Guild Wars 2

Eurantien.4632:

This was highly unexpected. There are so many option that come to mind with these changes. I am very excited. Only regret is that trap ranger didn’t seem to get any love. Still, so much potential diversity!

Skirmishing outside of traps seems beyond reasonable repair if we are talking just in the ballpark of slight changes to the code lol. Like, traps DO still need some love, but in general, Skirmishing needs a serious looking at.

BUT, there are so many other good things that at this point, I’m just going to enjoy finally getting a lot of the stuff I’ve wanted for the class, especially with the Longbow.

It’s too bad you probably won’t get to highlight any new builds during the ToL since the patch will more the likely be after all the tournaments in August. Would have loved to watch you on stream going crazy with buffed up power builds.

snow.8097:

jcbroe.4329:

Chrispy.5641:

Through all the shiny changed There was actually a dirty nerf or two….

Bear F2’s can be blocked now. Kind of needed to happen though.

Entangle cooldown was reduced by 60%, but skill effect was reduced by 75%.

Just wanted to throw that out there.

It’s a nerf and a buff. The other side of the buff is that on top of the recharge speed, traited, we now have a 48 second recharge elite that allows us to interact with the “on elite” runesets, which is a HUGE bonus.

“two stupids, one thought” we german say xD

Hahahaha xD I wonder how amazing Runes of the Krait are going to be with this now that we will actively be able to take advantage of the 6 tier bonus…..

Chrispy.5641:

Through all the shiny changed There was actually a dirty nerf or two….

Bear F2’s can be blocked now. Kind of needed to happen though.

Entangle cooldown was reduced by 60%, but skill effect was reduced by 75%.

Just wanted to throw that out there.

It’s a nerf and a buff. The other side of the buff is that on top of the recharge speed, traited, we now have a 48 second recharge elite that allows us to interact with the “on elite” runesets, which is a HUGE bonus.

chemiclord.3978:

I’m geeked about the new trait (which is indirectly a 10% buff to sword damage). And I’m finally intrigued by axe as a main hand ranged option (I had already started to come around on its off-hand viability).

Power builds definitely got some love today.

Not today unfortunately, not yet. We need to get past these tournaments NOW and get to patch day lol.

@Thread;
So uhhh, I think the balance preview may have invalidated a good portion of this thread….

I took the time to go through the entire video segment by segment and write down every single note, including taking notes directly off of the un-finalized tooltips.

Here are the notes from the preview. I am aware there are multiple thread about the preview already, but I wanted to put all the changes into one concise list:

Traits

• Signet of the Beastmaster has been removed. Signets now affect players by default.
• New Trait: Predator’s Onslaught: “You and your pet deal bonus damage to enemies suffering from movement impeding conditions. Player: 10% Pet: 5%”
• Read the Wind: In addition to its current effect, now also grants 10% increased attack speed with the longbow.
• Strider’s Defense: Increased block chance from 15% to 20%.
• Intimidation Training: “Activated abilities for pets cause cripple. This can only occur once on each target affected by abilities.”
• Rending Attacks: “Pets inflict bleed when they critically hit wit their basic attacks.”
• Stability Training: “Pets gain Stability when disabled.”

Weapons/Utilities

Longbow

• Long Range Shot: Lowest Range damage tier gets a 17% damage increase. Medium Range gets a 7% damage increase. Longest Range is unchanged.
• Rapid Fire: Reduced cast time to 2.5 (or 2 and 1/2) seconds.
• Barrage: Reduced cast time by .5 (or 1/2) seconds.

Greatsword

• Power Stab: Damage increased by 10%
• Maul: Now hits 5 targets. Increased radius from 150 to 220.
• Swoop: Now evades during the attack portion of the skill. Does not evade during the running portion.
• Counterattack: Reduced aftercast to be able to follow up better after successfully landing this skill.
• Hilt Bash: Daze and Stun durations are increased from 1 to 1.5 (or 1 and 1/2) seconds

Axe
Mainhand

• Ricochet: Now grants might (base 3 second duration) per hit.
  Offhand
• Path of Scars: Velocity increased by 25%

Utility/Elite

• Sic’ Em: Reveal duration increased from 3 seconds to 6 seconds
• Entangle: Recharge decreased from 150 seconds to 60 seconds. Duration of vines reduced from 20 seconds to 5 seconds.

Pets

• Black Bear: Enfeebling Roar: Now delivers a strike for damage, no longer goes through evades or blocks.
• Polar Bear: Icy Roar: Now delivers a strike for damage, no longer goes through evades or Blocks.

This should be the complete list from the preview. I personally am ecstatic.

Okay, so ummm, after the preview:

• Signets effect us by default
• Rapid Fire half the cast time on baseline
• Read the wind increases arrow AND ATTACK speed
• Damage improvements across various weapons

Need the preview segment as its own standalone video now please, I’m not done having a ranger-gasm yet.

Eurantien.4632:

These always make me cringe. They will “buff” something, which won’t be the right thing then they will ninja nerf something good.

Someone hold me.

What’s going to be even more entertaining is that it’s a pre-recorded video, which means that the devs are going to try to showcase changes with actual gameplay of some sort I would assume.

So…. I went out and bought a big box of popcorn.

Just letting you guys know I’m still reading and taking notes, but I’ve taken a backseat position since I haven’t been spending much time away from the Destiny Beta on my 360. Will be more visible on the thread again after the 27th when I have to quit the cocaine that is Bungie’s Destiny cold turkey.

SafiMoyo.5130:

I like your original post jcbroe. I agree with everything and reading it sounds like it’s coming out of my own mouth.

I do understand the flaws in Beastmastery (only TOO well) but I don’t understand your solution. It sounds mostly abstract, so I don’t have a clear grasp on what you’re suggesting. Could you clarify your solution or go over it again in greater detail?

Of course!

Take this from another one of my replies:

In a more literal description, what I essentially would like to see with the pet mechanic is to get a slightly more complex “Arcane treatment” that elementalists got when they in essence made attunement swapping efficiency less dependent on the Arcane traitline by default so that it was more effective at a base level and players felt less pushed into the Arcane line.

That basic concept is what I would like to see with pets as far as the damage ratios go. All it would take is some number tweaks. Scale down the damage done by pets (GW1 vets think no beastmastery investment but still taking a pet into combat), and increase damage dealt/power scaling/etc for the player accordingly at a base level, and then have Beastmastery scale more heavily with the pets and have stronger pet increases through the traits.

So like, perhaps if every 1 point (out of 6) invested into Beastmastery decreased the death cooldown of the pet by 5 seconds, and have the BM tree also add proportionate condition damage and ferocity to the pet based on investment.

Then we can have traits that make x pet cause bleeding on its basic attack (and not just on crit) and have it be a strong option because we can build for a condition pet. Possibly a utility function to play off of the already existing Fortifying Bond called Copy Cat or something, where upon F2 activation, the pet applies all the boons it has on itself to allies within a set radius for a specific amount of time.

To some degree I intended the description to be vague because the sheer volume of possibilities that open up by allowing there to be more variation with how we use our mechanic could have us as the community spitballing ideas for hours, as we’re a very creative bunch of players hahaha.

Mark Katzbach.9084:

Just to clarify, the Skill Bar segment is a pre-recorded balance preview, much like the previews that used to be posted on the forums. Each segment will cover 2 professions and Karl will talk about the changes as they are demonstrated. We decided to pre-record these segments because it allows us to cut down each profession from over 15 minutes to about 5 and it allows us to show off the changes without making you wait for Karl to make build changes on the fly.

For your feedback, please feel free to open a new thread (for each profession previewed) in the profession balance subforum after the preview and I’ll make sure the balance team knows where to find it.

Ah, that’s actually pretty awesome! Very GW1-esque with the old Developer blogs.

Atherakhia.4086:

September would mark almost a full year since the last balance patch, wouldn’kitten

They’ve really got to roll out changes faster than this.

April 15th, so almost exactly 6 months if they do it the second week in September.

It would also be nice, at least regarding the ranger discussion time, with there could be some follow up about the direction the Devs are taking with information gathered from the Ranger CDI.

Additionally, any follow up regarding the ongoing discussion that was occurring in the Ranger Balance thread the Allie commented on at some point and said was being passed around to the dev team would be a pleasant surprise.

Also, there is another community discussion currently ongoing about rangers here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-Balance-2/first#post4231484

Please note that I am not trying to hassle you guys (devs)! I just wanted to reiterate the amount of community effort that has gone into, and goes into providing feedback, and as much I personally am aware that you don’t have the time in the day to go and make every single person who provides constructive praise/feedback feel special, it would be nice in these Ready Up balance segments if the devs do mention any, or if, they have taken any notes from any of the efforts put into the feedback provided by the community.

Anyhow, I’d also like to say I love the intended direction of the Skill Bar portion of the Ready Up, and genuinely hope to see it succeed!

End of ToL2? That’s optimistic, since both Gamescom and Tol2 are within a few weeks of each other, might as well just go with the safe option of September at the earliest, which is what I’m sure people mean.

Anyhow, I will be interested in seeing the discussion.

So some more quick (this time) follow ups.

I like the discussions going about specific traits and the ideas and philosophies behind them personally. As a note, I’ve written down just a generic “Masters of Regeneration,” and cited the amount of sources/effectiveness as a possible improvement.

Adding more bounces to the axe is already a trait for other classes that have a lot more power on their weapons that it effects than the Axe, so having that be a possible improvement to the Axe looks like I fine option.

As a general idea, I think that a vulnerability on crit trait in Skirmishing would be a good addition to all of our weapons in general, and should be looked at/discussed.

For bows as far as some suggestions I’ve seen goes, I would love to add a functional AoE that doesn’t revolve around piercing. Something like: “Splinter Arrows: Arrow attacks now splinter when they hit a target, dealing 75% of the damage dealt to that target in a 120 radius around the target.” Obviously a Grandmaster option.

And lastly:

Sube Dai.8496:

Totally agree with the Pet suggestions.

But about the longbow…speaking from a PvP perspective, I don’t trait into Marks or Skirmishing.

I can’t, because I’ll die.

Traiting x/x/6/6/0 with zerk amulet gives way more damage and survivability than any sort of 6/6/x/x/x amulet combo.

My problem with the bow traits is I can’t find a reason to use them…

I agree, and if I didn’t clearly explain some of the stuff or it was too text wall-ish, as a follow up opinion to elaborate, the longbow feels like it’s missing something as a base function, and the opportunity cost for traiting defensively versus how many traits you actually end up wanting/needing for the longbow is a terrible tradeoff and makes it another heavy investment option we have that we just shouldn’t need for a single weapon when we have to also heavily invest into utilities to make them worthwhile.

There just isn’t enough trait points to get all of the traits you feel like you need, versus other classes that have a lot of their options at a base level to the point where it gives them versatility that rangers just don’t have.

In a sense, rangers have the MOST linear (I’m going to do one thing and this one thing only) build options in the game, which is a combination of everything listed as a negative in this thread, starting with the most glaring problem of the pet acting more as an anchor that does this one thing and can only be improved to do this one thing better (damage with a slight bit of utility on most pets), heavy trait investment for utilities, and on and on and on.

It’s definitely a system of huge tradeoffs that I don’t see other classes having to make, at least not at the level of extremes that rangers have to make.

To follow up with some comments, first off, I like seeing that we’re all of the same mind as far as Longbow traits go. It is still early in the lifespan of the thread to make the call, but even still, I think it’s a pretty fair assumption to say that if we all (or most of all of us) think the same thing and have the same issues with the weapon regarding traiting for it, then I’m pretty sure it is an actual issue (instead of a perceived issue being created by imbalances elsewhere, like the whole Warrior Healsig debate which isn’t a problematic skill on its own, but gets magnified by multiple utilities and other sources of health regeneration and sustain. Not the place to debate this though, just an observation).

@Chokolata;

I totally understand what you mean, but I’m not actually pushing for the mechanic to be changed at all, and I actually don’t mind the pet being the class mechanic. What I do have a problem with is that even at a base level with no trait investment, we are forced into playing a particular way around that mechanic due to how much efficiency is tied to the mechanic at a base level.

In a more literal description, what I essentially would like to see with the pet mechanic is to get a slightly more complex “Arcane treatment” that elementalists got when they in essence made attunement swapping efficiency less dependent on the Arcane traitline by default so that it was more effective at a base level and players felt less pushed into the Arcane line.

That basic concept is what I would like to see with pets as far as the damage ratios go. All it would take is some number tweaks. Scale down the damage done by pets (GW1 vets think no beastmastery investment but still taking a pet into combat), and increase damage dealt/power scaling/etc for the player accordingly at a base level, and then have Beastmastery scale more heavily with the pets and have stronger pet increases through the traits.

It wouldn’t remove the pets as a focal mechanic for the ranger class, it would just be a mechanic that functions more similarly to how not invested versus invested mechanics like Steal and Adrenaline play, and we would still rely almost entirely on the pets for CC and utility conditions (spiders on a LB/GS set are almost the perfect utility pet selection).

As a matter of fact, in some sense, it would make the pet selection process even MORE valuable because there would be more variation in how the pets function and how invested into the pet a player is, so that making the distinction between damage pets and utility pets would have a much greater effect on the efficiency of builds (also, hybrid Beastmaster could become a thing! Instead of the current either you are or not).

It would also give players a more interactive sense in choosing their playstyle within the class, because not wanting to have to make the pet the full focus and only use it for utility would no longer be anchored down by the pet reducing their abilities at a base level and having to work in its damage to be fully effective, and ideally, the flipside of that would be that full on Beastmaster players would be more even more effective than they are currently with more options with what they want their pets to do through traiting and ideally more synergy with the pet than hitting the cap of what Beastmastery lets BM players hit currently.

At the end of the day though, I don’t want the design changed at all, and the most efficient ranger players would still be the ones who fully utilize their pets and work alongside them to get the job done.

Kilger.5490:

How about including MH axe in with the range fun? Not a lot going for it either trait wise… Otherwise great points.

That’s a good point, and I totally missed commenting on the Axe. However, I do remember ANet specifically making mention that the Axe is meant to be a hybrid weapon, and thinking to myself that the Condi part of it is fine, but the power side is lacking a bit. I think that overall, this should be a direct improvement to the Honed Axes trait though. Maybe capitalize on the bouncing and shotgunning aspect of the Axe and say something like “opponents hit more than once by a single attack take x% more damage for each hit.” It could ultimately be done a million different ways but I agree the power aspect of the mainhand Axe is lacking in comparison to its condition functions.

Atherakhia.4086:

You mentioned it a few times in your post, but I feel power Rangers deserve their own bullet as there seems to be a disconnect between the type of game ANet has made and the method in which ANet wishes us to actually play this class.

During the CDI thread ANet made it pretty clear that they want this class to be a sustained DPS class. However, the majority of people who made Rangers chose it to be a ranged class, which suffer from a rather steep handicap simply because of the range advantage. They then have another handicap due to the pet. They then give them another handicap by giving them no burst and only a limited DPS increase by using their individual skills over the spammabale attacks.

Add that onto a class that they’ve given no real thought to how they’re supposed to sustain themselves for long enough to overcome these handicaps and actually beat an opponent and nearly all defensive options for the class are designed around avoiding damage instead of tanking it.

I simply don’t see how a power Ranger will ever work if they don’t allow the class to move beyond the sustained DPS role they’ve forced us into. Not to mention how incredibly boring it is when your best attack for nearly every weapon is auto attack and all you do is strafe in circles all day while you wait for you or your opponent to die of boredom.

Yeah, I absolutely agree. It got me thinking for an example in this game of where sustained DPS works. My most immediate comparison went to Phantasm mesmers, who, despite the flaws phantasms have, are fairly strong overall. Then I thought, what makes them so strong? Well, the DPS comparison that is used in the PvE meta clearly shows that mesmer DPS has one of the highest theoretical DPS outputs in the game. The portion of their damage devoted to AI can be cycled much more frequently so they aren’t as heavily punished by allowing one of their delivery methods to be killed. Also, there is an incredible amount of utility phantasms gain just from minors by pulsing boons that help with survival to the player and allies.

Overall, they have high sustained damage and self utility, and can actually rely MORE on their AI in some regards as a DPS tool because they don’t have to micromanage their AI to stay alive or else sacrifice 30% of their output for 1 minute.

So I have taken a note that incorporates what has essentially been mentioned a few times in this thread as “reasons to use cooldown skills as a substantial increase to personal damage output. Not a supplement to the autoattack, actual damaging cooldown skills.” I do also think that ANet needs to take a look at the delivery method of sustained dps and maybe try to increase the subjective “fun factor,” aka, is it fun to just autoattack for maximum DPS? Lastly, if we are supposed to be a sustained DPS class and ANet is unwilling to try to improve our utility options, then our damage options should be competing a lot better than at a lower midtier DPS output level.

Sai Locke.7193:

I know it has been mentioned before but add the pig family f2 to the list. Why can’t this function like the thief steal? Press f2 to forage and f2 again to use instead of having to pick the item up. I still can’t believe that to this day an enemy player in wvw or pvp can pick up your foraged item and use it. Good joke though ANET… the pet is playing fetch with us.

Added to the list. Thank you, totally slipped my mind haha.

Fluffball.8307:

Are you planning on putting an updated version of this thread in the profession balance forum? I’m pretty sure no devs read this forum. Honestly I would prefer you didn’t even put any input from other ranger forum members in to it and simply moved your thread to that forum. You have a far better (edit: and realistic) understanding of the class in those couple posts than the terrible suggestions I foresee coming in future responses.

Yeah, but I feel bad just putting my own opinion over on that thread lol. People have already pointed out things that I agreeably missed, and overall the more views and opinions I get in this thread, the more I can dissect and get to the general gist if those suggestions aren’t the most balanced (either underpowered or overpowered).

Then I get to use the community delivery method haha. In my thought process, I’m essentially trying to do a CDI that was better than ANets version of the CDI, and then give them the notes they would need.

Also, I typed too much out, they wouldn’t read it all in that thread (unfortunately). I’ll have to reorganize the information and bullet point it and keep each bullet to about 150-250 words. Which is very, well, I’ll just say I don’t have a positive opinion of the process in order to avoid an infraction.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I second all of it. Regarding the longbow, all traits affecting the long bow, like “Eagle Eye”, should also affect the shortbow. Even if we break the trait down to its naming, it does make no sense that you have an eagle eye while wielding a longbow but not when you’re wielding a shortbow. Furthermore, for the sake of effectiveness, I’m still a fan of an increased chance for projectile finishers tied to the traits, not as separate trait, but as addition to already exsisting ones.

I 100% agree, and really like the idea of increased projectile finishers. But yeah, why we need so many traits just for the longbow should immediately indicate some red flag areas, and there is no reason why the traits don’t affect the shortbow to begin with.

I’d love to see both ideas implemented, personally.

Part 2: The longbow. We have more traits dedicated to the longbow than some of our utilities. 2 Marksmanship Grandmasters only function with the Longbow (excluding underwater combat). The problem is that there are far too many traits that individually do far too little for the amount of total investment needed for the weapon to be a competitive option. For instance, in a versus Player environment (PvP, WvW), Read the Wind is an absolutely mandatory trait to actually use the weapon at its effective range (this is actually a variable that is dependent on the skill level of the opponent). The problem is that you have to provide maximum trait investment on a single weapon just to make it usable at its optimal (not increasing its performance rating to above and beyond, but from poor to optimal) level. And that’s just one example.

Personal Solution: Remove Read the Wind as a trait and make it effect the weapon at a base level, make Remorseless a more universal trait option so that it plays off of other weaponsets, combine Piercing Arrows with Quickdraw and leave it in the Skirmishing line.

Skirmishing Flaws

This entire traitline is devoted primarily to traps and pets. Outside of its passive stat increases, it does almost nothing for the player for power builds except for Moment of Clarity and the minors.

Personal Solution: Rework the traitline entirely so that it more actively interacts with power builds. Maybe some more traits for melee options. My own suggestion was a Fresh Air styled suggestion as a grandmaster that would read: “100% on critical hit to recharge the weapon swap and pet swap cooldown. 5 second ICD.”

Beastmastery Flaws

This entire traitline have even less overall direct effect on the player than the Skirmishing. You are essentially taking a passive mechanic that accounts for 30% of our total output in it and then investing in it to give it overall minimal improvements versus investment, while most trait selections in the line do barely anything for the pet, and barely anything for the few that affect the player. It doesn’t increase the amount of available utility, it barely improves pet damage and survivability based on the opportunity cost of taking something else, and it increases Healing Power which is objectively one of the least valuable stats to build in to, attached to a traitline that is barely worth investing in for its trait options.

Personal Solution: Make this the Beastmaster traitline! Revamp the traits so that trait selections allow pets to provide agreeable utility and damage, decrease the pet death penalty even more than already suggested through this trait, allow the traitline to also improve the players damage output as well. Currently, with the way pets work, Rangers at their baseline are forced to be beastmasters, and then beastmastery only slightly improves that role. Instead, let rangers have the option to go pet or player focused at default, and then make the Beastmastery traitline make players into fantastic and feared beastmasters.

TL;DR

Now that all of that is out of the way, let’s get this conversation rolling! Is there anything that needs to be added to the list? Any specific issues people feel are worth mentioning? Maybe somebody disagrees with one of the line items I listed or the reasons on it and would like to explain why. This thread is not a thread for attacking or arguing with each other, and there is no right and wrong. This is a thread for collecting perspective and trying to gather it into one definitive opinion so that we as a community can evaluate at a core level what we think is wrong with the class, as well as figuring out what is where it needs to be along the way. Please keep it civil and don’t attack each other, and try to remain constructive, especially during the disagreements that are bound to ensue, and also, try to have fun

Kiriakulos.1690:

Prysin.8542:

Sigmoid.7082:

We are in the skill fact meta….

and this meta is a strong one. It will last for a while, i predict.

Wasn’t there one update last year that specifically tackled making tooltips clearer and traits better explained in game?
Anyone else remember that?

Yes, I do. Like all changes that get made though, they have had to take patches since then and continue shaving the tooltips until they get them balanced.

Olba.5376:

Well ANet seems reluctant to release balance patches during major PvP related events. Currently we have the Tournament of Legends, so you’ll most likely have to wait until that’s over.

ToL ends and then Gamescom is within a few weeks after that, so we probably won’t see another balance patch until September at the earliest, and that’s the optimistic prediction.

GW1 had a better and more involved pet system and pet combat. That alone should speak volumes when people would prefer a direct port of the old system over the new system.

But for my overall issue with it because I shouldn’t directly compare games, GW2 is mobility based combat in which movement is the most important determining factor in fights. Most of the combat in the game takes place while mobile (as opposed to rooted attacks). Attacks that root the player are often times compensated by being big, important skill, both to land as the user and avoid as the intended victim.

At which point we get to pets, where none of there attacking abilities are mobile, and yet almost none of their abilities are strong enough to justify being rooted abilities. The downside to this is especially evident versus other players, who generally are smarter than the AI to the degree that they can use their intelligence as a player to negate the effectiveness of their opponents AI. However, their effectiveness (30% damage before factoring in utility function) is completely and totally tied to that AI, meaning that now, that player has to “trick” or force the AI into being intelligent enough to compete with your intelligence to the point where it lands some of its damage or abilities.

This is especially difficult in terrain based kiting, where in certain situations players are smart enough to figure out that they can kite pets on terrain that those pets won’t be able to traverse, essentially handicapping ranger players by 30% of their damage on top of utility being lost.

That is a huge issue. I have no doubt that eventually ANet will be able to iron out details with Pet AI versus content, but versus other players, to some degree, I think that rangers are always going to have to work harder to get their pet mechanic to work than other classes and their mechanics, and I don’t see ANet compensating ranger players for their disadvantages with any clear advantages (like eles get with having such high DPS but having to manage so many skills and a low health pool).

Being able to use the other 2 cooldowns skills on demand that our pets use would be a huge start. But the ANet devs think “that’s too hard for ranger players.” But just like ANet’s shock with how fast the Tequatl revamp was beaten versus the time frame they were expecting, they seem to have a habit of gauging the intelligence and abilities of their playerbase a lot lower than where they actually are.

I don’t know about you guys, but I have the most amazing trap build. It has incredible output and good survivability for the output it provides, and works in teamfights and home/far point situations.

Check it out, I know you’ll enjoy it: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fdAQJAqelUUpPrlYx+KseNCbBNqxI6N2xq85GEgkC-TJhHwAU2fgwDAAwJAAZZAA

Eurantien.4632:

Yes. Every time I see a ranger on the other team I think “free win”.

And here I thought I was the only one lol.

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

You know what would be incredible though?

If rangers could actually use bows. Let me restate and emphasize something, if rangers could actually use bows. Not just autoattack with bows. Not wish I had more interesting skills with bows. Not hit like a wet noodle with bows. Not “I enjoy another classes bow skills more than my own” bows.

Honestly, as like a /thread style argument, if bows were where they needed to be, nobody would ask for pistols/rifles to be added to the kitten nal. Well, nobody asking them to be added for the sake of balance (meaning only people who want them added solely for the theme and stylization of them would still be asking for them).

I don’t think anyone IS asking for them on a balance perspective…

Subconsciously it’s a possibility, the the bows being so off putting that it feels like we need even more ranged projectile weapons to compensate.

Dos.7052:

let’s “believe” anet is undergoing some decent improvement for rangers after that CDI topic, well, only question is when they will carry out these changes… next patch or next expansion pack?

Next balance patch is more than likely not going to be until after the All-Star tournament in August, and I would imagine that based on the way content and balance is handled in the game, that an expansion wouldn’t really add any balance at all, just content.

I mean, ever since Allie, the community manager running the CDI, left ANet and we haven’t heard an official status on whether or not they at least took the work she did on the CDI into consideration for things to add to the pipeline of changes, I haven’t had any sort of hope or seen any signs that the class will be anywhere close to what people want by Christmas (December) this year.

My advice to everybody is to play this game like you would a Call of Duty game. It’s definitely as casual as Call of Duty, and even though it tricks you into making you think you have a whole lot to do, at the end of the day, all you are doing is killing and leveling, so if anybody expects anything more out of the game (a true competitive experience, a hardcore PvE experience), my advice is to find a nice Korean MMO (I hear Dragon Nest is good enough at this point an F2P and not too B2W eight now) where the developers take hardcore players seriously and not as a joke.

tl;dr: Enjoy this game for what it is, and stop getting disappointed for what you know it could be because of things that are out of your hands and find something better to do with your time. I know that what I’ve been doing, I’ve only been logging in for LW updates and dailies.

You know what would be incredible though?

If rangers could actually use bows. Let me restate and emphasize something, if rangers could actually use bows. Not just autoattack with bows. Not wish I had more interesting skills with bows. Not hit like a wet noodle with bows. Not “I enjoy another classes bow skills more than my own” bows.

Honestly, as like a /thread style argument, if bows were where they needed to be, nobody would ask for pistols/rifles to be added to the kitten nal. Well, nobody asking them to be added for the sake of balance (meaning only people who want them added solely for the theme and stylization of them would still be asking for them).

Factoring in traits, I’d say that my favorites are:

Thief: Initiative is incredible and completely unique compared to the rest of the game, and steal when traited with Mug and Sleight of Hand is an incredible tool that feels very much like an “ace up your sleeve option.”

Warrior: When specced all the way up to Burst Mastery, Warriors are weapon swapping, damage dealing machines. Due to the nature of how different weaponsets operate, Warriors can shift momentum at an almost alarming fast rate, which keeps people on their toes and never really leaves a dull moment in edgewise.

Elementalist: Attunement dancing is incredibly fun as well as it is rewarding. Nothing quite compares to the feeling of properly landing a solid skill rotation, and elementalists are all about their rotations, which again never leaves a dull moment.

Necromancer: Absolutely, stunningly effective for what it is. Nobody is arguing that it isn’t a little buggy at times, but it’s an entire health and utility bar that you can use virtually on demand. It deserves to be listed by people even if for only being thematically appropriate. Uniqueness is also a factor too, and it definitely competes in that category as well.

Guardian: Virtues are simple but elegant. They add so much to combat both passively and actively. Sure, they might not be on demand fire element applications or instantaneous teleports to mug people and smack them with what you take, but Virtues work. The theme works, the effects work, the traits work, and it really overall comes together to make for a very solid class.

Engineer: Well, the toolbelt is… thematically appropriate I suppose. I mean, more utility isn’t a bad thing. I’d have to factor in kits as part of a mechanic (please don’t burn me at the stake engi community, I know it’s a sore topic) before I even considered it interesting. That being said, if I were to factor in kits, ummm, bombs, grenades, and flamethrowers? Yes please. This class has a tool for everything it seems (on the surface). Besides, I think everybody has somebody in mind irl that they would just love to smack with a wrench.

Mesmer: Oh boy. Shatters are fun. The AI is no walk in the park though. It’s actually quite frustrating. But hey, at least you can kill that frustrating AI to create beneficial combat effects. Oh, and animation effects. The mesmer is overall a well put together and extremely fun class, especially on a shatter build. The content might not always render the mechanic as effective as people wish it would be, but hey, at least you aren’t the next class to be listed.

Ranger: Oh boy you mesmers have it lucky, you can shatter your useless AI! (cough) I mean, useful, definitely useful, and not in anyway crippled by mechanics hellbound to annihilate any sort of AI mechanic that can’t avoid the pain train. Look at the brightside though, Sir Hurrdurr Gimpmeister is here to save the day! Eventually…. With some extra AI damage output that makes me as a player sacrifice my personal damage output because I’m stuck with Dumb and Dumber the sometimes-use-my pet-F2-skill-when-you-want-me-to-even-after-miniscule-pet-improvements wonder pet whom I can’t just slaughter over the fire to the gods or the dragons or the quaggans to get some god forsaken decent power scaling. (sigh) Well, on the brightside, I can name my pet whatever ANet deems is an appropriate name for an arguably social misfit that nobody would even associate with irl with fear of lowering their IQ. On the other brightside, there is no lore telling us that ranger pets can reproduce. So that’s a positive. Oh, and hey, all that gets made up for by rangers being amazing with bows and having amazing bow skills!!!!!!
What!? Wait a minute here!!! Son of a…! (/deskflip)

Soooooo yeah. I hope people are as entertained and informed by this evaluation as I was writing it (believe it or not, a portion of the write up was extremely cathartic).

“Does the class have interesting mechanics somewhere you’re not seeing…”

Honestly, no, not at all. If you wanted interesting skill combinations, rotations, and effects, mesmer would have definitely been more up your ally.

That being said, I’m not saying ranger is inefficient or anything, but Shortbow, Longbow, and Mainhand sword are most effective at doing damage when autoattacking…

So, to salvage your experience with the class, I would recommend going Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch with some sort of condition based build for PvP, and I would highly recommend Empathic Bond with 6 in Wilderness Survival with Offhand Training as well.

Essentially, this build allows you to “dance” in and out of weaponsets and different combat ranges and soft CC lockdown targets. Run it with a wolf for a controllable interrupt and you’ll have just about every tool you would want available to you outside of consistent AoE and multi-target abilities.

Still, this for me is personally the most active, or actions per minute requiring way to play that I have found for the ranger class. If you don’t like how it plays, then you are probably just straight out of luck outside of trying to make a pure glass LB/GS build work. And I personally only know of one person that play glass LB/GS efficiently in PvP in a high competition setting, so what I’m going to say to you is that if you can’t play the build perfectly, and I mean perfectly, then you are going to be absolutely frustrated with it and not enjoy it at all outside of catching a few people with it in hotjoins.

Anyhow, best of luck to you. Keep your ranger around at the very least. 2+ years from now when the devs finally make enough “shave” quality changes to the game for the game to play differently, ranger will hopefully have a more active and entertaining playstyle on builds that currently lack it.

Atherakhia.4086:

OGDeadHead.8326:

jcbroe.4329:

BUT, you gave me a very great idea for a trait that would give you what you want (I think) and create a very, very fun style of gameplay.

First, remove the ICD on the Skirmishing 1/3 swap traits. Then, new Grandmaster Skirmishing trait (ideally replacing Striders BS): “100% chance on crit to recharge Weapon Swap and Pet swap. 5 second ICD.”

Oh I would so use that trait – zephyr’s speed mayhem!

My issue with that trait is you kind of move the Ranger back into the problems it has had since release with condition removal—you’ve removed any hope of getting EB or SotF. It’s very hard going back to a 6/6/2 build after playing something like 6/2/0/6 for awhile.

Yeah but, as far as PvP direct damage builds go (excluding warrior, everybody knows warriors are in a ridiculous spot), it isn’t like we lack condi removal compared to a typical 2/6/0/0/6 thief (or 2/0/0/6/6 thief), 4/4/0/0/6 Shatter mesmer, 2/1/6/1/4 Meditation damage guardian, etc, etc, etc.

I actual thought that with the suggestion, the main concern that would be brought up that in order to pick up utilities like EB and SotF, which you can definitely still do, that you would have to sacrifice longbow traits, at which point I would say that the only trait the longbow ever feels like it NEEDS as a baseline function (to me) is Read the Wind.

However, merging Piercing Arrows into Quickdraw would bypass another issue with the heavy trait investment the longbow feels like it needs out of the marksmanship line.

I would also argue that the BM 5 minor should replace the 1 spot entirely, and the new 5 spot should remove 2 conditions on Pet swap. I will forever be in agreement with certain top PvP players I’ve spoken to that think that we need a condition removal on pet swap trait in the BM line so that it synergies better with power builds that want to invest into the pet and NOT take traited survival skills for condi removal.

All in all though, I think with the suggestion, the biggest advantage everybody should be thinking about when considering it is how it would finally bandaid fix the pet mechanic versus content it melts to and WvW blobs that melt the pets since we would be able to recharge the pet swap.

@Atherakhia.4086;
I definitely see what you’re saying about the Fast Hands trait and how it would be useful. I just don’t think that the Cooldowns are conducive to 5 second weapon swaps is all. Like, you are going to hit a point where all you are doing is weapon swapping and autoattacking with one of the weapons unless at some point you don’t take advantage of a 5 second swap time.

BUT, you gave me a very great idea for a trait that would give you what you want (I think) and create a very, very fun style of gameplay.

First, remove the ICD on the Skirmishing 1/3 swap traits. Then, new Grandmaster Skirmishing trait (ideally replacing Striders BS): “100% chance on crit to recharge Weapon Swap and Pet swap. 5 second ICD.”

I dunno how you would like that though, but I would love that, and it would give a whole lot of builds some love all at once. Yes, I totally ripped it off from Fresh Air for eles lol.

Archon.6480:

Niah is actually quite amazing, and he loves running carrion which makes him my buddy ole pal… Of course, that will put him at odds with 90% of the ranger forum stooges who are soooo much better in PvP with their “statistically superior” berserker builds… Go power rangers!!!

Carrion is an extremely good option. I would argue that Celestial competes with it in certain areas since the April 15th balance patch, but that being said, Carrion WAS the meta build for the 6+ months before the patch, so I guess I missed people promoting power builds in a competitive PvP environment since I’m only on the forums periodically (about once a week, more for a day or two back to back at times during that weekly visit) lol.

Atherakhia.4086:

Simply changing LR to remove condis when pressed (I assume this is still an issue, I haven’t played my Ranger for 2 months) as opposed to the end of the roll and making it prioritize movement impairing ones over other condis would be just as good as your change imo and wouldn’t be that overpowered.

Hunter’s Shot I’d much rather see it always stealth regardless of hit (thus not needing unblockable) and with it being 100% reliable as a defensive cooldown, you probably wouldn’t even need the removal of weakness and blind on activation. You could then do what was suggested in the other thread and offer some other premium for actually landing the hit something like one of the following:

A brief immobilize
A 5 stack of vuln
A leap backward
A movement buff like Ele’s get

If I had to choose 1 single thing the Ranger class needs above everything else it would be a Fast Hands trait. I personally think this one change would at least raise power builds enough to be competetive in both PvP and WvW. Certainly not top tier like other classes, but enough to make it feel like you could actually win as opposed to an insurmountable brick wall all the time.

That all said… people shouldn’t compare skill X on class A to skill Y on class B. Just because another class has something similar and the Ranger would get more tacked onto doesn’t make the skill overpowered. It’s still in the hands of a Ranger afterall.

To the last part, true, but I can compare performing a particular role on a particular team composition with how rangers compete at performing that role based on the actions we can perform. And that being said, either the ranger was never meant to perform the role of a PvP roamer (moving from point to point to help team fights primarily with damage, back/counter capping as necessary) on a power build, then the weapons are even more poorly designed than anybody could have ever imagined lol.

It’s just a simple case of “assuming equal outputs,” so that, assuming equal outputs (even if one is burst and one is over time, but that is a debate of the effectiveness of the delivery mechanic and not the actual value), why are other classes being chosen to fill this role, and what is holding ranger back from being a competitively viable option.

All of that aside, I agree with your suggestions more than my own. Though I’m always up in the air about your fast hands suggestion. Not because I don’t like it, but because most of our weapons cooldowns aren’t conducive to early swaps, so if you take something like LB/GS, even if you can swap more often, it wouldn’t really change how often the skills could be used to the point where it would make an effective difference. It would make full melee builds a ton stronger than they already are though.

Warriors make fast hands work arguably because it grants them adrenaline and lets them swap right into a burst skill. For rangers though, unless some cooldowns get toggled I have a hard time seeing how much more beneficial it really is, especially with sigil cooldowns and out 1/3 Skirmishing traits both also having 9s ICDs.

Still, I like your ideas on the matter better than my own. They are more efficient.

I still have no idea how people are arguing and disagreeing that our power builds are lacking and that they need either a increase in damage, utility, or a lesser mixture of both. Like, Eurantien might not share the reasoning behind any of my sentiments and I would take his word over mine any day, but he is one of the best (visible, there are rangers that are good that are more unknown to people) ranger players in the game AND makes power builds work in PvP and will be first to cite any of the general shortcomings of the build(s), and he and I share similar views at the very core of the problems the build(s) face.

The purpose behind the proposed change to Hunter’s Shot is to remove some of the counterplay options to the skill, absolutely. The skill is terrible for damage, and isn’t used for any sort of “big damage” setup.

It’s a full on utility skill, that at the moment, is both extremely unreliable, and fairly weak utility for how unreliable it is.

And yes, our tanky builds are tanky against conditions, but most of our strong condi removal options are only beneficial to condition damage focused builds, leaving power builds high and dry unless you sacrifice so much efficiency of your output that the opportunity cost is no longer worth it.

More importantly, what is the largest difference between running full glass on a ranger versus running full glass on a thief or mesmer? A lot of people are going to argue damage, and while a strong case can be made for it being damage, that isn’t what creates the efficiency disparity. What creates the efficiency disparity is the amount of utility options mesmers/thieves still have access to as full glass builds.

Thieves have incredible team offense utility on their shortbow alone, and can maneuver terrain for defense, on top of the amount of utility Shadow Refuge is alone, not to mention pistol 5 for blind fields on demand if that is the set thief is running, which greatly improves their overall versatility and survivability.

Mesmers, while having arguably only slightly more terrain maneuvers due to blink (less land speed mobility though), perform a near identical role to that of a longbow ranger. They pressure for a distance with Greatsword, opening up on specific targets when needed. However, the also have arguably better AoE options, ON TOP OF the fact that they can run portal, mass invis, veil (more of a WvW option), Null Field, and have a bunch of teleport “tricks.”

Mind you, both classes run full glass with basically no condi removal either. So comparably to either class, when ranger goes full glass, we get as our best options, exactly what Eurantien runs on his bar; Protect Me, Lightning Reflexes, and Signet of Renewal. Combine that with Longbow, and with full glass traits, no matter what your offhand swap is, the amount of team and personal utility you are capable of having is so extremely limited that THAT is what makes makes our power builds less effective than other classes competing for the same role on a team comp.

tl;dr: Power builds need more utility to be viable.

Lightning Reflexes could stand to have the damage removed entirely. I would take the conditions being removed over the damage being dealt (especially because you could then reliably use LR after hunters shot and create distance).

The goal behind Hunter’s Shot is to make it a reliable stealth, which would still have some counterplay. Additionally, the removal of Weakness as well, because the Longbow is the least evasive weapon option we have access to (outside of running Axe/Warhorn or Axe/Torch), would allow us to keep the dodges while use the weaponset up, as well as keep the damage impairing aspect of having weakness on you at a minimum, making the longbow more reliable damage, which I personally feel fits the overall theme of the weapon.

Evasive Purity is a pretty garbage trait anyhow for removing blind, the blind could be removed entirely from the trait and most people that actually use it wouldn’t even notice the difference.

Just my thought process behind it.

Prysin.8542:

I WANT A SPEAR!!!!!

Go underwater lol.

Things in the game I’d like to see before guns (I’d prefer guns to be a never option, the bows already need enough improvements as is):

• Mainhand Dagger
• Hammer
• Staff
• Mainhand and/or Offhand Mace

blitzkrieg.2451:

Eh, Niah is alright, after watching him play there’s been many many mistakes made by the ranger, not saying he’s bad but he’s not the best and he has a team of really good players to carry the downsides – but I guess that’s the point of a team right? Besides, I think there’s only 3 rangers now that still play in top tier being Niah, Eurantien, Nnight? Shame though that almost every ranger that used to be really good no longer plays now (Tany,Vyndetta, Folly, Genyen, there’s many many more)..

Niah has run spirits ever since he ran non-spirits in that 1st ToL because non-spirits is simply not viable and anything but spirits are very selfish specs.

Those selfish specs, good for back point, but then you’re forced to sit on a back point because you provide nothing but condi harassment in a team fight and one groupwide condi clear if you’re running renewal.

Pretty much this.

Also, for the EU side, I voted for the whole Team Mist (TCG) squad personally. I don’t care how much people dislike Helseth’s personality either, he’s the first person to criticize the devs and push for better balance, and TCG doesn’t run the same 5 man cheese tanky comp that’s gotten so popular lately.

That being said, I think that NA not even having a whole team to vote for really skews the win in EUs favor if all of Team Mist make the cut, which is really unfortunate. I won’t ever understand why ANet didn’t grab 5 people from the same team on NAs side at least. There’s a huge chance now that it will end up being basically a premade versus a superpug.

Oh well, esports and all that jazz, I guess.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

I disagree with the hunter’s shot change idea. Curret one is a great survival tool, that’s great for a longbow ranger that got too much attention.

By getting stealthed yourself only, the aggro obviously gets diverted to pet. That’s also why pet switness is there. A very reasonable and good skill for a longbow ranger if he got more attention then he bargained for.

There’s “guard” shout for pet stealthing. Though that should be insta-cast.

Aggro is a PvE tool, and I made this specifically in regards to PvP. In PvP, if a target drops your pets focus while you attempt to go stealth, the pet comes back and stands next to you and gives away your position. Not to mention that every thief in the world that has more than 3 brain cells will use your pet if they are running D/D to counter your stealth with stealth.

If the pet AI was ever changed so that the pet doesn’t try to run back to you when it loses a target that stealths, then a change like what I suggested wouldn’t be needed. But at this point, people just abuse the limited AI and in the process can remove any defensive benefit you were trying to gain from going stealth.

Rym.1469:

Seems like after two years people break eventually :P

Yes, we need Control, Kiting, Damage and Utility. The “Holy Quattro” of every “Ranger/Hunter Bow” design. In this particular order.

I have NEVER thought that the longbow was a good weapon. Every time I touch it I hate it a little more. Our condition builds are pretty much as ideal as they can get. We are at the point now where power builds need visible changes (and not slight, “shave” level improvements), and the traits need a serious overhaul.

ANet has targeted the “low-hanging fruit” changes for our class long enough. When the entire forum thinks that rangers need buffs, even people that don’t play the class, that should be a HUGE red flag. The only people that argue that rangers don’t need buffs are the close-minded PvP players who have never played ranger before and associate the class with AI and autoattacks because of poorly designed weapons and a toxic build, and they don’t even realize that a single build that only performs semi-well does not equate to a class being in a well balanced spot.

So yeah. I’m just really tired of always wanting to use the Longbow, and it being an absolutely abysmal weapon that doesn’t even compensate with how not fun the skillset on it is with enough damage for me to personally let it slide.

nagymbear.5280:

jcbroe.4329:

Traits:
Marksmanship:

• Read the Wind: Current functionality becomes baseline functionality for the weapons it currently effects. New Effect: “Deal 5% more damage to moving foes while wielding a bow. Critical Hits on a moving foe cause 5 seconds of Cripple. 15 second ICD.”

I thought you were of the oppinion that read the wind is a good grandmaster trait, and rangers should make choices, and shouldn’t have all the lonbgow traits available at any one time. And now you propose +100% arrow speed as base line functionality. What happened?

Longbow:

• Hunter’s Shot: Additional Effect: “Also applies a 2 second immobilize to the target.The pet is also stealthed.”

I think this is relly overpowered. A skill with a 12 second cooldown adds stealth to both you and your pet, gives pet swiftness and 2 seconds of immobilize on target. This is too much for 1 skill. I would like it don’t get me wrong, but it will never happen.

It is a good trait, and I run it in WvW whenever I LB. That being said, the Marksmanship line is cluttered with traits that could arguably be baseline functionality, and the easiest 2 people always target to make baseline are Eagle Eye and Read the Wind. I personally don’t think the LB should be 1500 range by default, and I don’t think it should pierce by default, so Read the Wind has to go to make way for clutter.

So while I do think it is a good trait, and I still think there needs to be trade offs (which is why people are debating with me that I should have had my traits push the longbow towards a more burst oriented or other role oriented weapon other than sustained output), my view of the entire games trait system is that the Grandmasters in the game are horrible excuses for Traitline caps and should act more like capstone skills that have a drastic and noticeable improvement on gameplay. Some traits like this already exist (Sleight of Hand, Burst Mastery, Illusionary Persona), and the rest of the grandmaster traits should follow suit to create a fundamental difference on immediate gameplay (not just throw some traps, or throw some traps that have longer lasting effects).

As for you thinking the skill suggestion is overpowered, I would argue that it isn’t any more overpowered than Pin Down, or the amount of spammable CC engineer rifle gets. Especially because I was particularly careful about making sure the longbow was still more sustain oriented than burst oriented with the suggestions. Is it strong? Absolutely. The skill might be deserving of a longer cast time with the proposed change. But I will never think the LB is an okay position until it has another skill on it’s skillset that can be used to setup Rapid Fire, that PBS is useless for that role and hardcountered completely by stability, and that the LB desperately needs an immobilize.

Atherakhia.4086:

Your Message Here.

I edited out the mathematical errors a little. I was having a case of severe insomnia when I came up with the list, so pardon any mistakes I make/made.

RtW change: In case you missed it, also works with the shortbow too, which was the goal behind the change I had in mind for the skill, as the Marksmanship tree is heavily bloated by skills that also only effect the LB, so where as you can run EE, Spotter, and Pierce, you could now run power shortbow and turn it into a monster of a hybrid weapon that has decent soft CC.

Opening Strikes change: Is essentially just an updated version of Sigil of Intelligence that also gives a short vuln. All it does for the greatsword is makes it so that you don’t have to run Sigil of Intelligence for a guaranteed crit, and as of right now, you can already LB stealth into Maul anyhow, so all it does is open up OS for more builds really.

Remorseless: The change is a bit stronger than you are giving it crit for, just not on the longbow. With the GS and also taking Moment of Clarity, you can Swoop -> Maul -> GS5 -> Maul, obviously not back to back, but this combo would chunk the hell out of somebody’s health if it landed.

SotBM: I agree that its existence is problematic, but at least with this change you could be a little more liberal with the activation of signets, which would mean a bit more burst opportunities. It would just make the one trick pony builds that rely on this for youtube montages that much better.

Quickdraw: Again, also works well for the shortbow, but would help give the LB some artificial burst.

Strider’s Defense: This is just a hard skill to work around. I would change the name any everything about this skill, and ideally, I would want another crit proc to go with the Skirmishing line. Maybe something like: “Being hit by melee cripples you attacker for 5 seconds, 15 second ICD. 100% chance on your next critical hit to apply poison for 5 seconds, 10 second ICD” This would help offense by reducing healing to opponents and giving some passive damage in the process. It’s the best I can do at this very moment based on how I see the class.

For the shouts, I agree that my Guard idea is bad, but I want it to give SOME sort of boon, the problem being that even if the protection suggested increased to 2 seconds, it allows spirit builds with stone spirit and 3 in WS with a little extra protection duration from gear to combine for perma protection uptime, which wouldn’t be good. In general though, because signets only work for the pet without traits, I don’t think that shouts should be the same way, and provide benefits to the player that don’t necessarily require play off of the pet, but do boost the pets effectiveness as well.

In general, I didn’t change the longbow much. I gave it a few more tools that allows it to deal consistent and arguably high damage, with the trade off for it not being a burst weapon being that some of the combination you can pull of with GS would now heavily punish people for pushing in to Melee. The longbow would have just enough tools to skirmish other players if utilized properly though, and ultimately, the build would allow a full damage specced ranger to play hyper offensive and become a serious threat to anything less than a full tank, and even a full tank would be chunked pretty severely.

snow.8097:

10% from OS of u and ur pet + 5% from remorseless, up to 10% from rapid fire, some stacks in that time from QD and that in a great uptime because of the fast regain of OS…idk extreme strong when u go full power

It has about as many modifiers as any other class though, and still relies on the pet for max damage to kick in. Also, you lose opening strike if it is blocked/dodged/etc. Not to mention that you still have to rely 99% on positioning for survival.

There’s lots of play and counter play involved to it overall, and the vuln from OS won’t even last 6 seconds without additional multiplier. It basically gives a full glass build worthy enough damage to make it threatening, and opens up a Grandmaster trait to other options that currently only is used for a single gimmick on a single weapon that really isn’t all that strong.

Oh, and a breeze will still kill you, so if anything even looks your way, you’ll die. It just shifts you to be about as priority of a target as a glass thief or glass ele, and you still wouldn’t outdamage either of those classes/builds, and have less than satisfactory burst outside of the Greatsword still.

Edit: @Thread;

Ah, I see with numbers. Annoying damage formula, will make some small edits.

Sigmoid.7082:

Tooltip damage = (average weapon strength) * Power * (skill-specific coefficient) / (level-based Armor value)

So base damage is scaling dependant. Base power at 80 is 916, level based armour is heavy at 2600.

Striders defense should be something to do with melee evasion. Have enough vulnerability from all other sources and even note from your changes.

All the changes that talk about base damages and scaling are dealing with the numbers provided by the wiki, so I guess what I’m suggesting to change for most of them is the skill specific coefficient, and the power scaling with Barrage.

ilr.9675:

Your message here.

I would be fine with a CC based longbow, but when I did the Ranger Balance thread around the time of the CDI, people argued with me for 10 pages about how a ranged CC weapon is OP. In it’s current form though, I would never consider the longbow as a CC weapon. It only has a single knockback and an area denial skill, and is actually quite terrible at locking anybody down, although I would love to see that change.

I would argue that outside of the Skill specific changes I suggested though, most of my suggestions actually make traits less longbow specific and more useful to other weapons and weapon combinations, though a few of them are still geared directly towards the bow.

But yeah, I’m not disagreeing that I think the LB needs to be a better damage weapon, because I think it’s quite clear from my suggestions that I think it’s a pretty bad weapon in it’s current state lol.

Edit: Don’t even get me started about how much it bothers me that people are fine with melee weapons having the ability to maintain their melee capabilities, but it becomes OP when a ranged weapon is able to maintain its ranged capabilities.

So, yeah, I haven’t made an idea thread in awhile. But I got very irritated yesterday trying to make the longbow more than just a weapon you stand on walls with and shoot into teamfights in PvP, and I encountered 2 extremes. Either you are pure glass with almost no defensive options if you have to skirmish with somebody, or you have a little bit of sustain, but building for any sort of sustain reduces your damage to an almost exponentially less effective level.

So, with that in mind, I do have some ideas. Keep in mind, I’m not trying to suggest anything ridiculously over the top, but I only factored in balancing the ranger against itself, and making gameplay entertaining.

So:

Traits:
Marksmanship:

• Read the Wind: Current functionality becomes baseline functionality for the weapons it currently effects. New Effect: “Deal 5% more damage to moving foes while wielding a bow. Critical Hits on a moving foe cause 5 seconds of Cripple. 15 second ICD.”
• Opening Strikes: “Upon entering combat or weapon swapping while in combat, gain Opening Strikes. Opening Strikes applies 5 stacks of Vulnerability for 5 seconds.”
• Alpha Training: “Pets have Opening Strikes, and regain them when you regain them.”
  Remorseless: “Foes with Vulnerability take 5% more damage from you attacks. 100% chance on crit to regain Opening Strikes, 10 second ICD.”
• Signet of the Beastmaster: Additional Effect: “Activating a signet for a short time (5 seconds) reduces the recharge of the next signet activated by an additional 20%.”

Skirmishing:

• Quickdraw: Additional Effect: “Critical hits with bows have a 33% to apply 1 Vulnerability stack for 5 seconds.”
• Strider’s Defense: “50% chance to apply 3 stacks of vulnerabilty for 10 seconds and 5 seconds of cripple to opponents hitting you with melee attacks. 15 second ICD.”

Skills:
Utility:

• Guard: "Additional Effect: “Gives you and allies within eashot 1 seconds of Protection upon activation.”
• Sic’ Em: Additional Effect: “Gives you and allies within earshot 3 stacks of might and fury, for 8 seconds.”
• Protect Me: Additional Effect: “Pet becomes immune to all damage outside of the damage it takes from the duration of this skill.”
• Search and Rescue: "Additional Effect: “This skill is now ground targeted. Pet gains 15 seconds of Protection and Retaliation upon the activation of this skill. Cast time is now 3.5 seconds, Cooldown increased to 90 seconds.”

Longbow:

• Long Range Shot: 0-500 range damage removed. Now only 2 tiers, 0-1000 range: Base damage is now 283. 1000+ range: Base damage is now 347.
• Rapid Fire: Base Damage increased from 1320 total to 1536 total. (I got this number by taking Volley on the warrior, which is half the cast time and hits, finding the base damage per hit, multiplying by 10, then subtracting 40% of the damage; 10% for vulnerability, and 30% for the pet. I averaged this number with the number I got if I did the same calculation but only removed 1% of the damage on each hit so that each hit counted as a standalone damage instead of the damage for the whole skill being totaled. So the average of 1462 and 1610.)
• Hunter’s Shot: Additional Effect: “Also applies a 2 second immobilize to the target.The pet is also stealthed.”
• Knockback Shot: Additional Effect: “Perform a short evasive leap while using this skill. Allows the skill to be fired when retreating (omnidirectional skill, like the shortbow 3). 1/4 second evade added to the leap.”
• Barrage: Cast time has been reduced to 2 seconds. Base damage increased to 1757.

This right here is a where I think the ranger ultimately needs to be with power builds and certain utilities. Obvious it isn’t perfect, and obviously people aren’t going to agree. But personally I would need most all of these changes before I consider power builds both fun and competitive.

You can shortbow all day in PvP and WvW.

LB is just a terrible weapon. Combine that with a whole lot of selfish utilities that don’t even help us compete with “top tier” damage in ANY game mode, and it makes teams in all content not want to run rangers.

But yeah, PvP and WvW if you go shortbow and you’re actually playing a sensible build, like, a build that makes sense and isn’t just a hodge podge of random traits and utilities, you’ll be fine.

LB on the other hand has so many skill and design problems that the only reason to ever actually use it is if you like it. That’s a matter of opinion and not efficiency though.

But to clarify what’s wrong with LB:

• None of the skills are conducive to the pet mechanic. Every other weaponset we have has skills that play off of the pets weaknesses, meaning that they have CCs and skills that boost the pets output. LB gives the pet a single swiftness, which is gone by the time it gets to 1000+ range at the longbows most efficient range, and then the pet can no longer function efficiently and will be kited for days.
• Rapid Fire is horrendous damage per time investment on the cast time. It’s poor damage, poor scaling, and just overall, an awful skill. I know it’s a terrible comparison, but play warrior for a millisecond long enough to use Volley, or even pick up a frost bow, and proceed to hate Rapid Fire forever.
• LB 3 is an unreliable stealth that doesn’t even stealth the pet. It’s essentially a placeholder that was a band fix to the longbows still ongoing predicament of not having any sort of defensive options.
• LB 4 is decent enough, but makes other players hate you if you use it liberally, and doesn’t really fit with the rest of the weapon skills since it doesn’t really help create any situation to increase your damage output and is really just a poor excuse for a defense option at the end of the day.
• LB 5, perhaps the best and the worst skill on the weaponset, it is well designed, but hard to use during active combat, and will get you killed by retaliation, and could probably stand to hit harder (again, pick up a frost bow, use it’s barrage, then hate ours forever)
• LB 1 ends up feeling more like it’s penalizing you at closer ranges than giving you a bonus at longer ranges. The lowest range needs to be dropped entirely, and the middle and highest range damage could be increased ever so slightly, unless all of the other changes that need to happen get implemented, in which case, its only an autoattack and doesn’t need to be so strong if the skills are actually worthwhile.

The worst part is, that’s like, the short list of what’s wrong.

warriorjrd.8695:

jcbroe.4329:

The loud discharging of our weapons would be more than painful to the ears of our faithful pet companions.

If you don’t believe me, let somebody fire a gun right next to your ear and let’s see how you like it.

Really though, the weapons we already have need to be fixed before anything new gets added to the game. ANY DAY NOW.

Oh, and as far as I know, for anybody interested in game balance as per the balance team, I believe that they are supposed to be having a balance discussion livestream on friday. Just saying. Ask the devs there why they made the longbow so bad we need another ranged weapon instead of it.

Considering that dogs can be trained to be hunting dogs, I don’t think gunfire would really be an issue. Then again, this is a game that is very, very far from reality :/

I can’t even train my pets in this game to work with me to use more than just a single skill command on my command, and have to rely on them to use their other skills when they feel like it.

So, I don’t think we can train pets as well as that in this game lol.

The loud discharging of our weapons would be more than painful to the ears of our faithful pet companions.

If you don’t believe me, let somebody fire a gun right next to your ear and let’s see how you like it.

Really though, the weapons we already have need to be fixed before anything new gets added to the game. ANY DAY NOW.

Oh, and as far as I know, for anybody interested in game balance as per the balance team, I believe that they are supposed to be having a balance discussion livestream on friday. Just saying. Ask the devs there why they made the longbow so bad we need another ranged weapon instead of it.

OGDeadHead.8326:

jcbroe.4329:

And how you do imagine that the code for weapon swapping (or stowing) is anything like the code written for dodging?

I don’t. Question is, what is it in the weapon swapping code that happens first of all, that is capable of interrupting any action, even mid-air when using GS#3 for example?
That code right there is what interests me.

jcbroe.4329:

If anything it would mean that the autoattack speed would have to get slowed down to allow for a delay period in between attacks so that a “cancel action” function gets sent to the server in order to cancel animations and allow people to dodge in between the attack chain.

Pure speculation on your part, since again, the “cancel action” is right there in some form in the weapon swapping code, and works instantly. In other words, no, the animation would not have to get slowed down.

It is speculation, I agree.

Some things we do know though;

• Weapons are their own objects, which are designated as active or inactive
• Activating and Deactivating weapons, aka weapon swapping, is instantaneous
• Unequipping a weapon outside of combat during a channel won’t interrupt the channel, or the animation or anything. This implies that there is some sort of mechanism specifically tied to the actual weaponswap action

Speculating entirely, I’d say that the mechanism is more than likely the stow weapon action, meaning that the weapon swap stows the current set and activates the other set.

So, theoretically, because it is instantaneous, if somebody was able to tie a weapon stow feature to the end of the animations, it would create a window to be able to dodge without having to change any of the animations.

Theoretically of course.

Sorry I wasn’t available, I was without power until only an hour or two ago. Tomorrow I will hopefully have a break in the stormy weather days about to assault my area.