Guild Wars 2

You can also stop thinking in PvP terms. It hurts other aspects too. A random smoke field will screw up fire fields. And what if I want a field to blind Lupi during his phase? Do I just sit around waiting for my pet to drop the field just in time?

And before, you could drop smoke field without being in combat. It was great for skipping mobs in certain areas of VB, and you could just stow your pet afterwards.

The attack is NO different than the canine knockdown! It’s the first thing it goes for when swapped and off cooldown! I ALREADY KNOW when it’s going to do the assault, in the meantime, I need to control when and where it will drop the smokefield!

Oh yeah sure. I’ll just stay in combat and never let my health reset.

This is ridiculous. For the first time ever, I’m running around shooting at pets, rock dogs, and doors just to stay in combat so my AF doesn’t decay. I guess it brings a “different type of play” to Druid, I just don’t know if it counts as a positive change.

Mcrocha.3891:

I disagree. CAF is already gated behind a cd and 100% req to enter, it doesn’t need to be further hindered by degenerating outside of combat.

The best thing they could have done imo is to let us keep remaining AF when leaving CAF, let us enter CAF at any AF level, and added the cd. That way if you wanted to pop in the form to get the cleanse or stunbreak, or the stealth when leaving, you could do so without burning all of the force you built up, but would have to wait for the cd so you couldn’t abuse it. Then they could have adjusted fill rates from there to get it to a level where they wanted. And if necessary they could have put ICD on things like Celestial Shadow or Druidic Clarity.

If CAF worked like I described it would have added a higher ceiling to the Druid when played well and gave us more control and much needed utility.

This. I thought the whole reason people were asking for a 10sec cooldown was because they wanted to be able to access CAF at any level. In return for that, we would have a cooldown on it.

It’s like they listened to half the suggestions and ignored the other half…

Why make it decay?! I just don’t understand! I might not need to pop CAF at that moment when it fills up. Maybe I want to save it to run to the next point and use it on teammates who are low. Except I end up getting out of combat and it starts decaying and I have to slowly and painfully build it back up again.

This is awful. I just had one game and I probably only managed to fill my bar twice from a combination of spamming TU and attacking as much as possible. I know they wanted to encourage us to use staff more, but it’s practically impossible to get into CAF with just LB/GS now.

Sardath.8524:

I think I’ll run this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vNAQJATWjEqQLLWyCesAXLW+DM41acduuUEyABgm+VNYHUyzCD-TpRGABA8AAO4QAkwFAYt9H4uMQAHBAA

Probably will change the amulet if something better comes out. Lots of fury and opening strikes, not sure if viable, but probably fun.

Don’t forget if you can also get fury from pet swap if you use clarion bond over enlargement.

Edit: I just realized your 2nd weapon is staff. Ehh, staff doesn’t really have a burst/high damage attack so you won’t be getting as much damage out of Remorseless. It only really procs on the first hit of something, so rapid fire won’t help there.

Lord Snow.3257:

So the Scrapper hammer is a complete clone of our greatsword, but the damage, defense and finishers (reliability and fluidity are also important), just makes Ranger GS pale in comparison.

kitten . I just checked and your right. Same cast time, same cleave amount, but base damage is higher by 100 on almost each chain (unless wiki lies). Not only does it stack might, it also grants vulnerability on hit.

And the other hammer skills provide just as much utility if not more so than GS. When you put it that way, wow. The difference is huge.

You shouldn’t be more than 600 units from your party in a dungeon anyways.

(1): +25 Healing Power
(2): +10% might duration
(3): +50 Healing Power
(4): When you use a heal skill, gain aegis for 5 seconds (Cooldown: 10s)
(5): +100 Healing Power
(6): +20% Might duration; when you use a healing skill, gain 3 stacks of Might for 10 seconds. (Cooldown: 10s)

Ok, so I just spent a few minutes letting my bird and lynx go at the running golem. Surprisingly, the lynx killed the golem on an average of 10 seconds faster than my raven. This was also using F2 off cooldown. Lynx got more hits in, had more damage from the bleeds than the raven.

Of course landing the F2 was a lot more difficult than the raven, but still, I’m a bit surprised by that.

If anyone else wants to run a more through testing, they should probably go ahead, but I’m pretty surprised by the findings.

Josh Davis.6015:

Hmmm, new amulets. Aside from zealots, anything else you folks think would be interesting?

Sigil of Cleansing

Makes sense, pretty similar to what I experienced. I just saw a few more rangers using lynx than before and wondered if I was missing out on anything obvious.

Since the changes to pet stats, cats have become a good alternative to using birds since they have 300 more condition damage. Especially the lynx with all the bleeds.

What do people think? I’ve been testing out the lynx, and while the extra bleeds from lynx are nice, their F2 pounce is pretty noticeable and much easier to dodge than the bird’s slash. Also I feel like cats seem to attack at a bit of a slower rate than birds, and don’t follow as closely, making it a bit harder to land taunt.

You guys think that extra 300 condi damage makes it worthwhile to bring lynx over birds?

Not gonna happen buddy. Maybe in a few years.

This might be a novel ideal, but maybe Anet should consider releasing some info to the community before implementing it in live. Sometimes players who actually play the class can immediately identify problems/weaknesses/exploits in new skills without even needing to test it (MDG, WhaO). That way, devs wouldn’t have to go through the whole cycle of fixing/removing as many things.

It’ll be less work for developers in the long run!

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/support/bugs/Ranger-pet-bugs-after-Sept-29-patch-merged/page/2#post5586051

Only workaround so far. Unfortunately does nothing for my bug, which is the first pet disappears every time I leave HotM.

Fluffball.8307:

Puck.9612:

Fluffball.8307:

What the heck? It’s literally one of the starting options, you can’t make a ranger without getting asked if you want one.

Unless you pick a norn.

Whoa, didn’t know that. What pets do norn start with?

Bear, raven snow leopard, and snow wolf.

EDIT: oops sorry, it was snow leopard over raven. You just get raven really early on.

All I can say is I played a lot of variations of druid during the beta. From what I could see, there is no room in PvP for a pure healbot.

Pure bunker doesn’t have enough self sustain to keep itself alive, especially in 1v2 situations. It’s completely reliant on it’s team, and what team wants to babysit a class that can only heal and maybe CC? It doesn’t even have good enough condi application to counter pressure with Settlers. If you were ever separated without your teammates, you’re a free kill. I mean sure, it might take them a while, but a druid bunker is way worse than bunker guard/neco. Can’t even compete with settler’s shoutbow either. You basically offer no good boons to your teammates, the only thing you can offer is heals and some CC’s.

With a celestial ammy, no might stacking means no damage. Which means you’d still eventually lose your 1v1s with people of equal skill level because after a while, your sustain runs out and you just can’t kill them. Meanwhile they can still eventually kill you. You could try the daze chain, but that wasn’t even useful, since again, no might = damage.

Which made power based builds the only good option. And power based builds relied strongly on the heals from CA form. The scaling from CA in Zerk, Maru and Valk was amazing. It meant you could still bring good damage, CC options, and some pretty freaking nice heals. If they take away our freaking nice heals in druid, the only thing we’d offer is damage and CC. Things which base rangers already has. So why bring a druid to the game at all? The only thing druid had going that differentiated it from thieves and mesmers was the strong heals.

So if they nerf the base healing, they’d better buff something else to compensate for that. Otherwise…druid just won’t be able to compete against the other classes in all forms. Not as bunker, bruiser or even DPS.

I have the same problem, except it’s my first pet that resets each time. Posted about it in the bug forums, hopefully they fix it soon.

Not game breaking but irritating. I only have half my pets, my first pet disappears every time I enter HoTM or start a match. Luckily I can re-add it from the pet menu, but it’s irritating to do so every match. If I forget, I end up with a pet I can’t swap and can’t revive.

The arrows still hit through stealth, but your character model won’t turn with it. And the arrow animation won’t change either, it’ll still look like it’s flying towards the place they stealthed. But after the channel ends, your character will end up facing the direction where they last were as long as you weren’t turning or something.

But if you use sigil of fire, it still procs where the other character actually is. So basically I have to rely on the fire burst to tell me where the stealthed guy generally is, or watch where my character is facing.

Not sure if this counts as a druid bug, but my first pet vanishes every time I start a PvP match. I go in, realize I can’t swap pets and see that my raven has vanished and in the pet selection menu, it’s blank. I select it and everything is fine. I go into HotM after the match and I still have 2 pets.

Then I q into another match, and again, my first pet is gone Have to reselect it again each time…

Not sure if anyone else is having this issue.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

All over 60s fight, after that there is some downtime. 100% uptime on 11 Might, Fury, Swiftness, Regeneration and Protection. 60% uptime on Vigor. 60% uptime on Stability. Healing Spring heals for 25k. Spotter for 150 Precision. Frost Spirit for +10% damage x 5 people. Sun Spirit for 30 burn ticks every 8s. SmokeScale pushing out top damage.

Then you have the Druid healing on top of that.

Consider yourself enlightened.

So I don’t know anything about playing support classes, but if the sigil of benevolence works like bloodlust, you should only need it on one weapon set + underwater for it to apply. At least it frees up a sigil slot for something else.

Ehh. maybe not exactly like WoR. WoR is still a utility skill with a higher cooldown while Sublime Conversion is a weapon skill with comparably low cooldown.

But the amount of healing it offers should get a buff. And maybe projectiles that would’ve given you a condition is converted to giving you a buff.

Yeah, this definitely needs a buff to reward players who use it properly.

Had an ohkitten moment when I realized I unloaded an entire rapid fire into another druid’s Sublime Conversion. Then I laughed when I saw his HP barely went up and 2 auto attacks brought him back down to where he was before.

I should’ve been punished for wasting a RF like that, and he should’ve been healed a LOT more for placing it down at the right moment.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

bloodpyrope.8630:

If natural stride became a minor, it’d be changed to 25% movement speed like Chronomancer’s Time marches on…

Why do you say that? Natural Stride has a downside, if you have a movement impeding condition, you do not move faster. Mesmer’s always moves 25% faster.

Oh interesting. I didn’t realize the mesmer’s speed boost wasn’t affected by conditions. In that cause, I guess Natural Stride could be swapped as a minor. I don’t like how the minor’s keep pushing us to be healers and I’d love to be able to take Celestial Shadow too.

I support any changes in the Druid line that doesn’t force us to be healbots.

If natural stride became a minor, it’d be changed to 25% movement speed like Chronomancer’s Time marches on…

Just had this happened in a match. Swapped pets and the pet that came out was already dead. Seems like an old bug that got reintroduced again.

Zatoichi.1049:

bloodpyrope.8630:

Zatoichi.1049:

Eurantien.4632:

WHaO is already better than TU in pvp because it frees up a rune set since you get mobility from WHaO. + with regen it actually heals more than TU

I would argue not all can afford, (or at the very least, feel like they can afford) to go without the extra condi cleanse from TU though, seeing as it is the most useful low CD Survival skill, tied to our best condi cleanse mechanic.

Then run trooper runes and you’ll still get 1 condi cleanse.

Personally I find the swiftness from WHaO outweighs the cleansing from TU.

Anyways I’m just scared now that devs will change the cooldown on WHaO just because of these buffs…

but now you are running a defensive rune with a tough/vit, when you could be running pack, travelers, ranger, hoelbraak, etc. If you like shout/trooper setup cool, doesn’t make it the best

these are all just options. different options suit different playstyles, there are many competitive builds that run different setups. My argument is WHaO is not “better” than TU

Yeah it just comes down to what playstyle you want. I run TU sometimes, but it’s not my preferred heal, but I can see why others like it.

But I think the point of the thread was to address the fact that WHaO was no better or worse than TU or other heals (except water spirit). So why was this one heal singled out for special treatment at all?

Zatoichi.1049:

Eurantien.4632:

WHaO is already better than TU in pvp because it frees up a rune set since you get mobility from WHaO. + with regen it actually heals more than TU

I would argue not all can afford, (or at the very least, feel like they can afford) to go without the extra condi cleanse from TU though, seeing as it is the most useful low CD Survival skill, tied to our best condi cleanse mechanic.

Then run trooper runes and you’ll still get 1 condi cleanse.

Personally I find the swiftness from WHaO outweighs the cleansing from TU.

Anyways I’m just scared now that devs will change the cooldown on WHaO just because of these buffs…

Kitty.1502:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

We are, indeed, reading.

We particularly take time to read the constructive and well-crafted feedback posts.

I don’t want to make promises, which as many of you have pointed out can go horribly awry for a variety of reasons, but we are hoping to make some changes to the old ranger shouts (pre-WHAO & SotP).

When are you going to fix pets?

…and we wonder why devs avoid commenting where they immediately get comments about things that don’t relate to the thread.

2 traps = at most 1 stunbreak/invuln. CC chain them to death.

They have awful condi clear. Either a signet you can see, at most 2-3 skills that can remove up to 6 condis, or RNG condi removal every 10 seconds. They also have really bad mobility, so you can just ignore them and rotate around them. Just treat them like a really selfish bunker guard that can’t support their team.

Or you can go full aids and run rabid burn engie.

Shadelang.3012:

bloodpyrope.8630:

I heard long ago, rangers could use Guard to send pets up towers and stuff in WvW. Was this removed for a reason? Because being able to teleport a pet somewhere would be insanely useful and I might start using it just to instantly position my pet on a ledge or place I wouldn’t be able to access.

They wouldn’t even have to change the leash range.

That was changed a very long time ago. And yes. It was kittening hilarious and brokenly over powered. While it made for some of the funniest youtube videos. Many were glad to see it go.

Using guard to bypass the leash range would not cause it to teleport from my current understanding of its mechanics. Of so. Then thats something that would have to be fixed together with it.

So I wasn’t around then, but why was it insanely OP? From what I know, mesmers can summon their phantasms up towers to attack siege. Sure pets have more health than phantasms, but unless people start running all ranger zergs and teleporting pets up towers to stop defenders, I can’t imagine a situation where it’d break the game (but maybe I just have poor imagination).

I just think a shout that’s already ground targeted and involves sending a pet somewhere could be reworked to teleport the pet instead. I can think of a few situations where that’d be useful. Teleport pet on a ledge where enemy rangers are shooting, teleport pet to ledge that a downed thief just went to, etc.

I heard long ago, rangers could use Guard to send pets up towers and stuff in WvW. Was this removed for a reason? Because being able to teleport a pet somewhere would be insanely useful and I might start using it just to instantly position my pet on a ledge or place I wouldn’t be able to access.

They wouldn’t even have to change the leash range.

LughLongArm.5460:

I dont think it is. I think they want to reward you for playing WHAO with FB and this idea ruins the combo. They need to create a reasonble fix amount that benefits from pet boon duration(?).

I just think if they wanted us to share boons, WHaO is ok. It’s just sharing the boons.

If they wanted us to copy the boons over again, and increase the duration, it should’ve gone on an elite with a longer cooldown, like SotP. Otherwise the potential for abuse is insane.

Either way, they’ve already made up their mind.

https://twitter.com/RoyCronacher/status/649288944513773568

“Instead of copying durations blowing them out, we are still going to have heal as one do all boons, but instead use static durations.”

Oberon Vex.1389:

“We heal as One” : heal yourself and your pet for X. Copy any boons on your pet that you do not have.

They could then shave the protection duration on Guard to a moderate level (8s or so) and call it a day.

Ideally this copy mechanic should have been placed on something other than a heal skill. Without changing functionalities of other abilities, the one I’d choose would have been “Strength of the Pack” because as an elite it has a solid cooldown and fits thematically.

^ this guy has the right idea.

Updates to WHaO:

https://twitter.com/RoyCronacher/status/649288944513773568

“Instead of copying durations blowing them out, we are still going to have heal as one do all boons, but instead use static durations.”

I thought it was kinda weird they decided to put it on WHaO. Would’ve fit better on SotP. It puts it on a longer cooldown so it couldn’t be spammed. It’d still be strong, but not OP.

SMOKESCALE BOIS!!! WE GET SMOKE FIELD!

Wait, this is actually looking not so bad!

HEAVY HEALING SUPPORT CLASS?!

Puck.9612:

bloodpyrope.8630:

I can’t believe I have to wait for this Quaggan show to end first…what were they thinking? All those new prospective players are probably running in the opposite direction by now.

Yuuuuup. I just opened up twitch to see if they were talking about anything interesting and saw that crap. Closed it right back up.

I’m sure glad they’re focusing on the important stuff first.

Well, to be fair they have to throw a bone to the vet players. And for some reason the community IS obsessed with quaggans.

It just…doesn’t seem like a good time/place to show it. Especially if they’re trying to lure in new players by throwing in this creepy VHS thing at them.

I can’t believe I have to wait for this Quaggan show to end first…what were they thinking? All those new prospective players are probably running in the opposite direction by now.

Have you tried using the metabattle build yet? That one is actually pretty durable with all the protection uptime. It’s also a good starting point so people can know what you need to change after you try it.

http://metabattle.com/wiki/Build:Ranger_-_Power_Survival

Sina.9208:

That’s odd. I play trap-ranger & they always focus me in the early game :-)

:P probably because they know you don’t have room for invulns/stun breaks.

Daharahj.1325:

That sounds far too weak for an elite. like Spirit of Nature

:) I fixed it for you.

Gabriell.4856:

bloodpyrope.8630:

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Thief can now:
Steal a Ranger’s Pet, making them unable to use Pet commands/skills. You must use Steal on the Pet for this to happen.

Ok, but don’t forget, once you steal a pet, you lose 20-30% of your stats and your F skills get replaced by the pet f skills Also when you stealth, your new pet will follow you around and give away your position unless you command it to attack someone.

Pet stays with you until it dies, or someone else steals it!

Hi,

Can you tell me where your magical 20-30% stats went because…everyone get the same stats with the amulet system. Am I right?

Supposedly, rangers deal 20-30% less damage because those stats went to the pets. I don’t actually have any official proof from Anet (maybe someone else does) but it’s just one of those things everyone says is true.

Turtle Dragon.9241:

Thief can now:
Steal a Ranger’s Pet, making them unable to use Pet commands/skills. You must use Steal on the Pet for this to happen.

Ok, but don’t forget, once you steal a pet, you lose 20-30% of your stats and your F skills get replaced by the pet f skills Also when you stealth, your new pet will follow you around and give away your position unless you command it to attack someone.

Pet stays with you until it dies, or someone else steals it!

Someone here has a llama/prize tracker in their signature. I just don’t remember who…

But yeah, it took about 1+ month for me to get my prizes from AG.