Guild Wars 2

I have to agree with Durz on this one that with the proposed change the actives also need to be more valuable than they currently are. Right now, the actives for spirits are used more just to proc each other at times than they are for the benefit of the actual active. Stone Spirit is probably the most useful though and the one most worth timing, but other than that, the game has such skill spam that the blind from sun spirit is always useful and usually not all that super potent since it is a singular blind, and then there is the proc on storm spirit which is always 2k+ and always useful, though you can perhaps save that active against certain other builds (Automated Response Engineers for instance).

Overall though, the active/passive skill design remains but it tied to your pet and would potentially be capable of offering up much more than what the current system offers. Yes, the spirit build is strong right now, but ultimate it’s just animation and screen clutter than that could be handled in a much better way, and in a way that doesn’t take up most of the screen since the Spirit Passives are just equivalent to other classes passive procs but as an AoE effect which makes them overly redundant in a lot of cases.

Atherakhia.4086:

Heh, a lot of the ideas he’s come up with are the same ones I suggested, so I’m cool with a lot of them.

Yeah, I’m behind the suggestions 100%. A lot of them have come from a lot of different community members and in total it looks like an entire collaborative effort when reading through them of all of our ideas coming together in a simple but elegant list. Most of them were also regurgitated by Allie when she made her post of items they were taking away from the CDI, so let’s just hope those are the ones they go with.

That’s because, as far as I know, Battosai’s list of suggestions was never posted in it’s most current iteration on the forums. I’m going to post what he sent me though because I agree with everything and I think it’s definitely worth sharing with you guys:

Signets on Rangers : Currently you need to heavily invest into the Marksmanship traitline and take up 2(3) traits to make them viable in a signet build and comparable to other signets, limiting trait choice and build variety a lot ( 30 pts already gone into wilderness survival leaving a measly 10 points to differ the build, due to the limited access to condition clearing). This also derives from Signet of the Beastmaster being a mandatory choice, especially in power builds. Moving it down to master tier or making signets apply it’s active effects without the need of being traited for would open up some great builds for power rangers.
Remoreseless – Speaking of the Marksmanship traitline, remoreseless by design is a really cool trait, but it feels lacking due to the rangers limited access to stealth and a rather high time to kill due to the lack of an inherent big hitter. I feel that with adding a condi clear/condi transfer or boon removal on opening strike it will become a really great addition making it a true grandmaster trait, that would benefit rangers greatly as well.
As for adding runes for spvp – Adding rune of resistance to offer power signet builds on rangers some skillful on demand defensive with the aegis procc. Making it a rather tough choice which signet to activate for the aegis and which to save for a later occassion. The cooldown of the Aegis procc would need to be adjusted though, as 30 seconds is a fairly long time in spvp.
Signet of the hunt – The ranger weapons feel lacking and the damage is usually coming from the autoattack. I’ve read an amazing suggestion on the forums about having signet of the hunts active change depending on the weapon the ranger currently has equipped. For example : LB sniper/killshot kind of move to add finishing potential on range, SB confusion/burning/torment for the next three attacks, sword final thrust/blurred frenzy. Things like that, this would increase the overall versatility and weapon choices ( pet choices even ) of rangers while providing a overall more active playstyle.
Beastmaster traitline – Adding a condition clear on petswap would be really great as it’d confront the player with a tough decision and a tradeoff again. (Cleanse 2 conditions on pet swap)
Another suggestions i’ve heard was regarding spirits and the AI cluttering the screen which makes it really hard to notice all the action going on. The suggestion is changing spirits to auras that are applied to you or your pet ( maybe adjust the range a little and just have it on one of these ) while still providing a visual effect for the buffs, the screen won’t be cluttered anymore and the ranger will have to make choices again – do i send in my pet to help my comrades to lose out on the condition clear from EB? or do i really want to run a dps pet that dies quickly in a spirit build? Or if the ranger is attaining the aura, he’d have to be in the middle of the fight in order to provide the best possible team support, making him a desirable target in a teamfight, if you want to shut him down – furthermore good positioning would be greatly rewarded.
I feel changes like this would add more depth to the game and adress a lot of issues with the ranger class ( mostly power and signet builds, but also for the spirit and some other builds) , while this is only a few small suggestions i can go into further detail and provide a lot of examples on situations those changes would really benefit the game.
[13:35:21] Nik: Trap Rangers : adding combofields to existing traps is a great idea, rangers could greatly benefit from a smoke field ( spike trap maybe? ) and a poison field ( vipers nest ) in order to utilize the many projectile finishers and the few blast finishers on the pet, if the latter get’s more responsive, the Ranger, given he’s an experienced one and a good player could make some really great plays and be very effective and desirable in a team, with overall raising the skill cap and a little raise on the skillfloor.
[13:46:46] Nik: Anyways, thanks for reading – I still care a lot for Rangers, the community and the game in general, excuse my messy type of writing and bear through with it at least, what I want to do achieve with this wall of text is to provide a balanced ranger with a skill entry floor that can achieve decent results and a skillcap/ceiling that will decide high level tournament games, given the player is able to gauge everything, the class, the opponent and his surroundings correctly.

Durzlla.6295:

So, me and Jcbroe were talking with some people about spirits, and my idea (based off of Battosais idea) for spirits is that you “summon” then for 60s (like now), but instead of an actual spirit a wisp floats around your pet (blue for water, purple for storm, orange for sun, yellowish brown for stone, white/almost white blue for frost, very large green wisp for elite) each one would give a passive effect, this effect would be “every 5th hit X effect occurs.” This passive would NOT be very powerful and would provide a very mediocre buff for everyone effected.

However, activating the spirit would “kill” the spirit and make your pet radiate with an aura, this aura would provide a pulsing benefit to allies near your pet as well as make your pets every 3rd attack apply a stronger effect than the passive.

EX: Sun Spirit: Summon a spirit to aid your allies in battle, causing every 5th attack for allies in range to Burn for 1s. Duration: 60s

Suns Might: The Spirit uses it’s remaining energy to imbue your pet with strength, causing every 3rd attack to blind and burn the target for 2s, and to give allies within X radius 1stack of might for 5s every second. Duration: 5s

The traits would OBVIOUSLY have to change as well, I’d like to see them become something like this:

Vigorous Spirit: renamed to Invigorating Spirits, is now the Grand Master trait, effect changed to: Your pet gains increased stacks for each spirit and aura attached to it.

Spirits Unbound: now an Adept Trait, your spirits CD is reduced by 20%

Natures Vengeance: The active effects of the spirits are increased, additionally effects of the spirits occur a hit earlier (IE passive effect is now 4 hits, not 5).

This would 1) remove cluttering 2) make spirits more fun to use and less mindless 3) allow MORE counter play to how spirits are, now killing the pet would end ALL spirit effects as well as the pet dying, this makes loading up 5 spirits into your pet very risky, but at the same time VERY powerful 4) this would allow tankier pets (such as bears and pigs) to be stronger in more aspects of the game 5) this doesn’t necisarily hell PETS in WvW, but it makes spirits less easy to pick off and die to AoE and 6) it makes spirits less point demanding to be good, but still rewards (and encourages) dumping points into spirits.

Yeah these are definitely really awesome and I would love to see the system to switch over to this instead of what it currently is.

Am I one of the only ones the remembers the developer blog posts about balance from guild wars 1? Where they would literally write an entire paragraph about why changes were being done to each skill and how the changes that were going to be implemented were to address something currently wrong with the way the skill is in an attempt to give the skills a different usage or stress the value of it?

Here’s a sample: http://www.guildwars.com/gameplay/developer_updates/september_2012_skill_balances.php

As some of us have discussed in the ranger balance thread, I think my point of view should be pretty clear that basically, while I think ranger would be in an okay spot if you are only looking at it individually and not in regards to the rest of the game, when you do look at the bigger picture, there are a lot of what I’ll refer to as “pacing” issues versus mainly the longbow and our pets, in which options that other classes have access to can simply throw more at us than what the longbow can handle.

That’s where we end up getting the perceived “kiting” issue, it’s not that we don’t have the tools, it’s that we have two different skills that are both single shot and very dodge-able, one of them is a stealth and the other a knockback. With the prevalence of stability and instantaneous gap closers and dodges and aegis (on certain classes), we just end up getting outpaced by certain classes because they can output more actions to counter our limited responses to their gap closers than what we can produce as a defense.

That’s all within the longbow though. And if the longbow was only meant to be a utility weapon (as opposed to a damage weapon, like looking a staff on a mesmer power build which is used more for it’s utility and clone generation that DPS), I feel like we wouldn’t have an entire traitline trying to make a single weapon better, and another grandmaster trait being introduced almost exclusively for that weapon.

The pets as well, particularly melee pets, are designed from the PvE AI in this game, which we all know as players has produced the “zerker meta” in which the AI is literally poor enough for people to go 100% glass and the be able to kite and dodge through 99% of the games content. The only fixes for that are faster attack speeds and a larger attack radius, because there are lots of times where the damage efficiency that we would get from pets gets wasted because they literally cannot catch what they are attacking, and then can’t hit that target when they catch up because the targets keeps moving.

I’ve already stated numerous times that if we aren’t going to get a fix for those types of issues and somehow make pets scale into large combat scenarios a little better, that we should be able to build entirely for the pet swapping mechanic or utility/support pets while wasting minimal to no damage potential on that investment. Beastmastery actually is really awesome for power builds right now with the three pet swap traits, but the problem is that for a power build, you essentially still get shoehorned into investing everything else into your own damage and end up with limited survivability, or survivability and end up with very limited damage output.

If the devs mean us to have to play with less defensive options in builds like I’m suggesting (essentially 30/x/x/x/30) then we need more baseline defensive utility, or some of the current stuff needs to be more reliable (hunter’s shot is like a 50% success rate for me at times, and long back shot gets entirely ignored by boons and instant gap closers).

I’m still looking forward to a trait reorganization of some sort. Our Skirmishing line is flat out terrible for power builds outside of the stats it gives, and while we have many of the pieces we need to make very interesting and coherent builds, most of those options are 30 trait point options (even more on April 15th) when what we needed was for more of our current options to get the “Spirits Unbound” treatment and drop them some tier levels so they can be integrated into more playstyles and more build diversity gets created because of it.

There, I think I’ve said my long winded piece now lol.

@AEFA;
I totally agree. The ability to play keep away is a valuable tool and, as it refers back to the longbow for me, I think I expressed in that discussion as an example of how unreliable I think it’s keep away mechanics are.

The shortbow is in a good spot on this one though. The gap creator isn’t dependent on the attack hitting it’s target, and sb 4 shoots fast and applies a decent enough cripple, plus a daze/stun for interrupting key skills like gap closers.

So I definitely agree with you. I still want Evasive Purity to remove a condition on dodge roll (any condition) but that just be me.

@Substance E;
Is it safe to assume that I’m not the only one who thinks the sheer amount of pet traits and the vast spread of them should be seriously condensed?

@Geekilo;
I’m assuming that it was just oversight that you didn’t mention Agility Training (30% pet movement speed). Remove the trait and make it baseline functionality for the pet, then rework how the passive part of Signet of the Hunt affects the pet. Would this be acceptable?

SafiMoyo.5130:

I’ve gotten to about 15 minutes in. I don’t know if you guys are right or wrong, but you’re awfully harsh and dismissive of “the ranger community” (which is also your target audience?) as a ranger-only player I feel like I’m very much part of the ranger community, even if I don’t always participate actively on the forums, and as such I feel clumped in with what you’re describing as “qq” and stupid rangers. Arrow to the Knee? More like, Arrow to the Heart :c

I’m just as much a part of that ranger community too though. I have my moments of QQ, and I will openly admit that I haven’t tried every build available and every playstyle before formulating my opinions on certain of those builds/playstyles, which means that at times I also tend to be “stupid” or ignorant.

However, I don’t believe it is either my or Durz’s intent to demean or insult. If anything, it should be taken as more of a challenge. We are attempting to challenge people (and ourselves) to disagree and dissent with what the loud majority thinks or what they discourage you to do. Throughout the entire guild wars 2 community, there are lots of formulated “meta” optimization theories and ideas about balance and what’s good and bad and etc, and lots of the time, those sentiments are filled with misconceptions and over-dramatizations, or even just fueled by bias based on gameplay experience or people projecting their expectations onto guild wars 2 only to be met with disappointment.

Personally, I only want the community to think critically and be constructive in discussions instead of being dismissive towards any new ideas or concepts just because it isn’t how they want something to be changed or they are just so jaded and disappointed that they are willing to shoot down everything to bring everybody down to their level.

Don’t be afraid to be an individual. Don’t let other people tell sway any of your ideas or opinions before you actually go through and test and try them. Vocal != accurate.

Essentially, all I mean by any negativity I may express is to take everything not supported by data with a grain of salt, and verify any data or data testing methods yourself before trusting somebody’s data for a theory/test that they post. All I want is for the misinformation to be eliminated, the doom and gloom to cease and desist, and to actually be able to have constructive conversations without people using arguments like “because we are bad as a class” or “because ANet hates us” and etc.

So now that I think we’ve discussed the longbow and the skirmishing line to the ground, I’m curious what else there is to discuss that was not addressed by the CDI.

Something that I brought up during the most recent podcast and elsewhere is that ranger Master and Adept tier traits can be very lacking outside of the common options in most of the slots. At times you aren’t slotting traits because you want to, but because you have to make the best of a bad situation and something may (or may not) be better than just not slotting anything there.

Am I the only one that feels this way?

nagymbear.5280:

As much as I welcome your enthusiasm (its like fresh air to the ranger community) I don’t agree with your views on the new marksmanship and wilderness survival GM traits. I particularly don’t see why you would autoattack an ele casting meteor shower, when you have Point blank shot, and can interrupt instead. And if you can land 2 long range shots on an ele standing still, you can do that without Read the wind too. I get that this will make rangers more of a snipe type prof with zerker longbow, but it has been said by the community for a long time now tha MM bow traits are too much in one trait line. What I think loongbow needs is some sustain, and I think I recall Chapman saying so on an old SOTG as well. They did work on how the bow feels, as they added projectile speed and short range damage as well, and stealth (which is really fun and useful as well). And while I agree with the sentiment of having to choose between trait, longbow power rangers had to do that already. Of sustain and less congested traits Read the wind addressed none. It is yet another trait that makes something basic just work better. The same goes for Poison master as well. It is a 100 per second damage boost on 1200 condition damage and ca 140 per second on 2000 condition damage. At 2000 condition damage you will apply burning and bleeds for damage. Poison is a good addition and it definately has its uses in pvp, but again it is a trait that just makes something a bit better. Its not adding interesting play or a fresh air to condition builds, its just 100-140 more dps. You can already easily have 100% poison uptime without our pets applying conditions. And the fact that our pets applying condition that deals damage off of our traits is just a feature because their condition damage is god aweful to begin with.

Sorry if this seems like a rant, had to get it off my chest.

I’m not going to offer a dissenting point of view because it’s certainly a matter of opinion, and I am more than 100% agreeable that a lot more still needs to happen and a lot needs to be done and that even if some of our builds do get put in a good spot after the patch, it won’t necessarily be because of trait organization.

What I am going to say is that most of the traits in this game across all the professions that are strong and define builds are not Grandmaster Traits. Granted that every profession has a few useful grandmasters of course, but what I mean is that there are traits in the game like Cleansing Ire, Deceptive Evasion, Incendiary Ammo, Backpack Regenerator, Cleansing Wave, Elemental Attunement, Mug, Terror, Absolute Resolution, etc that boost every build or 90% of all the builds you can possible run, and most of those examples are only masters.

As a matter of fact, as far as Grandmaster dependency goes, Thief is the next most dependent class on their Grandmaster traits, but not only do they have high raw base damage output, but they have a bunch of other unique and defining class mechanics that the traits are just improvements to what the weapons and steal are already capable of.

I cannot think of a single trait for a ranger that is even remotely like any of the ones I mentioned. I guess the Beastmaster Traitline (Mighty Swap, Vigorous Swap) but that ends up being extremely limiting due to the inherent limitations of the pet versus certain parts of the games content.

That ends up being my biggest issue. I could care less about getting any more Grandmaster Traits, we are already so 30 point dependent on everything that it doesn’t end up improving build diversity at the end of the day. What I want is to be able to look through certain traitlines and instead of having a hard time choosing an adept or master trait because I’m looking for the least bad one, I want to be deciding on which one because they’re all so good it’s hard to pick.

Honestly the Marksmanship Traitline is perfect. It has exactly what I’m looking for. It’s the longbow that needs a rework because something is missing when you use it because it’s clunky and feels like a relic of an old build that never got updated when it hit live.

And sorry you don’t agree with our enthusiasm! I’m not going to try to convince you, just try to keep in mind that it isn’t a scripted discussion. My excitement for all of the PvP features alone boils over into me talking about the patch, so if that ever keeps me personally from me being as critical as people think I need to be, I apologize and will try to bring up more opposing viewpoints in the future

@Aridia;
Yeah, agreed. I would honestly say just a removal of the lowest range damage is fine for the auto imo, but that could just be me. Then again, I’ve already suggested multiple weapon reworks throughout this entire thread alone, so I think I’ve adequately expressed the idea that longbow is not okay (imo) in its current iteration lol.

I would say a lot of the issues with longbow stems right back to the 30 trait point investment discussion and our utilities. There just aren’t a lot of utilities that play all that well off of the longbow or even our power builds. Really, it’s only Signets or Survival Skills. The issue with that is that it either takes heavy investment for the signets, or you run survival skills and the survival skills are more situational where you react and use them than having an actual effectiveness to the point where they are part of a skill or damage rotation.

Theoretically you could run spirits, but a build like that favors smaller scale engagements. You could run Moment of Clarity, but you’re essentially sacrificing 1 to 2 trait slots traiting up through Skirmishing that high that could have better options for power builds like every other one of our traitlines do except Skirmishing which is more beastmaster and traps than anything for power builds, and that’s of the 2 minors in skirmishing that occur on weapon swap which aren’t active on a longbow based build nearly enough since you aren’t going to be weapon swapping and sacrificing your range as that’s counterproductive to the build.

Traps do poor direct damage, have minimal control effects, and favor condition builds, so those are out. You’re now left with lolshouts which is going to cost you more DPS to activate Guard compared to what you’re gaining from it than just running Sic’ Em with a DPS pet and no investment if you really wanted to play shouts that bad (unless you are a tanky longbow build, but even then there’s better survival options).

Those last 30 traitpoints now end up in Beastmastery, which is honestly going to be the best single target DPS we can achieve against other players, but have all of the drawbacks of pets, meaning that they die easily in large scale skirmishes and that often times melee pets have a hard time tracking targets, especially with the amount of swiftness some classes have and can use to kite. It also requires we sacrifice all of our defensive potential through traits except maybe picking up Shared Anguish, meaning that we are relying entirely on our weapon skills and utilities to survive. Assuming this is a Marksmanship heavy build, this is either going to be Signets or Survival skills, as mentioned.

Overall, an extremely limited build for anything outside of damage that has such a limited survival option that once people recognized the build, you would become the target and get dropped almost instantly every time.

Therein lies the ultimate problem with our direct damage builds in general, that our defensive capabilities, while existent, in these builds in comparison to the amount of defensive capabilities other classes can get out of their utilities, weapons, and mechanics, are severely lacking, making our direct damage builds that build for damage much, much more linear than many other classes going for the same build type, and ultimately weaker than all of those other classes options because of that.

Substance E.4852:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Substance E.4852:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

I just want to recap the design philosophy behind the longbow, so we’re all on the same table again:
The longbow is meant to deal damage at range. Noone ever said it should deal high damage.
However, there is the major flaw that we aren’t able to utilize the range we’ve been given. This applies both to WvW, where we aren’t able to maintain our range to justify the longbow, and PvE, where is simply no need to bring in a ranged weapon.
So there are two things we could do to fix the flaw.
1) Scrap the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range and it wouldn’t need to if we would say that the longbow is meant to deal high damage on any range.
2) Fix the definition. The longbow can’t maintain it’s range. Therefore we have to add cripples and immobilizes to effectively maintain our range. This would be fairly easy to do for WvW, but maintaining the range in PvE isn’t the problem. The problem is, that there is no need to range anything. You can melee all day long in PvE. So ANet has either to deliver content tailored to using long range weapons or they have to buff the longbow to a certain extent, so it’s more desireable to use longrange weapons than melee weapons. Either way, they probably have to buff the damage atleast a bit.

It’d be far easier to simply remove the range penalty on the auto attack. It doesn’t need a bonus effect if it’s already the hardest hitting ranged attack in the game, that’s enough on it’s own. It then becomes useful in pve because you can stack in melee range and it’s still plenty balanced in pvp because melee will still hit for more and the bow lacks survival skills beyond a short stealth so you’re toast when they inevitably close the gap.

Then, if any balance issues do crop up, they can shave off damage from the auto till it works without having to drastically retool the skills.

Looks like a band-aid solution to me. Melee weapons should be more effective in melee range than ranged weapons. It is stupid to stand directly in front of the enemie and “snipe” him. It may be the easiest fix but it’s also the most silly fix I can think of.
They can, however, decrease the minimum range for the maximum damage required.

It still wouldn’t do more than the 1H sword. And as I said, they can then shave down the damage if it starts to break the “melee > ranged dps” rule.

It may be a band-aid fix, but that’s how Anet rolls with Ranger fixes anyway…

The damage would probably be “normalized.” AKA, the new damage value would be the current mid range damage value.

Chrispy.5641:

Substance E.4852:

Chrispy.5641:

I know you feel poor and neglected, and are envious of just about everything other professions can do because the Ranger can’t do it, and still you want to play the ranger instead of other professions. That’s okay. You don’t deserve a response beyond that based on the fact that you still feel the need to compare a class mechanic (burst) skill to an auto attack.

Evidently I’ve touched a nerve…

Nope. Its just my standard response to people who enviously try to compare 2 things that have no business being compared.

jcbroe.4329:

…snip…

you know that people can get a 9k longbow auto attack in WvW right now, right? add 25% to that, it becomes 11.25K, for an auto attack, with no active tell telling someone they are about to die, unlike killshot.

I’m all for getting extra damage on vulnerability. It does give the longbow extra power, and a reason for me to take it along, but, you guys need to stop with not wanting to factor in those “useless, long cooldown Signets”, because, while you wont, Anet sure as hell will. One thing you guys should start factoring in to your discussions (as far as increasing the damage we do) is to change the way signets work, so we can avoid that dirty word Anet likes to call Power Creep. Signets are part of the problem why we deal so little damage. its not all pets.

Those numbers are taken from a target that would have around 2600 armor is the reason why my numbers don’t match yours. Just a heads up for the information sharing. I’m more than well aware that damage is higher against squishier targets, but that was a generic calculation.

WvW is never going to be balanced. There are so many different permutations of stat investments, different foods and consumables, and mechanics that break when the number of people increases what the game was balanced for (5v5). It isn’t a knock against anybody who plays WvW, it’s just pointing out the fact that WvW was never intended to be a high level competition game mode and more so a fun, Player versus Player oriented experience that gets an entire server involved to unify and test themselves in some regard against another server.

So if any of the changes I ever suggest would be balanced in PvP and not somewhere else, that would be the big reason. ANet has been pushing PvP since day 1, and centers all of their tournaments around TPvP. I think it’s fair to say that from their perspective, that is where they believe that highest and most intricate level of balance needs to be, and if it trickles out to other game modes and doesn’t translate well there, it either never gets fixed, or there are skill splits at an attempt to compensate.

Today’s Arrow to the Knee should be up for viewing on the twitch channel. Like links? I do too! So here’s a link for all of you: http://www.twitch.tv/soacgaming/b/515730985

Still Carrion/Forge Spirit ranger. 10/0/30/30/0. Sun Spirit, Stone Spirit, Signet of Renewal, Elite Spirit.

Against certain team comps, I’d say you’re better off running a Settler’s Amulet with a Carrion Jewel and Runes of the Undead. You don’t have to rely on the protection as much against direct damage comps, and direct damage comps are the new meta, so where Carrion helped counter the older, more condition heavy comps, right now, the game is filled with Pistol Whip Thieves and Hambow warriors, and it’s just easier at times to deal with them when you have your toughness investment.

Chrispy.5641:

Durzlla.6295:

Shared this in Skype with Jcbroe, but like 10s after I posted I remembered an idea me and my friend had for the LB#1 change it from what it is to being Penetrating Shot: deal 1% more damage per stack of vuln. IE: if they had 25 vuln instead of doing 25% more damage you’d be doing 50% more damage. If they want to keep the long range thing make it so that you apply 1 stack of vuln for 10s or so while you’re over 1k range, but other than that don’t change the damage.

This would allow the LB to not only be a very lethal weapon in team fights due to the high vuln that can be around, but it’d also Synergise nicely with Rapid Fire and the proposed Hunters Shot (immob + vuln), imo it’d also warrant Rapid fires long cast time since that’d be a 20% damage boost instead of 10%, it’d give the enemy a chance to stop you from setting them up for death.

This is probably one of the better, less confusing ideas I’ve seen over the past year and a half. The only thing I would be cautious of is just how crazy the damage will stack up after using Signets in their current form (not that its a bad thing, but a 12-15k auto attack, even if its one well planned shot…it will send every other class up in arms)

That seems like a much higher damage estimate than it should be to me. I mean, I’m going to go with a crit at 50% crit damage doing around 2k damage with pretty substantial power investment. Full glass builds at max range (this is outside of PvP because in PvP there isn’t much higher you can get with crit damage if you are in the 50s) are going to be pushing 3k, so let’s just say 3k for math.

Signet of the Wild, when traited will up those crits to 3.75k (3750) per hit, and a signet of the hunt active would put 1 hit up to 5625 on a single hit.

Those are numbers against a target with medium range toughness. With Max vulnerability, your hits on the autoattack would go to 4500 on crit, and with Signet of the Wild activated, crits will hit 5625, and a with Signet of the Hunt on top of hit, you’ll get one crit of 8438.

I mean, in PvP, this change is actually pretty fair and provides the “oomph” that the longbow feels like it is sorely lacking at times (numbers would be 3k crits, 4.5k with SotW, and one hit of 6750 with Signet of the Hunt while under SotW). Not to mention the ability to die if somebody looks at you when you run a build like this, meaning that it still keeps its linear role and has a plethora of hard counters.

Also, if the range stipulation was removed, the damage would more than likely be normalized (by this I mean they would use the average of the lowest and highest base damages and make that the new base damage).

Durzlla.6295:

I like Jcbroes “Strike As One” sorta style longbow skill, but I’d absolutely tie it to hunters shot IE make it the second skill there, then I could choose to use it or not after I stealth and just totally kitten with my enemies mind with the though of “is he gonna immob me? Is he gonna just bait me? What’s gonna happen?” And leave KBS as it’s own skill.

As for LB #1 I’d like to see then get rid of the short range damage, IE make it 0-999 range for damage and then 1k+ the 1k+ should be what it is now, so long range is rewarded. The other range should be what our 600-900 or w/e the mid range is.

PS: the 3 skill could just be named Hunter’s Instincts (stealth + swiftness on pet) —> Hunter’s Shot.

I have to agree with this idea myself, it seems like a more refined version of what I was aiming for.

Personally I think that as far as functionality goes, a Moment of Clarity empowered Greatsword is the BEST power weapon for rangers as far as functionality goes. Burst, gap closer, defensive utility, with a big damage counter, cripple, and an interrupt that can be used for big damage setups.

I think that the longbow should be a mirror of sorts of this functionality. Rapid Fire should be big damage, and then it needs a gap creator (which is why my original suggestion is a 2 part gain stealth and knockback), a defensive utility (being able to immobilize to maintain range and apply a bit of weakness while getting the pet involved for potentially setting up a defense based F2 as well), and some sort of other utility or damage skill (barrage doing 50% more damage).

That explains my line of thinking. Not to mention glass ranger builds running both these weapons are only going to have these few weapon skills as defense, even with my updated skill suggestion. It would end up playing so good, because a good ranger could win any fight against a lower skilled player, but against an equally skilled/higher skilled player, you have to manage your skills and positioning perfectly and not get outplayed by them.

Xaylin.1860:

You’re right about the stealth being unreliable in its current state. Your suggestion about making it a 2-tier skill should make it more reliable. I’m not a fan of the knockback being on the follow up skill, though. LB#4 right now is a ‘get out of my face’ skill and it works just fine. It doesn’t marry well with stealth and would become extremly trolly. I’d rather see it stay on LB#4. You could tie the Weakness and/or CC (still feel that Cripple/Chill is more reasonable than Immobilize) to the LB#3.2 skill instead.

I’m also still not convinced that a pet teleport on a projectile is very smart. Again, look at Shadow Shot in combination with Richochet (P/D, made a mistake the last time I referred to it). As long as the pet teleport is tied to a projectile it will become extremly unpredictable when paired with Piercing Arrow. If you feel a pet teleport is needed in general a Shout or Signet might be a better place for implementing it.

It doesn’t have to be coded unpredictably though. Ideally, it should be coded so that the pet teleports to the first target the arrow hits.

A 1 second immobilize every 20 seconds on what would be a fairly telegraphed skill that offers nothing but utility would be pretty fair IMO. Pin Down, Guardian Hammer 3 and Guardian Scepter 3, are just some examples I think are much stronger than this, so the range factor what would be what makes this skill compete on an equal tiering level with other ranged immobilizes in the game.

In actuality, the skill is more designed for the pet than for the ranger. It really doesn’t help the DPS output of the weapon itself at all with such a short immobilize. It does however, give the ranger the ability to buy an extra second, and potentially get some damage in from their pet as well as a split moment where the enemy does less damage and you do slightly more from the vulnerability.

With this skill being the way it is with the immobilize, I think dropping LB 3.2 to just a cripple is a fair tradeoff.

The thing about the longbow right now, and even after my suggestions, is that once you’re out of cooldowns, all you can do is spam rapid fire and auto attack. The weapon is completely out of defensive capabilities for what could be considered a lengthy period of time, which is the balancing factor. Dodge the immobilize, and react to the keep away abilities, and you can get in close to a longbow ranger, kill their DPS, and melt them with melee if they don’t swap.

The interesting part coming out of this conversation is that everybody for the most part is suggesting the longbow need more CC of some sort.

Some more thoughts regarding the longbow; I don’t really like the stealth shot. I find it to be unreliable at times for what it actually does, and the fact is that even with Remorseless, Knockback shot doesn’t do enough damage to capitalize on the opportunity created by Hunter’s Shot.

Just a simple QoL change, I think that Hunter’s Shot should stealth you regardless of whether you hit anything or not.

As a matter of fact, let me tie this all together before I lose my train of thought:

Combine Hunters Shot with Knockback Shot into a 2 part skill (like sword 2).

New Skill:

Part1:
“Hunter’s Instinct: You and your pet gain stealth, and your pet gains swiftness.”
Part 2:
“Knockback Shot: No change”

15 second base coodown.

This opens up slot number 4 for:

“Debilitating Shot: Fire an Arrow that immobilizes your target(1 second). Your pet teleports to your target and inflicts Vulnerability (5 stacks, 5 seconds) and Weakness (3 seconds) with it’s next attack.”

This probably deserves a 20-25s second recharge. This skill would have a very low damage value (like 300 with 3k attack) because it’s a setup skill and a utility skill.

Then the last things I would change are Rapid Fire being a 3.5 second channel with the same damage output (reduce number of arrows if the animation is too short for the amount fired, still same damage), and Barrage having it’s damage output being increased by 50% (multiply it’s current by 1.5).

I think that all these changes combined would make a functionally perfect longbow. The numbers are of course negotiable to be fitted into the balance spectrum, but these are my suggestions.

I ran Ritualist support for my Team in HA when I wasn’t running R/E Magebane snare hahaha, so yes, I absolutely miss that style of play and those tactics.

Rangers in this game have the perfect tools to make use of decently ranged spirits, since we have so many leaps and evade backs. We can leap out of a fight, summon a spirit out of harms way that could buff the whole team, and then back into the fray.

The competitive aspect of it is that going up against it, it would be like “where is all this burning/bleed coming from, or how do they all have protection/regen right now? It must a spirit. We need our roamer to go take care of it.”

In that moment the roamer leaves the fight to go take care of the spirit, it creates just enough of a window of opportunity where it allows the team running spirits to possibly push a few kills and win the teamfight, or gain the advantage, because the other team lost a part of their damage for just enough time to give the spirit team the upper hand.

bhagwad.4281:

jcbroe.4329:

they should be a “Thank you for the time invested and the support you’ve given us, and here is that reward for your time investment” type deals.

So what is that reward now? Whether we want to call it time invested, or skill, or whatever, the fact is that there should be exclusive rewards. Right now, everyone at r70 is essentially getting bumped down to r55.

I agree with you, and I also agree that it is totally unfair that those plays aren’t getting as heavily rewarded for their time investment.

However, I don’t think that based on rank, anybody deserves anything exclusive, when there was nothing exclusive in itself about ranking up. You gained rank whether you won or lost, and there was a point when there was even an abundance of Skyhammer farming going on.

It would be different if the rank finishers were like rank emotes in Guild Wars 1, which were earned exclusively through winning matches in Heroes Ascent. You couldn’t lose and still eventually get those, you had to win, and win consistently.

So while I do think it’s insulting to the players who are a high rank and deserve more rewards because of their rank and time investment, those rewards shouldn’t be exclusive to them (I’m not saying by this that more people than them deserve all the rewards in the game immediately, but that whatever rewards that high rank players obtain are still obtainable through work and playing) because rank is essentially based on participation and time investment.

I do believe though, that players like Eggs and others, who have thousands upon thousands of tournament wins should receive exclusive items for those for being in a very small percentile of players with that kind of tournament investment and amount of wins, and I think it’s even more terrible that players who have always played tournaments and been invested in the “competitive scene” whether there were rewards or not do deserve something from that, and something exclusive, like a finisher or a special reward that could only be obtained from PvP (aka not a legendary like the upcoming tournament, which, while rare, is not exclusive or entirely representative of player skill).

It is truly awful that these players are neither getting the rewards for their time investment (honestly, it wouldn’t hurt my feelings at all personally if all current rank 70s got a guaranteed precursor or something), and that among these players, most of them I would assume (I don’t know who they all are) have probably a large amount of wins in tpvp which they aren’t really receiving anything for either.

IF these players that are rank 70+ do deserve something exclusive, it should be like an in game statue/plaque in the mists that have a list of their names on it and a total amount of rank they earn before April 15th, with a few words congratulating them on the dedication to PvP, and more than likely a few words saying they are “the champions of the mist” or something like that. Essentially, their “achievement” shouldn’t be forgotten, and if “hurting the economy” is the problem with rewards, than this is the bypass that still gives them something they deserve, which is essentially an ANet shoutout and thank you, and bragging rights.

While I do think that it absolutely sucks that the people with the most time investment into the ranks they’ve attained aren’t getting anything “special” compared to people, there are 2 sides to every picture.

What ANet is doing, and has always basically had is what I’m going to refer to as the “Call of Duty” rank and reward system, by which playing the game, no matter what skill level you are, will eventually get you to the highest rank, and that “skill level” was usually denoted by some other defining feature (like weapon camos in CoD, or exclusive skins in GW2 PvP).

You shouldn’t be able to earn any sort of truly prestigious reward from just participating. Instead, players with the skill level that is usually associated with the current level 70 population of players should be shown through unique skins and finishers (Gold Trophy finisher anybody?) earned from high level competition and or tournaments.

It absolutely, absolutely sucks that the people that have the time investment to be as high ranked as they are aren’t getting some sort of reward based on their time investment. But the community as a whole is extremely two faced when it comes to how ANet rewards players. You either don’t reward players retroactively, and here the range for feeling like their time investment meant nothing, or you do reward players retroactively, and apparently also gets players complaining about how their investment meant nothing.

Point being, rank really has nothing to do with holding a level of prestige over other players, and it’s a true shame that in that past, there weren’t more unique rewards for tournament or team queue winners in order to actually show off something meaningful other than essentially just total time played.

So again, yes, it’s terrible that there are a small handful of people who are going to end up feeling like they aren’t being rewarded generously enough for the actual time they invested in the game. But those rewards shouldn’t be a “I’m better than you so I have this unique reward because I played more than you,” they should be a “Thank you for the time invested and the support you’ve given us, and here is that reward for your time investment” type deals.

The patch is actual a great step in the right direction for expanding the casual playerbase. Maybe PvP will stop being such an underutilized game mode. However, just as the casual players are going to get incentives for playing, tournament players have always deserved better rewards for their wins, and something to show off your wins and even potentially ranking, and I sincerely hope that just as you are getting retroactively rewarded now (albeit, not nearly scaling well enough based on time invested), you will be rewarded appropriately and with the prestige you deserve for being heavily invested in tournaments and recurring winners of those tournament matches.

I’d like to ask that people please try to remain respectful of each others situations. While the high ranked community does have every right to feel slighted, for a lot of the other parts of the community, it makes a previously unobtainable seeming and therefore undesirable to work towards goal obtainable, which can reignite the competitive flame and drive to play for players that were burned out, and help to stabilize the population of PvP.

Well, I would say that regardless of how it gets changed, I think we almost all can agree that the longbow could use some sort of improvement.

I’m not sure if this would be an accurate description of how the weapon plays currently, but something about it makes it play extremely clunky, like the weapon is too slow to keep up with the combat and environment around it.

Both builds hit some really solid numbers for stat allocation. It’s too bad I don’t have the gearing options to get all that ascended at the moment, because I’d really like to try out either build, they look like exactly what I’ve been trying to theorycraft for awhile. I couldn’t hit the magic numbers I wanted without using Ascendeds though, so maybe I’ll have to break down and actually try to get some gearing options higher than exotic.

Humorously enough (to me), I was just playing around for the last 2 hours in PvP with a glass ranger build centered around MoC and the greatsword and this is the exact trait spec I ended up with, although I took a few different choices than you because I wasn’t healing so I chose to go all out damage.

I also tried a variant of it with 10/30/30 with spiders and malicious training, which was pretty amazing. But then again, full glass on that build, so different playstyle entirely.

I’d love to see some good vids of this too

Xaylin.1860:

Prysin.8542:

immob would be fine. We are the kings of AOE immob, all we need now is a long range immob that out-ranges anything warriors got and we will be THE undisputed kings of immobilization.

From the Rangers point of you I agree with you. However, how do you feel when taking the point of view of your opponent? Is it fun to be immobilized at 1500 range? Do you have reasonable ways to counter it? Without Read the Wind you might be able to strafe or avoid it. With Read the Wind it could become be very difficult. Besides dodging it most opponents won’t be able to do anything because of your range advantage. There probably is no worse funkiller in a game than uncounterable skills (even if it requires traits).

I think an Immobilize on LB#3 would be fine in PvP where Rangers have a harder time utilizing their range advantage. Not so sure about WvW. It would be extremly powerful with insane troll potential. The synergy with Piercing Arrows would be nice but it undermines the usefulness of Muddy Terrain and (traited) Spike Trap at the same time. While those skills might remain useful in other scenarios I’m not sure if making utilities less appealing for the benefit of LB is desirable.

I wasn’t suggesting an immobilization on 3 at all though. I was suggesting more like a removal of a current skill entirely in order to create a skill that would immobilize and teleport the pet to the target, and maybe even make the pets next attack do more damage as well. A skill like this would need to have a fairly obvious animation, and a 25-30s cooldown time, and that’s where the balance is. A big skill that would help longbow keep it’s range even better for the bonus range damage stipulation.

Personally I would remove longbow 4 right now in replacement for this, although I know lots of people longbow 4 to be one of the better skills on the weaponset. But I do think the longbow would benefit much more from a skill that immobilizes than any other skill on the weapon we have right now, especially with a skill like rapid fire, which enemies can literally evade twice to you after you land knockback shot and avoid most if not all of the damage, make that combination of skill pretty moot.

Kal Spiro.9745:

The second one would work on initial activation of Spirits and for teleporting your spirit?

Yes, I’m going to edit that to make it more clear, thanks lol.

Since it is a throwback to a Guild Wars 1 skill, and quite a few of our GW1 skills in GW1 that had a blocking factor were also movement speed increases, why not we change the trait so that it provides a chance to block whenever we are under the effects of swiftness?

Except that’s way too strong, so it should probably be more like “gain Aegis whenever we apply swiftness to ourselves or our pets.” Might be in need of an ICD, might now, I didn’t really extensively think it through like I normally do, I was too excited about how cool I thought it sounded lol.

More interesting gameplay options and better synergy could improve some weapons considerably, most notably the longbow.

This is the thing I want to push for the most. Ranger has a wide spectrum of functionality in weapons, ranging from interesting gameplay and synergy through the greatsword to very, very barebones, basic, and lacking in interesting functionality, like the longbow (imo).

Some notable issues to me are:

• The overlap between the axe/dagger and axe/torch sets, mainly the first, and the shortbow, as far as combat role goes. Axe is a little more “burst” oriented and dances in and out of range more than the shortbow, but overall, the share pretty much the same characteristics, range, and function. My bigger problem lies with the shortbow and how autoattack centric it is, and personally, while I’m fine with it doing damage through steady condition application and pressure, I’d like to see the weapon be a little more control or interrupt oriented to give it more of a unique role over axe/dagger so that you can weight your choices more clearly like “okay, this is my condition damage option, and this is my combat control weapon option that favors steady damage and utility over multiple condition application and stacking.”

• The closest weapon in the game that relates to the way the longbow functions is the mesmer greatsword (and the ice bow summon from the ele) which is problematic because both of those weapons feel like night and day when it comes to interesting functionality versus the rangers longbow. Millions of things could be done. Personally, I’m in favor of a new set of longbow skills and/or damage increases and casting time decreases. Rapid Fire needs to not be such a long cast and feel so clunky. Steady damage is fine, but the weapon skill is so slow it literally gives the perception that it was designed for a slower combat game. Also, I’d very much like to see a longbow skill that immobilizes the target while teleporting our pet to that target, for pet synergy (similar to the way mesmers greatsword is good for shatter builds) and class mechanic synergy, and because that coupled with a knockback would give the longbow enough ability to maintain range which would help its feel for the flow of combat better.

Those are my big ones.

Kal Spiro.9745:

Durzlla.6295:

Kal Spiro.9745:

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

I have no suggestion on how to make either of those things happen without breaking something else though, which leaves me with only ever being able to confidently suggest boon punishment.

The most obvious and simplest is to split the game modes and give different functionality for different modes. In pvp, spirits can be nerfed to what ever level they feel appropriate and in pve/wvw they can either be made invulnerable like banners or into massive HP sponges so they can work in world bosses and zergs.

Ultimately though, that decision rests with Anet. Its not that they aren’t doing it because they can’t, it’s because they don’t want to and it’s really just a matter of how long before they realize that they are wrong. They had to do it the first time around because there were too many skills and combos breaking things and they will have to do it again because the game modes are too different for a unified rule set to apply equally in a way that is fun for everyone.

So many of our needed fixes (better pets, spirits that work like banners ect) just won’t ever happen to the degree they need to as long as they will break spvp.

Funny enough, I was just talking to Durz earlier how I think the ultimate goal for traits at this point should be obvious traits with obvious PvE or PvP roles. It was in regards to how basically purposeless Read the Wind is going to have in PvE, and that it is really a PvP/WvW driven change that has no effect on the other game mode.

The scope of that can be expanded to skills and utilities as well, I think.

Although with Spirits, I’m of the opinion that they should go back to being like guild wars 1 spirits, so that they have long ranges and can be placed out of combat, and the PvP counter to that is to force players to sacrifice their positioning to go deal with the spirit, while in PvE/WvW, they can sit out of harms way while still buffing you/teammates. Then, some way to move them instead of an active, like a spirit teleport or a “get up/plant” type function that makes them walk, and a whole new set of traits regarding the new spirits.

But at this point that’s probably me just dreaming haha.

There is definitely no real reason Spirits shouldn’t have similar functionality to Banners. Where Banners can be picked up and become an improvised weapon, Spirits have an active ability. But having the ability to make them somehow move locations would greatly, if not completely, remove the need for the trait to make them follow you. At the same time having to trait into being able to make them change locations is not better than just having them chase you around and is just as poor a situation. So it leaves the question what do you do with that trait if they’re given the functionality to relocate?

You scrap it? It’s already the worst trait we have, it moves our squishy spirits into harms way, the spirit actives are pretty stupid as well, because you need to move some fragile group utility buff into Melee range to utilize it, and everyone knows Melee is the most dangerous place to be if you’re squishy.

The active should’ve either been 1) not there and instead been a sort of “teleport to me!” Sort of ability 2) been ground target or 3) been a “get away from me!!” Ability that made enemies have to get away or literally FORCED them away.

Sorry, what I meant by what you do with it, is what do you replace it with. If a trait goes away something else has to take its place.

Not just Spirits Unbound would have to be removed, but Nature’s Vengeance would have to be changed/removed too.

So let’s setup the new spirits functionality. I’m not going to suggest specific functions because there are a million different things they could be, but beyond that: “Passive effect: buffs allies with a spirit based buff that triggers x effect every y seconds, or with a y second cooldown. 900 range.” “Active effect: Your spirits teleport to your current location. X second cooldown. 2000 range.”

Traits:

• “Spirits have 100% more health and a 20% cooldown reduction. This applies both to the summoning cooldown and the active cooldown.”

• “Summoning Spirits and Spirits actives are ground targeted. Increase the range of the spirits passives by 300.”

• “Spirits are invulnerable for a short time when you summon them, and when you use their active. Summoning a spirit creates an additional effect based on the spirit at its location (combo fields, damage that scales with power, etc), and the spirit active grants boons at your location based on the spirit (might, fury, etc).”

These are only a few ideas though. There are infinitely many ways to go about doing this, but you get the picture.

Chrispy.5641:

Jocksy.3415:

Chrispy.5641:

jcbroe.4329:

Lol thanks for the laugh guys, I had a long day and I needed that.

Back on topic, 900 range trap throwing would be something I want to push for full force. The 600 range has never really made much sense to me personally, since it’s an in between range that doesn’t really compliment our ranged weapons that start at 900+ since it makes us sacrifice superior positioning, or melee which wouldn’t really be all the concerned about throwing traps since we already have lots of leaps and inherent soft CC to stick to the target at a range where we wouldn’t need to throw traps.

That extra 300 range wouldn’t really break anything that I can see. As a matter of fact, it would increase the viability of traps in group play in both WvW and PvP, and by now I think people should realize that competitive build options are the way to my heart lol.

So yes, I approve of Prysin’s suggestion and prior approval

The only other real improvement that I would suggest for traps is not for more range. I would suggest that they don’t require line of sight (like engineer grenades), and also have a small arc when thrown, that way, you don’t have to stand on the very edge of walls in order to throw them at enemies on the ground below.

Otherwise, you already know my thoughts on giving traps more damage or even more effects on top of two already overloaded traits.

On the contrary, I find it interesting, when choices must be made.
Given that the choices are all interesting in different ways (and not about taking the less bad option). This is, imho, what allows for build diversity.
Eg; arrows – piercing is interesting in bus, velocity in solo PvP play.
Reduced Cd is more interesting in some settings, while more damage is in other settings.
The point should not be to stack traits that have an effect on one thing, but to pick the trait that is the more convenient.

(I’m not saying some traits consolidation is not desired, just that different traits having different effects on different gameplays is not, in itself, a bad thing – as long as the traits do bring something)

No, its not a bad thing, I agree (its what I’ve been saying about the Longbow’s many traits), but, loading absolutely everything trap related on two trap traits….., I think is a bad thing. That doesn’t promote build diversity. (removing the useless trapper’s defense trait), There’s room for a third trap trait that doesn’t involve consolidation that could, for example, change our traps to deal only physical damage instead of condition damage, or, have all our triggered traps daze the target for a split second on each pulse (yeah, you’re really going to regret going near me!).

These would seperate but equal build choices for traps instead of taking everything at once, which we shouldn’t need to be doing if trap traits ever get expanded on. Just tacking even more effects onto already existing traits doesn’t increase build diversity. Adding new traits that change gameplay in interesting ways does.

I agree as well. As a matter of fact, it reverts back to one of the main reasons why I started the thread, which is to identify key issues or areas of improvement, instead of tackling issues with singular suggestions, because ultimately, there’s a million different perspectives and right ways too accomplish something. It’s why I started with a suggestion, and then I try to “zoom out” until we’re left with the basic idea, which I believe I mentioned here:

I like the idea flow, and can see that we definitely come to a common agreement about traps doing more direct damage and being able to trait to give them additional effectiveness beyond just potency.

At this point, I would edit in a parenthetical: (boon removal, condition application manipulation, addition control effects, etc).

There’s a million different ways and ideas that these ideas can be implemented, and ultimately the goal of the thread was never supposed to create a definite “you need to do this” balance suggestion, but to stimulate creativity while highlighting common themes behind specific suggestions in order to address potential areas of improvement.

Though I appreciate the input of course, don’t get me wrong! Again, I absolutely agree with you on this, it is way too much to split between just 2 traits

solrik.6028:

Yamsandjams.3267:

solrik.6028:

Nothing should be RNG in a game where being skilled is what decides the fight.

So no crits?

Why not?

Condition damage works without crit. I don’t even know why ‘critical hit’ exists in these kind of games as a probability.

I’d like to second this sentiment.

Lol thanks for the laugh guys, I had a long day and I needed that.

Back on topic, 900 range trap throwing would be something I want to push for full force. The 600 range has never really made much sense to me personally, since it’s an in between range that doesn’t really compliment our ranged weapons that start at 900+ since it makes us sacrifice superior positioning, or melee which wouldn’t really be all the concerned about throwing traps since we already have lots of leaps and inherent soft CC to stick to the target at a range where we wouldn’t need to throw traps.

That extra 300 range wouldn’t really break anything that I can see. As a matter of fact, it would increase the viability of traps in group play in both WvW and PvP, and by now I think people should realize that competitive build options are the way to my heart lol.

So yes, I approve of Prysin’s suggestion and prior approval

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

I have no suggestion on how to make either of those things happen without breaking something else though, which leaves me with only ever being able to confidently suggest boon punishment.

The most obvious and simplest is to split the game modes and give different functionality for different modes. In pvp, spirits can be nerfed to what ever level they feel appropriate and in pve/wvw they can either be made invulnerable like banners or into massive HP sponges so they can work in world bosses and zergs.

Ultimately though, that decision rests with Anet. Its not that they aren’t doing it because they can’t, it’s because they don’t want to and it’s really just a matter of how long before they realize that they are wrong. They had to do it the first time around because there were too many skills and combos breaking things and they will have to do it again because the game modes are too different for a unified rule set to apply equally in a way that is fun for everyone.

So many of our needed fixes (better pets, spirits that work like banners ect) just won’t ever happen to the degree they need to as long as they will break spvp.

Funny enough, I was just talking to Durz earlier how I think the ultimate goal for traits at this point should be obvious traits with obvious PvE or PvP roles. It was in regards to how basically purposeless Read the Wind is going to have in PvE, and that it is really a PvP/WvW driven change that has no effect on the other game mode.

The scope of that can be expanded to skills and utilities as well, I think.

Although with Spirits, I’m of the opinion that they should go back to being like guild wars 1 spirits, so that they have long ranges and can be placed out of combat, and the PvP counter to that is to force players to sacrifice their positioning to go deal with the spirit, while in PvE/WvW, they can sit out of harms way while still buffing you/teammates. Then, some way to move them instead of an active, like a spirit teleport or a “get up/plant” type function that makes them walk, and a whole new set of traits regarding the new spirits.

But at this point that’s probably me just dreaming haha.

We won’t be able to see what progress either that thread or the CDI thread has made until any feature made post April 15th. There is no possible way they could have implemented anything based on the information that was gathered in such a short time frame when there is more than likely already a schedule of balance and release they are working on that gets created months prior to even begin talking about releasing another feature build.

Being constructive and staying constructive in our discussions are the best thing we can do as a community. Beyond that, I do know of a few individuals who have some more direct ways of speaking with ANet members and are able to pass along any threads and suggestions to them, albeit, not by spamming them all the time.

So, no reason not to be positive, stay positive, and have as much discussion as we can about positives and negatives. The most important thing we can do is be informative when providing feedback, and just because there is no visible acknowledgement doesn’t mean that anything goes unheard. Lots of ideas I’ve discussed and suggested, I have seen repeated back in some way or form from a dev.

There is a problem with the time frames between balance patches, and it’s totally understandable to be frustrated with the devs for not making the game “perfect” as immediately as humanly possible, so I totally understand any negative feelings towards ANet the stem from sheer disappointment.

Still, no reason to give up

That’s fair too, I was just trying to consolidate ideas haha.

Offtopic: It would be pretty simple to code something like frost trap and vipers nest not overlapping with boon removal. The trait would act as a stipulation gateway so that when a trap is triggered, the trap acts normally, and then the trait that applies to it would activate during the pulse and remove 1 boon, then go on cooldown and become inactive for a second so that only one boon would be removed, and this would be done per pulse. It would essentially work like overlapping sigils with internal cooldowns currently works, like air and fire. Only one would activate, and then the sigils share a cooldown. So in this way, the traps would be sharing a common cooldown for the boon removal through the trap.

Back on topic: I like the idea flow, and can see that we definitely come to a common agreement about traps doing more direct damage and being able to trait to give them additional effectiveness beyond just potency.

Xaylin.1860:

jcbroe.4329:

My first preference would still be to have Boon Removal tied to applying Opening Strikes through Remorseless, which would finally make Remorseless competitive with other longbow traits and more than GM worth.

I like that idea.

jcbroe.4329:

Traps removing boons per pulse when traited would be nice as well. Add a boon removal per pulse to the chill trap (so when traited it becomes 2 per pulse) and it would give people a reason to run traps on a power build, as long as a 30 point investment isn’t required (attach this functionality to the throw traps trait for instance). This would also provide an decent AoE utility roles to rangers as a soft CC/heal suppressing boon ripper.

If this only applies to the Frost Trap it should be fine. But if it was applied to all Traps it would probably be too powerful since their cooldowns are very low and you can also stack them which is not the case with, for example, Nullfield.

So we’d then be talking about a trait which adds something unqiue to each Trap like it was discussed for a possible change of Natures Voice? That would certainly be interesting.

I may have been too vague on that trait there lol. Let me refine the ideas together. First, merge Trap Potency into Trapper’s Expertise, keep the condition duration, lose the recharge.

Now: “Trapper’s Mastery: Your traps recharge 20% faster and do 100% more physical damage. Additionally, Flame Trap now applies weakness, Spike Trap’s immobilize is 100% longer, and Viper’s Nest and Frost Trap both remove 1 boon per second per pulse (meaning even if they are overlapped, only a single boon can be removed at a time).”

Combine that with Frost Trap inherently removing 1 boon per pulse, so that would be 2 traited.

How’s that sound? I mixed and matched some things I liked.

nagymbear.5280:

jcbroe.4329:

Still, there is a lot to talk about now…

…rangers react to other prof GM traits.

Because I don’t want to discuss it during the podcast and possibly derail the cast, I want to make a list of all the new traits I wouldn’t use at this point in time for all of the classes:

Won’t be using:

Elementalist: Any of them. None of them are more worthwhile than what’s currently available.

Engineer: Any of them. Same boat as elementalist.

Guardian: Any of them. Other slot choices are too good to give up for the new traits.

Mesmer: The only one I would (and will) use is Power Block.

Necromancer: A few of these are actually usable. The ones I wouldn’t use are: Parasitic Contagion, Renewing Blast.

Skipping ranger.

Thief: Any of them. Choices are already too good and hard to pick for certain builds.

Warrior: Personally, I’d only use: Burst Precision and Dual Wield Agility.

Let’s take a total count. Out of 35 new traits, I’m only impressed by 6 of them, not counting ranger.

Now, that’s my opinion obviously, but I’m not going to fall for the “shiny object” syndrome going around and associate new with better, because there’s a whole lot of circumstances and builds that would claim otherwise.

Prysin.8542:

Then again, if trait applies to pet, we just need to take a spider/devourer/murwellow to have a strong poison application. Sword+Axe is also a very strong zerker/power build, that gives you access to poison aswell.
There is no shortage of ways to apply poison on the ranger, other then Axe MH, LB and GS. But other then that, we got “everything covered”.

EDIT: I think trappers potency should not increase duration but the damage itself (similar to how the new poison trait works). In a mix of +50% duration and +100% damage
People run so much condi reduction in WvW, that increased duration is only going to make traps last long enough to do damage.

Too true and agreed with everything you said. Definitely more than one way to accomplish goals like these. +1’d also.

I think that first we need to get something straight: Piercing Arrows and Spotter are not necessary traits. Spotter provides a little bit of team utility, yes, but as far as increasing your own damage, it actually only gives you the same damage output (averaged over time) as Eagle Eye OR Remorseless starting somewhere in between 45% and 50% crit damage.

Otherwise, choosing Spotter over Eagle Eye (or Remorseless) is less efficient. With the incoming ferocity changes, this is going to matter for more build setups than it currently does, and only full zerkers really are unaffected by this information.

Piercing Arrows is nice for group cleave and group fights, but you don’t get to have it AND your maximum damage increase because there was always supposed to be some tradeoff between AoE/multiple target damage and single target damage. ANet even said so during a State of the Game back in December of Launch year. Is the game perfectly balance to match this philosophy? No, but the foundation has to be somewhere, and nerfing to approach that philosophy is better than introducing power creep.

This is all in reference to Read the Wind and the longbow. Yes, there is supposed to be a tradeoff for being able to accurately land most of your hits at a range other class can’t attack you, or reliable attack you unless you stand still, from. Is it the most powerful GM in the world? Absolutely not. But it has its time and place, and is not “never useful” as some people would make it out to be.

Now Striders Defense, on the other hand, might not ever be all that useful ever. And the more I try to theorycraft with Poison Master, the more I feel it is severely lacking in potency and competitive aspects with the other GMs fighting for that slot.

Survival of the Fittest is still a much better cleansing option for power builds than Empathic Bond though, seeing as how survival skills will also grant fury, activate Bountiful Hunter, and give you the option in the NM traitline of improving your Greatsword and scale some power power into your build off of the Vitality you gain. This is a great traiting option for the people who are currently running 20/20/30/0/0 or 30/10/30/0/0 because they wanted to pick up condition removal, as it definitely makes the new trait setup better at surviving and damage output then the trait setups I just mentioned.

Is it the most damaging build in the game for ranger? Absolutely not. But there are people who don’t like playing full glass or signets, and those people now have a better traiting option with this patch than with investing 30 points into a line that doesn’t really help their damage or weapons at all just to pick up Empathic Bond and some toughness.

Invigorating Bond is on the fence of course. It could be amazing, it could be terrible. It all depends on the healing rate, whether or not the healing power scales off the player, and whether or not there is an internal cooldown.

Rangers aren’t the only class who got seemingly useless GMs either, and the things discussed in the CDI were never going to be ready by this patch.

People just need to calm down with the doom and gloom. The patch hasn’t even dropped yet, it’s just a waste of energy, excessive, and not constructive, unless you are going to try to actively have a discussion about the traits with pros, cons and tradeoffs, in which case at this point, the most common conclusion should be that without hands on experience, there is no way to be totally certain that something is bad, no matter how much we can assume or imply.

We need a new forum rule. Patch Notes before QQ. Not saying QQ isn’t justified, but there is a time and place.

Hey everybody!

Just a heads up, the Ranger Balance thread in the Profession Balance subforum has been updated to a post CDI discussion, and is still currently an ongoing balance discussion and balance suggestion discussion.

It’s a very worthwhile thread, and there has been a great deal of community activity and support within that thread, which has been an extremely progressive and constructive experience this far.

So this is sort of like a public service announcement; we’re still going strong, so pop in, have a good read, and post reply with anything discussion wise that you’d like to contribute.

Let’s keep those discussions going and those ideas flowing

I’d love to see a “when you apply poison, you also apply x” trait. It would be fine if it randomly applied a condition too, like weakness or chill or x.

I don’t know if poison should just outright remove boons though, as boon removal is infinitely more useful on power builds, and our power builds have a tendency to lack poison application, especially the GS/Longbow.

My first preference would still be to have Boon Removal tied to applying Opening Strikes through Remorseless, which would finally make Remorseless competitive with other longbow traits and more than GM worth. Also, having it tied to pets in some way wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world, especially if the F2 update is everything it needs to be. Something like: “Rending swap: When activated, your pets next 3 attacks, if successful, remove a boon.”

Traps removing boons per pulse when traited would be nice as well. Add a boon removal per pulse to the chill trap (so when traited it becomes 2 per pulse) and it would give people a reason to run traps on a power build, as long as a 30 point investment isn’t required (attach this functionality to the throw traps trait for instance). This would also provide an decent AoE utility roles to rangers as a soft CC/heal suppressing boon ripper.

Also, trap potency should be increased to 200% because why not, and affect the immobilize on Spike Trap if it doesn’t already.

Atherakhia.4086:

I never played GW1, but from the descriptions you guys have, it honestly doesn’t sound that much different than a Ranger class in any other MMO.

Lower overall damage per shot, but higher rate of fire to maintain an elevated level of DPS with support skills to spike damage to apply pressure. All the while the majority of the class’s defense and offensive utility came from their ability to kite their opponents with limited on demand skills for emergencies and to escape from CC.

Sound about right? And then compare that model to GW2…

I’m not sure they’ve covered any of those area sufficiently enough for the class to handle anything remotely close to ogranized group play. Certainly enough for dueling or small scale roaming. But groups of 5-10 all the way up to zergs?

The bolded part specifically is a very good point, but it isn’t just specific to the ranger.

Combat in Guild Wars 2 is balanced around PvP, 5v5 specifically more than the node capture aspect (otherwise decap engis wouldn’t exist).

This translates to areas of the game like dungeons, which are also 5 man team compositions, except that dungeons are mostly treated as a DPS check, so a lot of support roles tend to get overshadowed by boosting damage numbers, and high damage/1 shot dungeon mechanics don’t translate well to AI based builds (mesmers, turret engis, spirit rangers/guardians, etc) that otherwise would have more potential to work elsewhere.

And THEN, there is WvW, where small scale combat translating into bigger scenarios breaks tons of mechanics that work in small scale 5v5 type environments. AI has the tendency to get melted, stuns, which are among the strongest CC in the game, are plentiful and more spammable by groups then any amount of passive and reactive counters you could possibly try to take to counter the situation, and boons, particularly like protection, retaliation, and stability, are so maintainable and have so few counters that it becomes near impossible to counter the tactic of stacking these boons without employing the same tactic with the same numbers and hoping your players are better and the RNG favors you.

Then take rangers, who employ certain methods of group support, like offering tons of soft CC, poison, vulnerability, and spirits, and all of these things are literally countered by the sheer amount of the counters to these things that are stacked and spammed. It’s only of the reason why I keep saying the rangers need boon punishment, but that isn’t enough for what I’m talking about. Conditions for large group play need to be able to “stick” better, and our AI support needs to not melt in the face of more than a few players hitting an area with such massive AoE damage that the spirits insta-die.

I have no suggestion on how to make either of those things happen without breaking something else though, which leaves me with only ever being able to confidently suggest boon punishment.

I just wanted to point out that I personally wasn’t trying to say anything about GW1 versus GW2 gameplay lol. I was just trying to end the argument about “what ranger means” because regardless of the origins of the word, clever wordplay, and what other games have done to create a archetype within their atmosphere, Arena already previously defined what a ranger was in Guild Wars 1 as a development company, and then tried to translate it into Guild Wars 2.

That’s all I’m saying. You don’t look at the origins of a word, or how WoW or whatever game made the “primarily ranged typically with bow” class, you look at the previous iteration of the class that was created by the company.

Alright, I think I need to clarify the discussion about where ANet’s version of the ranger comes from, since it appears that the community has a real lacking of insight as to how classes transitioned from what they were to what they are.

In Guild Wars 1, bow rangers did most of their damage through conditions like poison, bleeding, and burning. The few builds that were more centered around direct damage didn’t have “instant bonus damage,” but made bows into more “turret” like builds, which could achieve a high output of constant damage, but that damage in Guild Wars 1 would have been considered a pressure/spike assist build, and not a spike build.

The ONLY skill I can even think of right now that could be considered true burst would be Punishing Shot, which was like an Elite Version of Savage Shot, which was also burst, but only against casters. Both of these skills required and interrupt to do burst damage.

All the while, rangers used tools like removing conditions block stances, and movement speed to stay alive.

Now, moving into GW2, what we can see is that the ranger is still largely based around conditions and evasion and movement, as as well sustained damage, and even interrupting for big damage.

Is it perfect in Guild Wars 2? No, but the ranger class as seen be ANet has never been a high damage 1 shot sniper.

Just a history lesson to end the bickering.

I’m sorry!!! xD real life>gw2 unfortunately, and when the long distance relationship girlfriend says I can visit, I drop everything and run lol.

Still, there is a lot to talk about now, and we’re only getting more information this week, so I’m super excited for the upcoming discussion and wouldn’t miss it!

Jocksy.3415:

I totally agree that some boon stripping ability would be wonderful (and could be made as replacement of consolidated traits). Would also maybe give us more of a point in larger groups.

But I don’t see it in the big ranger picture… we bring things, but don’t take.
Something that has an effect according to the number of boons our foes have would be more in line, imho, for example, an increase in control durations according to the number of boons the ennemy have, an increase in power, or things like that…
This is my opinion, though… punshing the ennemy for having boons, without making the ranger a “taker”.

Not sure I’m clear… I personnaly love the boon removal idea, would be great in bus, but doesn’t seem to fit, conceptually…

Edit:
I do not have the impression the lack of WvW worth have been missed… Been mentionned quite a few times, but there’s no easy way out…

No you’re spot on. It makes me think of something similar to Warrior’s Destruction of the Empowered trait. It would definitely be worthwhile, and it is the other option I would love to see. Boon punishment, in short.

Atherakhia.4086:

I only really have any interest in playing a power build with a longbow and I feel it’s this area that ANet repeatedly misses the mark. I don’t feel we discussed this area enough for the class in the CDI thread. I don’t feel the trait changes impact power builds at all. And I don’t feel the issues for power play are limited to pet issues or the lack or AE/burst (though these are certainly top 3).

The area this class needs the most improvement in is group utility. And not just group utility, but something valuable on a large scale that is currently missing in WvW. While boon removal as Jcbroe mentioned would certainly help, it would have to be on a rather large scale to allow the Ranger to be noticed at an organized GvG level.

I’m simply not convinced number crunching and trait adjustments is going to be enough for this class if the goal is for it to ever be worth more than 8th place in WvW. Burst, AE, and more damage will certainly make it more viable as a class, and it’s most definitely needed.

But the lack of WvW worth in a group setting was completely missed in the CDI thread and no changes we’ve seen past, present, or future have shown any real improvement in this area.

I totally understand. I still think the breaking point for power builds right now is the Skirmishing traitline. It has the perfect stat combination for power builds, but most of its traits lend themselves to beastmasters or conditions, and overall, it ends up be one of the least useful traitlines for power builds, even with its stats.

It’s a huge problem, and needs immediate changing, and I think that it would be the best way to help power builds from that aspect.

The other aspect you’re right about is that we didn’t discuss essentially what rangers bring to the table in WvW. Right now, the game I can honestly say that outside of a few very specific niche builds that revolve around small groups, if you pug as a ranger, I don’t feel that there is a very clearly defined “okay, I can do this in this situation, and that in that situation.”

It’s like you just and go “okay, uhh, my traps tickle, my spirits die, my pet is clunky and is making no immediately visible impact, my survival skills are selfish while helpful outside of Muddy Terrain, and my signets all burn out too quickly for me to use them for anything other than lolburst while somebody isn’t looking. Oh, and my weapon skills are all single target mostly, and I don’t contribute much in the way of providing group boons.”

Jocksy.3415:

I also think that the F2 responsiveness and additional source of condition removal are big stepping stones for the class in the upcoming patch, but that Power build are still going to be lacking.
Not so sure that boon removal is the solution, in a close future… reorganising the traits would be the main first step, imho….

But, well, it’s going to be some time before we see whatever they took from CDI really implemented in game.

My main impression, after CDI, is that they have no clear concept/design of the ranger, appart from it being “the pet class”. (by the fact that it moved from the original “archer” definition towards a “skirmisher” definition that unfortunately does not really fit in the current Meta…)(and is further highlighted by the variety and lack of focus of players suggestions)

I am on a “wait and see” point.
What needed to be said has been said, hopefully, they will get a more encompassing vision of the ranger, eventually

Well, when I keep bringing up the boon removal, what I mean to address by it is more of just an observation that I’ve made directly from watching competitive teams play PvP matches against each other using the same builds for the last year+ (yay stagnant balance lol).

Basically, there are 3 classes that consistently go “zerker,” or build as the high direct damage option: Warriors, Thieves, and Mesmers. Warriors are chosen because they are tanky even in zerkers gear in PvP, and ranger power builds don’t really have a way to compete with this “role.” Thieves and Mesmers however, are both played as roaming duelists of sorts, jumping into team fights to provide some quick, high value damage, and then continue to support the fight their or roam elsewhere.

Now, rangers would play very similarly to this, so much so that ranger power builds would end up competing with one, or both, of these classes for a team slot. So, what do the mesmers and thieves do that rangers don’t provided, excluding their class mechanics? They both provide boon removal, which is a huge part of offensive team support, and better/easier to land burst damage than the ranger, and the burst damage that rangers can provide them makes them much less able to escape, or “hop” back out of a fight than mesmers and thieves.

Rangers don’t really need any more “escape-ability” though. So what that leaves them needing to compete in is offense team support and damage output. Now, ANet during the CDI as much as said that the ranger isn’t meant to be a high burst damage class, but rather, a sustained damage class, while also saying that the damage output isn’t at an agreeable spot right now. So in the future, at a balance equilibrium, rangers will have the capability to focus down a target in a team fight with high enough sustained damage that it shouldn’t make a difference in the burst class versus sustained class unless you truly need instantaneous damage.

That leaves just offensive team support, and right now, all rangers have is Muddy Terrain, as an AoE immobilize/Soft CC. And I guess revealed on Sic’ Em too, but that has such a niche role that mentioning it doesn’t seem worthwhile. Boon Removal is just my suggested way of putting rangers on par with other classes offensive team support options, and then letting numbers get tweaked as the game gets balanced.

But I’m sure there are other ways to accomplish finding a competitive team role for rangers!

Xaylin.1860:

jcbroe.4329:

The real trick is going to be combining Empathic Bond with Survival of the Fittest, which I’m not sure whether or not it has been mentioned in this thread or not. A 10/0/30/30/0 build should be just about the most difficult build to kill with conditions outside of an Engineer who knows how to abuse Automated Response.

The question would be: Why would you do this? The only point would be when bunkering in PvP. But you will probably lack Stability so people can push you off of the cap point. On the other hand, LB+Muddy Terrain basically mimics decap Engis which could be pretty nice.

I personally really look forward to using Survival of the Fittest although I’m quite sure I won’t combine it with EB. But there is one thing which really bothers me. For me, it feels like Survival of the Fittest and EB should switch traitlines.

Pretty much just for counter comp’ing in PvP, though right now most classes meta builds aren’t very heavy condition based.

So right now it would actually have more to do with the WvW roaming scene than anything else, with perplexity runes on every class and the dual sword warriors, clone death mesmers, confusion engis, etc.

Not that the build would be any use anywhere outside of roaming, and not even that great at taking camps compared to our other specs, so really, just to counter other players in WvW. Also, there are always those duelists and fight club style players that would certainly appreciate a build that might finally be able to deal with a PU clone death build in that environment.

I’m not arguing for the builds viability though, I’m just saying, it certainly has the condition removal capabilities if you choose to go that route lol.