Guild Wars 2

This change should have happened ages ago, but ehh, better late than never.

Its gonna take a few more months of tweaking to probably give warriors some reason to be, but yeah, Anet was saying the game wasn’t going to be really twitch based (to help latency and make the game more friendly) all Beta and earlier… with dodge rolling, interupts, quickness, and the turn of the pointedly-not-named-assassins into token-assassins…

Aaaaanyways, its a good step towards a more friendly game, something that, I mean after some more balancing plays out, might bring a few people to log back on and check it out.
—————————————-
Ideally they will give each class a base amount of cleansing so all the top builds aren’t the ones that go threw the 2~ ways to get a workable amount…
But ehh, I’ll just call that ‘too much work’ if that’s what your into…

Oh and better scoreboards/scoring, the ones at the moment tell menothing I want to see and just promote circle cap/zerging.

Maybe a non-trenchcoat medium armor or 2 too would be cool…

JimmyJazz.7943:

WoW didn’t have arena’s until… 1 year of release?? I think. So, yeah. Be patience.

The PvP needs allot more than arena’s.
IMO it needed a ton more alpha testing to work out the basis for burst dps, bunkers and conquest…
Fighting someone who just runs in for a lol-burst every 30+ seconds and either wins or loses off of that isn’t generally enjoyable, fighting a stalemate bunker isn’t appealing. The game has no pug synergy short of premade level planning making it an utter pain to actually feel like you are a team in team fights.

That and they needed a flaming decent graphic desighner to make the medium armors… every one is a trench-coat??? seriously?!!?

Empathetic Fighter.2065:

This happens when you design a game around casuals. Everything for everyone, no differences between ppl (gear, rank etc.). Basically a failed design from beginning, especially hotjoin and rank-grinding.

If the game had good PvP and good looking gear, I would have loved it more than any other.

But then again I could be special, in other games I only really hunted down gear for the sake of appearances or cool abilities. As a sidenote I’d account myself in the top 25~% or so when it comes to playing MMO PvP, at least at the moment since I haven’t been playing much over the past year since every one lately has sucked balls.

style.6173:

The reality is that sPvP isn’t that popular simply because most people are enjoying other parts of the game….

The other thing is that people want to use their own gear….

Finally, the other death toll against PvP is that there are different balancing options there than in the rest of the game. Originally, [s/t?]PvP was the place where I’d go to check out new specs… [wut??]

Didn’t play any other part of the game besides S/TPvP.
Couldn’t give a rats kitten about gear short of appearances/customization.
Every decent, popular PvP MMO/MOBA I’ve played I dived into near religiously.

Hated GW2.
Couldn’t stand the terrible balance, terrible matchmaking, terrible scorecard, terrible looking gear and snails pace to change. To note, I did play for about 6~ months, which was, laughably, long after everyone I knew left.
The game, by far, had the best set of promises and expectations I’ve seen. GW2 was the first game I tailed into releasing, checking updates and crunching numbers for specs… but ya, worst by leaps and bounds.

They just couldn’t deliver worthwhile somewhat competitive PvP (I’m not the best, but being in roughly the 85~th percentile means I do want challenge)
If they didn’t have kitten matchmaking (its an utter pain in the kitten to find people of roughly the same skill in game, to fight and to group up with) I probably would have stuck around a bit longer or at least kept on the updates.

Vena.8436:

Meanwhile, you’ve probably more than recouped the money spent on this game in time played and entertainment earned…

No.
I payed for a working PvP game that was heading to be an Esport.
I got none of that.

I count my brother lucky that he saw this coming in beta so didn’t even buy the game.

Daishi.6027:

It is “take a break worthy” but come 2014 I’d be willing to bet we’d have a stronger healthier game and community.

If they keep funding it.
If the majority of devs/coders aren’t cut since PvP generates so little money…
I, right now, wouldn’t be surprised if the PvP just stalls out.
GW2 PvP is an utterly kittenTY source of income for the company, the gem economy entirely revolves around PvE….

Whoever that economist they hired to work out the kinks in the system is, is an idiot.
kittening sell skins for money like every other game… not the ability to fail against hardcore premades… (tournament tickets)…

If PvP had some solid source of potential income with a decent sized population, I would see more hope, but there isn’t even that… I can’t see 2014 being enough of a change to pull next to anyone back that left this game.

The vast majority of people already left

Hope is wonderful, an easy fix to make the game fun would be amazing, but I am a bit skeptical (real surprising, I know…) about much happening in this game.

My guess is that they lost their funding.

The PvP seems like it had solid backing for the first half~ of its creation, then the CEO or whatnot saw how terrible of a money maker it could turn out to be for the costs involved so just cut funding, by like 2/3… that or it was planned from the get-go to do that, just funnel a ton into initial game developement and work out all the kinks in time since its a one time fee sort of game.

The idea fits with the great core concept/setup of GW2, and then just shoddy snail paced developement during/after beta. The guys up top just didn’t like what they were seeing, or didn’t see enough potential in more investment, so pulled out. The GW2 team probably did have large hopes of making it an esport before beta/mid-alpha, and this attempt at a new game style probably would have been great for it, just the ‘building a game from the ground up’, I bet, was soaking up WAAAY too much time/money for it to really seem worthwhile…

At least that’s how i kinda look back on the game.
As a sidenote, I find it utterly hilarious that Dota 2 has roughly a couple dozen times better competitive scene (tragically not even being sarcastic) than GW2 and its only in beta…

I still find it ironic that they pointedly called the class a thief not assassin yet turned it into as much of an assassin as any other game ever has.

Antisceptic.9174:

Warrior Rifle does more damage than Ranger.

When it comes to practical situations.
Yes.

I’m sure rangers can ideally pull as much if not more dmg with a dps pet, but that involves a pet which has a janky AI and is pretty killable…

Warriors can whirlwind or dodge roll threw marks and have them do nothing.
Just saying.

MindlessRuff.1948:

You could stop fighting if the stats mean that much to you, they aren’ t very important however, and don’ t indicate skill all of the time.

That’s a terrible way to look at it.
I would say, quite obviously, but it doesn’t sound like you were joking so I’ll hold it back…
No other game puts up the scorecard while you can fight and to boot up only until the game loads you out of the instance… and that isn’t just because of tradition or coincidence.

Games attract people by being player friendly; silly and needlessly bad UI setups aren’t any way to do that.

For the 15p minor trait to give 50~% reduced aoe dmg and then for a ‘move here’ command to be added in would be wonderful.
Those 2 things and decent responsiveness and control over every ability would be everything I could ask for.

You can just send them out of bad situations and random aoes won’t slaughter them without noticing. You’de be able to control the situational abilities and pretty consistently relly on a pet instead of just using it as a situational perk.

“How is ArenaNet supposed to make this game an Esport when the playerbase does absolutely nothing to promote it. "

Release a good, complete, game.
If you make it… they will come.

Releasing something, say ‘focused on being an Esport’ yet with none of the basic tools to play it as such, oh and with a terrible meta…. it won’t get far AT ALL.

A community can carry a game for a bit, but I don’t see that alone bringing in the large amounts of people that the game needs to be a shining E-sport comparable in any way to LoL.

What do you expect from them though? There are already TONS of online videos/guides for every class posted somewhere, people looking to look can find a wealth of information about the game as is… enough to easily get their foot in the door.

I can’t really see top tier players throwing out more making a profound impact on the player population. There are dozens of top tier builds floating around, and most do stream so you can’t say they are doing nothing… its at the point where ‘moar guides and videos’ will only do so much. If you take the conversation down to ideals though, then yeah, the community would be boiling with threads about classes/specs and imbalances with top tier players leading it all, but saying ‘for not taking that roll top tier players, you caused a large part of why this game is dying’ is outrageously unfair. It’s not their job, top tier players can play the game insanely well but it doesn’t mean that they are obligated to balance it for the devs and carry their community. Sure, ideally, in a completely altruistic world full of ideals, where Anet met these top tier players with open arms, they would be running this community and balance, there would be streamed player made tournaments every day and the meta would be constantly evolving into something beautiful… but this place is far from that and very unlikely to change.
People are people.

I admire you trying to keep the game alive, its gonna be a tough road to tread.
Best of luck, I hope you succeed though and GW2 does become popular beyond anyone here’s beliefs.

I personally wish it was even half as entertaining as WAR was for me, since even then I would find it worth notable time.. but we don’t all get what we want.

GW2 doesn’t support dueling well.
Like at all.

Finding a server with other people looking to duel, especially people of similar skill, is an utter pain in the kitten.
If ‘play now’ does not grace you with a lucky draw of the hat, you’re gonna have to spend a good half hour jumping threw instances until you find someone worth dueling.
BAD BAD SETUP.

Finding a worthwhile 3v3 server would be about 5 times as hard and interrupted at least twice as much by random puggers looking to just randomly kill kitten without regards to the constant stream of ‘this is a dueling server gtfo’.

A matchmaking system setup for it would avoid all of those problems.

Pug conquest is gay, just gonna throw it out there, so I don’t really see any problem with asking for more ways to PvP.

Dahkeus.8243:

1) Unfortunately, there’s no perfect way to keep pets out of AoE and retracting them will often just pull them through other AoEs. The best work around for this that I can recommend is either using a more durable pet or picking up the 15 point Wilderness Survival talent that gives you and your pet a protection boon on dodge and using a dodge when your pet is in AoE.

A ‘move here’ command would be beautiful.

But so would being able to actually control all of your pets abilities and for them to respond in a timely manner, but that’s probably too much to ask…
Its not like every other game has those basics…
Ugh.

BroScientist.9875:

Well this just put a damper on my parade. Here we are thinking rangers are getting selective treatment to bring them up to par with other classes+give them specific roles. No, they are buffing speed across the board so in reality we are getting no improvements at all(in regards to speed). With that said I will reserve judgment until patch notes are out.

Actually, if you look at the changes of the state of PvP as a whole, it’s a forgetable change at best unless the signet ends up stacking with swiftness.
Signet of the hunt blows, makings its passive better doesn’t change a kittenty, kittenty active. At best specs that throw half their stuff into the bird F2 can get a lil use out of the active , but it still is just a massively worse version of assassin’s sig… and no one in their right mind is throwing away a utility slot for a passive ‘mostly swiftness’.
It doesn’t help that with the ranger being a ranger, the tier 3 trait to make SoTH’s active actually effect the ranger does very, very little…
(in S/TPvP)

We are supposed to have top tier evasion as compensation, but with all the ‘vigor on crit’ traits and whatnot floating around, other classes can usually match the ranger dodge for dodge and still have some solid class block/invuln/distortion skills and anti CC stuff to boot.

vilman.7196:

@garethh.3518
Show me exactly where I told that I want to stow pet for an extra dmg…. Your argument with mesmer is invalid…. What most of you guys seem to not understand is that every class has an OPTION to perform a certain action…. Ranger are forced to have our pet all the time… I see no balance here… Now imagine that all those classes are forced to play as we do. Thieves do autosteal when entering the combat. Warriors attack with its ulti whenever its fully charged. Guardians Uses its virtues immediately after entering the combat….

And frankly I do not wish to delete the pets. I just want to stow them…

Being able to stow a pet when in combat is something people have talked about, in PvE it could be useful but of course would require balancing, since just being able to stow/release pets on demand would make them a bit unkillable…
Making pets more able to be used without dying would be much more appreciated on the part of many many rangers though, like aoe dmg reduction or something of the likes so they are not fodder in larger fights/PvE.

And every class has an option with regards to the F-skills… look at your ranger F-skills… they are options.. attack, come to me, ability, swap… saying that having to have a pet out is like having to use class F-abilities on CD is a TERRIBLE comparison, especially when rangers quite obviously have exactly the same type of thing on pets themselves (F2 button). I hope you just mis-wrote that or weren’t thinking straight when you did because it makes little sense…

Look there already is the ‘passive’ setting on pets so they just sit next to you unless you tell them not to, its not a far stretch from that and stowing a pet.
I can’t say that stowing a pet won’t make the game more enjoyable for you, but what I can say is that it doesn’t seem like that is really a largely held opinion.

Viper’s nest should do much more physical dmg.
It’s just there to kitten up high healing enemies, so taking it on a condition spec won’t net you much… but taking it on a power spec, and if it hit for notable dmg… it’d be a pretty solid pressure and ‘my dmg aint goin no where’ sort of ability.

Durzlla.6295:

It doesn’t need evades, bonefire does enough damage to make anything fighting you in melee range melt, and then if they’re ranged you don’t really have any good evades against range on our other weapons.

If you want to focus on bonfire dps you tragically have to take that tier 2 trait for larger radius (which is a bit annoying)
The bonfire burn is nifty, but not all that… it will add a nice bit of dmg but won’t deter any warrior/thief/mesmer… if you just sit in bonfire, the 3~ seconds of burning they end up taking before doing the majority of your health would easily be in their favor…

Really, having an evade on weapon, like going sword/torch so that if an enemy does push into bonfire you can evade more (taking less dmg) while they keep burning, its a win/win. Being able to leap threw bonfire is a nifty bonus.

NaturalPortman.9562:

The whole design of the ranger class hard counters thieves…. I don’t know how you consider this trolling

In 1v1s.
Outside of that rangers tend to be decent→bad depending on how many CDs they have left up.
Tragically theives don’t usually aim for straight up, fair, 1v1 fights.

Birds… ugh you have to give up half~ your spec just to have a decent bird spike, most people run canines just because they give solid CC, decent dmg and don’t require that.

Right now, thieves tend to do better ranged dmg than rangers can… so those high dps thieves in shortbow can usually whittle away any ranger not specced pretty heavily into selfhealing/toughness before going in for a kill.

They should have just done what every other MMO does… based the game on team fighting… balanced the game on team fighting… it’d make that ‘zerg’ not something that can crush the majority of specs, while making a few high dps/bunkers thrive… everyone would work well with respects to it and get the percs of playing a game based on playing with others, even when pugging, and more specs/strats would be viable, positioning would be a factor…
WAR pulled it off pretty wonderfully.

PowerBottom.5796:

It’s gonna be hard to get as much depth in teambuilds though, simply because it’s 5v5 and not 8v8 and because there are no real Healers, but hey – maybe we’ll even get an 8v8-mode…

Btw. don’t misinterpret my passion for GW2 build versatility as being PO’d or not taking other opinions seriously, I just love trying out new stuff in GW2 and feel that ppl that think GW2 is stagnant and only has a few good builds, are just afraid to try out new builds.

5v5 is fine, but 5v5 based on skirmishing over BOs…
Now that is just a kick in the pants for allot of the possible synergy…
You basically have to work in the bunker/roamer mold with a man or 2 based on group fighting/stalling… its a bit of a tough spot to be in for a meta.
Team fights provide so much depth to them, positioning becomes extremely important, situational awareness skyrockets in usefullness, working with others becomes a the centerpiece of the game… which kills me when I see that Anet’s 1 style of play, the style they seem unbreakably intent on, generally avoids it…

Pharexys.4280:

My idea is, the cost is not high for any dedicated team. The problem is creating teams require work, time, shedules, practice evryday, etc etc. Wich is a bit hard to do or not evryone has the same dedication for it.

Dedicated teams….
The game is having trouble getting teams interested in the game… forcing an entry fee to even compete isn’t going to help that at all.

I’ve just found the PvP dull, but getting pub stomped in paid, and paids being the only way to really get matched with competent teams/players to practice… I mean short of the other option of grinding through frees which forces you to wade threw pugs for hours until you find other guys of similar skill doing the same.

Ladders.
That and just having the tournies give better rewards the more wins you get against higher ranked enemies, it would do wonders… just scrap the entire paid tourny system and put together ‘ranked play’ with near ironman style victories… it would be marvelous.

Free/paids is an utterly terrible concept.
A notable bar of entry and utterly random match making in the ‘I want to play/practice against competent people’ part of a game is just bad…
Yet to use a ranking system in that, to bracket people up and form tourny groups with similiar skilled people is just BAD. It’d create tournies where lower ranked people would play and win their qualifying points for just getting a few lucky plays while highers up would have to duke it out with the other best players out there for the same reward…

Anet kittened up.
Qualifier points for winning the normal group v group instancing is a TERRIBLE idea.
It doesn’t help that the vast majority of the PvP gear looks like trash.

Oxstar.7643:

In ganking that happens all the time.

Which means it is outright ridiculous in SPvP and extremely, extremely encouraged in TPvP.
Which makes rather unpopular? gameplay.

When there is no way to survive some of the most common setups short of having a CD up or, of course, being in a solid premade (not even positioning can save you >< ) a game tends to become rather lackluster.

Also, dodging is easier said than done, with Mesmer being able to stun and Immobolize you with skills that have a rather short CD.

And daze.
Mesmers are easily one of the most versatile classes because of their instant shattering…
I faught mesmer after mesmer laughing to myself as they never caught on to shattering well, and they were jokes to duel for the longest time… but now, that people are actually learning that shatters are instant so if an enemy walks near your illusions or you summon sword clones… its pretty much free dmg. You can even ‘mind wrack’ then and swap/imob pretty much consecutively fallowed by a daze shatter or started with a magic bullet leaving only ‘a stun break that gets out of an imob’ or eat kitten as the only answer… its brutal what they can manage with solid survivability to boot.

Portal and Time Warp alone were enough to ensure a class a spot in the meta for ages… the class being a solid spike dps to boot is just overkill.

Vecuu.2018:

This build has a very similar playstyle to the one I use. I have done some experimentation with a 0/030/10/30 Clerics build as well, but have found my over all durability and utility to be lower than that of my regular 0/0/30/25/15 Soldiers build.

Your mileage may vary.

Greatsword is terrible against anyone with stability or a way around the block…
Outright terrible… its like a low dps, low mobility version of warrior greatsword then…

I dunno, I just don’t like weapons so easily hard countered with only marginal gain otherwise :/

It depends how many of those movement buffs end up stacking.
Anet has had a bit of a hard-on for capping speed at +33%… so I kind of doubt that they are going to knowingly stray from that concept all of a sudden.

SoTH is just, ugh… if the activated ability wasn’t an all around worse version of assassin’s signet on a class with no high dps attacks to utilize it, yet requires a tier 3 trait to work… I would consider it worthwhile… I just can’t say I’m a fan of a utility slot for nothing but a passive ‘mostly swiftness’ and occasionally an allright buff to a bird F2 if you run a pet heavy spec…

The extra movement speed on your pet is nifty, but the main issue pets have (short of birds) is hitting moving targets, not reaching them. That and birds already throw out their own swiftness, which odds say Anet won’t knowingly let stack with signet of the hunt, meaning it won’t really help the one type of pet that could use it the most…

Oxstar.7643:

How to counter glass cannons.
Dodge or block.
Once their burst is done, kill them.

Tragically an upfront 1v1 is the last place glass cannons tend to be in S/TPvP…
When your in the middle of a fight with half or more of your CDs blown, that ‘ kitten your face off’ spike starts to look allot more intimidating…

Especially when the spike is impossible to dodge or it is relentless enough that the only answer is some 45+s CD utility skill.

Oxstar.7643:

Velocity? I hope that doesn’t mean range because they certainly don’t need it. You mean speed? Maybe. That just means it will be easier for me to reflect a full Rapid Fire back in their faces.

Geee, another class with a free swiftness buff? I don’t see how we need it.

Ironically rapid fire is the only attack on ranger that uses a respectable projectile speed.
It’s near everything else on shortbow/longbow that is… lacking…

But yeah, there is too much projectile hate for how mediocre they are. I’d understand if projectiles were something strong enough to merit specific hard counters for… or if setting up and then shooting projectiles threw combo fields was really strong to compensate, not this bad chance at a bad proc on mediocre attacks. A 20% chance of combo’ing on spammable, with only 100% on some long CD single hit projectiles that serve an important situational purpose already, with the gain from setting up a combo field for the sake of firing that ‘could be used better’ long~ CD projectile threw the ‘could be positioned better’ field only being a 1s burn… it is just all around as close to useless as a perk can be…
Leaps and blasts are where its at but all the hate is for projectiles…

The permanent swiftness buff is nifty, ranger’s either need to be better at working with other players (right now they are terrible at it in TPvP) or notably better at moving around the battlefield, this is like a half a**ed attempt at making them better roamers (lets face it… the signets active buff is garbage, like an assassin’s signet that requires a tier 3 trait to work on a class without any high dmg single hit attacks to make use of it)

vilman.7196:

Does it really hurt all of those ‘Beastmasters’ here to have more options? If you guys want to run with pets, then please do so. If someone wants to stow their pets permanently, then let them have it….
I participate in WvW quite frequently and all the time I am forced to drag my dead pet along. It is really not fun…. I am here to tell you that having more options does not hurt….

It’s part of the class, mesmers don’t ask for more dmg for not summoning phantasms and rangers play better with pets.
Pets dying in WvW/PvE can be solved many, many ways.

Oh and, sure, more options can help a game… but making the options they have going, and Anet has setup many options, actually work is a billion times better than adding in more kitten to cover up the many faults…

And stealth isn’t a thief’s core mechanic… that is initiative and steal… every thief uses initiative and steal just like every ranger uses his pet…

vilman.7196:

Having an option to build a Marksman instead of a Beastmaster would be a great deal for all of those who enjoy RANGEd combat and that’s the main reason they’ve chosen RANGEr class

They do have the skeleton of a marksmen spec already out there, they even released a marksmen tree and longbow for the sake of that. The problem is that Anet just hasn’t gotten around to making them worthwhile…

Rocklin.4106:

Jay.3415:

Here you go just as a few
Volume I: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pPEbzNl_mDE&list=UL
Volume II: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=poltQGmLu5M
Volume III: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5iK-QnDSKys

Just to make things clear: this videos show nothing specifically of the Ranger, this is a Problem every ranged class has (except mesmer gsword or necro scepter)

Only bows have the slow projectile speed.
Thief pistols are a guaranteed hit, engineer rifle/pistols are a guaranteed hit, thief shortbow is a guaranteed hit, ranger rifle is a guaranteed hit, mesmer staff attacks track targets…
I mean literally every ranged weapon besides possibly warrior longbow and mesmer scepter has significantly faster projectile speed than ranger bows.

Atamaz.4195:

The interruper role from GW1 is lost, but another strong aspect of ranger in GW1 was the trapper build, dust trap+some other trap+defensive cd like whirling defense can make ranger become a decent bunker, probably with rabid gear.

Yes, because those ideas would make the ranger decent in a group fight.
Right now they have no point in being in a larger fight short of throwing down an aoe rez spirit.

Wasdclick.1764:

Oh, you mean players would have to respect the fact that there’s a pet attacking them?

I dunno, that sounds like a good thing.

Granted, I don’t think pets would deal that much damage on most melee player’s approach, given the leap and charge skills most melee players use in PvP situations.

There is difference between threat, and an imbalanced threat….
Anyways, I run canines and just play them well so don’t really notice the missing issue all that much.
At worst I have to unclick my target for the canine F2 and/or give in to the typical delay, which is fine since an on demand aoe fear on a pet that hits for 800->3k… is a bit much.
Then again I do run a condition spec so do have cripples/chills out the kitten

I wouldn’t mind having a trait for 1/2 CC durations on yourself, or buffs to spirits. Both would help the class use its amazing dodging and/or get them to work with others a bit better. The class needs a bit of help in both aspects…
Compared to mesmers, rangers are just in the hole… multiple mesmer specs can 1v1 as good if not better (and lets face it, that’s the best thing the ranger class has going for itself atm) and to boot mesmers can pull it off in spike dmg… which is the best kind of dmg. To boot they have as good of evading as rangers because of that silly ‘vigor on crit’ minor trait on top of distortion, invisibility, stuns/dazes… Rangers need a terrible amount of buffing to compete, at least competitively… what mesmers are doing right now with their semi-bunker deal is what rangers actually seem to be made for since they have bad->terrible synergy with others, yet stand alone pretty well… but rangers are just all around worse at it…

Yeup… same dmg, you can just pew with it from the side of a fight.

Fellknight.4820:

Who said anything about WoW there is NO MMO that has stealth that didn’t give Ranger/Scout/Hunter class the ability to reveal and tell me what role ranger has in current pvp because they are the least represented class in tpvp or spvp atm.

War, Champions online, Rift…
The 3 grand MMOs I’ve played before this, neither gave a way to detect stealth.
Champions only gave a stat that let you have a better chance of revealing stealthed enemies near you.

Hard counters for stealth really aren’t necessary in any game, hard counters for anything aren’t necessary and are actually bad, at least imo.
But then again Anet already screwed up by making backstab a high dps ability… you don’t make extremely high dmg attacks unable to be reacted to in a game based on countering entirely threw abilities, not positioning. Backstab should have just been a weakness, cripple, bleed, vulnerability, might; something that is in some way counterable after the fact, but gives the thief a clear edge if not.

And rangers are low in representation because they are mildly -> extremely UP in the vast majority of things. One of their greater weaknesses are larger fights, and SPvP is all zerging so its a big kick in the pants for the majority of the ranger class…

I honestly don’t really have much hope for them fixing the class at this point, it has soooo many issues and with the devs slow and meticolous way of balancing… it probably will take half a year before they really become top tier viable in some niche way, or even good at SPvP.

BlackhawkSOM.6401:

put dps build and condition biild together<—. “wtf thts stupid” its very possible. For example going full trap build gave me 650 condition dmg per burn via torch on dummies. With dps traits mixed in with my trait build i still get 600 condition dmg as well as almost same powerr dmg from dps build plus signet stone invulnerability.

Look at it urselves. See the amount of condi dmg without traits.

Just a tip you guys shud look into it. What people fail to realize, amulets are probably the most important for builds. So find one tht incorprates both condi dmg and power and find a correct jewel as well.

Carrion doesn’t carry a ranger power build well at all.
All of the buffing dmg traits are by %, so having a % more than ‘decent power with no crit’ is not very much. That and everything affecting condition dmg is entirely separate from power… it makes speccing to be strong at both more silly than not.
Rampager… rangers have little use for critting short of sigil of earth so it doesn’t tend to be sought after much on the class at all… back when shortbow just did more dmg it could carry a rampager build… but now… ugh.

That and you have to go 30 skirmishing, for traps, so you either go 30 wilderness survival for the best cleanse in game that next to every ranger spec runs because its near a kittening necessity; or you make a 120s CD signet, one that warriors have an outright better version of, just usable. Nothing they excel at involves 30 in marksmen so few people go there.

People realized ranger’s don’t play well when playing like warriors and so never should, at least with their current numbers.

Warriors can play their game DOZENS of times better than rangers… rangers have their own thing going on; solid self healing, evading, cleansing, good pets, quickness every 20~ seconds… after focusing on the perks of the class you tend to end up with a different sort of setup than ‘the dps ranger’ you posted.

Its a situational class that isn’t really optimal for any tourny group I’ve seen.
Not bad, but just not optimal.

If your fighting duels or something of the likes… rangers are fantastic.

Always have and always will play a ranger; I win the vast, vast majority of duels and mostly only duel people over 35 as well.
Canines are just insanely good….

I went 50-50~ with an obnoxious d/d ele that could self heal out the kitten , then had only a few scrapes with death in the next few dozen duels against other solid players.

Good looking gear is spastic and typically clipping with a fair deal of other stuff.
I’ve found two~ good setups for medium armor, but that’s out of the dozens and dozens of armor sets released… that’s a terrible ratio for gear… ESPECIALLY when they are the only reward… other games can get away with it since they had stats tagged on or the PvP was really enjoyable in and of itself, but not GW2…

Yes they kittened up allot of their game.
Not only is the s/tPvP system generally a pain in the kitten and the gear/rewards generally terribly made, but the actual PvP itself isn’t anything noteworthy… they had some good ideas but they didn’t really turn them into attractive PvP. I’m not saying the combat is bad, it just lacks that draw every other PvP game I’ve played so far had (WAR, Rift, LoL, exc.)…

Anet kittened up and its debatable whether or not there is any chance of recovery for them…
Its tragic, we all know, but good thing DOTA 2 is releasing beta keys.

For TPvP…
Offensive ele or thief.
Ele’s, well played eles, (typically s/d cantrips) can win 1v2s against mediocre players pretty easily.
Thieves can run into a losing fight and just burst down enemy after enemy without much trouble (short of fighting good players).

Both setups are extremely survivable, mobile and can dish out allot of harm in combat.

SPvP…
Fighting a zerg, winning against a zerg with a single class is painfully tough…
Warriors are decent at it with endure pain and the stability on being CC’d trait giving them next to free reighn on enemies for 6~ seconds.
Mesmers are solid just because the average pug is bad at telling the difference between the mes and clones, condition dmg mesmers are utter pains to kill and deal decent dmg all the while.

Agadar.4931:

Are you sure we’re playing the same game? Because I don’t think we are.

If you play S/TPvP….
Yeah, then you don’t play pets well.
Its a tragedy, most rangers for some reason don’t… it could be partly why there is so much QQ around.

For birds, the raven F2, then swap for a second bird F2 can pull off 10~k spikes if you spec for it, every 16~ seconds to boot. That and they aoe swiftness and can hit moving targets so their dmg never really stops coming in.
Canines can kitten up an extremely good number of enemies if you know how to help set up their knockdowns, use their aoe fear/imob well and interrupt their stuff when you know it is wasted.
Spiders have ranged imobs and if you go for it, there is that trait for a cripple on spider F2, I’ve heard it is a 5s cripple on hit and spider F2s can have 3~ hits on them for a 15s cripple. Pretty powerful if you are into kiting, not many balls to the wall melee dps have answers to long duration movement impairment.

Durzlla.6295:

Hyenas absolutely launch their KD as soon as it’s off CD, no doubts about that!! I’m pretty sure all the wolves do however, because whenever i swap my pets over my wolf will use his KD asap (unless the enemy isn’t using an ability at the time then he doesn’t)

I’ve noticed, without a doubt, a fair number of times that I pet swap in a canine (while I was downed) and the canine doesn’t go for a knockdown, mainly if he spawns already in or close to melee range of the target.

Agadar.4931:

Pets are also a central class mechanic, and are currently much more broken than the phantasm issue.

Nope…
I have won so many fights just because of my canines.
If their AI was fixed they would be blatantly OP.
A reliable on command aoe fear and immobilize in addition to 2~k dmg 2s knockdown and consistent 800~ auto attacks… that would be ridiculous…

Birds are also really good.

Spiders are decent, felines are decent.

A fair number of pets are underpowered or buggy but that’s not really a major issue since there are still many working good pets.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Noone comment the close-open thread,fear of infraction..I would say it as i always say things.Straight and clear.If creating Ranger was MY work and someone showed me this videos :
1.I would be fired
2.I would be ashamed,and acknoledge that i didnt work hard enough
3.I would ask sorry from someone

Pet AI is fine’ish, the only issue short of their inability to fallow up/down terrain is that you can’t control their other abilities (so they tend to be utterly random).
The pathing just means you have to either run a bird or work with your pet if you want to actually do anything worthwhile with it.
That’s not a bad concept.

The projectile pathing, at least for shortbow I don’t hate it, it is a closer range weapon after all, but longbow is utterly crippled because of it.
That is a problem.

Panther Chameleon.8465:

From my experiences, the Hyenas are the go to dogs for knockdowns. For instance, I can use Guard like it’s a knockdown ability, and I think the Hyenas have a higher chance of using their knockdowns because they have very poor auto attacks.

uncontrollable knockdowns, having an aoe fear that you can time is a dozen times better :P
(aka wolf)
The thing about guard though is interesting and it makes sense, it gets the pet to back off so he then uses his leap to get back in melee range.

It was a good fight though, just calling what happened like I saw it though.
I dueled in this game ALLOT mind you (I’m rank 39) so I saw exactly how brutal thieves could be with shortbow many, many times.

xbutcherx.3861:

At this moment is impossible to die in 1 hit by a thief not even with 10 stacks of might. Unless you are half or almost dead that we have a trait that does 20% more damage when target is below 50%. So please stop with this nonsense.

By 1 hit… he means 1 combo…
And yeah thieves can commonly near entirely down people in one BasiliskVenom->mug->C&D->backstab->22….

The only possible problem is that they are instant.
It makes evading their spikes, if the mesmer is playing well, an utter pain especially on BO.

Blurred frenzy and the blink/imob don’t help the matter at all….