Guild Wars 2

Is there any confirmation or hint that the hammer #1 chain will fixed?

AIMonster.8236:

“Paired with the Shortbow” I’ve won many 1v4s and even a 1v6 in WvW.

Sorry dude, but that voids your whole argument.

The issue is that you NEED the shortbow to do anything at all.. there is people who do not want to use the shortbow, and then the greatsword, and even longbow as well, is absolutely useless.

The greatsword should be viable as a main weapon, and not just some support for minor aoe damage. The longbow itself is equally useless, because it does such low damage without even having the aoe of the greatsword.

I don’t like the design of the shortbow either, its only strength is its high dps auto attack, the other abilities on it are just boring and weak, which is why I don’t use it, even though it is the only viable option for the ranger for both pve and pvp.

I said I wasn’t going to reroll, but I have to consider going thief or something, as the more I advance in the game, the weaker my ranger is getting, and that is just not much fun.

Don’t compare the ranger of a fantasy game with the ranger of real life too much, because in real life no one uses bows anymore, compare it with fantasy lore. Fantasy lore clearly says that rangers and rifles are a very ill match. Rangers are about nature (hunters are not rangers, hunters are also anti-nature), and rifles are about as anti-nature as is possible.

The problem is that even with a stationary target, and your jaguar or lynx doing constant damage without having to chase, the total damage is still multitudes lower than that of the other professions, and while the greatsword has a block and a short daze, that really doesn’t make up for such a gigantic gap with other professions, who also have utility abilities by the way, it’s not like the greatsword utility is so much better.

Saying that the ranger is okay on its own is pointless, you have to compare it with the other professions. You can ooze your way to lvl80 with the greatsword I guess, but other professions just do it so much faster and easier. The shortbow build works and is much easier and faster, but I don’t want to be forced to play a build that I don’t enjoy at all, I derive no joy from using a shortbow, the skills are just not interesting enough for me. I greatly enjoy the greatsword, but all I can do with it is play downleveled content.

I think the main problems with spirits is that their buff range is too low I think, that the buffs they give really aren’t very good, but most importantly that they die to the slightest aoe damage from trash monsters (let alone veterans and bosses) even when traited.

For them to be more durable their health needs to be increased greatly (multitudes), but they also need a 75% aoe damage resistance, along with our pets as well, otherwise even if you make the health ten times larger they will still die too fast, where as warrior banners cannot be destroyed at all for example.

In this game, monsters do huge amounts of damage, so any pet-class is suffering greatly right now from extreme fragility. Pets, especially spirits, usually don’t last more than one to two seconds into a trash monster encounter.. against veterans and bosses they just get one shotted at the first aoe attack.

Spirits are not useful for support in their current state.. their buffs are mediocre at best, have a short range, and your spirits will be one shotted by the slightest aoe damage they take from trash mobs, (let alone veterans or bosses), even if you trait.

Using a spirit build is cool for roleplay value, but they die so fast, any aoe attack from players or trash mobs one shots them, that they are not useful for either dungeons or pvp.

I also disagree that rangers should be only viable or most viable with the bow, a ranger is not a hunter, they should be equally powerful with the bows as with the swords. In the beta, the greatsword was a viable choice, though it was so heavily downgraded damage-wise that it is no longer a viable choice either for pvp or pve, other than for playing heavily downleveled solo pve content. I enjoy using its amazing skills, but I can only use it if I play in areas that are much lower level, so my gear gives me some advantage.

Rangers are fine if you like having a single viable build I guess. The only way to play a ranger competitively though, is by going full condition/bleed shortbow.

The greatsword has the most solid and fun to use weapon skills in the game, but the damage is so incredibly low that it is unplayable in any kind of PvP.

The sword is a little better, but its auto attack locks you in place and prohibits you from moving or dodging at all, though still far too low damage. The axe is just a utility off hand weapon for lack of better, its damage is no better than that of elementalist water auto attacks, even lower than that of the greatsword.

So yeah, if you want to play a ranger and PvP, your only option is the shortbow. The longbow is very cool, and has fun skills, but its damage is barely better than that of the greatsword.

I would play with the shortbow, but I really don’t have any fun using the shortbow weapon skills, and I just don’t like ranged that much. I play the ranger because of the lore, the roleplay of a forest warrior, so I use a greatsword and axe/horn. I have a lot of fun with the awesome skills, as long as I ignore how little damage I do, as long as I ignore the warriors and thieves that kill a monster five times faster than me.

But sadly I cannot PvP, the greatsword melee build is simply not anywhere near viable for that, its damage even on a glass cannon build is simply too low to beat the worst of PvP players.

Tapap.3749:

Thank you buddy, that’s what I’m trying to find is the fun factor of my ranger. I do like major damage with bleeds with my short bow and axe+horn combo but its not fun anymore.

As far as your secondary weapon set, you have axe and what?

I haven’t decided yet on my axe offhand.. I guess I use the horn normally for the swiftness buff to move around faster and to buff allies, but I still have to play around with dual axes, the torch and the dagger.

I will probably go with the horn full-time, I don’t care much about killing people, so I focus on support, and the horn grants a nice buff.

We are not hunters, we are rangers. Rangers are forest warriors and nature guardians, they work and fight to maintain the balance in the forests and valleys, they do not go around killing animals to put their heads on the wall.

Unlike the hunter, the ranger is silent, swift, caring, compassionate and elegant, he plays a benevolent role to help lost travelers, heal wounded animals and fight back all which seeks to corrupt the forests. The hunter kills for fun and trophies, cares for nothing but the thrill and rush of the hunt, and has no respect for natural life.

Rifles completely contradict ranger lore, and hunters are the opposite of “tree-hugging”, since their unnatural role and purpose in the wilds, is destructive and unbenevolent.

If you want to be a hunter, then play a rifle warrior.. which by the way offers far more damage and power than a ranger has to offer, it is pure destruction and burst damage.

If you use the sword and greatsword mainly for fighting monsters, then use a wolf or feline pet, the feline grants high dps and the wolf grants control, he knocks down his targets and cripples their movement, reducing monster damage on you.

If you use the longbow and shortbow mainly for fighting monsters, then use the bears, they have high survivability, especially the black bear with its prolonged weakness condition ability. A bear will last three times longer than most other pets, and the brown bear looks quite cool. The brown bear also offers a condition removal (at least once they fix F2 pet skills), while it is nice to remove cripple and chill so you can stay at range.

NO, rangers should most definitely not be given use of rifles and pistols. Rangers are warriors that fight with and for nature. The whole lore of rangers is that they are in tune with nature, while rifles are based on destructive technology, rifles are absolutely contradictory to nature.

Rangers are not hunters such as in World of Warcraft, while we use bows, our lore is not the same as that of the hunter of beasts such as in other games. A hunter kills animals for fun, a hunter is not in tune with nature, as he seeks to conquer nature, rather than harmonize with it and respect it.

So no, rangers should most definitely not be given rifles, I feel this would greatly harm the feel of the ranger as a nature guardian and forest warrior. Rangers are silent and swift, respectful and caring, a rifle just goes boom, loud and unelegant, ugly and unnatural.

Rangers are in tune with nature, while the very concept of a rifle is unnatural and harmful.

I don’t think someone can comment on this without having played professions like warrior, guardian and thief to compare. Even in PVE the amount of time greatsword rangers need to take down a monster, is embarasingly long compared to other professions. If you spec toughness and vitality so you don’t die right away, you will spend even longer beating on that monster and watching its healthbar slowly, sloowly tick down. Then you see a warrior come by and watch him destroy that same monster in five seconds.

Rangers aren’t hunters, rangers are forest warriors, their lore does not limit them to only the use of bows, a major weapon such as greatsword, especially considering the awesome design of the skillset (ignoring the dps), should most definitely be viable as a main weapon. I keep playing greatsword + axe/horn, just because the skills are so much fun, and because I roleplay, I bought this game because I wanted to be a forest warrior, a nature guardian, so I just hope Anet will enable me to join player combat some day.

The shortbow is the only viable weapon choice, but I really dislike the skills.. they don’t feel right to me, and although it is much more powerful, I have absolutely no fun using the shortbow. I could enjoy the longbow if I had to, but again the shortbow is much more powerful for both pve and pvp. What keeps me playing is because a big Sylvari ranger as the protector of the forests, is just such cool roleplay for me, and because again, the skills of greatsword are so much fun to use. I enjoy placing down a fire trap, leap comboing with swoop to create a fireshield, and smashing a big sword down onto my enemies.

I really don’t agree Ryo, the absurdly weak state of the ranger greatsword right now, really does not justify having to sacrifice anything at all to increase its damage output. The actual damage output COMBINED with that of a high dps pet, is still literally multitudes lower than that of other professions. What damage a warrior or thief does in 10 seconds, we literally need over a minute for.

It is not just the greatsword, the longbow has incredibly low damage as well, and the axe tops everything with even lower damage. The only skills doing less damage than the ranger greatsword and throwing axe, are elementalist water auto attacks.

I’ve played warrior, elementalist, thief, guardian and ranger so far.. and the only viable build for a ranger is a condition build with shortbow. Nothing we have is remotely as viable as a skirmishing/survival condition build with a shortbow.. it is the only way to play in PvP, no other option is anywhere near viable.

The greatsword situation is not a matter of replacing utility with damage, because then you remain in the same underpowered situation. You can’t talk about greatsword being fine for solo pve, you have to include sPvP, and for that the greatsword is completely and utterly useless. Its utility is great, the abilities are incredibly fun to use even though they aren’t that strong at all.. but the damage is so piddly, so incredibly low, that we cannot use this weapon in sPvP.

I think the greatsword should be a healthy mix of damage, defence and mobility, and that is exactly what it is right now. I find the greatsword skills to be the most fun skillset of the entire game, easily beating other professions in sheer fun-factor.

However, the damage it does right now, is just too low.. even if you can get your pet to do sustained damage despite its broken mechanics, your total dps will still be barely 20% of that of a warrior. Consider the warrior has far more health, defence and armor as well.

I suggest:

1. Increase the auto attack damage by 30%
2. Add a 2 second knockdown to Maul, increase the bleed damage by 40%, but increase its cooldown to 25 seconds.
3. Increase the damage of Swoop by 30% as well, and add a 2 second cripple.

We will still be far, far weaker than a warrior with these changes, but I think they would be a great first step. If necessary afterwards we can still increase pet damage if necessary. I don’t agree with people that say the pets should not play a significant role in ranger combat.

These are all upgrades, but I think they are justified considering the weapon right now is completely useless for SPvP, and is so much weaker compared to most other weapon sets in the game.

The weapon is amazing fun, the skill concepts are the most fun of all sets in the game, but simply too weak in terms of damage to be useful as a main build for SPvP. The Ranger is a Ranger, a forest warrior, and not a hunter, so longbow and shortbow should not be its only options for main weapon. The greatsword should offer a good main build, and not just a secondary weapon option.

Heh, makes me glad I chose a weaker but cooler build with a greatsword as main weapon.

Yes, I definitely agree that Lightning Reflexes, with its insanely long cooldown timer, should not only remove stun, but all immobilizing, crippling and slowing conditions. I use a bear to try and remove immobilize, but its F2 responsiveness makes that not an option.

An ability with such a long cooldown should at the very least make you break any state that stops you from moving normally. I would even say to add another boost to the ability, such as a 5 second swiftness boon for example, it is a lightning-element ability after all.

I use a greatsword as my main weapon, and an axe as my secondary weapon for a ranged/aoe option. I use a fire trap to create a fire combo with the greatsword leap attack (Swoop), which creates a fire shield boon, pretty neat. You run to the monster, drop the fire trap, and Swoop. I guess it would be effective for runners to use the freezing trap instead of the fire trap to keep stuck to them easier.

I don’t like one handed sword, because it roots you during the auto attack, but I enjoy the greatsword skills more than anything else in the entire game. The greatsword for ranger isn’t very powerful, but incredibly fun to use. With the fire trap/Swoop combo it does have adequate dps for solo pve. I do like 30% of the damage a greatsword warrior does, but warriors are unbalanced, so I try not to compare too much with them, it is too disheartening to see a warrior kill something 4x faster than I can.

We do have a fire trap that causes burning, but the burning is so short that increased duration makes no difference. We also have torch abilities that cause burning, so if you use a torch in your off hand in your secondary weapon set, then increased burning may help a little.

I think we have two or three sources of burning, four maybe if you include the spirit.

@ Bast Bow

According to the patch updates, it seems the devs think that the issues are already fixed: the notes said that “responsiveness and AI” have been improved.. neither of which have been actually improved in the game to a point where pets are in any way useful in dungeons and player combat.

I don’t think this is a problem with specific pets, this seems to be an issue with the core code of how pets are programmed. I don’t think the answer lies with trying to fix the most problematic pets, the core code itself needs to be completely overhauled so that pets can home in on their target, can attack while moving, so they stick on their target without losing dps, and that special abilities are executed right away, canceling all other actions, without putting previously queued actions on cooldown.

Much older games have done this successfully, so I am sure Anet is able to make this work now as well if they decide to give it attention.

Small fixes are not the answer for Ranger pets, F2 responsiveness is just one of about four major problems that I’ve seen with pets so far. Pets will not be useful until all the four problems I mentioned before have been adequately solved:

1. Homing in on target.
2. Attacking while moving.
3. F2 executing right away AND while moving.
4. 75% AoE damage reduction so pets last longer than 2 seconds.

Just improving the F2 responsiveness of a few pets, really won’t make any difference, right now the Ranger profession mechanic is completely broken in pvp and dungeons, and without solving all four problems, there may even be more that I’m not aware of at this point, pets will not become any less useless.

Another option would be leaving pets broken and making Ranger abilities stronger, but I don’t think that is very elegant.

I mean, none of these things are actually upgrades or boosts, they don’t make Rangers more powerful, they just make our mechanic work as it should work.

The Ranger/Hunter profession is always very popular in any MMO, so I do think it is worth it for Anet to repair the Ranger mechanic, as right now many Rangers are quitting the game. They bought the game because they wanted to play a Ranger, and if they cannot because of broken mechanics, and have no hope of any upcoming repairs, they just quit, and many seem to be doing just that now, which I think is very sad because this game is amazing: IMO the first top quality MMO since World of Warcraft, and I think the only one for quite a while.

Personally I love the Ranger profession because it lets me play a “nature guardian”, a forest warrior, it allows me to play melee rather than be forced in a ranged/bow position. Few games allow for such an option, so I will keep playing Ranger even if it takes months for our mechanic to be repaired. I do hope it will be sooner.

100 blades is INSANELY overpowered for PVE right now.. my friend stopped playing his warrior because it was just too easy. His gameplay consisted of moving to a monster, hitting 100B, moving to the next monster, hitting 100B, moving to the next, etc, etc.. The skill does far too much damage for such a ridiculously short cooldown.

For PVP one on one the skill is very interesting, with enough reaction speed you can avoid Bull’s Rush I guess, but it is far too powerful in zergs, as you just kill 5 players at once with the click of one button that way, since its total damage far exceeds most players’ maximum health.

But for PVE, 100 blades is stupid.. in those few seconds one 100B attack does more damage than 4 to 5 other players can do all together, and 8 seconds later you can use it again, the dps in pve even for warriors with low power and crit, is beyond insane.

Warriors have the highest armor, the highest health, and the highest damage, while having a very high amount of mobility using the skills of the greatsword along with Bull’s Rush. I’ve seen a warrior completely get away from 3 players, they had no way of catching up as the warrior rushed away at a rapid pace.

The warrior and the elementalist right now are the most unbalanced classes.. the warrior is way too powerful because there is no downside to his insane damage output, even as a glass cannon they still have like 24K health, where as an elementalist and guardian has 10K health.. while the elementalist is unbalanced the opposite direction, he has the lowest damage output, the lowest health and the lowest armor. An elementalist needs several minutes of attacking to do the total damage a warrior does in one click of a button.

I am greatly in favour of having our pets be a significant part of our power, but right now in PVP and in dungeons, we might as well have no pets at all, because they never last more than two seconds. I do think pets should be a high priority on the fix-list, because a ranger without a pet, which is the case in dungeons and PVP as I said, they die instantly there, is just a very weak character.

The points I see that need urgent fixing:

- Pets need to home in on their target, rather than running in straight lines.

- Pets need to attack while moving, and not stop before attacking, because even mobs can dodge pet attacks. The only way I can get my pet to do damage if it doesn’t have aggro, is by going melee.

- Pet F2 skills need to be executed on the move as well, and have an animation/charge-up of no longer than one second, and be near instant in cases such as condition removal.

- All pets need a 75% AOE damage resistance, including damage from auto attack cleave swings from players. As is now, pets are useless in PVP against professions such as warriors and guardians, they simply destroy our pets without even targeting them. If a player wants to kill a pet, then that should only be possible by targeting the pet. No other profession can have its profession-mechanic negated like this. We are balanced around our pets, so they should not be so easily destroyed.