathering groups for your allies to cleave/aoe, and spike trap will provide further control while flame trap provides good damage and a fire field.

It’s the best you can do for your group other than pet rezzing on Jade Maw.

Ranger is like the engineer and necro in that their pve damage is horrible relative to warrior/thief and his utility is completely kitten compared to mesmer timewarp/feedback/null/stealth and guardian/ele boons.

Durzlla.6295:

All these people saying LB is bad for a glass canon build… i don’t think you understand how the weapon works… When you’re at max range you don’t use anything but 3 and 1, because it just hits that freaking hard…

My mesmer autos crit for 3-4k on melee. Your 2-3k autoshots, which are much slower and single target, can be reflected, and don’t remove boons or apply vulnerability are paltry.

A longbow ranger also has little aoe with barrage’s heavy cooldown.

There is a reason why guardians and melee specs are used in skirmishes and dungeons — they cleave hard, and the survivability difference is not bad at all considering most ranged weapons outside thief shortbow don’t allow for kiting effectively against all of melee’s gap closers.

Melee cleave>everything, and the warrior and guardian are the worst of it. I can run a guardian in pvt gear and berserker jewels, which lets me maintain easily 1700 toughness while still having 80% crit damage bonus. His Whirling Blade hits for about 8-9k, sometimes even 10k with might stacks. AOE. Not a single target, AOE. And it channels for a lot less time than your Rapid Fire, so I can go back to autoattack cleaving mobs for 2-3k.

Glass cannon specs are melee specs because they blow ranged damage out of the water. Range is something you use when you mess up and need to wait for your heal to come back.

It just so happens that the ranger’s melee weapons suck because they were nerfed to the ground from beta, the melee pets don’t cleave like melee weapons for other classes, and pets don’t get our 100% crit damage bonus while making up a half of our damage.

The only anomaly in ranged glass cannon is the warrior rifle and thief shortbow, which burst much harder than anyone else. Warriors in general are broken and dwarf every other class in damage.

Rezz.8019:

Rangers are pretty much the best PvE class if you know how to spec them, and you have a decent gear. Sure they do a bit less damage than warrior, but then again everyone does. However, rangers can’t get downed or die (unless rest of the team is dead) and they do massive damage (again, if you spec properly). I do any dungeon, fractal, and even did Simin (arah 4) few times without any problem before the last patch (when he got nerfed), where we had 2 rangers. It’s all about knowing how to build and how to play.

Hahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

Put it on youtube. I call BS if you don’t. “Massive damage”, what a load of crap.

And to people saying berserker warriors are no good to a group because they die, the same applies to rangers. And honestly? I’ve met even more bad rangers than bad berserker warriors. The difference is that when both are good the ranger is still garbage and doesn’t come close to half of the warrior’s damage output while not justifying it with the powerful utility of the guardian and mesmer and elementalist.

Auesis.7301:

Nikaido.3457:

Auesis.7301:

There are some fairly niche places where Rangers can help – Shake It Off from the bear and Healing Spring can keep you clean and crisp against Subject Alpha, I know that since doing that has kept my team alive numerous times.

You are in the wrong group, simple. The thing people don’t understand is that once someone has made a warrior alt, and tasted what it is like to run a dungeon with a lot of high dps in their group, they don’t want to go back to what is was before the warrior alt.
Subject Alpha dies way too fast in an efficient, high dps group for anyone in the party to take too much “chipping damage”, and his major attacks are highly predictable, telegraphed AoE that can be dodged all the time.

In a good group, no one needs your healing spring. I say that as someone who used to partner with a ranger in fractals and completely abuse the water field combo field, spamming cluster bomb to maintain the both of us alive when the rest of the group died. I don’t play that way anymore cause an efficient group doesn’t need heals. Thief used to be my main, my first character and experience with the game, and I abused combo fields with a ranger friend, I used a high initiative regen to get the ability to basically spam the blast finisher as much as I wanted. I don’t play the thief class anymore, and don’t really care for the ranger, the war/guard/mes just outshine those in every single way. You don’t need healing combos, you don’t need group heals in a decent group that can kill things very quickly and dodge the few major attacks. Chipping damage ? What chipping damage ? things will die before our HP goes down low enough for us to get hurt.

Who the hell are you to tell me I’m in the WRONG group? My original post referred to unreliable pugs in the early days, Ranger is only one of my five characters with the lowest playtime, Sonic Boon Warrior being my second most-played and Thief being my most-played. I’ve run CoE over 300 times in total on all five characters in almost the exact same guild member composition every single time and we have never had any trouble whatsoever with any of the content within any of the 3 paths of CoE or any other dungeon in the entire game, period. Just because we don’t run 4 Warriors + 1 Mesmer or 5 Warriors for the loldps doesn’t somehow make the group worse. When I use Ranger for the daily tokens, the guildies relax a little and preserve endurance as the conditions drain away, at least on path 1 and 2 for the burns. It’s a convenience thing, as for path 3 it’s back to the usual dodges against the ice and stack on the earth.

I’ve run the fabled dps groups before, and while it’s highly convenient, it’s INSANELY boring and I have far much more fun on any other profession. Not everyone goes for maximum performance. Some people like to play how they enjoy playing, god forbid, I know.

There’s no such thing as a “wrong” group. That is absurd, and horribly elitist and disgusting. I sincerely hope you’re not the kind of person that boots people that aren’t Warriors.

Of course there is a wrong group when doing speed runs or PuG’ing. You may be fine and having fun with inefficient setups, but the run isn’t solely about you.

It’s good that you have teammates willing to accommodate the additional clear time you are putting on them by bringing your ranger, but for other groups, their time is precious. They’d play the game for about 3 hours a session, and they’d like to make the most of it before they log off.

Time may not be precious to you, but it is valuable to other people. Dismiss it all you want, but some people would rather obtain their stuff sooner than later.

Pet’s also need to derive stat benefits from gear. Conditions from pets are far inferior to a ranger in full condi gear. Pets and minions and illusions do not benefit from condi damage or condi duration or crit damage. It’s silly that a ranger needs to trait for 30% extra crit damage on a pet, which means half of his damage is only 30% extra crit damage whereas other classes with 110% full crit damage get it applied to the entirety of their damage. It’s why berserker gear is weak on the ranger.

Pets also do not benefit from food and shaperning stones and other buffs, despite being half of a ranger’s damage.

They want him stowed for a different class because regardless of what people here tell you a ranger’s damage is terrible compared to warrior/mesmer/guardian, his burst relies on pets that die easily, and he brings no utility like many group boons and reflection or group haste.

Your best bet is starting a group of your own, but be cognizant that you’re slowing others down if they’re competent.

Most people like to bring up skill and not dying, but in a skilled group nobody will be dying often regardless of class but your ranger is guaranteed bad DPS and utility regardless of the player behind it.

Just go sit with the necros and (to a lesser extent) engineers. They’re overshadowed as well.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Here’s a thought I just had.

What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”

So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.

That would be brilliant.

F2 skills need to activate a lot faster— the animation times are so painfully long…

Moa pets need some loving, I think extending the range of their support abilities would help, while increasing the duration of their boons to match cooldowns.

You also need to look at the shouts for moas. Not all shouts are created equal — protectection is much more valuable than a few seconds of fury, so the fury screech should be lower cd. What’s more, the protection screech should include something more like vigor or swiftness for thegroup, while the fury screech should consider adding might. Same for fern wolf. Such a long cd for some seconds of regen boon is out of line with the boons other classes can bring at much shorter cooldowns and longer durations.

Also, what’s the point of having DPS pets if they will not be viable in high end content. Do you want to restrict rangers away from DPS specs by making the jaguars and birds disappear in dungeons? Why can’t melee pets cleave to match the damage dealing capabilities of other melee classes? The ranger has very little aoe options and that’s largely why they are not wanted in dungeons.

There’s no way to avoid dying on the switches unless you bring bunker guardians. 2 people will die no matter what at 38+

And whatever genius suggested one person protecting each on the switches while leaving the door guy alone to some random spawn shooting him or burrowing up to him, not very smart unless you consistently bring thieves.

Vox Hollow.2736:

The spec specific solutions are always interesting but kind of missing the problem.

Dungeon Pet survivability when you spec into it is actually very good. Maybe even too good, if I’m being honest. The problem is how miserably pets perform if you don’t.

Maybe whatever easy dungeon you’re running. I sure as hell know no amount of speccing saves a pet from ascalonian warriors or mages let alone the grawl shamans in fractals.

Grawl Shaman is another example. I think in general encounters would benefit a lot more if players needed to do more than kite a boss that will 2-shot them. Make management of key adds important in encounters.

You know, for all the grief Simin may cause, she’s the right idea because people actually need to do different tasks while dealing with her. Ditto for several of the Arah bosses. Applying secondary mechanics to fight and making bosses not be sandbags of doom themselves will test player coordination much better than just learning the dodging mechanisms for one boss’s attack patterns.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.
As much as they seem vestigial, the “attack” and “return” keybinds are really the only thing that can give the player any control, and they can be a bit unwieldy. I would recommend though that if you have never tried using those keybinds, try them out the next time you’re in a dungeon, your pet will thank you for it.
Also, I find that a ranged pet does better in dungeons. My typical pet setup for dungeons is Hyena (because having 2 knockdowns and another hyena is super good), and a Drake (almost any). I know this is contradictory to what I just said about ranged pets being good, but I use the keybinds a lot and that dramatically increases survivability when taking 2-3 hits is all you want the pet to do.
Spiders and devourers can be really good to bring because of the fact that they are ranged. Devourers have an escape from melee ability as well, and spiders have CC, which helps keep them alive while you reposition and pet-swap (or return) in a more favorable place. Tankier pets require more management, but once you get there and know how to use it (in combination with pet swap), you’ll find you’re not facing the death cooldown as often as before.
That and you can name your spiders “Cuddles” and your devourer “Citizen Snips” and get a good laugh out of people’s reactions.

Easy. Make mobs prioritize players over minions for aggro so that ranger’s can’t swap aggro.

Really, why do pets or minions need to hold aggro? Is there a particular reason? That’s the very reason pets and necro minions die to begin with and nobody is pleased. If pets were out of the aggro table and had 70% less damage from aoe, you’d see these builds become more plentiful.

Yes, you can call them to you, that only really works for ranged gameplay, since if you are melee the return command does nothing while you yourself may not need to get out of melee range.

What’s worse, you’re advocating retreating half of your damage (the pet is seriously half to 40% of the ranger’s damage, and even a larger proportion of his burst capacity) be constantly made inactive.

No other class needs to have its damage halved like that because they just switch to range if they need to wait for a heal and maintain full damaging capacity.

Even worse, the ranger has no cleaving because most pets do not do conal cleave damage like melee weapons, only the ranger himself who is half of the total damage. So half of his damage is already restricted to a single target whereas a warrior and guardian and mesmer can melee to full effect.

Well, dungeon dev said Rangers have a few very viable dungeon builds, just not DPS ones. So, supposedly Rangers are fine. And they can supposedly do dps like mesmers and warriors.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

…..Every class can do open world. My thief could shadow refuge the skill points in orr.

Don’t cripple the class in the most rewarding and organized group settings just because one class can solo better than others in content that awards green drops at best.

And great DPS? Are we in the same universe? Where?

Are you seriously comparing something like mesmer or thief or warrior damage to ranger? If it’s going to take the same amount of time for you guys to realize that the class is so unwanted everywhere because its numbers and support skills are actually bad, then I don’t think people will stick with the class if it means becoming the gw1 elementalist having to wait more than a year to be made good for hard modes.

What the hell happened to skill splitting? Why just not tweak aggro mechanics so a ranger’s pet can’t just tank and the aggro is actually shared instead of offloaded to a pet?

Why are you abandoning the gw1 models that worked? Skill splitting worked, and yet you choose to take the World of Warcraft route for universal skills that leads one game format to screw over the other as classes get on a rollercoaster where they are great in one format but suck in the other because developers fear changes to the ill format numbers will make the great format status OP.

Why is it so hard to just give Rangers 70% AoE damage reduction for pets in PvE so that the pets are not useless in dungeons and WvW. At least for WvW you could make the ranged pets 1200 range instead of the 900 range they currently are and make their projectiles hit more reliably by increasing their speed.

And for dungeons either remove the cooldown on pet deathaand leave the 15 second switch or make pets have decreased aggro priority for mobs, considering pets can’t dodge and fractals like the Ascalonian at 38-48 I might as well stow the pet because it doesn’t last more than 2 seconds.

Rangers and necros, maybe engineers too. But specially rangers and necros.

Both ranger and necro do crap damage.

One because half his damage is split with a pet that does not scale with gear (no 90-100% crit damage bonus or 1k condi damage or sharpening stone or food bonuses), hits mostly single target (where most melee specs cleave on every one of their attacks, including autoattack). That half also dies to a sneeze in dungeons/high fractals and wvw. And their stupidly long F2 activation times with boons that last less than other classes can give. Crap utilities as well.

The other because his weapons simply are terrible damage wise and their condition damage is bleeding, which is weak compared to burning and confusion.

Both classes also suffer from the fact that their weapons have half mixes of power and condi skills, which means no weapon gets 100% benefit from one stat except longbow and mainhand sword. The necro has dagger and axe but neither of those is a viable ranged option with 600 range and less (and both axe and dagger suck and have no cleave or aoe).

Mesmers put some in inspiration that clears conditions when they heal/shatter, and null field is pretty good for condi removal. Most glass cannons are just bad and don’t carry condi removal/use it on key conditions and that’s why they die.

I will admit this build is pretty kitten good for group fights.

Oh, I’ve tried it. I wanted to put my fractal sword to good use but alas I’ll have to give the skin to one of my alts who will actually use the weapon.

Hey, at least you can use a mainhand sword spec to great effect in wvw and tpvp. It’s a good bursty yet tanky weapon in smaller engagements with nice mobility.

Why? Single target, no CC/group utility or symbol. Single target damage is worthless when the greatsword does nearly the same damage single target, but cleaving, whirling finishers, group pull, aoe blind. Or the hammer for short cd blast finisher and with traited symbols perma prot for anyone near the guardian and circle of warding.

I run 48 everyday, and quite frankly even the hammer isn’t that great by then. You’re better off with GS/mace+shield or focus and switch to scepter for some bosses like archdiviner or ice ele.

There’s no point in selfish weapons because even then you don’t touch warrior or thief or even mesmer (that’s the list, with warrior and thief close single target, but warrior blows thief away in aoe and mesmer is a distant third) damage, but you lose symbols and other group utility no one but guardians can bring (eles can pull with earth shield, but sacrifice a utility slot for it).

Where the hell is the toolkit? This looks like a glass cannon build that will die to any competent thief/mesmer, or any other glass cannon that can stall out your Elixir S and gib you after.

A mesmer will have no issue with this build.

You need toolkit and shield to not be a sitting target to classes that can cleanse conditions and burst you down quicker than you can burst them.

I don’t know what expansions they’ve played, but this is hype at best. This is not expansion worth of depth and systems.

And it’s fine, because it’s not paid like a proper expansion you see in MMO’s like WoW. But please drop the comparison to expansions because it is not.

Expansions also have deep balance changes and overhauls to subpar classes. Nothing close to balancing has happened in all these patches after release. The changes to professions has been marginal.

Just call these what they are — content patches. Cool guild missions, fractals, and a couple extra DE’s on the starter areas. Content addition but nothing on the scale of an expansion.

Recently mesmers got Mindstab, their third autoattack chain step to hit 3 targets. The engineer toolkit hits conal as well, but only on the first two steps. The third step hits only a single target.

You might also want to change the amount of vulnerability applied. 1 short vulnerability stack on a 3-step attack chain where the final strike has a long windup seems pretty paltry, might as well remove it in that case since it is negligible. Something like 5 vulnerability stacks for 4-5 seconds would be more reasonable.

There’s no reason to use FT instead of bomb or grenade kit anyways. So EG should never be competing with FT — if you’re limiting toolkits and EG has to compete with something in PvE, it’s either grenades or bombs.

I have both. The Engineer is far superior.

Ranger is only good in tpvp because people are forced to stand on points, and thus traps are effective.

Everywhere else, rangers are garbage. Their damage is garbage, half of his damage is the pet that dies to a sneeze in fights greater than 5 people, and the pet is single target. The engineer has way better cc and better utility besides being better damage.

Just understand this: ranger’s class mechanic is what the developers of this game have been the least competent at — AI/minions.

Condition builds are crap. They work in wvw because condi builds in wvw are about OP confusion and then decent burning damage. Bleeds are weak in PvE and often outperformed by berserker gear sustained damage.

If you do conditions in pve you will be dragging your group down. Berserker/Knight is king there.

You bring elixir in pve for the weakness autoattack and most importantly the much improved super elixir healing field that you can blast with acid bomb on plus the build removing condis from the group from elixir skills and elixir throwing.

Nokaru.7831:

Why Ash Legion Spy Kit was used: Because it was overpowered.

The Dredge Fractal does not summon an “endless” wave of creatures. It summons one wave every 20% of the door’s health in damage, so you can just do it slower and kill them in smaller and more manageable groups.

This is not about the door. It’s about the CAGE.

I would appreciate if you paid a little bit more effort reading what people actually post instead of strawmanning them.

hamsteak.1368:

before yesterday i had never stepped foot in fractals, and my group was able to do it on the first try (with me pulling the lever)

i’m a thief, although my shadow refuge/blinding powder/heal wasn’t enough to keep me in stealth for the entire time, so one of my party members kept the dredge that spawned near the lever from attacking me

maybe it’s a different story at much higher fractal levels, but on level 4(5?) fractals i had no problem doing it without any prior knowledge

It’s different. Much different at higher levels. Mob autoattacks will routinely take out a third to half of your health when they are veterans.

Rypo Falem.8913:

Weren’t fractles designed to become increasingly difficult and eventually impossible as the level increased? I feel like most people are missing the whole point.

For those that want a challenge, push fractles to as high as you can exploiting every little resource you can find. To those that want loot find a level of fractles with the balance of time, difficulty and loot that fits you best and run that.

INCREASING THE NUMBERS MOB HIT FOR DOES NOT MAKE IT MORE DIFFICULT.

It just makes you stack guardians because a) group aegis/prot/regen/healing, and b) they have 3 good reflection sources.

Guess what? 2/3 of those dredge in the cage that 2-shot you are ranged mobs that you use reflection for.

It’s not difficult because you complete the event by dying on the buttons and having someone stealth through the control panel (spy kit removal just means people will bring a mesmer or thief for that fractal).

If you are so skilled, film a kitten video of you doing 38-70 fractals, on that dredge cage without using guardians or mesmers, where nobody goes defeated while the control panel is interacted with. SHOW ME.

I don’t want your internet lectures. Put up a kitten video or shut the hell up and begone.

NO Guardians for that cage, NO mesmers.

Lambros Augustus.6594:

Why spy kits are used. Because they are a consumable, and enable a more flexible play style. They gimped the spy kits and neutered the game.

What are the flexible playstyles other than aggro drop for 10 seconds? For stealth rezzing it stll works— it just has some activation time and can’t be chained.

Spy kits are conflicting to me, because they to a point became expected. Yet, it is good to see one of those karma items be useful. It rewards you for world completion and participation in pve events — same for venoms.

But there is a problem when people expect the perk of becoming chain invisible to avoid an overtuned encounter. I have a feeling they ought to give those mobs the treatment they have for explorables and the cliffside fractal where the veterans turn into normal mobs, and cull the numbers a bit.

Ursan.7846:

While it’s perfectly fine to express your opinions, please do it with a much more descriptive title that actually encompasses your entire topic.

….That is the topic. People use the spy kits to circumvent such time consuming endeavors. The only reason people don’t use spy kits in ascalon is because they don’t have to tank all the 2-shotting mobs thanks to the NPC’s.

Cato.3547:

What has this wall of text rly to do with spy kits? Basically you are just complaining how content get harder on higher lvl and this is new bcs? or that pretty much every fractal is done wrong, just stop doing it if you hate it that much. 500+ fractals and 60+ lvls later only real use for spy kits I had on dredge fractal just to cut out some time and
occasional stealth ressing.

Oh, shut the hell up. You’re not the only unique snowflake who has done lv60. Many people are sitting at max.

whoosh That’s the sound of the point going over your head.

The content is doable. It’s just nowhere as efficient as running other tasks, and why exploits like spy kits and 99% jade maw rez tricks are designed. Or leaving one target alive on cliffside so the full group doesn’t spawn on one side.

If anything, the post is a complaint about punishing players for doing the content proper instead of taking shortcuts like bugging a boss or bringing in outside items or stacking classes like the guardian.

The content is not hard — it is tedious and only a matter of armor repairs.

You’ll notice that spy kits are mainly used in fractals, and not really in explorables. For a very simple reason. The scaling with fractal levels is absurd.

By lv38-48, the amount of dredge veterans and their shockwave attacks/projectiles/melee from a single one of them will hit anything but a bunker guardian or ele for half their HP. Multiply that by the amount of mobs in that cage. There’s simply no way players will be able to tank more than 2-3 of these mobs for the amount of time it takes to channel the control panel. So you get exploits like people having to die on panels and stacking stealth because otherwise a group of 3-4 people cannot handle that group of mobs short of stacking guardians. And what this game needs less is stacking more guardians.

A parallel situation of mobs hitting too kitten hard is the ascalonian fractals. Warriors will 2 shot you, and it’s not just the charge. Their autoattacks hit too hard. Yes, using the NPC’s is part of the strategy, but when mage mobs from a distance will focus fire with little animation a player trying to go into melee to aggro the NPC’s on the groups, any player will go splat in less than 1 second. Mobs hit too hard in too short a time window too often and with aoe range to boot. So you have to hug range and find ways to get the NPC’s to aggro on the mobs while staying in range because meleeing is suicidal when mobs hit that hard.

Cliffside shows a better example of mob hits. You can still get gibbed, but it’s not by autoattacks. It’s by backstabs with big animations or getting focused by a large group of cultists, who you can los/clear vulnerability from. Grawl mobs with one aattack even at 2k toughness will take out half your health. It’s not good when mobs can do this. It just drives players to skip any form of triage and find a way to circumvent fights — which they do. There should be a ramp up to that kind of damage. You might want to try mechanics like environmental traps that punish players for not paying attention to the environment instead of mobs that are scaled up to silly levels as a disguise for difficulty.

Then you have the harpies. You have short platforms you can’t dodge in, but harpy rapidfire attacks that will downed a helpless player unless they have a reflection cooldown up. It’s simply not fun. As a player, you shouldn’t need guardians and mesmers to make the experience less frustrating. Yes, it would be a lot more manageable if you just had to worry about jumping platforms to avoid orbs, but the rapid fire and heavy hitting autoattacks mixed in just make it tedious.

Attacks that hit hard should not be autoattacks. There should be indicators, and players should have the means to respond to them regardless of class. I really don’t mind harpies chaining knockdowns and you having to be situationally aware and mobile to make your way through, but when multiple harpies can both knock you down and down you with a rapidfire you cannot dodge, it gets silly. Silly mechanics lead players to get resourceful with unintended mechanics, which spy kits were.

The Jade Maw is another deeply flawed encounter that encourages exploiting. Skin droprates are so low that people will do fractals that are higher than current agony resist affords, so you get a case of people resorting to asinine tactics like suiciding someone, rezzing them to 99%, wait for the agony ticks and rez the player so he doesn’t have agony and can rez the people who have agony. I just disagree with the design of agony for jade maw moreso than agony in general (which is just a gear check to be honest dictated by grind). At least the other agony attacks you can be skillful enough to dodge. I’m not sure you are happy with a system that leads players to use suicide as a tactic to progress…

Now you’ve removed spy kits, which needed to happen, but spy kits were just a symptom. And you didn’t address the source. You didn’t make the dredge fractal more about skill— you just made it a matter of bringing a thief and mesmer for stealth stacking on the control panel; and time warp while 2 people have to suicide on the panel side buttons.

The knockback spam is the most obnoxious thing. They take it out of orr because it annoyed people to be used like pinballs, yet my toon gets knocked down and before he can get up and I’m out of stunbreakers another graveling knocks me back again.

Ditto for the stupid path 3 boss. You have 2 dodges, maybe even four in 5 seconds, yet the boss when aggroing on you will pretty much make melee a matter of being a pinball.

I don’t mind difficulty and punishing mechanics like lethal damage for failing a task. I do mind losing control of my character so kitten much and being subject to further loss of control WHILE I’m already out of control.

Agadar.4931:

Guard: Pets will no longer guard areas that should be inaccessible to them.
This has always felt like it was not working as intended, and it seems Anet felt the same. Cats climbing walls as if they are spider-hybrids is unrealistic, even for a fantasy game. A well deserved change, albeit a massive nerf to some playstyles. However, Guard now officially has lost the only good use it had, so I’m hoping that the next patch will buff it in some other way. Nobody will be using this shout now.

Crippling Talon: Cooldown of this ability has been reduced from 18 seconds to 15 seconds.
A very, very minor buff to an attack of an off-hand nobody uses, and to be honest this buff does not give me any more reason to use this weapon. It is still incredibly lackluster, overshadowed in mediocrity only by the off-hand axe. I’m hoping that our dagger will be receiving more well-deserved buffs in the future, because as of now it is still one of our worst weapons. Either way, it is a good beginning.

Empathic Bond: Fixed a bug that wouldn’t apply transferred conditions to pets. This trait now transfers three conditions to the ranger’s pet every 10 seconds rather than all of them.
Ouch. A double nerf and a massive blow to many different builds. The first part of the change was admittedly a bug, as is stated in the description above, but it is still a massive nerf to the 0/0/30/10/30 build. If you are suffering from weakness, cripple, immobilize, or chilled, and EB ticks, then your pet, who is your main source of damage, can no longer do any worthwhile damage. Painful indeed, but this change was necessary.

What was not necessary however is the second part: nerfing EB from transferring ALL conditions to only THREE conditions. This change has pretty much killed one of the few good traits we have. I can only guess as to what Anet’s reasons for nerfing EB like this is, but I feel like it was undeserved.

Hawk and Eagle now have their own unique icons instead of sharing one.
It’s something, I suppose. Not much to comment on this one, other than it being a good change.

Path of Scars: This ability’s damage has been normalized between traited and non-traited versions. Damage has been increased by 85% when not traited.
Though a bigger buff than the buff to the off-hand dagger, it still leaves the off-hand axe swimming in mediocrity. Path of Scar’s damage could have been increased by 170%, and I would still not be using it. Why? Because it’s just a bit of damage. It doesn’t do anything else. It doesn’t help me survive. It doesn’t slow my opponent down. It does nothing. And besides, Whirling Defense is still a horrible skill against anything other than rangers and the occasional rifle warrior/shortbow thief. All in all, the off-hand axe could definately use some more love.

Icy Screech: The White Moa activated ability now applies 3 seconds of Chill, and the skill fact has been updated appropriately.
I’m not entirely certain whether this is a buff or a nerf, but either way I doubt anyone will be using this moa anywhere anyway. They’re simply too weak.

So, what conclusion can we draw from this patch? Well, overall we have been hit by the nerfbat, and we got barely anything in return. Shouts are still lackluster, as are signets, spirits, and none have even been looked at this patch. Our weapons have also remained virtually unchanged.

All in all, quite a disappointment, especially when considering literally every other class received nothing but love. But I suppose we are, and always will be, the adopted red-haired stepchild.

Nothing but love? What?

The changes were garbage for most classes. Even though superficially necros seemed like they got something, they didn’t. They got more damage to the only ability on a crappy weapon with no sustained damage (#1 skill hits for nothing, almost as bad as Ricochet and it’s single target), and more boon stripping pigeonholing. Their minions are still crap and nothing was done, while the mesmer got a third of autoattack made multitarget the necro still remains the ONLY MELEE SINGLE TARGET class, and death shroud is still crappy for a mechanic.

Engineer didn’t get that much better, and neither did scepter eles (who are bad outside bunker specs). Mesmer scepter still sucks big time, nothing changed.

I think you people should not be fooled into thinking this is a balance patch despite what anet may say.

It isn’t this patch has no more balance, meaningful changes than the December one.

In what pvp scenario can you actually stay at max range besides humping a tower wall or in a zerg fight? Because in skirmishes you will lose the range anyways.

PvE most likely.

Berserker ele isn’t even that great — your damage comes more from might stacking and boon duration stack than using ruby orbs.