Guild Wars 2

This game needs less stealth if anything. As much as i enjoy the new LB3, it’s another step in the wrong direction imho.

Get in a party with people in the same overflow. If you get disconnected and log back in on another overflow, you can then go to your party menu to rejoin the overflow where your friends are.

Swagg.9236:

This sort of spammy blur of attacks is the kind of offensive paradigm that is unhealthy for GW2 because it undermines active damage mitigation such as dodges and single blocks. Because none of the Ranger attacks really have any “oomph” or are telegraphed particularly well, the Ranger just sort of throws skills at opponents which have to guess at random when they should maybe dodge or block.

This blur of attacks is what makes the ranger’s melee different. When i want slower, harder hitting telegraphed attacks, i just play my warrior.

If you want to solve the “guess at random when they should maybe dodge or block”, well, just take a page out of GW1 and start displaying casting bars imho.

Loubbo.9852:

For people asking it to scale with you, why would you want that?

If you are a pure dps your tank pet can no longer perform well and likewise as a tank your dps pet will be extremely lacking (otherwise it would be extremely op as you could have a rampaging bear with the dps of a cat or etc).

Agreed. That asymetry is fun. Also, pets have until now been independent from the oh-so-enjoyable ascended gear grind, i can’t emphasize how much i want this to remain the case.

Totally agreed. Pets should get back the ability to scale walls!

Prysin.8542:

when it comes to combos, rangers only need a spammable blast to be far superior to warrior by all means.
We already got more finishers (that can be used in a practical, working manner. Yes you can possibly argue that a warrior can equip 4 banners. but then you become utterly useless on all fronts.), granted most of them is projectile or leap,

More finishers? Warriors have access to every type of finisher as a utility skill for example. About the same access to projectile, and more access to leap. Add a fair amount of those finishers being pet-tied, and yes, the warrior is a better finisher in every way:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_ranger_combo_skills
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Table_of_warrior_combo_skills

Of course, they don’t have access to fields apart from fire. That makes the solo warrior pretty much a non starter for combos. But it’s really a great finisher class for group play.

Norn has the lore thing with the Hunt and the spirits. With the ranger skills showing some of these animal spirits, it’s a great fit, as is having a pet companion from that spirit species. Also, a max sized norn using signet of the wild with off-hand training equipped gets to show off the biggest bubble possible for Axe5. And then there’s abusing Bear Form and Signet of the Hunt to crit-a-lot in a gimmicky one-shot way. It’s fun, though it’s going to pay the incoming crit damage changes.

Sylvari fits naturally lore-wise, and the fern hound looks designed for Sylvari rangers. Racial skills wise, roots are nice for additional cc, and Take Root is a fun elite worth slotting depending on what you’re doing.

A Charr could be from the blood legion beast tamers, in a “i’ll bend nature my way”. Not sure the Shrapnel Mine is worth slotting over a trap, but it’s there, Hidden Pistol is a 15s cooldown evade for evade-spam builds, Charzooka finally gets your ranger to wield firearms, and Call Warband summons 2 additional ‘pets’ to add to your 4 spirits and your regular pet (preferably a hyena that duplicates itself) for the ultimate pet zoo.

Asuras, i have no idea lore-wise, but game wise, you get confusion access with Pain Inverter (i think?) and an extra daze with Technobabble, whose duration you can double with 30 in skirmishing. Plus you get to play with a model that is smaller than your pets.

Humans now are sadly rather plain. They get the Hounds of Balthazar on elite to play the same pet zoo as the charrs, but aprat from that… If we ever got hold of rifles, then one could finally play a proper Human Hunter: a rifle, a dog, a mustache and a monocle. But as of now, the pro-rifle crowd is massively outvoiced by the druid-crowd, so that’s not gonna happen tomorrow.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Combo field wise…well just about anything trumps a warrios for obvious reasons. And having fire, ice and water field, sure doesn’t hurt ranger’s combo game.

Bit unfair. Combo play involves fields and finishers and i’d say both classes are about even, with each having a clear focus on one aspect. While the warrior is poor on fields (fire on LB, that’s it?), it is a massive team player with blasts. Banner summon blasts, then banner 5 blasts, and the banner can be used by anyone for additional blasting. By comparison, the ranger only has the in-combat drake and the horn 5 (gotta love that blast, maybe the best buff we received EVER). There’s some whirl on both classes too, but whirl is generally underwhelming compared to blast.

On that note devs, let me say that there’s a missed dialogue opportunity. Kasmeer never reacts to some random dude wandering around with a bikini-clad mini-her!

I was hoping for some well-deserved putdown, but no, nothing. Awwww…

Lol, we all did the same.

Here’s me norn playing with his minis. :p

Durzlla.6295:

Question for those who actually roam (I mean I do sorta but it’s never solo) is it useful to use traps ( the universal WvW ones) at all?

Very. Just keep in mind that you can have only one active at a time (or maybe one of each?), so don’t spam them: the old one will disappear…

Supply traps are precious to save some time against tower ninja’ing. A small/medium group hit by it won’t have enough supply left for 2 rams or kittenlowing them down considerably, giving more time to react. A zerg will still have supply, but even a single supply trap can be enough to slow them down a bit in a keep fight, lowering their remaining resources for inner. You can also drop the trap right behind the outer while it’s still there. Even if you leave immediately back to roaming, you’ll have contributed a fair bit to the defense.

As for the stealth traps, they’re hilarious. In a 1v1, don’t even try, you’ll just die, but if a nearby thief is ganking someone else and you can deploy the trap and bait the thief to it, it’s party time! Works a treat on stealth-spam thieves trolling groups. Or predict a place where a spotted thief may come through like the ‘lake’ supply camp narrow gate, or the south supply camp bridge. But my favourite is to drop it on a friendly sentry and wait there like an idiot. There’s always a thief spotting the free kill. From there, it’s your turn to laugh.

Forzani.2584:

I can’t seem to not lose time when I try and turn around for the 1st backward jump …

The first jump is always away from your current target, so if you’re running away, and have a target selected behind you, hitting the skill will automatically have your ranger turn around to face the target, then jump back. The jump being slowish will give you plenty of time to turn the camera around again to turn and continue running after you landed (and use the second leap).

I can’t use that skill to gain any time while just running, but when chased, it’s easy to pull off. Extra points if you can use the second leap to cross a chasm.

The pets. They lost their proper range, they lost ‘Guard’ outside of towers or into them, they lost damage, but they’re still fluffy and provide some funny additional semi-independent utility. Making use of them is a game in the game. Still… Oh for the days of a 30 BM fully Master Bond’ed jaguar Sic’em’d at 3000 range…

The acrobatic 1H swordfight and it’s dagger companion for evade spam.

The warhorn. First it’s cool. Real heroes have a warhorn. And the skill 4 scaling up graphically with the target size is priceless. Skill should have been called “Attack of the Humongous Flesh-Eating Pigeons”. I know, it’s hawks, but for all the damage they do, they may as well be pigeons.

The beastly look of GS2. On a norn, it’s pure win.

The utter coolness of an axe/axe norn ranger. Max-sized norn + Signet of the Wild + Off-hand Training + Axe 5 = biggest axe dance ever.

The traps, though i prefer the idea of them than the underwhelming implementation.

1500 range. I don’t run it often, but every now and then, it’s fun to outrange everything else and cowardly run away as soon as they start noticing. I sing the Sir Robin song to myself when in that mood.

The spirits, particularly the underwater ones. It’s gorgeous to swim around some areas with your pet, your spirit dolphins and the giant spirit whale.

All that, and the 18k Bear Form charge.

CreativeAnarchy.6324:

Mobs […] will run right up to you even though they have a bow.

That’s because if they’re seen ranging with a bow, Zhaitan kicks them from his party. :p

My bet is on a tooltip fix.

Lawn (Moa)
Snoop (Dog)

Prysin.8542:

Mesmers are pidgeonholed into one single build, and any variation thereof is even more useless to the zerg then any ranger build is. This is bad for the mesmer, as it creates a “unspoken law” as to how to build a mesmer, completely ignoring the overall goal of “have fun”.

Funny that you’d adress another wonderful aspect of the ranger, though in another game mode.

“OMG! y u no play spotter/frost spirit/sword/warhorn??! L2P u bearbow. /kick”

I love my ranger, and have a ton of fun with it in wvw, including zerging. But i’m perfectly conscious that i’d bring much more and with less effort on many other classes. For having dusted off my warrior this week, it’s insanely noticeable. At the end of the day, i’m privileging my own fun to the server’s efficiency.

Somewhere along this thread you mentioned people shouldn’t take their own personal experience for a generality. You may want to think about it. Maybe, just maybe, it isn’t the entire wvw player base minus you that is wrong on rangers being that awesome…

Fenrir.3609:

cafard.8953:

Sarrs.4831:

How would you realistically enforce a moratorium on speculation?

Easy. Any TP purchase becomes account-bound.

You can sell everything you harvest/produce/loot but don’t need, you can purchase everything you need, but nobody can purchase stuff just for resale value.

Not sure if serious…

I’m not debating the pros and cons of the TP-trading minigame. But to the question “how could you realistically enforce a ban on it”, i believe the solution is trivial.

Sarrs.4831:

How would you realistically enforce a moratorium on speculation?

Easy. Any TP purchase becomes account-bound.

You can sell everything you harvest/produce/loot but don’t need, you can purchase everything you need, but nobody can purchase stuff just for resale value.

Phaeton.9582:

Anything that emphasises team-fight positioning gets a tick in my book aanyway

So, the current system then. It rewards positioning and careful field placement, since field spamming will overwrite the intended buffs. Want multiple buffs? Time your fields or move out of the first before casting the second one. Timing/positioning is there at the moment, precisely because of fields overwriting each other. Coordination is rewarded at the moment.

Allowing field-stack blasting or even pre-selecting the favoured field will destroy this and mainly strengthen the mindless stacking. Field blasting strategy would come down to “drop all fields, blast all”…

Imho, wvw is rewarded just as it should: a small profit that remains well under what you can get through other methods. That ensures people only come in to play it, and that avoids saturating queues with farmers.

See the League for exactly what happens when the farming crowd is enticed in: 3/4 weeks with dreadful action on the lucky times you actually went past the queue. It only got better once most farmers had their achievements done. The hilarious ‘reward chest’ at the end was the best thing ever. With some luck, it’ll keep some crowd away when it’s somehow decided that what the players really want is a season 2.

kyubi.3620:

actualy i wouldnt be surprised if they reduce the pet base damage to compensate for the stat gain. Now non damage based ranger wouldnt be able to run damage based pet without gearing and specing accordingly.

So remove one of the uniqueness of the ranger/pet mechanic? What’s the point of the pet if it becomes a sub-performing mirror of your build?

Josh Davis.6015:

We agree. There were some PvP-only changes for professions that made sense in a previous meta, but not so much now. I expect we’ll be looking very closely at some of these skills over the next few weeks.

Great to hear. Please consider restoring the ranger pet leash range outside of sPvP.

You must be new to this subforum. Let me answer all your gear/build questions:

“l2p u noob, y u no frost spirit+spotter s+wh full zerk?! u bearbow or wat??! lol”

I don’t know. While i’m as annoyed as anyone when i get retaliation when the zerg is trying to stack swiftness, or aoe heals when we’re packing up might before a fight, i think this is one of the few mechanics that provides a downside to the “stack & dump aoe” technique.

I feel like the wrong field blasting is serving some purpose. In a small group situation like a dungeon, it’s lack of coordination, your own fault. In a large group situation, it’s probably the only price you have to pay for getting all other advantages.

Mint Rain.6798:

Is there any actual lore stating how they 1) survived

Do you have any idea of how many Rangers brought their pet Melandru’s Stalker to the Zaishen Menagerie where they were cared for and bred to profusion?

RyuDragnier.9476:

Unfortunately Solori, we’ve seen changes caused by something in PvP hit us across the board, and we see at least 3 instances of it in each balance patch. Such as the damage nerf for pets and the endurance regen trait change, to name two. They were caused by things in PvP, but they hit us in PvE as well.

As was the hilarious ‘Pet leash range “increased” to 2000’. Another sPvP issue we paid for in other game modes.

nagymbear.5280:

Did you ever get downed by barrage? Ever?

Oh yes. By my own barrage when stupidly hitting a massive retaliation blob. ^^

kyubi.3620:

i run only on solely beast mastery since release day, prety much viable everywhere if you ask me

0 20 5 20 30

Where do you pick up the quest for the additional 5 trait points?

Wondering about that too. Superior Sigil of Perception gives me the stacks, but the Superior Sigil of Bloodlust doesn’t. Is it working for anyone?

Unleashed pets.

“Your pet is too far away from that target!” is just doing my head in.

Keep them leashed for sPvP if needed, heck, you can nerf their life/damage 90% in sPvP too for all i care. But give the hunting companion back to us non e-sports people.

Don’t forget Runes of the Thief too in there. Precision, Cond. Damage, and +10% damage when flanking. Very nice synergy with shortbow.

Charr or Human, so you can pick an elite that summons two additional pets (Warband, Hounds of Balthazar). Pet Hyena + F2 + spirit heal + 3 spirits + 2 elite pets + one mini just because you can = 9 creatures around you. Get one or two friends like that with you and you can scare away zergs in wvw when they see the amount of red names. ^^

Loving it. Had fun plenty of times with Bear Form group knockdown trolling but never paid any attention to the damage. That’s absolutely insane. XD

Quick few points from my minor dungeon experience:
- signet of the hunt close to useless in dungeon, get a frost spirit instead to buff the entire party’s damage, just drop it somewhere in range, far enough from the bosses big aoes
- too many bosses are cc-immune, so entangle can be safely dropped. Go for RaO for big fury and stability uptime, or the elite spirit if you can place it at the right time in the right safe spot. Cooldown on spirit is annoying imho, and i’m not good at timing it, but it’s revive and group cond removal is very handy.
- QZ, really not sure. Don’t think those 6s will be the difference between success and fail. I prefer to noob it out and pick utility like Search and Rescue or Protect Me. Alternatively, Lightning Reflexes for one more get out of jail card.
- so unless you want to keep some Survival skills, you could remove the shortened cd on these with WS 10 and pick Vigorous Renewal for some vigor.
- spotter is great, keep it
- GM marskmanship is meh. Piercing arrows won’t be needed, and if you need aoe, you already have axe 1 and 2, and can pick a drake for cleaving attacks.The traited signet of stone can be nice, but i’d rather put those 10 points in nature and pick Vigorous Spirits for the spirit of frost.
- not quite sure about Quickdraw. Flanking autoattack has no cooldown anyway, and that’s the one you’ll spam in dps race conditions. If you’re good at keeping the pet alive, i’d go for Pet’s Prowess or Companion’s Might. But otherwise, i’d switch those 10 points to WS to get the protection on dodge passive, and pick Off-Hand Training to get more warhorn uptime.
- Master’s Bond is not gonna cut it in dungeon, you’ll lose a pet or have to swap to save it, so you’ll lose those stacks super fast. I’d go Mighty Swap and swap every time it’s available instead.

Weapon wise, speed clearers will tell you to go full melee. That’s probably the fastest dps setup. But meh, unless you’re speed clearing, you can do the job like that. Axe 1 is very weak against single targets though, so make sure to swap it out asap on bosses, and only come back to it when the warhorn is off cooldown. Or if you can avoid dying to the sword rooting, feel free to use it.

Pet wise, Jungle Stalker is handy for dps and group might, but could die a bit fast if you’re not careful. Not being the best at the F3-F1 dance, i like to go for drakes since they have a Blast finisher, survive well, and have a cleaving autoattack nice for the groups. A brown bear on the side is nice for condi removal too, but with less damage in exchange. Handy in case you need ‘Protect Me’.

On a more generic note, your condition damage is very low. So all your bleeds (on-crit trait, SB flanking, axe 2) will be wasted (overwritten) if your party stacks 25 bleeds with more cond damage than you. Same for other conditions if they reach the 5-stacks cap. But i’m not sure how much your average party would have in cond damage, so i couldn’t tell you how much to aim for i’m afraid!

Anyway, have fun.

I hear the fix is scheduled for April 1st.

I run bears every now and then because i like bears, because they’re “Protect Me” HP sponges, because sometimes i want the condition clear or the aoe weakness, or because sometimes, there’s such a ‘bearbow’ stigmata that i enjoy running it out of spiteful contrarianness.

As for the longbow, well it’s the signature weapon of the class archetype. And like it or not, many people like that archetype. The hunter dude(tte) with his(her) friggin’ maulin’ fluffy bear is cool. Deal with it.

But OMG, it’s not optimal! We get a bad image because of it! Sword has more DPS and (insert favourite pet) has better DPS! Well, guess what, we’re not all here for min-maxing (and were we, that’s the stupidest possible class choice for it, haha). Bears, like bows are enjoyable, and still do a job in what is a tremendously easy game.

Siphaed.9235:

What can a player of GW2 expect in April 2014 that’ll make the base collectively say “oooo, ahhhhh, wow!”?

“Ranger bugs have been fixed”.

On the 1st of the month.

“Your pet is too far from that target!”

What i wonder is why they don’t add this map to the regular scoring wvw for variety. Why not alternate EotM and Borderlands every week for example? One week Borderlands (3 copies) are scoring, EotM is the non-scoring overflow, the next EotM (3 copies) is the regular scoring map and Borderlands become the non-scoring overflow.

And once a mechanic like that is implemented, that opens the door for wacky stuff like rotating the regular PvE maps as wvw non-scoring overflow. Fighting in LA, Lornar’s Pass or Bloodtide Coast would be great fun.

Prysin.8542:

Spirits (Sun = 1.5k burning over 3 seconds)

Got nerfed to 2s.

I want a monkey with a Steal ability on F2. May as well throw a gorilla and orang-utan for good measure in the ‘Primate’ family in fact.

nagymbear.5280:

Expiatus.4210:

Does anyone know if superior runes of the mesmer’s sixth bonus correctly affects Hilt Bash and Concussion Shot? Trying to work out a build using the six rune bonus plus Moment of Clarity to see how long a daze I can get. Couple this with ice sigil(s) on a bow and some frosty pets and it sounds like a good bit of CC.

Moment of clarity affects stuns, rune of the mesmer affects dazes.

In-game tooltip for MoC clearly says “Daze and stun duration”.

Skill name: “Second Amendment”
Effect: Ranger invokes the Right to Bear Arms. All bears in 1200 range pull out a shotgun and attack ranger’s target while shouting at it in a redneck accent.

Skill name: “See how it feels?”
Effect: Currently equipped sword reverses roles and starts wielding the ranger to chain auto-attacks on target, as well as inflicting additional confusion stacks. Damage scales according to ranger’s current Armor value. As soon as the sword gets hit by cc/damage that it couldn’t dodge since it was rooted while attacking, sword gets downed and ranger spams the /laugh emote.

Ehkipazhi.1869:

@Solandri,

Thanks for that breakdown. Gives me a lot to think about. This would not be such a big decision if it weren’t for the cost involved!

Cost and bother is the reason i went down the Celestial route (ascended jewelry, exotic armour, will be upgraded to ascended one day). I’m not that much into min/maxing, so the full celestial set gives me enough of everything to switch around builds and weapons all the time. I just pick whatever food/oil emphasizes best my build of the moment for a bit more oomph but that’s the extent of it.

The only remaining inconvenience is non-stat rune set bonuses, which still involve a fair gold cost if you feel like switching often. So at the moment, i’m sticking with boon duration runes (2 water, 2 monk, 2 traveller) which are always useful.

I’m enjoying the convenience so much that i don’t bother anymore taking my old apothecary set out of the bank when i feel like going beastmaster.

Nice comparisons. HS is undervalued by those numbers though, as they don’t take into account blast/leap you can pop on it as well as the condition removal. And it benefits allies as the icing on the cake… I really have a hard time picking anything else, apart from TU every now and then as a preventive heal.

I wish they’d bother fixing Heal As One before adding a new heal. It’s almost there really. All it needs is either a small scaling up, one or two conditions removal, or a boon (protection maybe?) and it’ll become a valid option. As is, it’s pretty much always inferior to TU/HS…

ShiningSquirrel has it. It’s a special menu from the black lion specialist that only appears if you have the ticket on you.

I hear there’s a secret achievement unlocked when you died once to every single one of these.