Guild Wars 2

Wow. This thread is still going. I can’t believe how many people there are that will actually argue that they think something is OP because they can’t facetank a burst skill without burning a dodge.

Can I just take a moment to remind people of something?

The damage rapid fire does has not increased with the patch.

Before the patch, it was actually LESS dodge-able than it is now, with MORE guaranteed damage on the target.

The only different to the weapon now is the time frame in which Rapid Fire deals it’s damage, and it comes down to the point that has been argued up and down these forums now that we can compare the old sustained damage longbow to the new burst longbow; In theory, sustained damage is better because it is harder to mitigate since it is dealt consistently. However, in practice, players have a harder time reacting to burst damage based on skill ceiling/floor, resulting in burst usually having an overall higher effectiveness against players ill-equipped to handle the mechanics of burst damage.

Go up against a good player. Like, an ACTUALLY good player. You will almost never land even a hit of rapid fire, because they know to counter the longbow, they have to dodge the skill and get into melee where dodging “through” a character cancels their cast, and incidentally, the autoattack damage is also at its lowest at close range.

If rapid fire is “still landing one or two hits,” it always did this. In fact, before the patch, you could double dodge and still be hit with ~5 hits of Rapid Fire versus the 2-3 you might land now, and the damage per arrow hasn’t increased.

ANet has stated explicitly, multiple times, that players shouldn’t be able to 100% completely negate the efforts of opposing players, because it’s already enough to be able to render them so ineffective that you should be more than capable of achieving a win against them.

The longbow is EXACTLY where it needs to be at now. If anything is broken after the patch, it’s the will of all of the bad players who can’t seem to figure out that they actually have MORE options to counter longbow users now.

Learn 2 dodge, like you have to dodge every other burst class that people QQ about.

Warrior QQ
Thief QQ
Mesmer QQ
Ele QQ
Necro QQ
Engi QQ
Guardian QQ

and now, finally, rangers have QQ too. Looks balanced to me.

Oh, pro tip, strafe autoattacks at max range, which is still as easy as any other projectile. Dodges regenerate fast enough to be able to mitigate rapid fire multiple times and either get out of range or close in on the ranger, both of which are direct counter to the glass longbow.

Before the patch, Rapid Fire wasn’t even a DPS increase over the autoattack unless you were facetanking with the longbow. Just because you don’t like our Quality of Life improvements doesn’t mean that they weren’t needed.

However, ANet has taken the liberty of giving every class the ability to play effectively and outplay the ranger longbow. Go to a start zone and look closely at your map. You’ll see a dodge roll trainer. Get yourself through the tutorial, practice a few times (we know it’s a difficult concept or you wouldn’t be QQing), and then reevaluate your mindset.

I think you’ll come to the conclusion that this is just a kneejerk reaction because a different class you like didn’t get the changes you want, while the ranger class got changes it desperately needed and opened up viability in what is arguably the classes thematically staple weapon, and that can leave a person salty, we get it.

Just calm down, take a few seconds, and remember, improvements to active gameplay are a good thing. It could have been another turret engi buff.

Prysin.8542:

jcbroe.4329:

because rangers literally pull player aggro in WvW.

Build signet tank then XD

Purpose: get them to focus you and super tank through it.

Well the primary purpose isn’t the survival, it’s the damage lol. Ideally we run a small anti-periphery group, and the rangers job is basically to spike/finish off enemies that leave the “safety zones” our thieves jump into to melee out opponent periphery.

We are also supposed to function as enemy thief killers to peel thieves off of our own periphery.

So ideally I’ll be running a build with high Longbow damage (RtW, Eagle Eye, Steady Focus, Hunter’s Tactics) and alongside another ranger or 2, we will RSpike (old GW1 Ranger team term) targets, and run a little bit of lockdown through Muddy Terrain and Entangle.

So it’ll probably be a 6/5/3/0/0 build (moment of clarity is less useful in group play imo in WvW since GS is more a defensive swap for escaping) with very high damage but with the ability to jump back to the group for safety.

The only thing I’m back and forth on with the build is whether or not I can solely rely on just SoR for cleansing, or if I want to pick up Lyssa runes and sacrifice some critical damage and the +7% bonus from Ranger runes for an “oh kitten” cleanse.

Atherakhia.4086:

GW2 has a pretty popular GvG scene now but the Ranger plays no real role in it. It’s simply trained down too easily and provides no valuable group support. People are hoping the RF change will allow them to play anti periphery so we’ll see.

That’s exactly what my guild leader wants me to try out lol.

I was bouncing ideas of him, and he basically wants me to run a super selfish build that’s high damage, but JUST tanky enough to pull out of sticky situations because rangers literally pull player aggro in WvW.

What some other people have mentioned, just get used to using your pet on passive and manually F1’ing and F3’ing it for control. You are (should be, can only speak for myself lol) much smarter than the pet on Guard and in particular instances like escaping combat when you need the pet to stop messing around with what you were trying to run away from, you will definitely notice a big difference when the AI isn’t on auto “attack everything that puts the player into combat forever until I or it dies.”

Thematically speaking, Heal as One should be categorized as a shout. Troll Unguent would be more aptly classed as a Survival Skill.

Fun fact, Rangers are the only class that have none of their original heals (before they gave every class a 4th heal) classified as a “family” of skills. I’m not exactly sure why that is, but it would be pretty nice QoL addition, especially to Heal as One.

Raven.9603:

jcbroe.4329:

Those are my current thoughts on it anyways. I wouldn’t even place Carrion/Rabid in the running though as long as Celestial exists. Options for PvP are basically Zerkers/Soldiers/Celestial/Settlers as far as I can tell for rangers.

Carrion is a very strong amulet for trappers who are getting toughness and precision (+fury) from traits already. Rabid is a very strong amulet for any condition build that doesn’t invest significantly in skirmishing.

Except that in any circumstance you’ll almost always benefit more at this point from just choosing celestial, because the combination of offensive and defensive stats on celestial gives most builds much more benefit than the focus that either Rabid or Carrion give.

The loss of any “focused” stats is made up for many times over by being able to pick up other stats that have a relationship with the “focused” stats, like instead of having just power or precision, you now have power/precision/ferocity, and instead of just toughness or vitality, you now have toughness/vitality/healing power, all of which directly benefit from one other and can increase each others efficiency/effectiveness more than what most existing amulets provide to builds.

The only true loss ends up being Condition Damage, but with the minimal scaling in condition damage, the loss of ~300 condition damage is only really felt on burning, and regardless you’ll make up for it in power damage anyhow. Most classes are currently bypassing this problem by might stacking so they can have the best of both worlds, but Rangers, like Engi builds, can just run a condition damage rune and be fine.

I’m not saying that ANY amulet is useless, I’m saying that by the time factoring in the losses matters in a real time situation, celestial will have more than made up for any shortcomings through sheer damage output alone, not to mention it’s understated defensive capabilities.

And it isn’t to say other options are weak either. It’s that celestial is just dominating the game right now because the tradeoff between picking celestial versus picking another amulet with more specialized stats is far too miniscule of a trade off to dissuade people from using celestial over most other options, especially with everything you gain just by having the particular stat combinations celestial gives.

nearlight.3064:

jcbroe.4329:

I honestly think Celestial is just the way to go right now, especially compared to other amulets.

Like, evaluating it versus Carrion and Rabid, you lose some condition damage and about 100 stats off of the secondary amulet stats with Celestial, but end up with an overall more offensive build with the right setup due to having every stat you need on the build, and easily more tanky builds with having all of the defensive stats on the same build and the beneficial relationship of healing power/toughness/vitality and how they affect each other.

You honestly don’t even need might stacking right now. You can just run Celestial with Runes of the Pirate (like the meta staff ele build) with a Shortbow and Sword/Dagger and you’re set.

I left out comparing it against Settlers because Settler’s ACTUALLY has a slight advantage in one area over celestial, and that’s bunkering. However, people in general would argue that by the time you go that route in PvP, you may as well take a different profession. Though I don’t personally agree and believe that, and especially after the update, Settler’s bunker support tanks (if running spirits) are going to be pretty great at sidepoint assault and self/teamfight support.

All of the celestial talk assumes a hybrid build though (running Shortbow and Sword/Dagger).

After the patch, Longbow/Greatsword will ACTUALLY be an option, though I don’t think people see it because they are thinking of playing it differently role wise than how it will actually perform.

longbow/GS builds are meh to me.

Anyway, I like settlers with undead runes because with might from axe it should be equalish in condition DPS to carrion with krait/balth runes. I like it becuase, even now, its damage isn’t much lower than the condi amulets and it has so much more sustain, except against conditions. I think celestial will be good as long as it doesn’t get nerfed somehow.

Yeah Longbow/GS is an “acquired taste” and running it before the patch is a pretty bad idea unless you are dead set on playing the setup, knowing full well that it does get outclassed in pretty much every area it outputs.

After the patch though, if people are smart enough to not gear their builds as full glass and instead, for PvP, push more towards running a tanky style build the way warriors tend to build, it does have potential. It’ll just never play like the high mobility, ranged sniper thief that people seem to want the class to play (without dying to a breeze).

Pushing passed that though, yeah, Settler’s has always been my favorite condi-based build. The only issues it runs into currently is far point warrior builds (tanky eviscerate builds) that know how to camp their LB for cleansing ire procs, and eles that are good at rotating their cooldowns.

I know of certain players that already bypass issues with builds like that by running Settler’s and going semi-BM investment for direct damage output as well (they usually run hybrid spirits, so like, 0/0/6/4/4 or 0/0/6/5/3) so that they can deal with certain classes that have extreme healing.

In fact, the only reason builds like this aren’t “meta” is because the game pushed towards a swiss army knife, need to be able to do everything gameplay style where builds try to push for as much dueling AND teamfight potential as possible and ranger weapons/pets are lacking in teamfights due to the singular factor of lack of AoE/cleave.

That’ll still be our biggest issue post patch actually; the inability to compete with other classes AoE/cleave. The Warrior/Engi/Ele (necros and mesmers will probably still be a pick up for boon countering. Thieves will occur less frequently with their sustain build basically being neutered and having to go back to pistol whip/backstab. Guardians are less of a necessity on team comps but still useful so never pushed into obscurity) core will remain untouched really, so the biggest challenge rangers have is to figure out how to beat out against those classes or accomplish useful functions beyond or benefiting the scope of what those classes cover.

Personally I’m a huge fan of a comp that highly benefits rangers which would be the 3 teamfight/tanky, 2 side point duelist comp, in which the duelists can rotate in and out of a teamfight to add bodies but are designed to contest and take the opponents homepoint, while are mobile enough to get in and out of teamfights and retake homepoints (if necessary) or stop home pushes.

Rangers have always shined at that role, and the changes hurt other classes just enough for rangers to retake our title of “king of the sidepoint.”

Those are my current thoughts on it anyways. I wouldn’t even place Carrion/Rabid in the running though as long as Celestial exists. Options for PvP are basically Zerkers/Soldiers/Celestial/Settlers as far as I can tell for rangers.

I honestly think Celestial is just the way to go right now, especially compared to other amulets.

Like, evaluating it versus Carrion and Rabid, you lose some condition damage and about 100 stats off of the secondary amulet stats with Celestial, but end up with an overall more offensive build with the right setup due to having every stat you need on the build, and easily more tanky builds with having all of the defensive stats on the same build and the beneficial relationship of healing power/toughness/vitality and how they affect each other.

You honestly don’t even need might stacking right now. You can just run Celestial with Runes of the Pirate (like the meta staff ele build) with a Shortbow and Sword/Dagger and you’re set.

I left out comparing it against Settlers because Settler’s ACTUALLY has a slight advantage in one area over celestial, and that’s bunkering. However, people in general would argue that by the time you go that route in PvP, you may as well take a different profession. Though I don’t personally agree and believe that, and especially after the update, Settler’s bunker support tanks (if running spirits) are going to be pretty great at sidepoint assault and self/teamfight support.

All of the celestial talk assumes a hybrid build though (running Shortbow and Sword/Dagger).

After the patch, Longbow/Greatsword will ACTUALLY be an option, though I don’t think people see it because they are thinking of playing it differently role wise than how it will actually perform.

To try to have a constructive conversation about the build, I wouldn’t really think that touching the damage is the way to change what makes the build so strong. I mean, it certainly is stronger now for certain, but ultimately the damage hasn’t output disregarding might stacking hasn’t really changed that much between when eles were being considered low tier versus now.

What has changed? Well, celestial gives the build (and many other classes builds) sustainability that was just previously unattainable, AND the Signet of Restoration was un-nerfed. Granted the eles already scale pretty well with healing power investment, and the build has everything it needs to not die, and pretty much the only way to kill one as an individual player is to make the ele player make a mistake, which isn’t really counterplay, it’s a stalemate situation.

Now, that in itself isn’t necessarily a problem, or at least not the problem that makes the build (and other celestial builds) so problematic. With just celestial, the damage output would be a bit more manageable and to some degree be more overall balanced. However, with the current might stacking capabilities that were brought on by the rune/sigil changes, it gives the celestial builds all of the defensive stats they need to be incredible tank/bunker roles, and then allows them to build their offense to really just override the need to build glass cannon or zerker builds when the amount of might being stacked + any runeset bonuses push the builds so close to zerker damage that running something that dies so comparatively easy for the minimal (if any) damage improvement for running zerker isn’t worth the risk.

So: What to do about it? Well, my own opinion is that most of the builds running celestial are a bit too capable of being swiss army knives and it’s bad for the overall health of the game. But logically, it’s hard to see ANet revoking their celestial buff, OR the might stacking abilities they implemented into the game.

A sound solution: Simple, more counterplay to boons. Simply put, as it’s currently easily the most observable with might stacking, that even when taking the classes that can manipulate boons reliably like mesmers and necros, a team with only a few classes dedicated to might stacking (watch the ToL VoDs with 2x War, 1-2 ele teams) can output more boons and maintain them as a team than an individual profession can deal with countering. Combine that with the listed classes being arguably less viable team selection options due to having less “safe” builds, and you really get left with classes that basically have to make no trade offs on their builds to gain all of the positives they want to run, which limits the counterplay ability immensely.

Last point: It’s very questionable at this current state in the game whether having a limited number of classes that can even counter boon stacking mechanics is good for the games health with all of the builds we see running rampant (and that will continue to run rampant post feature pack).

Also, boon denial, as a mechanic, is not punishing. It negates a bit of an opponents offensive potential while doing nothing to break through the defensive capabilities of these celestial builds. So now, you have risky builds having to play perfectly against players and deny their offensive/defensive boons as much as possible, while those builds are still completely safe risk wise and can still kill you relatively safely and continuously negate your efforts by re-stacking their own boons.

tl;dr: Boons are the mechanic currently with the least counterplay and aid celestial build outputs much more than necessary. More counterplay against them not limited to the classes with current boon manipulation abilities are necessary in order to create versatile team compositions while helping to balance out issues with boon accessibility. In some instances and with certain build, boon denial is simply not a punishing enough mechanic, and more punishing boon counterplay mechanics are needed to puncture through the incredibly defensive builds people are now capable of running offensively, in order to create enough gameplay options to make swiss army knife builds less efficient/existent.

Substance E.4852:

Bryzy.2719:

Chrispy.5641:

Prysin.8542:

point 1: it is a bow. A bow shoots arrows. Want something else? get a musket or something, oh wait, rangers cant get those.

point 2: see point 1

point 3 : exploding trick arrows and flaming arrows of fiery death are already taken by other professions.

kitten, now I’m imagining how awesome it would look if rapid fire shot flaming arrows, or if barrage was like an arrow firestorm. Or if point blank shot were to shoot some kind of floral breeze at the enemy or some shiz. I can dream kitten.

I believe what you’re thinking of is what’s known in the GW2 vernacular as a “Warrior”

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Combustive_Shot
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fan_of_Fire
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Smoldering_Arrow

Rangers can only shoot arrows really far, shoot a bunch of arrows really fast, or shoot an arrow really hard; all in the same stance. It not like the class has access to Nature Magic or anything…

More than likely he’s a GW1 vet who doesn’t understand how 250 years of lore made rangers forget how to use a lot of their skills (who ANet gave quite a few of to warriors):

http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Burning_Arrow
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ignite_Arrows
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Incendiary_Arrows
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Kindle_Arrows

It’s a real shame that between GW1 and GW2 lore wise, Rangers forgot how to combine fire with arrows, gave away their preparations to thieves in the form of venoms, completely forgot stances and “mirror stancing” with the pet, forgot most of their good pet skills and bow skills in general, and completely forgot all of the amazing spirits with awesome abilities in favor of the tissue paper, have to follow you to keep up with combat instead of having amazing range and effects spirits that we have now.

It’s okay though I guess, because now we can use a 2 handed sword and 2 pets at a time (with arguably less than half the effectiveness they could have in GW1 combined together, but still).

Current iterations of the classes be kitten ed, because every single class in the game retains most of the capabilities they had in GW1 if they existed in GW1, except the ranger, who in the transition sacrificed almost everything that made them unique and in return didn’t receive any sort of compensation in the form of design or capabilities.

“Different games, different designs, blah blah blah, etc.” To that argument, I say that if everything was going to be different in this game but use the preexisting lore, then the least they could’ve done as courtesy is not call this the “ranger” class when any sort of resemblance to the GW1 class is a mere shell of what Rangers were truly capable of. Should’ve just went ahead and called the class “Beastmasters.”

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Bryzy.2719:

Duke Blackrose.4981:

Rangers have nothing to do with archery other than being able to do it.

The term “Ranger” does not imply a ranged specialist, neither in GW2 nor in tradition. It refers to a character who is an experienced survivalist and who is attuned to nature.

And they can perform that role just as well with a sword as they can with a bow.

I think you missed the “title is a joke” part. First phrase, second line.

I didn’t miss anything. I was only addressing a rather annoying misconception that periodically perpetuates the Ranger forum.

jcbroe.4329:

Honestly the only thing going for the shortbow is the ability to stand at range and hit max DPS, versus with an Axe/Dagger set, to be most efficient, you have to be up in peoples faces for the most part, and can’t really sustain damage at a distance..

False. Shortbow is an entirely decent weapon. Its access to bleeding and poison makes it a strong condition applier and a strong anti-healing choice when coupled with the Ranger’s naturally heavy access to Chilled. Add in its swift interrupt and excellent evade + backwards mobility skill and you’ve got a weapon that is quite capable offensively and defensively.

When did I say it wasn’t decent? Shortbow is and has been the meta PvP weapon option for the entire duration of the games life cycle for a reason.

Kilger.5490:

When I compare shortbow with axe/dagger, it seems to me shortbow loses in virtually every category. Damage, durations, targets hit… aside from concussion shot (on a long cooldown), what am I missing here? Especially with a power bias vs condition damage.

For a prolonged 1-1 fight I see more to shortbow since axe is handicapped by needing a riccochet but (otherwise) every time i pick up a shortbow I feel like I just nerfed myself.

Honestly the only thing going for the shortbow is the ability to stand at range and hit max DPS, versus with an Axe/Dagger set, to be most efficient, you have to be up in peoples faces for the most part, and can’t really sustain damage at a distance.

In most gameplay options, this doesn’t matter though. In PvP, where Spirit builds have been a heavy part of the meta for a long time, this matters immensely in teamfights where you don’t really have “frontline sustainability” and the spirits you are using and essentially having their potential wasted if you can’t keep them up during a teamfight to support allies (unless they are getting target by single target damage in which case they are fulfilling the purpose of pulling pressure off of something else, which is highly unlikely with anything but the Elite).

My personal opinion is that Axe/Dagger shines more than most other options on a Pet based build. Chill, Perma-Weakness, a cripple, and constant conditions can help keep the pressure from both you and your pet up, and outside of the sword Autoattack, there isn’t a better weapon option to root down a target and “guarantee” pet damage.

Then again, that’s still extremely game-type oriented.

I took it from the Ready Up Livestream, from the Skill Bar portion. It’s also posted up on Dulfy, though I personally would have liked Dulfy’s notes better if they had categorized them versus having them listed chronologically by order of appearance in the Skill Bar segment.

Sorry, I know that ANet makes finding any information that isn’t a tournament advertisement or something to buy on the TP extremely difficult to find official announcements and information provided by ANet for, so my recommendation would be to subscribe to their Twitch channel if you use twitch, and/or check Dulfy(.net) periodically for any updates on game information.

Not to mention the numerous guides Dulfy has for all of the different game content.

This thread, wow.

It’s time for people to stop speculating what will be dominant on a playing field that only recently reached 50% preview-able visibility.

To anyone that thinks that the LB before the patch currently is a strong, dangerous option, please, please, please let me know what’s in your pipe and where you got it. Seriously, there is a reason that it has never had a “meta build.”

Also, ANet is buffing the weapon the right way by increasing the ability to counterplay against it alongside its buffs.

Seriously, the only way to die to a longbow is to sit at 1000+ range and try to outrange it while wasting dodges on non-vital skills.

Tips on playing against a LB Ranger:
1) Get into 500 or less range to fight.
2) Dodge Knockback Shot.
3) (post upcoming patch) For Rapid Fire, quickly chain a side step into a dodge. You’ll avoid most of the damage of the skill, and if you do it at the right angle, as with all other channeled projectile skills, if the player doesn’t rotate their camera correctly with you, you will cancel their casting altogether.

At this range, good players will generally swap to the commonly paired Greatsword (or die wielding their Longbow because they aren’t aware the game was designed around weaponswapping. Or swap to Shortbow and die while they have a wet dream later that night about being Legolas. Or swap to Sword/Dagger, evade a few things, and then try to get back out to range and make you repeat the prior process). For this:
1) Dodge the animation where the go to smack you in the face with the hilt of the greatsword.
2) Dodge the humungous, obvious Bear Swiping animation.
3) Don’t get caught in melee range for the Counterattack skill when they start blocking.

For anybody still having trouble, it helps to learn that this game in fact has a dodge mechanic, and you should be able to bind it to a hotkey or mouse key or something to use in combat so you never have a problem with the Ranger LB players ever again (not saying that people can’t get outplayed by that player, but don’t fault ANet for that).

That or we’re back to the “pipe” argument. Or, and I sincerely apologize, because I have not been very thoughtful in this elaborate post of the people who may in fact be physically or mentally handicapped. To those people, I offer my sympathy towards your status, and while I cannot help you with any of the gameplay complications you experience, I can offer you a word of advice; wrap your head around the idea that LB rangers aren’t OP, and you’re already a higher skill tier than the lowest that exists in the community.

It isn’t just the longbow, almost every skill in the game has some sort of aftercast.

BUT, regarding rapid fire, if anyone would like to take the time to go back and watch the video and try to get the exact screen of the Rapid Fire tooltip that get’s shown briefly, I recall (could be wrong, but I’d put a bit of money on it being right, so I’m that confident) the tooltip reading 2.25s for Rapid Fire, which would be indicative that BOTH the cast time and the aftercast of the current skill get halved to the point the patch is supposed to take them to.

Since that aftercast values are visible to the devs, I’m sure that they factor the aftercast into the full completion of the skill when having discussions, which is where you would see the discrepancy.

Well see the thing is with Kudzu, one could, if they so chose, to make a perfect argument about how the weapon is beautiful and the most suitable legendary for rangers, down to every last detail, including that added on excuse for a bowstring that looks like a last minute detail, which one could argue completes the feel of the ranger down to every last detail, including that nice little metaphor for a class mechanic.

If one so chose to do so that is. Not saying that I think that or anything. I love the forced 30% dps mechanic that makes rangers beastmasters by default.

While I would personally love Withdraw on Ranger, I don’t necessarily agree with it on the basis we have so many evades already comparatively.

BUT, that said, Heal as One is terrible really. I think that a good alteration would be something like, with its current value and effect, with an added effect of:

“If you or your pet are below 50% health with this skill is activated, remove Cripple/Chill/Immobilize from both you and your pet. (Optional Part) Both you and your pet gain 5 seconds of Regen.”

While with a few traits, and a heal/utility option, Rangers do have pretty impeccable condition removal already. However, the overall potency and/or RNG factors can be severely limiting even compared to the output of a single player you go up against. While conditions in the game weren’t meant to be perma-cleansed, it would be nice to be able to have options that allow “guaranteed mobility,” even if that mobility isn’t an additional effect, but a conditional hard counter to impairing effects that would allow mobility to remain unhampered, especially in a situation where mobility would be most vital. In those situations, we only have 1 go to panic cleanse really (SoR) to save us, and at times that can even be completely unreliable due to the imo strange 600 range limitation.

Since I (individually, but we collectively as a community; me being a part of that community) had to say it a million times about Rapid Fire before the devs finally initiated any action on it, it’s time to start on the next skill: Heal as One’s cast time does not justify its output.

I typically find that Empathic Bond, Signet of Renewal, and Healing Spring altogether on the same build is adequate.

Just make sure you manage your pet properly, especially if you use SoR to send it a condi spike you may have received.

Other than that, learn what “big” skills people can hit you with and evade/dodge them. Most condi classes rely on big hits of condis to keep the damage they need up on you, so if you can mitigate skills that will apply burning, Engineers Pry Bar, Shrapnel Grenades, Freeze Grenades, Poison Grenades, avoid standing in bombs, and Necro marks in general (you will see their staff animation and most necros will aim right under your feet so you can basically pre-dodge them), along with their Scepter 2 (big bleed stacks and cripple), Dagger 4 (condi transfer), and Dagger 5 (long Weakness and bleed).

Other than that, I mean, we get into more WvW specific specs. PU condi mesmers are all about lucky procs of cleansing and avoiding killing their clones if they are clone death builds while avoiding iDuelists attack if they are running Pistol (some do), or evacuating the area of they go invisible with The Prestige skill to avoid being burned.

Last tidbit, condi thieves. Typically Venoms, avoid their “Venom Burst” if it all possible, or if you are caught by it, cleanse immediately once they are out of Venoms. Then either kill them, or in the fairly likely event you can’t down them, escape before their venoms come back up, because most Venom thieves, factoring in skill, are an absolute nightmare to actually kill and will wear you down eventually.

Kudzu jumped up in price since the patch preview QQ lol.

Sarision.6347:

Maybe we should just promote Ranger and Mesmer to Cheese Professions…

Every class has at least one cheese build though.

Sevans.4619:

Well it at least it seems that pretty much everyone is on the same page with this issue. Thanks for the feedback thus far.

How would you buff Protect Me so that it isn’t obsolete but also doesn’t over-shadow Signet of Stone?

As part of my suggested shouts revamp:

I’d have Protect Me become ground targeted. Description: “For the next 6 seconds, your pet becomes completely inactive and invulnerable, and absorbs 10% of the damage that would be taken by allies in the area (600 radius).”

So basically, if that’s unclear, you let your pet redirect 10% of any damage allies are taking in the area to itself.

Just to put into perspective, PvP has been in the “cheese meta” since the april 15th patch and arguably before then.

Ranger is considered underpowered in the current meta.

Therefore, while the build might genuinely be a cheese build (I’d also argue it’s mostly the shortbows fault), the cheese isn’t as strong as other meta cheese (soldiers/celestial warriors/warriors abusing cleansing ire bug that causes it to cleans a metric kitten ton more than what the description implicates with Longbow, celestial eles/engis).

And that’s just the PvP meta cheese builds. Let’s not get started on trait specific cheese that is strong elsewhere (Shadow’s Rejuvenation thieves, PU and/or clone death mesmers, etc, etc, etc).

In general for PvP though, the Celestial buff was one of the worst things that’s ever happened to the metagame, and causes a direct contradiction with the balance philosophy of ANet claiming “we don’t want builds that can perform like swiss army knifes and compete at multiple various roles without having some sort of weakness.”

Keep in mind: On a generic team comp, which is usually Guardian/Warrior/Ele/Thief/Engi or Necro, Rangers have to compete for 3 positions, Ele, which bring so much damage and support I’d personally argue there is no competition, Thief, which means you’re glass, and there’s only one person ballsy and skilled enough for that currently since it’s arguably an underpowered spec, or Engi/Necro, meaning the team is sacrificing AoE condi spike/area denial to bring a ranger, so you better have SOMETHING to make up for the hit to the offensive power of the team.

Personally, if I was making a “balanced” comp for tPvP right now, even though I main ranger, I probably wouldn’t pick up one for my primary team comp when the team could run Bunker Guard/Soldier Warror/Celestial Ele/Celestial or Rabid Engi/S/D thief and have all of the roles covered that a condi/spirit ranger can provide.

Rangers aren’t alone right now though, Mesmers have a very hard time in PvP right now too, and I personally think that necros see heavy competition with engis, and that engis come out slightly above necros due to overall mobility and burning procs.

Still, it’s one of the first times since the game launched that rangers haven’t been on the meta team comp, so I guess there is something to be said about that.

Not gonna lie, I probably won’t use Protect Me ever again and stand behind my position that shouts need some serious reworking to be viable (a “Shout” build literally only uses shouts as trait proc fodder and being tricky with Sic’ Em here and there).

Not that they are bad, they just suffer from the same issues that Signets suffer from, meaning that ignoring 1 of the 4 of them, the other 3 effect the pet only, and out of those effects, only Sic’ Em is in a good place. And Signets are getting the love they need, so it should be shouts turns after that.

Anyhow, disregarding all of that for a moment, in a full glass build in WvW (or even PvP), I would run SoR, SoS, and Protect Me. However, I probably will run 6/0/6/2/0 in WvW on a power build, so I’m going to run LR, SoS, and SoR.

That’s at this point though, I’m thinking of theorycrafting up a tankier sort of build once I get a feel for the improved longbow so I can feel out a good balance of offense and defense and build accordingly.

My personal opinion is that your points in Skirmishing are wasted. Assuming you play the build how I assume a person would play the build, you are almost never taking advantage of the minors, and as nice as Primal Reflexes is, it’s counterintuitive to some degree to try to deal primarily ranged damage and then take a trait that will give you an extra dodge for being hit when the goal should be not to be hit, even though I fully understand the value of the trait and know that it is a strong selection in its own right.

Quickdraw just overall isn’t worth the opportunity cost by the time everything else gets evaluated.

I’d end up running 6/0/6/2/0 with Read the Wind, and Steady Focus swapped out for signet mastery (post balance patch I’ll probably run Signet Mastery with SoR, SoS, and SotH or SotW depending on whether I decide to pick up travelers runes or not), and Strength of Spirit in the Nature line. Offhand Training as mentioned would be used, and I’d personally aim for a minimum of 40% crit chance at that point since I personally run air/fire sigils and would want a fair chance to proc them. I’d also probably swap in either Vigorous Renewal or Shared Anguish for Wilderness knowledge.

I don’t have ascendeds though, so mix/matching my gear always seems a bit easier, but here’s where the power build I run is at now: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fNEQNAT8YjEq0ya/KWsQ1ag9gadAUAnd7f4a3BXbxFr0kE-TlyEABXqWRQ7PcjysdUaEwTAYgLCQKqqUgSQN0NAg5PA-w

If I wanted to go a tad bit more defensive, I’d swap out the S/D sigils for at least an Energy (so Energy/Air) or even Energy/Battle, which would help ever so slightly beef up the condi output of the poison and few bleeds while in the weapon set as well as power output, if I wanted to go that route.

Then again, there isn’t really a super set build for running power in WvW that I’m personally aware of. Most people that I know of either go full glass 6/6/x/x/x or more defensive 6/x/6/x/x, and the occasional SotF 6/0/2/6/0, though I’ve personally found that while I was originally excited for the trait, I still hate having to use offensive Survival skills as defensive cleanses, and it just isn’t as overall powerful as the consistent 3 condis removed per 10s that is EB at the end of the day in drawn out fights.

No way this is serious.

On the off chance it is: you can easily negate most of a build like that’s damage by not facetanking it. Most of the damage is done within 600 range and the trap throw animation is super obvious, AND you can dodge through them and negate most of their damage.

If you can’t play “footsies” and kill them outside of their optimal range, then you are either full melee and need to learn your opponent better since being full melee pretty much means you expect to have to facetank some stuff to do damage, or you are afk and incapable of using your ranged weapon at 600+ range and should probably explore the mechanics of your class or the game more before going into any sort of competitive versus game type.

On a more serious note, I’m almost 100% certain this is a good ploy to try to get that video more views, but if ANet catches wind of that antic, goodbye thread.

Chokolata.1870:

Well what I would do:

- critical damage to marksmanship and condition duration to skirmishing
-combine agility training with pet prowess into a single trait and move it to the master level
-move quick draw to adept level
-carnivorous appetite affects ranger as well. ICD of 1 second
-new minor trait “random cool name”- convert 1 condition into a boon on weapon swap (ICD 9 seconds)
-opening strike refreshes on weapon swap as well. Pet opening strike refreshes on Pet swap as well.

There, i fixed it :p

I’ll take it! lol.

Chokolata.1870:

If they placed ferocity in the MM line and condition duration in the skirmishing line, then having condition damage traits would make sense.

Well that would definitely help with power builds, and my build in particular, it would only compile the issues we have with the Skirmishing line as far as power builds are concerned.

To a certain extent, power builds NEED precision. Condition builds don’t, and the Skirmishing traitline is primarily filled with Condition and Beastmaster related traits.

The change could still be made, but functionality wise, the line should probably get more crit procs first and foremost, since I think that as rangers we might actually have the least amount of crit proc traits, which seems very, very odd.

Give the line maybe another interrupt specific trait (or traits even) to play off of Moment of Clarity, and give some more weapon swapping traits to the line outside of the minors, and we would be looking at an extremely well rounded traitline functionality wise that would be worth using for more than just its stat bonuses.

That’s my thoughts on it anyways. Like, it would be really cool if Primal Reflexes was changed to give vigor on weaponswap and make the ICD 9s, and maybe a might or vulnerability on crit type trait (I’d prefer the might since it would help with trap builds too if the trait doesn’t compete with trap traits).

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

I think that while although in some way a near necessity for the weapon to “feel good,” it would first have to go through a slight redesign so that autoattacking isn’t the main source of DPS. The weapon is already rage inspiring by how little effort it takes to play it effectively in PvP, people would have a fit if it just got net buffed like that, and the endless stream of “Ranger AA” QQ would never end.

More risk/reward factors while also giving the weapon a reliable condi stacking tool would be my vote.

A lot of weapons rely on Auto Attack for the majority of their dps. The problem with the short bow is that the ratio is overwhelmingly in favor of AA that the other skills might as well not even do any damage for all the difference it would make. The 1h has a similar, though less obvious problem.

Modeling it after the harpoon gun* is a much better way to go than what we have. With that weapon most of the dps comes from the bleeds, but it still has a great pressure and burst damage skill on cooldown so there is skill involved in choosing when to use what and it just feels more fun overall.

*Just as great sword and spear are fundamentally the same weapon set.

That’s exactly what I mean and I agree entirely.

perko.8309:

I tried the Beastmaster trait to get a feel for what Signets will be like post patch.
For SotWild, my ranger didn’t get the 50% movement speed buff part. Is anyone else seeing the same?

Don’t quote me on this, but I’m fairly certain that the enlargement transformation slows you down when you get bigger, so you move 50% faster to compensate, which ends up normalizing movement speed.

That being said, it’s very ambiguous and I haven’t actually used the skill in awhile, so this information could be entirely inaccurate.

I think that while although in some way a near necessity for the weapon to “feel good,” it would first have to go through a slight redesign so that autoattacking isn’t the main source of DPS. The weapon is already rage inspiring by how little effort it takes to play it effectively in PvP, people would have a fit if it just got net buffed like that, and the endless stream of “Ranger AA” QQ would never end.

More risk/reward factors while also giving the weapon a reliable condi stacking tool would be my vote.

Fluffball.8307:

Necros new meta to give rangers a 6% damage boost. I can see it now!

Who knows? Necros could get the patch preview that they’ve been waiting for just like we did for the Longbow lol.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I’m thinking about how will it affect me. On the LB and GS part, really nicely.
Not sure if I will sacrifice 1500 range tho… it is essential in WWW if you don’t want to catch a random spell in the face. So this should be added to the upcomming buffs for Longbows.

I’m sad because it isn’t Today’s patch, and yeah… propably have to wait the end of Tournament at least. Let that end with really crappy ranger state ^^ lol?

I’m not a professional economist, but could manage time to fix rangers and else before a hyped Tournament. Right now, it seems a pounch in eSport’s face… well…

There’s 2 sides to that. Assume you patch ahead of the tournament and don’t leave enough time for any bugs to get fixed with the tournament coming up and make people play an even buggier game.

The small PvP community would only get smaller with the outrage that would come from that, because they would rather have a working game that they could practice with no matter how broken the balance is, than a broken game entirely.

Not to mention patching today would basically swing the next qualifiers this weekend as far as advantages/disadvantages go. People would argue that teams are getting carried by a shifted meta instead of deserving to be there all together, and certain players “top tier” egos would make them speak out against the tournament and take any mindless drone followers into that mindset with them because “it wasn’t as competitive as it should have been because they made changes that shifted the meta instead of letting the meta play out which all the teams have practiced, not to mention all of the bugs, etc etc etc.”

It’s like a tightrope walk for ANet, and just saying, but because ANet is providing the gems for the weekly tourny winners in PvP, I’m pretty sure they I know whose side of the situation they land on when deciding to make changes.

I DO think that the least they could do is patch the game after the ToL but before gamescom, since gamescom is a LAN tournament. They could just patch the live game, but keep the LAN servers they are going to be using in the old version so the meta doesn’t shift for the competitive part of that event, but the rest of the players get the patch they want sooner than having to wait for a tournament that admittedly most people just don’t care about when you weigh it against getting a balance patch.

Especially since the Gamescom tournament isn’t even a competitive event to begin with. It’s a team that practices and plays together and won the first ToL EU side against super pugs of NA and Asian players; some of the NA players haven’t even been on a competitive team for a while, and are just well known players that used to play competitively.

So I really don’t see why the balance of the game for that particular tournament even matters at that point. It’s a pick-up game with a bunch of personalities there for show-off, ego stroking, “funzies.” The rest of the players would rather have their balance patch than cater to such a silly event.

Predator’s Onslaught is going to become the PvE 1 hand sword meta with the build 6/5/0/3/0 build particularly in mind.

Besides that though, it does receive some pretty hard competition in other game modes. The removal of Signet of the Beastmaster and addition of making signets affect rangers by default is arguably the more valuable change to take away from the addition of Predator’s Onslaught.

I prefer Predator’s Onslaught to Strider’s Defense any day though. If I had to choose between more of one or the other, it certainly would never, ever, ever, ever, ever be the latter.

Atherakhia.4086:

Signet of the Beastmaster, while an absolutely stupid trait, was a reasonable example of ‘choice’ in the tree. The signets were largely defensive in nature (since most everyone who took SotBM took it solely for SoS with SotW as a nice perk). That was a fair trade off imo: more defense for offense.

But as it stands now, RtW will now absolutely be mandatory for any longbow build simply because it’s effectively a 10% damage increase. Spotter, Eagle Eye, and Piercing Arrows is a bit excessive to choose between imo. One really should be moved somewhere else or merged. Piercing moved to adept like most every other class does for their similar trait is very reasonable to ask imo.

In a perfect world, they’d move it to adept and merge quick draw’s effect with it. That way quick draw could simply be changed to reduce weapon swap cooldown if you have a bow in either hand.

I would actually think that in a perfect scenario, Spotter would be the trait that gets moved down to adept tier (really I think it should be the adept tier in Skirmishing, but adept regardless).

Overall Spotter just doesn’t thematically fit into the Marksmanship line to me. The most perfect scenario to me would be merging Piercing Arrows into Quickdraw and leaving it as Quickdraw and a Master Tier, and taking Spotter and moving it to the Adept tier in Skirmishing.

Then take remove Agility Training and in one of the Marksmanship Master Tier slots that’s open, create “Agile Predator: Your pet moves 30% faster, and you move 25% faster while wielding a Bow.”

Lastly, new Master Trait in Marksmanship: “Unsuspecting Strike: Opening Strike now also steals health.”

That in my mind would create the most combinations and the best system of tradeoffs.

Personally, I watch Gladomer stream. I will be watching Eurantien when the stream gets going full force.

But Glad multi-classes and mostly WvW roams with a few different ranger builds. Probably the most consistent (how often) ranger streamer I’ve found so far: http://www.twitch.tv/gladomer

@HHR;

Yeah, I don’t understand why Eagle Eye and Read the Wind don’t affect the Shortbow still. Most of any trait consolidation I think is needed though involves reworking the Skirmishing traitline, which ideally would kill 2 birds with one stone.

They also said we wouldn’t see all of the progress from the CDI in one patch, and the biggest single reoccurring note they took away from the CDI is how poor the overall comparative quality of the Pet Mechanic is. So I wouldn’t go thinking that’s it for ranger changes in totality, but the ones they are implementing are arguably a low hanging fruit improvement to the changes the community wants made to the Mechanic.

As far as weapons go, I’m not exactly sure which ones have true flaws outside of nitpicking small details. I know that a lot of poeple don’t like the 1h sword, but I use it and think it’s amazing in both PvP and PvE content, though I can understand where people have issues with it. I do think that being able to cancel the chain to dodge better would be an important improvement, but I’m not of the opinion that it is a necessary improvement. It would be more Quality of Life than anything.

Besides that, with the update, excluding the mainhand sword, I think that the Axe, Greatsword, and Longbow, will all be fine unless the patch power creeps other classes up and elevates them to the same current plateau situation we have currently (where they are up on a plateau while the rest of the classes like Ranger and Mesmer are stuck down below). All of the offhand weapons are fine too for the most part. I mean, I wouldn’t object to improvements, but they are pretty fine in their current form.

I think that utilities are the things that need help. Heal as One is a pretty bland, boring, and an inferior heal overall. Traps need heavy investment just to compete with other classes baseline options that are more spammable and take up less utility space on their bars, and Guard and Search and Rescue are pretty meh too (we need to take a grandmaster trait just to bandaid guard into being functionally useful).

Spirits are Spirits. They are strong utility and arguable better AI than every other class can create (except mesmer phantasms), but they have the stigma of being compared to Banners (pickup objects, not AI) due to similar functionality and then the argument becomes (it is an argument I agree with, don’t get me wrong) is that Banners are better in every way because they can’t be killed and can be traited to be even more supportive and can be moved at a base level.

That would be a redesign of a utility and a rework of a major portion of traits in a traitline though, which would be a much more extensive update than even the one we are about to receive. So I can agree all day that I would prefer to see spirits work differently, but they are still a good enough build currently to not warrant immediate attention.

Truth is, this is a very, very, very good update filled with fairly heavy improvements for us. Most of the improvements I see people asking for are unrealistic based on either balance (not usually this one anymore), or how involved the changes would be. Like, they would have been things that needs to be implemented during the development phase of the game, and now that we’re so far into the lifespan of the game, it would take years to acknowledge that and change and redesign (animations and art and skill teams would be required) and balance out the game based on the current balance/change process.

So I mean, while we could spitball forever and come up with amazing changes and improvements and everything, any actual implementation of the extent of the things we could come up with, if they happened, would be so far in the future that they could possible not even be relevant anymore.

Just look at the current update. It’s going to be amazing and very well deserved, but it is also much, much too late into the games life cycle to salvage the community and the players that tried the game, hated the class, couldn’t find a suitable alternative, and moved on to a different game. The only way ANet is ever going to gain any players back, no matter how substantial any balance changes are, is to release an expansion and advertise the crap out of it with all of the class revamps that will bring in old players that quit and new buyers that aren’t aware the game still has a pulse and figured they’d just be buying a dead MMO at this point.

Sorry, textwall/rant. Couldn’t end my flow of thoughts lol.

Prysin.8542:

stop speculating in pets and pet cooldowns. Remember before they implemented Invigorating bond? How we all speculated that aslong as it was over 500 healing we could abuse the hell out of it with traited eagle???? yeah, 20 sec ICD…

Ill call it right now; there WILL BE an ICD with that trait. Surely not 20 seconds, but enough to make it matter.

Well we saw the the pre-finalized tooltip and there was no mention of any ICD on that tooltip, and let’s be honest…. my perma chill build NEEDS to be able to apply perma-cripple too. It’s simply underpowered without it lol.

Soilder.3607:

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

Aberrant.6749:

Rapid Fire: Reduced cast time to 2.5 (or 2 and 1/2) seconds.

Does this mean a 50% increase in dps or the skill just doesn’t last as long?

yes for rapid fire, does its damage over 2.5secs , add Quicken zypher it will shorten that by onther 50% to 1.75secs. more burst but not more damage.

This will honestly be some insane burst, with or without quickness.

Full glass, I routinely hit 8-10k with a full rapid fire in sPvP. Now imagine doing the same in half, or one third, the time.

I have a feeling they’ll reduce the total damage of the skill by like 20-25% percent or so in the future. But either way, this is kittening awesome; we actually HAVE BURST NOW.

I wouldn’t think that they would nerf it at all. It does a little more damage than Volley now with Vulnerability, so it isn’t like we’re shooting a 100 blades damage skill at somebody that fast.

Not to mention that a 2.5s cast time actually makes the damage more avoidable, so while it will truly be a burst, it will also be almost entirely negated by a dodge/evade. So while it is going to be a much better skill after the update, there will also be much more counterplay to it.

Also, a side note to how much more effective dodging is going to be against Rapid Fire, it also basically improves a stealth thieves ability to counterplay rapid fire, because it won’t even track them through their full duration of stealth and a they can dodge ~50% of the damage from the skill.

Not that I’m not super hyped, I mean, obviously I am, I finally have motivation to finish my Kudzu now lol. But I just mean to remind people in general that it isn’t like it super-buffs the class. They are good and well deserved changes but there is an equal amount of counterplay involved against the new specs we can create and we aren’t getting buffed to the point where we’re going to be “god tier.”

Oh September…. why aren’t you now lol. Serious note though, uhhhh, I’m going to have to get this thread deleted/closed, take the notes from it, alter/remove what I need to, and wait to form an opinion post balance patch before making another of these.

There aren’t many reasons to use the Shortbow, unfortunately. The Shortbow projectile is “more reliable” at the extent of its range, more rapid, beating out the DPS of the axe autoattack (when comparing just autoattacks), and applies a damaging condition, which allows you to do condition damage pressure at range, albeit, you have to work with the flanking requirement.

I’ll have to wait until after the full patch drops, but seeing as how I don’t expect my jaw to be dropped any more times (unless they superbuff warrior or something), I’d have to say that post patch, we are still going to be looking at:

• Shortbow needing some love. Autoattack centric centric weapon that hits its maximum output the moment it starts attacking. Personally I would take the tradeoff of making the autoattack less strong DPS wise and buffing up some of the cooldowns to create a skill rotation that also potentially increases the DPS beyond the number achieved through autoattacking. Still, overall assessment is that currently the weapon feels like it leaves you a bit helpless at times with your offensive pressure and output and there is nothing you can possibly do about it.
• Traps. They aren’t weak, but they aren’t exactly strong either, and the amount of traiting they require and amount of utility space the take up makes the opportunity cost of taking a trap ranger over a class than can do all of the same things and more like an engineer is in a very bad spot. Traps need some sort of love either through their direct effects or giving them some additional effect to make them a competitive option against other condition applications.
• Skirmishing line. Power builds only use the passive boost, Quickdraw, minor traits, and Moment of Clarity. Every other single trait is BM related or just poor in general. The Adept tier doesn’t even really offer an option that directly helps power builds.

I really don’t have any major opinion left about anything at this point. I won’t be able to develop one until I get my hands on the new changes in game and see just how extensive they are (and feel) in game. I know I won’t be disappointed, but there are 6 other classes ANet will be balancing (presumably). Hard to weigh how strong our options have truly become against an unknown variable.

Against the current game though, seeing the new changes, I don’t think I’ll ever have another negative thing to say about the longbow. The Marksmanship line is pretty tricked out too it seems, though I don’t foresee anybody using Remorseless ever now, so the Opening Strike and Remorseless mechanic could still use tweaks. Still, we’ll essentially have 3 majorly useful traitlines, Marksmanship, Wilderness Survival, and Nature Magic, and builds that take advantage of both power and condition damage builds.

We’ll essentially have more options than we’ve ever had before. The only thing that can even stifle that remark is if ANet takes the next 6 classes and makes all of the Ranger changes look trivial in comparison to them.

Sina.9208:

They haven’t mentioned sword auto, so I wouldn’t expect any change…
And the balance pass comes at an “undisclosed time”… xd

Well, assuming that every class is going to get one before the next patch and they are doing this podcast once every 2 weeks, that means we still have 6 weeks worth of podcasts to go.

That will put that last podcast date on September 5th, which is when both the ToL2 and Gamescom tournaments will have ended, meaning that the balance patch is more than likely going to be on Tuesday, September 9th, though it could be as late as the following week on the 16th.

It will almost definitely be within that time frame though. 6 month balance increments seems to be the “thing” as far as balance schedule goes.

Having leveled all of the classes and putting a fairly hefty time investment into 4 of them (Ranger, Thief, Engineer, Mesmer), I don’t think that the changes are overboard at all lol.

The changes do exactly what I thought power builds needed, which is needing more damage to offset having so many selfish utilities. Now, the ranger can compete damage wise with other damage/roamer classes to the extent that they can be heavier contenders for team slot positions.

That’s obviously just a generic analysis that doesn’t account for what any other classes could get and is definitely subject to change, but like, overall, and most importantly, power ranger will be more than just a joke to people looking at this preview alone lol.

SafiMoyo.5130:

Oh man. If only Remorseless was in Skirmishing….

But we still have Moment of Clarity!

Hilt Bash, which will now be a 3 second daze/stun, with Signet of the Hunt empowered Maul, while ALSO being able to “snipe” people with Read the Wind Longbow potentially being backed by either SotW or QZ (or both on an all out offense build).

Obviously full glass and will die to the breeze, but THE NUMBERS lol. Rangers are going to start putting out their own “killshot montages,” calling it now.

I’m just ready to hotjoin hero, catch somebody with entangle, and then pop SotW and QZ while I have Read the Wind and a Fire/Air sigil longbow equipped and instagib them in a few seconds if they don’t react at all.

Rangers finally have their hundred blades! lol. Run LB with GS and moment of Clarity with this to be pure glass and die to a breeze but also lol instagib people you catch with it (just like hundred blades).

Cufufalating.8479:

Honestly couldnt care less if these changes will be useful in top end PvP. Top end PvP is played by what, 200-500 people at most? No reason at all to balance the game around them since GW2 is not and will never be the eSport they hoped it would be.

200-500 is a very generous estimate lol. The people complaining about the changes not effecting how ranger plays at top end PvP don’t actually play at top end PvP.

GW1 had an interesting homage of sorts to the type of situation we have going on right now: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Please_Don%27t_Feed_the_Dwarf

Ranger Party on Patch day? lol.

Nobody ever said these were supposed to be high end balance changes anyhow. The entire list is filled with mostly quality of life changes that improve the gameplay at an immediately noticeable level.

There aren’t that many games that I play that have their metagame immediately shifted by the extremity of buffs/nerfs at high level play. What this update does for GW2 is make a weapon that was previously unusable for players a lot better, both by numerical output and by the actual feel of the combat system.

It provides players more barebones utility options, and creates more combinations of utilities and gearing. It’s all completely quality of life changes, and all of them are very good and necessary, even if they don’t change any part of the “high end metagame,” which, even though I personally enjoy and play, isn’t even played by the vast majority of the GW2 population.

I will be able to use and enjoy the longbow. That’s the first thing these changes made me think. I HATE the weapon in its current state. I don’t even enjoy having it in my inventory taking up space. It’s a horrendous weapon, just with the way it feels to play it, let alone not being lucky enough to be ignorant to the actual numerical output and how best to currently achieve it with the weapon.

The patch makes gameplay less stagnate. That is the most important part of the upcoming patch. If it doesn’t change the PvP high level meta, oh well. I personally think people should of given up hope of PvP being a truly competitive experience when they left Skyhammer in the Solo Q rotation, so my level of caring about how the changes effect top tier compositions is minimal at this point, because I’m not on a top team, and I have been boycotting Solo Q, and I can see past the toxic, tank and hold PvP metagame to know that I’ll enjoy the changes.

Well you can run SoS and Protect Me in the same build and not have to trait for either of them. So the dual damage immunity, no trait investment required, is a nice touch.

It seems very similar to the “Warrior Immunity” playstyle. No complaints, I’m excited to use SotW and not have to trait it and finally having a usable longbow, just observations haha.