Guild Wars 2

What about Kanscout’s variant? That’s what I’ve basically been running.

But yes, Carrion/Forge is the standard.

How is this looking for the running summary? I may have missed things, or things may not be clear:

• Pet responsiveness
• Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
• Pet survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
• Utilities completely outclassing other utilities
• Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content
• Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design

@Soilder;

It is well designed, but it is too strong imo. I don’t think from a design perspective that it forces warriors into enough of a “backpedal” when performing a defensive action, and is instead just tacked on to an action that most of the warriors weaponsets would be performing anyways, which allows for a more constant offense than what I personally believe is healthy for competitive play.

I think that the best designed cleanse in the game is Elementalists Water Magic line (the cleanse for attuning to water and for gaining regeneration). They don’t necessarily want to be in their water magic attunement at the time they need to attune to it to cleanse, but they are forced to in order to stay alive, which opens up a window to counterplay them by taking the pressure off of the opponent allowing them to get either more offensive and push them, or to reset the fight.

I find that the warrior on the other hand can just keep on attacking, and use a burst skill whenever they need to cleanse. It’s a pure offense setup that I don’t feel punishes warriors enough for taking an action that is achieved by most other classes through some sort of defensive action or debilitating effect (killing pets, putting skills on cooldown, switching attunements, etc).

But that is a design philosophy conversation that you and I really should not have in this topic for the sake of the thread since you and I can just debate our opinions all day long and never see eye to eye.

The point being, that we agree on the fundamental level that there is something that needs to be improved with how Empathic Bond functions, which is enough to extract another general idea to take to the balance forums when they open

Yeah, there are two particular options that I can think of immediately (Protect Me, Empathic Bond) where we basically go “ummm, I know I’m the pet class and all, but I’m gonna need you to die now so I can stay alive. Because, you know, we’re supposed to work together and all. You don’t use your F2 skills and I kill you. Symbiotic Bond!”

Gonna add the general issue to the summary lol.

Soilder.3607:

jcbroe.4329:

Soilder.3607:

jcbroe.4329:

@Prysin;

I see your arguments, and would like to say I only rated the Greatsword low for zergs because rangers have less cleave than other classes (only 3 instead of 5) and while the Autoattack is nice for zerg surfing, Maul is a very obvious damage source, and even in zergs I personally believe it to be very avoidable.

However, I do believe the weapon is a top tier weapon for zergs when compared to all of rangers options for zerging, so if we are talking about the post where I made a weapon breakdown analysis, then that will be the one that gets changed to saying it is top tier.

As for Empathic Bond, I know we have had this discussion as a community over and over, but the truth is that Empathic Bond is one of the best passive cleanses in the game, and outside of the lack of control over the time increment, it is one of the most condensed, shortest time frame cleanses.

Ehm, all melee attacks only hit three targets (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleave —->Link if you don’t believe) … It’s most of the ranger’s AoE that hits three instead of five.

Also, empathetic bond is not a condition cleanse, it is a transfer.

Whoops, wow, dunno why I just made the jump from AoE to melee cleave when I wrote that up (makes some remark about needing to drink more responsibly and don’t drink and forum post) haha I’ll get that fixed up.

That argument about EB is like, more nitpicky than even I can be lol. Fair, it transfers them to your pet, I misworded the post, but it doesn’t change the premise that it is the best access to removing conditions from the player, does it not?

Absolutely not, I’d prefer cleansing ire over empathetic bond 100 times to 1. It may be the best we have, but it’s certainly not the best in the game for that matter.

Empathetic Bond needs to be replaced, or atleast needs reduce the duration of the conditions received by our pets.

Cleansing Ire is a terrible counter example (not saying you’re wrong), only because of how god awful strong it is with the right weapons. With the longbow you basically have a free condi cleanse whenever the burst comes off of cooldown (as low as 7.5 seconds) and with a warrior you can build adrenaline so easily, or maintain it, that Cleansing Ire might just be one of the most spammable cleanses in the game.

Also, Prysin was just talking about the class being built around survivability, and while I agree that EB being a transfer is far worse than a cleanse, I’d rather have a dead pet or a pet where I’m losing it as a source of DPS because of debilitating effects than I would being dead from conditions.

Also, we can swap pets for as low as every 15 seconds, which does make all of the conditions disappear, which is about the equivalent of most of the other classes cleansing options, aside from a few classes that have really strong options.

However, and I did make my own list of changes page, I would much prefer to see EB be turned into something like “3 conditions are cleansed on pet swap.”

We aren’t arguing though, I am only trying to use reasoning to back the things I say, or mistakenly say, while agreeing with the point you’re making, that the transfer is bad, and that, on a broader scale, there are a few themes with rangers that are “abusive” to our pets that need to be worked on.

Right now it feels like Michael Vick as a ranger (too soon?).

Soilder.3607:

jcbroe.4329:

@Prysin;

I see your arguments, and would like to say I only rated the Greatsword low for zergs because rangers have less cleave than other classes (only 3 instead of 5) and while the Autoattack is nice for zerg surfing, Maul is a very obvious damage source, and even in zergs I personally believe it to be very avoidable.

However, I do believe the weapon is a top tier weapon for zergs when compared to all of rangers options for zerging, so if we are talking about the post where I made a weapon breakdown analysis, then that will be the one that gets changed to saying it is top tier.

As for Empathic Bond, I know we have had this discussion as a community over and over, but the truth is that Empathic Bond is one of the best passive cleanses in the game, and outside of the lack of control over the time increment, it is one of the most condensed, shortest time frame cleanses.

Ehm, all melee attacks only hit three targets (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Cleave —->Link if you don’t believe) … It’s most of the ranger’s AoE that hits three instead of five.

Also, empathetic bond is not a condition cleanse, it is a transfer.

Whoops, wow, dunno why I just made the jump from AoE to melee cleave when I wrote that up (makes some remark about needing to drink more responsibly and don’t drink and forum post) haha I’ll get that fixed up.

That argument about EB is like, more nitpicky than even I can be lol. Fair, it transfers them to your pet, I misworded the post, but it doesn’t change the premise that it is the best access to removing conditions from the player, does it not?

@Prysin;

(bunch of words were edited here) Maul is a very obvious damage source, and even in zergs I personally believe it to be very avoidable.

However, I do believe the weapon is a top tier weapon for zergs when compared to all of rangers options for zerging, so if we are talking about the post where I made a weapon breakdown analysis, then that will be the one that gets changed to saying it is top tier.

As for Empathic Bond, I know we have had this discussion as a community over and over, but the truth is that Empathic Bond is one of the best passive cleanses in the game, and outside of the lack of control over the time increment, it is one of the most condensed, shortest time frame cleanses.

When you couple that with a real serious lack of other “amazing,” or, better put, highly functional Grandmaster Traits that drastically change the capabilities of builds, it does make Empathic Bond one of the most chosen and highly sought after traits for many players, more so in competitive play than anything else.

That and it is honestly the best cleansing option we have access to, which is also part of the reason people view it as such a necessity, because it is an Apex Predator option that needs to see some competition from either traits or utilities in order to create more build diversity when factoring in cleansing into a build.

It may be overhyped, but it is the best cleansing option we have access to as well, so maybe the trait isn’t as overhyped as the value of having tons of cleansing options in a build?

@Thread;

Wow, didn’t expect this topic to be so big. I’ll try to get a post with a summary of the entire discussion and what can be taken away from it going.

In case it isn’t evident, I was hoping this thread would serve the effect that the CDI topics are serving, and since I highly doubt ANet will ever come to the ranger forums ever again willingly, it’s nice that we can have this conversation and try to organize key points as a community, to be able to take to the balance forum.

Even though we all debate the specifics, it will be nice to take a bunch of key issues the majority of the community either agrees on or has a “why not, it doesn’t affect me either way” attitude about and be able to stand by them instead of squabbling over things in the balance forums because we get to into how the specifics of things should work instead of just trying to address the general problem at first and then working out the specifics.

So…. keep it going, I’ll work on that summary

Because literally almost every other game ever, especially most “triple A” titles, that have node capture game modes teach players that stacking on the capture point decreases the time it takes to capture it.

That, and Guild Wars 2 has no tutorial or any sort of explanatory device in game that ever tells players to the contrary.

I mean, we still have players who believe that channeled skills are showing you “per hit” damage instead of a running total, and things like this are supposedly less complicated?

I totally get the frustration, but it would be a much different issue if there was a game mechanic that explained these things to new players, instead of just throwing them into the mix and making them figure everything out on their own.

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

The wiki uses numbers with player stats, me and a friend tested it a whole night to see how it was, unless it radically changed (totally plausible this was done months ago) the damage should be about equal, I tried it with a variety of pets, I believe at least one of each species.

Honestly it would be worth testing again and recording. I’m getting the distinct impression, even though I haven’t seen the tests, that it might have something to do with more than just what skills the Moa transformation has access to.

I’m not sure exactly how what I’m going to propose would be working exactly, and maybe I’m crazy, but I wonder if the transformation has any effect on the AI processing which reduces the “pet lag” and makes them “think” and react quicker than their regular unaltered counterpart.

Of course, it could just be the skills lol. But I want to believe it is more than that, so that we can then suggest to the ANet devs trying to make however my hypothesized transformation effect works part of the normal pet algorithm and then number tweaking for the sake of balance if it works and it is needed.

Well if you go and get moa morphed all the skills lunge you towards your target,that is what is making it so they land more often, it was patched to do that (for EVERYONE not just NPCs) a while ago because it used to have the same issue our pets had, AKA you had to stop moving to attack so you didn’t hit anything while moad.

Then I have no faith that ANet will patch it into the game anytime soon seeing how they operate for a long time, they probably figure that if that is the solution they go with, then they would have to redo the animations for all of the different pets and make sure attacks “make sense” for them to be leaping, and then they would have to rebalance and retweak all of the numbers.

So even though I find it alarming that it isn’t a top priority to make big changes to improve quality of life gameplay, I can see how their “low hanging fruit” balance philosophy continues to relegate pet issues to the backburner.

Could we please try to remain on topic?

Thank you

@KeyOrion;

I’m not sure what you’re talking about exactly as this is neither a thread asking for builds to be more like “swiss army knives” so that they can accommodate all situations, nor is it a thread trying to debunk the effectiveness of rangers in a dungeon and the perceptions that follow the situation.

I totally get what you’re expressing though, which is basically saying that balance isn’t achieved by giving one setup all the tools to be effective in every game mode, and that people largely mistake perception for fact.

However, this thread is merely to have an open conversation about how the ranger is balanced against itself (evaluating our own options against each other) and against other classes, and what changes, if any, should be made moving forward.

Ideally, there are 8 professions and only 5 slots for a teams composition, so every option in combat that every class has access to should either perform some unique function, or perform some shared function that is equal in overall output with the other class(es) it shares that function with, while outside of that shared function, still having access to the unique functions that the respective classes use.

Traps, for instance, are not balanced well against options that Necromancers and Engineers have access to, but those classes not only have easier access to them, but their options require less build investment with equal or greater output, while still allowing them more opportunity to build for other options in their setup than what rangers have access to.

That’s just one example, but there are others out there. Mostly, this is just a thread for collecting other ranger players opinions on the state of the balance into one discussion, then ironing it out until we can get a basic list of balance changes that would improve perceived lacking performance in all game modes, that can then be transferred to the balance subforum when it opens up, in order to hopefully incite an open conversation with the devs to see if they are agreeable with where the ranger community sees themselves in a balance perspective.

Bri.8354:

jcbroe.4329:

snip

As clarification, I was only giving dungeons as an example of people generalizing the class and I didn’t go into the other game variants because I felt It was enough to make my point.

Also, the MH axe and shortbow could probably be split into different groups as they are both “hybrid” weapons that are commonly used in both power and condition builds and their strength in each type of build depends on the game variant. For instance, a power build with axe/axe is stronger than a condition build with axe/torch in PvE.

No I know, it was just clarification to keep the topic flowing, not really directed at or trying to argue with you or anything.

You brought up the good point of evaluating items on a less broad level, and I wanted to participate in the idea of doing so is all haha.

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durzlla.6295:

ChillyChinaman.6057:

Durz, I think that’s because of the better scaling of Moa-fied skills compared to base skills.

The pet hits for roughly the same damage as when it’s a Moa as when it’s not, the only difference is that it lands all the attacks it uses.

Really? I was going off the wiki numbers since I’ve never gotten the chance to test it personally.

The wiki uses numbers with player stats, me and a friend tested it a whole night to see how it was, unless it radically changed (totally plausible this was done months ago) the damage should be about equal, I tried it with a variety of pets, I believe at least one of each species.

Honestly it would be worth testing again and recording. I’m getting the distinct impression, even though I haven’t seen the tests, that it might have something to do with more than just what skills the Moa transformation has access to.

I’m not sure exactly how what I’m going to propose would be working exactly, and maybe I’m crazy, but I wonder if the transformation has any effect on the AI processing which reduces the “pet lag” and makes them “think” and react quicker than their regular unaltered counterpart.

Of course, it could just be the skills lol. But I want to believe it is more than that, so that we can then suggest to the ANet devs trying to make however my hypothesized transformation effect works part of the normal pet algorithm and then number tweaking for the sake of balance if it works and it is needed.

Bri.8354:

I agree that we need to stop generalizing the state of the class based on game variants, but I think we need to take it further than just that. The state of the ranger is also widely generalized based on a specific builds or weapons, not the overall state of the profession.

For instance, just because a single weapon or build is good, players will claim the ranger is good when in fact the class is broken overall, and only that single build is good.

I mean just look at dungeons. The ranger is nice with the well known sword/frost spirit/spotter combination, but what about the other utilities and weapons?

• MH axe is low tier.
• Longbow is low tier.
• Shortbow is low tier.
• Greatsword is low tier.
• Traps are low tier.
• Signets are low tier.
• Shouts are low tier.

We need to stop looking at the ranger from such a narrow perspective. The ranger isn’t fine just because swords are competitive when nothing else is.

But see, that’s only dungeons, and while I do agree with your evaluation of it, let’s look at a different example:

PvP:

• MH axe is top tier.
• Longbow is low tier.
• Shortbow is top tier.
• Greatsword is mid tier.
• Traps are mid tier.
• Signets are low tier.
• Shouts are low tier.

And then WvW:

Zerg:

• MH axe is mid tier.
• Longbow is top tier.
• Shortbow is low tier.
• Greatsword is mid tier.
• Traps are low tier.
• Signets are mid tier.
• Shouts are low tier.

Solo

• MH axe is top tier.
• Longbow is low tier.
• Shortbow is top tier.
• Greatsword is mid tier.
• Traps are mid tier.
• Signets are low tier.
• Shouts are low tier.

I mean, given that these are my opinions and a quick evaluation, what can we take away from averaging all of them together?

Well, the Shortbow and Mainhand Axe do have their uses, but are mostly used for condi builds, which in general are the more used in PvP/WvW and because there are more game modes with player opponents, it skews the results so that Mainhand Axe and Shortbow are top tier in more categories.

-Mainhand Axe and Shortbow are consistently better than the other options.
-Longbow is only good for zergs and outside of that it is a poor skirmishing weapon.
-Greatsword never has a top tier category, indicating it needs more changes that just ANet number tweaking Maul every patch.
-Traps are in the same boat, they are very outclassed by our offhand weapons, Sun Spirit outclasses Flame Trap, and in general, every other class can do what our traps can do and more with weapon skills and trait choices that are common selections for those classes
-Shouts are terrible. They need attention asap.

Just my take on it though, so really, just more things to discuss for everyone!

Not sure what all of the complaining is about. I put in most of my time on the effected classes, and I like the changes being proposed for each one.

At least it establishes a baseline to balance around, which is more than what could be said for ANet’s balancing so far, with allowing power creep to be the baseline for balance.

Atherakhia and Prysin;

Good points. If I was to outline some specific core issues that both of you bring up that actually effect all game modes, would it look something like this:

-Pet Responsiveness
-Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
-Pet Survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
-Utilities completely outclassing other utilities

@Soilder;
Yes, that is how it is currently, but only because Spirit Builds are the last updated build we had approaching the time period in which ANet started introducing power creep instead of balancing the classes appropriately (Dhuumfire, Healing Signet, etc).

However, rangers have been top tier for every single “period” of meta. Originally, traps were the meta, to the point were other players were even QQing about ranger trap builds and saying we needed our trap build nerfed. Then, there was the BM build era, and again, there were barely any team comps without rangers on them. Finally, we have this very long extended time period in which Spirits have been the meta, and while overall, our other builds either haven’t been buffed to keep up with the power creep ANet loves to give the game, rangers have still always been an integral part of the PvP metagame.

Not to say that you’re wrong, you’re totally right lol. I just want a blanket statement to cover it, basically so that I can compile a generic list of things the entire ranger community would appreciate seeing changes to moving forward, so that when the time comes I can do an in-depth write up on the balance forum when it finally opens up.

So how does categorizing it as something like “Apex predator builds created by lack of equally competitive options” sound? Since this addresses how rangers (and most other classes as well) are basically pidgeonholed into very specific builds in one way or another in most gamemodes, because we have a few really good options, and then a bunch of others that just aren’t as equally strong.

infantrydiv.1620:

I’d say ranger is one of the worst dungeon runners, and one of the best open world roamers (even though after world exploration that doesn’t really matter).

I agree with your other ratings though.

I only rated the average rating for dungeons due to a single build (I think it’s still 20/25/0/25/0) with Spotter and Frost spirit, which I think, and I could be wrong, but between those two support options and the rangers mainhand sword/x, that a person very skilled at staying alive on that build is probably going to be bringing some of the better group support along with damage, outside of might stacking.

However, these things only make it average because I do believe it is a very niche build that doesn’t work in every situation, and I’m also not honestly sure if there are any classes that can accomplish the same level of support and damage at the same time, but I do know that for rangers, the particular build is hard to use with the sword making dodging difficult, and there is always spirit placement issues, and knowing when not to melee, etc, where as there are other classes.

It’s a very easy change to make to the OP though, I just want some opinions on it.

I honestly have no idea how to rate open world PvE, because it’s like on a scale of not killing stuff to killing stuff, so then I guess you factor in time to kill, and the amount of enemies that you are capable of killing at one time, and here I only put ranger below top tier because AoE options are sorely lacking, so options for cleaving enemies down are more limited and not necessarily as strong.

Again, all debatable things that can be changed, I appreciate yours and everybody’s input

I didn’t even think anybody would read through everything because textwall lol.

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

Honestly, Remorseless should be combined into the Grandmaster minor slot, and Eagle Eye should affect the shortbow and be moved up to the Grandmaster tier. Signet of the Beastmaster shouldn’t even exist, and signet actives should be affecting both the player and the pet inherently. This would open up another Grandmaster slot for x trait.

Probably the best way to move forward.

That’s what I was thinking, especially since they said they want SB range trait to be a grandmaster trait, and let’s be honest, if you’re using a LB and using piercing arrows you’re going to go the full 30 for EE too.

Exactly. Then with the Master tier, people only have to choose between Piercing Arrows or Spotter, which is a reasonable selection to have to make; more single target damage, or hitting more targets.

Moving forward from this particular date, I think this is where we should start:

Top Tier = within the 3 best classes as far as general performance goes
Average= middle of the pack
Bottom Tier = close to the worst, if not the worst, at something

Open world PvE: Average performance, maybe a little less due to the quirky and therefore harder to master weapons like the 1 handed sword, which is our best weapon DPS wise but probably hardest to master.

Dungeons: Average performance, DPS can be high but it is a very niche setup that requires practice and isn’t for everybody, and outside of that build and it’s learning curve, rangers don’t really do anything better or worse than other classes, except for the engagements in which the pets will die no matter what, in which case the class is poorly balanced for those engagements.

WvW-Zerg: Bottom Tier. AoE is lacking, group support is lacking, and really you are outclassed by just about every other class, just because even if you dump all of your stats and traits into doing good zerg damage, that’s all you can do, where as other classes zerg setups can achieve the same thing with better group support, AoE for multiple targets, and even better survivability.

WvW-Small Group/Solo: Probably Top Tier. Between a mixture of high mobility, high survivability, and good solo damage all at the same time, rangers can build very independently from the need of group support and still outperform several other classes. The damage is very decent, especially for a person spec’d for survival, and without having to sacrifice any mobility, there are few classes that can actually achieve all of these things in a single build.

PvP: Absolutely Top Tier. Top Tier since day 1. Good group support for the game type, good damage, great survival, great mobility, and overall just a great duelist, which matters more in this game mode than any other game mode.

This is just the baseline I wish the community would try to have its discussions around going into the future. There is just no sense in attacking each other because we all play different game modes, which inherently puts us at a crossroads because the game is balanced so differently in each of those game modes.

Also, there will be a balance subforum in the future, and it would be nice if we could collect our ideas and what is and is not balanced and for what game type, so that when the balance subforum is released, the whining and crying and misinformation and everything that is typical for EVERY profession subforum doesn’t bleed over into the balance subforum. At least we can try to handle that within the ranger community so that for the first time in more than a year, we can actually get some of our problems and reasonable complaints addressed.

…WvW zerg fights…

I think this is my main gripe with where there is a disconnect when it comes to discussing balance in the game. Most people immediately here balance and jump right to the “if I can’t zerg with it, it is a bad build that is balanced badly.”

Now, I’m not going to sit here and say that’s wrong, but it isn’t a broad enough spectrum to evaluate builds on, because the game honestly wasn’t and isn’t balanced around zerg play. I agree that more balance should be aimed towards what I’ll refer to as large group play, but look at the rest of the game, and you see that every other game mode outside of WvW was balanced mostly around the theme of 5 man groups.

Dungeons, Spvp, and even open world scenarios are all balanced around 5 man teams, or 5v5 scenarios. Heck, even the group size is only 5, as well as the AoE cap.

In hindsight, if the game was balanced around larger group, or zerg gameplay, then the group size and the AoE limit would be greater than 5. Now, I’m not sure why exactly that ANet thought it would be a good idea to add in a game mode that allows for such zerg gameplay, while only balancing for 5 man scenarios and then assuming than balance would “translate up” to zerg scenarios, because clearly that wasn’t and didn’t work.

So now we’re stuck in a situation where a lot of peoples favorite game mode involves getting in mobs with masses of people and attacking other masses of people, but the game isn’t balanced around it, and is only balanced around 5 out of the zerg hitting another 5 out of the zerg, which then with the AoE cap creates an RNG element of what hits what and what buffs what, and it allows for certain classes with heavy access to specific types of support (AoE stability/regen/prot/retal) to compound and steamroll less organized groups, which leaves only 2 group roles open; heavy, preferably AoE damage, and heavy support.

However, because again, the game is only balanced around 5 man groups, classes were actually meant to fit together like a puzzle more than all being capable of doing the same thing with the same output, which leaves a lot of classes outmatched and thereby almost excluded from larger scale engagements because they bring nothing useful to that style of engagement.

This leads to situation where now we have a separated community that can’t have a balance discussion with each other or even be civil at times which leads to “profession discrimination” in certain game modes, and just generally keeps people at each others throats because they play 2 different gametypes that aren’t even remotely balanced against each other, let alone within themselves. On top of that, the game just doesn’t translate well between game modes. A person with a zerg setup can’t go to PvP or dungeons with that setup and be as effective, and vice versa, and the issue it that it has gone unbalanced and unaddressed for so long that the community is literally split based on the game type people prefer.

Because of this, it’s making it near impossible to have a civil balance discussion because people either think the other game mode they don’t play is garbage and they have no respect for it and are unwilling to listen to why a class is balanced in that mode because it doesn’t affect them, or they literally don’t have the mental capacity to wrap their head around how the game modes are so different that it’s too hard to make singular balance changes that address all game types without making something overpowered or underpowered in one of those different game modes.

What we need to start doing as a community is breaking down each game type and start addressing whether or not things are balanced for that game type.

Honestly, Remorseless should be combined into the Grandmaster minor slot, and Eagle Eye should affect the shortbow and be moved up to the Grandmaster tier. Signet of the Beastmaster shouldn’t even exist, and signet actives should be affecting both the player and the pet inherently. This would open up another Grandmaster slot for x trait.

Probably the best way to move forward.

It’s honestly all of the same builds and playstyles and really nothing has changed at all. Still Spirit Ranger meta for pvp, still the same exact working builds, etc.

What’s the point of running BM in solo Q? The stat investment it takes to put points into BM doesn’t return nearly enough output for the point placement.

Honestly, you’re better off just taking a traditional spirit setup, and then switching your amulet to a Settler’s Amulet for the tankiness and healing power. If you really want your pet as a damage source, don’t even waste time putting points into BM, just put 10 into Skirmishing and pick up Agility Training so your pet sticks to its target better, thereby doing better DPS through its speed boost than any investment you’d be making in the BM line.

Unfortunately, that’s sad but true.

As for traps, it still has the potential to be useful, but it isn’t like you are going to be performing better at the role trapper performs any better than an engi or a necro due to power creep, outside of maybe using a build with a Settlers Amulet to make yourself tankier and more sustainable than either a Necro or a Engi. And not necessarily more sustainable either, but more like, easier to sustain without having to micromanage as much survival through use of healing and evasion and passive condi removal, which allows for a greater focus on damage output or defense when needed. Oh, and Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch bring everything to a ranger build that traps do, so if you use that weapon setup and Offhand Training, you are capable of doing everything traps can do short of being unblockable AoE, which only really matters for the pulsing traps, as spike trap can get screwed over by enemy AI like minions/clones/pets/etc making it almost utterly worthless against players not dumb enough to walk into your traps.

The thing is, that a ranger that plays his build well is probably one of the best duelist classes out there, especially if you manage your opponents cooldowns versus your own well. Really, the only “meta” build that beats a ranger is a hambow warrior, and that is only if they use zerker stance right, and even then, it is a much more even fight than it is warrior hard countering the spirit build.

The issue with power specs for rangers isn’t really the damage output so much as it is breaking through the opponents defenses. We really don’t have any way to stop or remove enemies stability/protection/regen and we don’t really do enough damage to burn through those boons, so at the end of the day, there are classes and setups that are literally unbeatable for power setups, outside of being a better player than your opponent.

Power builds either need a little more damage or some sort of access to boon removal. Then they will become immediately more useful and better in almost every way.

Honestly I just walk away from PU mesmers on my Ranger. Or a slightly more different condi mesmer rendition being Sensotix (on his youtube channel) Scepter/Pistol Staff condi build.

Staff can just just eat us alive at times because a good mesmer (tactically, the builds themselves are so easy to play that I’m surprised people complain more about rangers than mesmers) will get it to constantly to bounce from us to pet to back and just mindlessly output condi pressure, and most ranger builds just don’t have the ability to outlast them, or it ends up being an endless 1v1.

Not to say they are unkillable, but it is such a hassle and they have so much sustain and can do damage so easily that I just walk away, because most of them aren’t running weapons that can lock you down, and they really can’t catch and kill players.

So honestly, if the mesmer is the only person defending the point, and they are a stealth user, I will just fight them until they stealth too many times and I get a decap/capture, and if nobody shows up to help, I just leave the point. They may be good duelists, but they are terrible pointholders, and if they don’t kill me and I can get a capture on them, that’s basically a win, since at that point they are kind of just a nuisance more than anything.

So, instead of taking out the old, easy to get through mindlessly hotjoining daily achievements, they go ahead and add ON TOP of those easy to get dailies, a way for solo and team q players the ability to get them through the game types they enjoy, or a few additional achievement points, and this is somehow a problem?

I mean, I don’t even notice that there’s a daily half the time and I get it done.

Maybe people should just try playing the game to play the game for once.

So how do you create an opportunity to land an entire rapid fire channel then? Last time I checked, rangers only have access to a single 5 second immobilize option, which means that every single longbow user now has to use spiders.

And we don’t have 5 second knockdown options. So really, it’s basically spiders or gtfo.

There’s a reason why there hasn’t been a single top tier player that has run a power longbow in PvP since the game launched.

But if you people are happy with you’re kittenty little Rapid Fire skill, just remember that this is why we can’t have nice things the next time everybody is crying over another patch doing nothing for our class, because half the players don’t even realize how kittenty some of our skills are.

Mortec.5684:

What happens when the Devourer burrows!? O_o

Otherwise, I welcome all ideas to the Ranger class

You go along for a ride haha

Obviously it’s just a for fun idea. No serious idea in the history of forever has ever made a good argument when using a hashtag.

Lighten up, the ranger forum doesn’t always have to be filled with dozens of topics where users express how ready they are to slit their wrists over the class.

Have some fun

The idea of riding a bear into battle, Greatsword held high, swinging away while the bear mauls peoples faces off, is clearly one made for pure enjoyment, and nothing beyond that

It isn’t like I’m suggesting an original idea here either, LoL and Dota both have heroes/champions that ride around on their “pets,” as does Maplestory (I know it isn’t the best MMO example, but still lol).

Alright, so I think we have been approaching ranger suggestions and reworks from the wrong perspective. I have an idea that will totally blow the minds of the devs and every ranger out there.

Do you want to keep your pet, but have that pet be fully functional, but also be able to play as an archer, or melee, or however you wish to play, without feeling kitten?

Well look no further, because #rangermount2014 is here!

That’s right, I’m suggesting that instead of being 2 separate entities, that we get rid of our pets health, get on top of them, and ride them around like the kittenes we were meant to be.

Now, I’m sure people out there are going “well we’d love mounts, but we don’t want to sacrifice our pet for a cosmetic effect.” Well I’m here to tell you you’re wrong, it isn’t just a cosmetic effect, and you clearly don’t like nice things.

The pet would still have it’s own built in auto attack! If you got into melee range, the pet will bite and claw at your enemies! Now all you have to do, is move a single entity around the screen, just like every other character, dodges and everything, shooting your bow or going melee, and when you go melee, your pet attack!

Still want functional pets? The F2 functions are there! What happens to beastmastery? It becomes dedicated to making you better at melee, and your pet doing more damage and cooler things, like giving you boons whenever it bites chunks out of the enemy!

No more having to rely on server lag to use pet F2 skills, no more damage split and bad scaling coefficients, the ability to effectively play however you choose, whether it be melee, archer, or other? Well now you can!

Just make a push for #rangermount2014! For everything we’ve ever wanted as rangers, without any of the BS we currently have.

I remember the devs saying comparing this game to Guild Wars 1 was looking through rose-tinted glasses.

So I went back to Guild Wars 1, and it wasn’t rose tinted glasses at all.

Given, it still has it’s own problems, but the only “cheese” spec I can find in the game is a Wastrels spam mesmer, and with no real problems with GvG, the only other competitive issue in the game is in Random Arenas, where sync’ing was never truly fixed.

Still, guild wars 1 even already has a spectator mode and monthly tournaments. Honestly, if we could get some of the more dedicated PvP guilds from this game to make a push back to Guild Wars 1, and could get a shoutcaster to stream some games, I would honestly bet money that with enough community support it would get bigger than Guild Wars 2 is, at a faster pace, with more esport potential than what this game has (unfortunate but true) at this time, and probably until about 2016.

Unless balance updates and content updates for PvP shift into high gear, both in potency and date of implementation of course (hahaha I should be a comedian).

But the versus side of it, from a competitive (WvW, PvP) perspective is that when the damage is spread across more hits, AND the vulnerability is spread across more hits, it gives enemies more opportunities to avoid more of the damage and vulnerability.

A shorter channel time alleviates that problem, and would actually make Rapid Fire better DPS than Long Range Shot, which is essentially eliminating all of the issues with it.

But nobody in their right mind is going to let you land all 10 hits. That literally means that they are just letting attacks hit them for almost 5 seconds straight without trying to strafe or dodge, something that rarely happens.

Volley is just better because it’s compressed time frame and channel time give it a higher rate of success for landing hits, making it more reliable damage.

If Rapid Fire switched to only five hits with a 2.75s-3s channel time, each doing like 250 base, and only applied 5 stacks of vulnerability each (I also want to make a push for a trait that applies vulnerability on crit, which is why each hit is only applying a single stack of vulnerability per hit), it would just outright be a better skill, even with the 5 stacks of vulnerability lost.

Even more ideally though, the vulnerability shouldn’t even be attached to rapid fire if rapid fire is supposed to be the burst skill. It’s the same exact issue I have with Maul, because it trades in a skill rotation which would end in using a skill to burst an opponent down for as much as possible, for just spamming the same skill over and over again, which not only is bad for a competitive environment, but makes the weapon extremely predictable.

When all an opponent has to do is know to counter play the longbow, all you have to do to avoid damage is get inside of 1000 range and avoid rapid fire, it makes the weapon extremely easy to play against (just like with the greatsword, all opponents have to do is avoid Maul and not let you flank them).

Rapid Fire desperately needs to channel for a shorter time frame regardless whether or not it receives any other changes, because right now there is only one game type (out of three) where it is actually reliable, and you still lose DPS when you use the skill, which is just /facepalm in itself.

Atherakhia.4086:

Compare it to volley for rifle.

Volley: 2.1k dps.
Rapid Fire: 1.4k dps.

You really can’t get any closer than those 2 skills. They’re identical in design. One has a shorter channel and 30% more damage the other provides vulnerability (which is the only thing that makes Rapid Fire better than auto attack at max range) :/

The only reason I didn’t compare these two weapons is because the rest of the Warriors rifle skills are actually really really bad for direct damage (not including Kill Shot).

Honestly, if you think about it with an open mind, Ranger Greatsword and Warrior Rifle are designed fairly similarly, with a bunch of utility type skills, and having to spam a single cooldown skill over and over again to do damage.

Not arguing, just my 2 cents, skill by skill, Volley and Rapid Fire are the better skills to compare haha.

Arganthium.5638:

Rickster.8752:

Losing to a ranger who just spams 1 button is a regular occurrence – even at the top level of pvp. All auto attacks should be way way worse. Passive procs should be removed or dodgeable. It is so unsatifying to die to someone just spamming 1 the whole time. It flaws the whole game. There is no cd management because you can always fall back to extremely powerful auto attacks.

It’s funny you mentioned the ranger. I was playing against a Spirit Ranger today on my mesmer, and all he did was spam 1- he didn’t even bother to use any of his other buttons. Still took me a minute or two just to take down. Ridiculous.

The even more ridiculous side of this is that the game actually punishes the ranger player for using any skills (assuming it was a shortbow) other than the auto attack by lowering DPS (not a meta build, but the ranger longbow is actually designed the same way, with the auto attack achieving max damage alone, definitely at max range, and the math hasn’t been done yet with the new update to see if the same holds true for mid range).

What kind of weapon is designed like that in a competitive atmosphere?

It brings up the issue of a seemingly disconnected logical design. In what universe is it okay to have 2 different classes that are able to accomplish the same output, but one can do it through autos and passive procs, while the other has a very high APM requirement necessary to achieve the same result?

If there is any balance philosophy even remotely centered around risk/reward and how that factors into output in this game, it is in a very bad place right now, and a new baseline needs to be established and balanced around.

Solandri.9640:

Hundred blades gets interrupted if you move. That’s why the final hit is bigger – to reward you if you’re able to get the target to stay in range of the skill while you’re stationary the entire 3.5 sec channel.

The problem with Rapid Fire is that it’s not really a skill. It just makes ranger longbow act like every other autoattack in the game except mesmer greatsword. Your damage is not reduced at short/medium range if you use RF, whereas it is does get reduced if you use autoattack. That’s why it’s so underwhelming. For the 31% of the time you’re using RF, your longbow acts like it was a normal weapon. Whoop dee do.

Now, I’m sure you know that with the amount of ridiculously long lasting immobilizes, knockdowns, and/or a mainhand mace for it’s long stun, Warriors don’t really have an issue landing that final hit of their Hundred Blades.

I’d argue that it’s harder to land every hit of Rapid Fire, since there is really no good setup you can use to make all of the hits land easier, and you get no bonus damage, and as you said, it just makes the longbow like other auto attacks for it’s channel.

It’s just really hard for me to understand how anybody thought this weapon was good when they were designing it.

I am only making the comparison to Hundred Blades because from a mechanics standpoint, Rapid Fire is more similar to Hundred Blades than any other skill in the game that I can think of.

Unless you want to compare it to elementalist Scepter auto attack when attuned to air, but even then, you still have to balance according to one being a cooldown and one being an auto attack, so either way, it’s a hard comparison to make.

The point is, each of of the skills (Hundred Blades and Rapid Fire) are both designed to be the “burst” for their respective weaponsets, but it is quite apparent that only one of them is truly effective.

Melee is of course stronger than ranged. It makes total sense, which is why my suggestions made the skill only 80% as powerful as hundred blades.

Ideally though, comparison aside, there is never a time ever when an Auto Attack should be doing more DPS than it’s cooldown skills unless the cooldown is a strong utility skill, which Rapid Fire isn’t.

Long Range Shot does 317 damage at base, max range. By “spreading” this across the cast time of Rapid Fire (realistically, you would fire 4 shots, and the 5th would be in flight), you get that in 4.5 seconds, Long Range shot is dealing a base of 1426.5 to Rapid Fires 1380.

It’s just bad design. Even if you don’t “spread” it out across 4.5 seconds, and only account for long range shot doing 4 hits, that’s still 1268 damage being done by Auto Attacks.

It’s just bad skill design.

I was just over anxious with giving a response lol. Somebody was actually doing mathematical comparisons, exploring multiple arguments, and assessing the different aspects of other arguments.

It’s a rarity on these forums.

I think that the interesting connecting that can be made is that Healing Spring is basically to rangers what Healing Turret is to Engis; an almost necessary healing utility that (for once) doesn’t actually need any trait investment to be effective.

CETheLucid.3964:

Solandri.9640:

CETheLucid.3964:

10/10, would read again. Very cool story, such a sad forum.

Cut him a break. If you don’t know about the down-scaling, it’s completely logical to think that a level 11 bow will hit harder than a level 5 bow, and a level 16 character will hit harder than a level 5 character. In fact they do hit harder, just not in level 5 zones.

Okay. You know what? Go look at what level is needed to use a culture tier 2 shortbow.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Aureate_weapons
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Flame_weapons
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Norn_weapons
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Verdant_weapons

It’s not even him I’m disappointed with. Maybe it was an honest mistake. Maybe he has his terminology all messed up. Even if he is trolling, he did a great job.

The people here are lemmings. The fact that out of 48 or so posts, maybe 10 of the posters here called BS is alarming.

The majority can’t read, couldn’t see the flaw being presented in the OP, and/or just bandwagoned on the whole ordeal. It’s pitiful.

This is why no one, especially the devs, can take the ranger forum seriously. There’s the objective answer for that.

If you want to have open honest dialogue, step one is to stop BSing and PMSing over everything you think is wrong and articulate that in a manner that isn’t hysterical hyperbole.

You know what’s not going to work? Calling the one with curly hair the worst dev of all that has no intention of balancing GW2.

You know what that might do? Get you banned.

Honestly, preach on.

This thread is very alarming.

Yeah, Rapid Fire is kitten poor, and the reason why I don’t use the longbow anymore. I used to suggest that the longbow needed an immobilize in order to setup the “burst” damage better, but the reality is that knockback shot already exists
as a burst setup, but Rapid Fire is just too bad to truly make that setup count.

Unfortunately, the only weapon I have to compare the rangers longbow to as far as function goes is the warriors longbow. So bare with me while I do my best to make sure that I maintain ANet’s Melee>Range philosophy.

Hundred Blades:
8 hits: 1624
Final Hit: 406

The final hit is 2 base hits worth of damage. So that is 10 hits worth of damage, coming to a total of:
2030

Or 203 damage per hit

Tooltip Channel time: 3.5s

A single hits worth of damage occurs every .35s

Rapid Fire:
10 hits: 1320
With Vulnerability: 1380

132 damage per hit, ends with the last hit doing 144 damage

Tooltip Channel time: 4.5 seconds

A single hits worth of damage occurs every .45 seconds

This is absolutely terrible to compare it against, because Hundred Blades is only of the strongest skills in the game, but obviously, it does more damage, and at a faster rate, than Rapid Fire.

Things that can be done about rapid fire:

-Improve how “rapid” it is. Maybe it should only have a 3 second channel time to compensate for it’s low damage per hit, while maintaining the Melee>Ranged based solely on how easily avoidable so much of Rapid Fires damage is.

-Improve how strong its “fire” is. Maybe the final channel should be doing around 1600 total base damage with it’s channels. The hits are going to need to be a little stronger than Styrofoam peanuts.

jonnis.2946:

jcbroe.4329:

Nice write up. I appreciate you taking the time to calculate it all out. I wanted to add that since you mentioned in the vs Healing Turret section the value of also having condi cleanses, it would also make sense to make note of that in the vs Healing Spring section.

I did =D

jonnis.2946

These values do not account for the provided water field and condi clears, both of which massively increase the effective HPS.

Thanks a lot

My fault haha, continue

Nice write up. I appreciate you taking the time to calculate it all out. I wanted to add that since you mentioned in the vs Healing Turret section the value of also having condi cleanses, it would also make sense to make note of that in the vs Healing Spring section.

Durzlla.6295:

I gotta say, one thing I’ve noticed about ranger is in PvP it’s pretty mindless with a few weapons to be good (SB for example), so the skill ceiling is just sooooo low because of how kittening passive ranger plays. This really hurts the prof as a whole because there’s almost no difference between a good and bad ranger (some builds there is but that’s like 2, MAYBE).

I will say though that as simple (and demanded) as giving rangers full control of their pet would be to shoot up the skill ceiling it won’t help the prof as a whole , we need trait and utility reworks so we aren’t pigeonholed into 30pt investments to bring utilities up to par.

I’ve been playing with Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch, spirit build without Storm Spirit (so my spirits don’t do damage, only utility), and my pet on passive so I have to manage it’s targets, so nobody can say I’m just AA spamming and being carried, at least no more than engis running Incendiary Powder or Dhuumfire necros.

I have to say, that it’s the only time I feel like I’m using any sort of APM to be effective, but the thing that takes the fun out of it is managing your APM and multitasking and everything perfectly, but the pet still not “behaving” properly.

For instance, I get my wolf knockdown, and chain it into the fear to land, so, perfect, I switch to my river drake, hit f1, and f2, and the drake still decides it wants to look at and shoot it’s f2 at the wall because it takes like 5 seconds before a summoned pet is able to “think” and select the target you tell it to select.

Like, I couldn’t have had a more perfect input, but the mechanic itself is limiting, and it’s just frustrating, because I can pull off other combinations of skills like this on other classes, just not ranger.

CETheLucid.3964:

jcbroe.4329:

I can’t even begin to explain how many games were won by my Guild(s) in GvG because I hit the monks WoH/Healing Burst/RC and it let my team push through and wipe an enemy guild. Or, alleviating the pressure by making sure a mesmer never ever ever got off Diversion or Shame, while shutting down any eles and ritualists nearby.

And, shutting down rezzes, just about one of the most important functions in the entire game.

So, maybe damage wise weak, but rangers had just about the most important function in a competitive atmosphere, because a single ranger build could do just about every function in the game if necessary. Shutdown the enemy team, split to the enemy base and start soloing NPCs, carry the teams flag, cripple the opponents flag runner, Spike Support, Pressure Support, and Team Support.

It’s just so impossible to stress enough how valuable a Guild Wars 1 ranger was.

I get it. But that didn’t change the general opinion about rangers, except when niche builds in HA popped up and were summarily nerfed.

The ranger has always had an image problem, in GW1 and GW2. What has happened before will happen again.

I’m not sure where. My guild (primarily a GvG/HA guild) always wanted me on my ranger, regardless of whether we were GvG/HA’ing, or doing an Underworld run. I never experienced this image problem rangers supposedly had in Guild Wars 1, ever.

CETheLucid.3964:

Domey.9804:

and in gw1, ranger was also carried by 1 skill. it was dshot. when you didnt play with it , your built was just a gimmicky one (like bunny thumper, thrasher, enraged lunge).
dshot was one of the best (if not the best) skills in gw1, i wish ranger had a similar skill like it in gw2.

Nah, in GW1 they complained about rangers being weak there too.

Distracting Shot had terrible scaling, actually limited the amount of damage it could do with few sources able to increase that number, and outside of an interrupt build (with the skill to land it, as it had a longer cooldown), it was a bad pick for anything damage related.

It was a nice filler skill for skilled interrupters, but not terribly incredible.

I can’t even begin to explain how many games were won by my Guild(s) in GvG because I hit the monks WoH/Healing Burst/RC and it let my team push through and wipe an enemy guild. Or, alleviating the pressure by making sure a mesmer never ever ever got off Diversion or Shame, while shutting down any eles and ritualists nearby.

And, shutting down rezzes, just about one of the most important functions in the entire game.

So, maybe damage wise weak, but rangers had just about the most important function in a competitive atmosphere, because a single ranger build could do just about every function in the game if necessary. Shutdown the enemy team, split to the enemy base and start soloing NPCs, carry the teams flag, cripple the opponents flag runner, Spike Support, Pressure Support, and Team Support.

It’s just so impossible to stress enough how valuable a Guild Wars 1 ranger was.

I don’t think the goal so much is to see diversity in effect, as much as it is to have the capability to utilize a diverse set of options to use.

In a very general sense, if every utility was equally as powerful and useful, and the game was balanced purely around risk/reward (high risk builds, high rewards, harder to play. Low risk builds, low reward, easier to play), then ideally, diversity has been achieved because every build would be functional around the baseline for balance.

Now, of course there would still be builds that don’t get used, but that would be mostly because of a player established metagame than it would be an issue of builds that a class has access to outperforming it’s other accessible options.

A prime example of such an issue is rangers Spirit Build. It can do everything that rangers traps can do, but also has better survival capabilities and team support, making traps an option that just doesn’t get picked anymore because that setup is outclassed in every way.

Basically, the goal of “diversity” is to eliminate apex predator build scenarios while ensuring that a class is still a viable competitive option. Apex predator builds and meta builds are not the same thing by the way. You eliminate Apex Predator builds by balancing a class against itself, making sure that everything is equally competitive, and establishing that class around the baseline for balance.

Ideally, the metagame should then only be determined by player perception, with builds being more common because they are better in the situation they are in, versus where we are at currently, where there are builds that are just clearly better for classes than anything else available for them to run.

If you don’t mind Arken, I’m going to speak specifically from a ranger perspective here because otherwise it’s just too much to discuss and I’m afraid I’ll make too many blanket statements.

So, starting off:

-Ranger Shortbow: Absolutely terrible weapon design for competitive. The weapon reaches it’s max DPS by just autoattacking, and actually loses DPS by using skills, depending on aftercast. All of the cooldown skills are great utility functions, but weapons should never, ever rely on autoattacking alone to do damage. There needs to be a skill rotation required to create the damage necessary to beat another player, in order to create play (landing the rotation) and counterplay (avoiding the play and creating a period of reduced pressure to retaliate).

As it stands right now, the autoattack is constant pressure than with flanking can start snowballing more damage, while the cooldowns are purely there for utility function that really don’t have much necessity (aside from using poison to deal with all the passive health regen) in order to obtain kills. That needs to change.

-Pets: Also terrible in design. As they stand, they are just tacked on DPS that basically allows a ranger to build with any stats they want and still a pet for very decent direct damage pressure. They are built extremely linearly so that there is really no way to build outside of this focused function, which is limiting to how the ranger can perform, frustrating to play against because an AI can train you down and damage you, and contradicting by design, which really makes it hard to give the class any additional option or make any additional improvements to it if you have this constant that is always there, and very capable of over-performing for lower skilled players.

Ranger Spirits: Very very much just another of the games passive procs that needs to be dealt with in order to make the game more competitive. Spirits are basically just mobile AoE passive procs for teammates, that have utility AoE active effects, and really just work to clutter the battlefield more and more, procing each others passive effects for more damage, or in Storm Spirits case, doing unjustified amounts of damage for the stat investment needed to make it do damage (aka zero). Sun Spirit basically gives Dhuumfire to a whole team every 10 seconds.

Passive procs with an RNG nature need to be removed in every form, as does the screen clutter. Spirits may as well have been made preparations from guild wars 1 (or passive trait procs from GW2), but instead, they have to be out on the screen, bogging everything down. Just, bad.

Not enough focus on available active playstyles: Where are shout rangers? Well, not being used, because shouts are terrible utility that have no synergy with each other. Where are Survival Rangers? Same issue, weak utility. Where are Signet Rangers? Well, that would be a glass cannon build, which is on the brink of being viable, except that it is one of the least forgiving builds in the game, that either doesn’t have enough damage, or enough boon removal, to deal with bunkers or defensive based characters, and die to breezes unless played absolutely perfectly. Even when played perfectly, they don’t outperform other available cheese builds that are more forgiving, so it’s a pointless endeavor.

Finally, where are Trap Rangers? Well, the build is active enough, and plays similarly to a bomb/nade engi in terms of performance, why aren’t these a thing? Well, traps haven’t been “updated” enough to keep up with the power creep introduced into the game that would be necessary in order to deal with options in the current meta. Why take flame trap, when my Sun Spirit can proc a single pulse of a flame trap to me, my pet, and my entire team? Offhand Torch and Dagger basically give access to all of the functions that traps are capable of, and to make traps only slightly better, but still not competitive with other classes options, it takes a heavy trait investment and what’s left over doesn’t have the same defensive capabilities that the other classes that are capable of the same things have either.

So in summary, there is just a whole lot of design issues holding back a competitive atmosphere, and this is coming just from the class that I (unfortunately, I’ve branched away) started off main’ing, as there are other cheese builds out there that I can’t analyze as in depth as this one.

So, I would really like ANet to do something about issues like these (I miss my interrupt ranger from guild wars 1, with high effectiveness but a high skill floor), in order to create a better competitive atmosphere, but also to make classes more interactive and fun to play.

So, definitely support this Arken, and every other good point other thread contributors have made.

It’s because it isn’t the worlds easiest fix. The devs basically confirmed that Eagle Eye’s code is inheriting from Two Handed Training, and said that it shouldn’t have ever even been coded in this manner.

So, what I’d assume the devs are doing, instead of just band-aid fixing the fury, is that they are actually recoding Eagle Eye so that it no longer inherits from Two Handed Training.

So basically, they have to recreate the entire trait and make sure it works as intended before releasing the patch into the game, which means that a lot of Quality Assurance has to go into what all Eagle Eye currently affects appropriately, and how to recreate those effects entirely from scratch without breaking anything.

Honestly, and not saying this to be rude to ANet and their updates/balancing, but this change, while seemingly miniscule, will probably be one of the more extensive ones being made as far as the amount of code that gets changed.

So I wouldn’t go expecting it to happen immediately. It isn’t like they can just go in and remove it with a magic eraser.

RaZaC.1963:

It would be easily abused by kittens. A honor system would be nice I suppose.

I believe in Guild Wars 1 the report system worked where a majority of the team had to report a player in order for the report to actually function and add dishonored to somebody. Otherwise, it did nothing, and started ticking towards a point system (like drivers license points) that would end up getting you dishonored if you kept trying to abuse the system and report people (if the report actually went through, you wouldn’t get any points added towards getting yourself dishonored).

The biggest problem I can foresee in Guild Wars 2 with this is “class hazing,” where teams start reporting the player that isn’t running the meta build, or a perceived top meta class, getting them dishonored because of it.

The sigils of Geomancy are for getting more bleed stacks, but the reason they are good is because on top of doing some decent direct damage, the Point Blank AoE the provide is very strong, and because you are “node” fighting in a lot of situations in PvP, the AoE spans the node and generally helps you keep pressure off of you because as long as it’s landing, its forcing enemies to either back off of you because they are taking too much damage, or blow their cooldowns to heal and cleanse the damage you are doing.

As for the mainhand sword, it is used mostly defensively for it’s evades on the initial sword 2 and sword 3, as well as leaping through your Healing Spring and Torch 5, for additional healing and a fire field respectively. However, the sword auto attack is also a powerful tool, because, and especially with Carrion, it is our highest DPS weapon, and it cripples the opponent and gives Might to the pet, which in PvP, the pet is actually very useful, so it allows you to output some good damage from that perspective.

I haven’t personally seen anybody using the Greatsword, since all of our builds have been condition builds in PvP for just about ever now, but that doesn’t mean that it can’t work. It would be much better suited for a Power based build though.

And yes, Stone Spirit would be much better than Muddy Terrain. Stone Spirits active does everything that Muddy Terrain does, on top of passively giving you and all of your teammates a chance to proc that protection, which is a huge boon in teamfights.

On top of that, all of the spirits actives have a chance to proc each others effects, meaning that Stone Spirit can apply Sun Spirits burning as a third source (you, your pet, Stone Spirit).

Doesn’t look all that bad for this build: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAsYRjAVV2BWKWs2Bg2jMtET+hE9MG1zC2UB-jkyAoNBRCCIJKQJPl1sogYdrIasKGM1pQqSNyejioVDA-w

It’s been my version of what Puandro (not sure if anybody remembers, but he went 0/15/20/15/20 full melee with a healing hybrid like this) ran.

Outside of this build though, I wouldn’t even touch the trait.