Guild Wars 2

leash range is what makes ranger the ultimate ranged class in this game.

the arrow speed increase is a nice QoL change, same with pet attack anims.

edit: the implemented change is that your pet will now initiate its animation at a range of 10 or 20 as opposed to 130 ( the attack’s maximum range ).

ranger has 2 quite solid pvp builds imo, as bunker with high single target damage & survival trapper. bunker was good pre-patch, now it feels more refined. i am a happy beastmaster.

using this weapon requires proficient usage of the ability queue system, targeting system & camera system simultaneously. all issues raised in this thread pertain to one of these 3 issues.

if you spam the 1 key, you will run into ability queue problems ( & apparently get CTS ).
if you play with autotargeting, you will lose most of the positional advantages.
if you do not have great camera control, positional strikes will not place you where you want to be.

imo, every weapon in the game should follow the example of the 1h sword, not the other way around. this weapon causes the player to learn more about how the game works in order to use it to its maximum effect. every weapon should provide such an enriching gameplay experience.

the idea that the sword does not allow you to dodge is quite absurd.

msg me in-game if you would like to discuss it any further or go over anything with you. i’m always happy to help.

Hi-O PvPeople.

The Professionalz ( don’t be fooled >< ) are practicing for Ratings & hope to join the Paid scene soon.

• * *

So, the reason for this post is because Custom Servers are taking their sweet time, but we have a lot of unused Hotjoin Servers.

What we have done is laid claim to Server 207. So when we are waiting on queue pops, 207 is where we go to test, duel, scrim, etc.

I propose that other guilds claim a Hotjoin for themselves, so we can play with dedicated pvpers while waiting on queue instead of joining the rage quitting masses of hotjoin or dancing around the mists. We can also use these claimed servers to set up scrims if the idea picks up at all.

Choosing any server over 200 should be safe, as 200 servers won’t fill on their own right now. Just post it here & we’ll see what happens. Then we can sort the browser by server number & scroll down to the bottom to find which Guild Servers are active at that time.

If there isn’t any other interest, that’s cool, feel free to pop into 207 if you see folks in there to talk shop or fight.

peace,
cutsu

i’m not talking about attack chains like Rapid Fire, just 1 single hit.

i see that Swoop ( GS3 ) has the highest tooltip damage possibly.

both beastmaster traits in marks could be better choices.

expertise training could be worthwhile with the right pets now, it’s a question of offense vs defense ( shared anguish ).

signet of the wild scales with healing power, the heal is kind of lackluster without it, but you may use it for the active ( but 2 min cooldown is really harsh for a utility ).

experiment with everything, those would be the places i would start in exploring your build options.

what is the hardest single hit to come from a ranger weapon? GS4? would GS2 be the hardest ability that you can hit with consistently?

can we judge purely from tooltip damage values, or do coefficients for final damage change depending on the skill?

i can definitely see the reasons for keeping utility swapping in—& as of now, we still can, correct? according to some posts here.

i like that some things are pre-determined about your build, that you make certain choices that you have to live by. but i agree that mid-game tactics should allow for some flexibility.

if they take away weapon/armor/trait swapping but keep utility swapping, is that a somewhat happy medium?

in MOBA terms,

weapon/armor/trait = hero selection
utility = itemization

pets are rad, it is why i play ranger.

i would prefer for them to fix & make this mechanic stronger than give us a bandaid that removes the mechanic entirely—but i can understand the point of view of players who want something like this.

there is a huge culture of negativity on MMO main boards.

the MMO generation uses main forums to attempt to bend the developer’s ear, & in 90% of cases, this involves changing something they dislike. this creates the “cesspool effect”, where if you dwell for too long in these forums, you will start to feel like nobody likes anything about the game, when this is far from the truth.

go to guild / community forums or reddit & you will find plenty of positive / productive discussion. when i talk with players in-game, it is almost always positive. but main forums do not positivity make.

i can understand why Mythic did not want to have main forums for WARHAMMER at first, until they caved to pressure to put them up—they understood the effect that dev forums have on their player population.

edit: For Summary of Pet Update Suggestions, go right to 10:30 of video 2.

Continuing my exploration of Ranger mechanics. I hope some of this proves helpful, sorry for the long videos. I included timecode jumps to the different sections in the youtube description so you don’t have to watch the entire thing. Video is still processing as of this post, HD should be available soon ( not that I can record fullscreen anyhow, hehe ).

Part 1: Attack Animations, F2s & Pet Swapping

Part 2: Passive Attacks, Attack Distance, Cripple / Chill & Summary of Suggestions

peace gl hf )

agreed, we need more ranged pet options. if not adding a new family, any new pets should belong to either the devourer or spider family.

but a new ranged family would be most welcome.

agree with you Unspecified on trap traits & BM traits. they both need revision.

all the family-specific traits in BM need to be addressed, with the possible exception of birds granting vigor. cats should be putting up bleeds on all crits, not just basic attack. canine/spider is alright, but most of these activated abilities are already crowd control, so it is overlapping control instead of sequencing. boars being unstoppable would be good if boars weren’t really poor pets ( bad stats & borked abilities ), same with bears for pvp at least.

yep, master’s bond is also bad. just a terribly designed trait, since it causes the ranger to avoid using a core mechanic of the class just to gain benefit from it. should be re-worked to give the buff to either pet, so long as both pets stay alive.

swap the trap traits with ones from the condi line. the most obvious one is cooldown reduction of swords, which fits better in the crit line than condi.

we have overall good traits outside of BM imo, they are just jumbled up a bit too much which messes with our stats.

dps ranger is hardly finished.

PZ ran trap ranger tonight & faced another trap ranger on kyhlo in paids. it’s still viable. some state that the only reason a necro is more popular than trap ranger atm is because of res signet. they can both drop huge pressure, but ranger traps are on much shorter cooldowns compared to wells.

we need to recognize that an animation-based combat system operates fundamentally differently from a hitscan-based combat system.

the design of this game is moving MMO PvP gameplay towards FPS mechanics & away from classic MMO targeting systems.

as such, yes, there are abilities that can kill you very quickly, but your opponent has to actually hit you with it. there are still some hitscan abilities in GW2, but the majority have a travel time or melee animation that needs to make contact with your hitbox, regardless of whether a target is set or not.

this is why these high damaging abilities are balanced. GW2 is all about active defense for survivability, such as dodge, which has an innately higher skillcap than other games where you would, say, gain more dodge % through gear stats.

understanding the relationship between active defenses & high damage abilities is core to GW2 gameplay, & these cooldowns need to be matched against each other.

if 100b is overpowered, then so is dodge. if you burn endurance to dodge 1k attacks, it will bite you when you don’t have the resources to survive burst. if you used your resources to avoid high damaging attacks & are still gibbed by further high damaging attacks, then you were outplayed in some fashion, beit through enemy teamwork, build or resource mismanagement.

http://hardcoregaming101.net/earthwormjim/QUEEN1.jpg

imo, ANet got it right the first time.

5v5 doesn’t work nearly as well as 8v8 for pub servers, much like TF2 pub servers are usually 24, but competitive TF2 is 6v6.

you need a buffer for population ebb & flow. playing in a 5v4 match means you will probably lose, it’s a difference of 20% effectiveness that 4 players need to compensate for. just one player stepping out has a large impact.

8v7 match by contrast is 12.5% difference with 7 players available to make up that difference.

the result is that it is often even harder to “play to win” on a 5v5 server than an 8v8 server, & usually within 2 or 3 game rotations, a full 5v5 server will be down to a 2v3 or duelling situation. ( which is fine, but isn’t exactly the tourney prep players are looking to get out of 5v5 servers )

again, custom 5v5 servers will solve this. i don’t really see a problem other than player perception & a general lack of patience. but as others mentioned, a better browser would really help casual players know that they have options. 1 NPC with different tabs for Free, Paid, Hotjoin 5v5 & Hotjoin 8v8 would be helpful.

i play this game atm for the same reason i played wow for so long—the gameplay itself is rock solid. i am still finding new features of the combat system & some mechanics take a really long time to master. that in itself will keep me individually busy for a long time, but there is little incentive for me to put any effort at all into a consistent 5-man team until ratings & custom servers hit. pug farming ain’t alright.

the current pvp system inhibits the development of the metagame itself. we think the meta is stagnant, because we don’t have thousands & thousands of players out there mastering obscure specs to bring something new to the table. it’s just like beta testing—there are some things you will never know until you release it to the masses. but now, our pvp community has been reduced to the size of a beta testing community, so we’re back to square zero.

DON’T GIVE UP ANET. it ain’t over yet. just be prepared to drop a boatload of cash as prizes for that first tourney you throw after the features are released. give a 2 or 3 month heads up after the features are released for players to return & train for the moneys.

i feel the balance is pretty good. mesmer & thief are the hardest fights to finish ( if thief is tanky ), since our pet will not auto attack the air in order to hit a stealthed target like we can.

our pets should seek out stealthed targets, just like mesmer clones. if our pets are as easy to avoid as ppl claim, this should be np for mesmers & thieves to deal with.

adding support to OP’s post.

i am a sPvP player, so am still unaffected by vertical progression, but it is sad to hear that the PvE side has fallen off the wagon ( considering the dire straits PvP is in atm as well ).

Joiry.2504:

So, rangers get the only weapon that #1 autoattack has to be turned off. Sure, it may take some practice, but its practice to get around using what really seems to be a bug and not a feature.

imo, if it is a bug, it is a very positive one, akin to the skiing bug in Tribes that was later developed into a full feature of the game. it gives the player creative options within the scope of a single skill, which makes fights far more interesting both to watch & to play.

i have posted a 2nd video in the top post going over the rest of the 1h sword skills for ranger.

Sarcasmic.6741:

since when does any pet active skill (let alone the ones that /do/ deal direct damage) come close to any of the warrior burst skills?

since august 26th or so.

it will only remove stacks upon water entry if you are not using an amphibious pet.

yep, canines are strong. their balancing factor is long cooldowns on their actives & passives ( 20s & 40s ), where other pets can fire off their passives much quicker ( cats have 8s CD burst ability for example ) with shorter CDs on active as well.

if you use a bow & want a melee pet, it’s hard to say no to canines.

heya, i know there are a number of threads floating around about this, but i didn’t want it to get buried at the bottom of a page.

these are my thoughts on the Slash – Kick – Pounce combo for Ranger in a 5 minute vid.

edit – another short vid going over the rest of the sword skills:

- get rid of skirmishing bonus. no rewards for fighting over nothing.

- make point caps worth 10 points total instead of for each player ( so 5 players waiting for a node to cap will receive 2 points each )

the only problem i have with consecutive wins giving chests is that the players are shuffled on map change, so in game 2 there might be 3 people on a team that won last round & 5 people who lost last round, which might prove difficult trying to get everyone on board for playing to win with a staggered roster.

i think that suggestion is moving in the right direction though. incentives for victory are needed in hotjoin to make teamwork important.

Dardamaniac.1295:

faeral.7120:

should thieves start complaining because their heartseeker doesn’t let them dodge?

Your argument is invalid.Heartseeker aint autoattack..The first skill of every weapon of every proffession is the autoattack which is meant to be spamable,its the attack you do while you have the cds on the other skills of your rotation…

technically there are no autoattacks. you have the capacity to set anything on autocast. it just so happens that the first ability for each weapon has no cooldown, so setting it to autocast will spam it.

there is a great comparison to be made between heartseeker & sword 1, because they are both spammable gap closers with an associated movement animation. the difference is that sword 1 is BETTER, as it cripples, cleaves & gives might to our pet.

I dont want to do 2 skills and then just move away and stand in a corner till my cds are again up.Its boring and stupid

i wouldn’t recommend that you do this. i would recommend that you learn why sword 1 is so strong by practicing with its unique animations both with & without targets selected. eg. hit a target with first two steps then drop target & use the 3rd step to leap in any direction. or don’t use targeting at all & see how well you can move around the field while fighting without using a single cooldown.

there is a reason why some rangers are saying this weapon is incredible & we don’t want it changed. if you don’t have interest in learning what the sword is capable of, i would recommend the axe. it has a much more simplistic playstyle, which is what you are asking for when you ask for a change to sword 1.

should thieves start complaining because their heartseeker doesn’t let them dodge?

the sword does not have an autoattack.

this is a good thing.

sup, i am a morning player on NA.

i’m usually around sporadically between 7am & 2pm EST. i play evenings a few nights a week.

great point about boss mechanics that are designed to be dodged. would love for pet to dodge with us. would help so much pulling pet out of aoe stacks ( & treb shots omg ) in PvP as well.

a few notes:

- pets have recently received 1 important fix—they can follow us over ledges now.

- Return to Me will interrupt the animation of a pet’s attack in progress to break off to us.

- Return to Me will clear your pet’s “ability queue”, which means you can use F2 & it will go off immediately.

suggestion:

- allow us to set a priority for our pet’s passive attacks. eg. Moa heal is given 1st priority, so it is used on cooldown & immediately upon petswap. the pet’s autoattack should be at the lowest priority by default.

- add AoE Damage Reduction for pet to Shared Anguish, or another Tier 1 Trait.

you can quickly exit the water on the buff side, there is a small beach. on the stairs end, you must use the box—which is quick, but you might need to practice it a few times.

+1 Xom.

it’s Death Penalty! something many players have been wanting in this game because previously, dying was almost meaningless.

now you have to actually protect yourself & your team. GW1 was 8v8 & most fights were straight up team fights. when a player went down in GW1, it was a big deal. it should be here as well. 4v4 is half the number of players from GW1, so these centre point fights should not be considered “Zergs”.

LoL is not PvP. DOTA is not PvP. GW1 is not PvP. sPvP is not PvP.

just clearing things up according to the OP’s argument.

anyways, you are right that WvW stuff shouldn’t be posted here.

i agree with you Yum, mostly that spirit durability renders them ineffective.

i like the concept of spirits though, each having aoe abilities in addition to group support passives.

two changes that might be a different path than a simple health increase:

1. spirits must be directly targeted to receive damage ( immune to aoe / cleave ).
2. reduce CD to 30 seconds, activated abilities to 15 seconds.

i found the same as durz, the range on spirits is quite large actually so you can place them in safe places that still impact your fight. having them move with me just put them right in harm’s way to get quickly gibbed.

the more allies you have, the better spirits become. as previously mentioned, spirits work well with minion classes. i wonder how much you could squeeze out of spirits in 5v5 with ranger, necro & mesmer putting up minions. not to mention rock dogs for the power junkies.

certainly we could use 1 or 2 more interrupts, considering we have traits for them but rarely have more than 1 in a build, on long CDs.

we have shortbow 5, longbow 4, greatsword 5. any others i am missing outside of pet cc?

there’s no doubt ranged specs need love. our 1h weapons are good & pets are strong, so those specs are doing fairly well. shortbow is good utility, but it is a skirmishing weapon for mid-range combat. longbow should be the ranged dps weapon. it just needs numbers tweaked, the abilities are all good. a longbow power build with opening strikes & hunter’s shot SHOULD be able to put up big numbers that opponents should be worried about.

the perma-stow with dmg % buff could work, would need a lot of testing.

pet’s AI is really simple & doesn’t need to be changed.

go to target -> execute ability queue -> return to player upon combat exit.

to solve the F2 problem, simply tap F3 before you hit F2. “Return to Me” will wipe your pet’s ability queue, making your F2 the first command issued.

i have no problems with pet. just putting one voice out there against the tide.

pet abilities could use a balance pass to buff some weak animals ( eg. Moa’s activated ability should be the heal & Boar breeds should put the found weapon onto the Boar’s activated slot without having to pick it up, like Steal for Thief ) & all animal-specific traits need to be looked at ( 2nd tier BM traits are super weak overall ). the traits that improve pet condi damage or pet healing should instead allow these stats to scale with the Ranger.

we can only hope they are taking the long view, & using PvE profits to build PvP infrastructure down the line. if this is the case, an eSports update would be required, to at least let their competitive community know to check back in 6 months.

pvp has already had its massive population drop. the players left are mostly people who like the gameplay enough to overlook the lack of systems.

they will need a convincing plan to bring people back after this shaky start.

5v5 is fine.

ppl do play for objectives more & the server population stays stable for longer periods of time. at least, until Capricorn ( then i usually rotate to a new Temple server unless the players on current server are good ).

however, where are my custom servers? they should be around here somewhere…

aragiel’s got it right. nothing wrong with conquest. it’s all about the matchmaking. pug farming is not competitive.

the new conquest map with a triple node neutralizing buff will make for some great plays. if they also shake up the meta with profession balances & give custom servers on the 15th, things could get quite interesting.

they should make true 8v8 maps for hotjoin though. 5 nodes instead of 3, larger distances between nodes. and probably remove Skirmisher bonus.

i believe ANet has stated that this is not currently on their agenda.

Custom Servers are coming. i’m sure that guilds will be running custom public servers to build community & recruit. this will at least help to alleviate the free tourney matchmaking problem, basically by giving you something other than the Free Tourney system to sink your time into & still feel progress.

a) the distance you can apply regeneration with a combo finisher is the distance your arrow can travel so long as the arrow touches your field at some point on its journey.

b) regeneration stacks in duration, not effectiveness. so you can get “stacks” of regen, but it will only increase the duration; you won’t see a stack number on the tooltip. so, the axe 2 gives you a 5 × 20% chance to apply regen & each successful application will extend the duration.

c) i am unsure about other players using my combo field, as to whether it uses my healing power or theirs. but i know that if there are 2 regenerations applied of varying strengths, the strongest one will run out its duration first before the weaker one takes effect.

@samfisher, if you take +33% regen duration then the Healing Spring ticks will overlap & each application will further extend your regen timer. this does not account for additional combo finishers that can extend it further. it is not difficult to have 15 seconds of regen up when your healing spring finishes, effectively giving 100% regen uptime.

hope this helps.

can’t compare dps in a vacuum, all utility must be taken into account.

rangers shouldn’t be dying to warriors unless running with no evades / cc breaks.

also, our pet is a ranged attack.

sbow + pet > rifle + adrenaline.

at launch, i had tremendous faith in ANet to get the job done. not so any longer. this patch doesn’t need to fix everything, but it needs to set us on a proper course.

this is a make or break patch in terms of re-instilling my faith in them to do things right. even if they set us on the right course, i’m still expecting february to be a good estimate of when they can bring full pvp systems online that can hope to satisfy the community.

ranger has fully functional pets & petswaps while downed. i have won many fights when being downed first because a pet with quickness chews through the remaining life of a stationary opponent trying to stomp me.

plus we have an AoE daze, something that others envy in group fight situations as we can stop multiple stompers to get a rez, even if they are invisible.

this is balanced against things like a warrior with vengeance winning a rock fight. i think rangers have a big advantage over warriors in the stand up, so i don’t see this as unfair.

i like that each class plays differently in the downed state. the abilities should be unique & powerful. vengeance is great & fits the warrior theme.

rangers with 1h sword can also escape very well. ( evade tank )

SotW scales with Healing Power & is independent of any Regeneration boons.

for me, Wild ticks for 133 & Regen ticks for 277, so 410 per tick total. Wild should always be showing on your buff bar as an Orange circle with the Signet symbol.

edit: unless you have used SotW for its active, then the buff is down for 2 min.

i agree with OP, the score screen is misleading.

ppl who farm glory are basically following an AI script set by ANet, but conditioning themselves with this kind of behaviour will not help improve their game ( winning & gaining glory are mutually exclusive goals ).

i try to let go of winning / losing in hotjoin, i just like good challenges & good fights, which is why i try to volunteer every time to keep the server balanced for as long as possible. hotjoin is exactly like pub servers in TF2 or most other FPSes, they have autobalancing systems as well when the server drops players. the only difference is lack of server controls, which were said to be one of the first things coming to us from the Iceberg blog post ( custom servers ).