Guild Wars 2

Your build is still completely fine. The “meta shake up” update didn’t change the build a single bit.

Not sure if it’s technically stealth. I think it’s actually “camouflage.” Similar to stealth, but you can’t move or you become visible again. So I have no idea if revealed isn’t working against it because of that or not.

My perma fury made me realize that my longbow just barely becomes viable when my Rapid Fire is literally hitting for double damage compared to how it normally hits.

So, since there is going to be a fix implemented, maybe the devs should make rapid fire better. Really, that’s the biggest thing holding the weapon back.

Hammerguard.9834:

Why are you even bringing balance into the discussion? I’m talking about making a better gameplay experience and you’re talking about how ineffective the skills will become…

Give spirits a 2400 effect radius, lower the cooldown, and increase max ally targets effected to 10… does that make you feel better?

It doesn’t matter what they do as long as it’s balanced around a non-kinect form of spirits.

I bring balance into it because you can’t change the functionality of something without shifting the balance of the game. Not just against other players, but against the content.

What you’re suggesting is a complete and total rework for 6 utilities now that would be more extensive than reworking the single class mechanic, the pet system, which Jon Peters has already told the ranger community is a very large project that will take lots of resources and has to be relegated to the backburner because of it.

There are A LOT of things that need to be changed to make a better gameplay experience. So really, I do agree with you, but no matter how adamant you are, the likelihood in which anything will be done within the next year even is so miniscule that it isn’t even worth stressing over.

But yes, I would love to see my Guild Wars 1 style ranger make a return.

Hammerguard.9834:

Spirit Unbound is . . . “unique”?

The suggestion is better for rangers and the game.

Taking a top tier apex predator build and nerfing it isn’t better for the game when the rest of the power creep in the game doesn’t get nerfed down to it’s level.

I would love to see AI removed from the game entirely, except for mesmers clones (but yes remove phantasms, but keep clones, but the clones only serve the purpose of body blocking and shattering).

The problem is that with the game in the state that it is in, your suggestion only hurts what rangers can bring for a team, because the pacing of the combat indicates that you would literally need to be able to reset your spirits in a different location every 10-20 seconds or so, and outside of spirits, none of rangers options have been balanced enough for the class to make a build that keeps up with the metagame (for pvp anyhow), and would literally eliminate them entirely from the metagame.

There is a reason spirits really weren’t used in Guild Wars 1 GvG either, because they couldn’t move and had long cooldowns and lifespans, so they really weren’t forgiving /useful enough compared to other options that could be brought.

I really really hate spirits, I do. But nobody would even use the build to begin with if there were other builds that could even compete with the effectiveness of spirits, so do keep in mind that while I find nothing wrong with what you’re suggesting, I’m just highlighting that you don’t present such a heavy handed change to class to that classes only build, which even if meant to be good intentioned, has the possibility of backfiring, without making sure any of their other options are competitive options at the same time.

Before spirits are ever even touched again, traps need to be better, survival skills need to be better, and shouts need to be better.

While we’re at it, we should just make banners, turrets, spirits, and spirit weapons (they follow and do damage with NO trait) all the same thing, and then merge engineers, warriors, rangers, and guardians all together since we aren’t giving anything unique functionality anymore.

Oh boy, I hope they make my suggestion. I can’t wait to play my ranguariorineer. GW2 so innovative. Too innovative. Remove unique stuff. Too stronk.

What the actual kitten are you people smoking?

Crossfire has always been weak, and the base damage has always been 134 with poor scaling.

Same numbers as always.

Shortbow with no power investment in PvP, WvW, and Orr (level 80 zones):

Ardenwolfe.8590:

There’s always someone who ruins it for everyone. Yeah, the deafening silence on this forum didn’t do it before. How will it be different if we go back to that . . . again?

Now excuse me. I’m going to shoot the hell out of some people and mobs while I still have frenzy and while longbow is still fun. Then, it’s back to short bow and its 2-10 damage.

Any mention of that bug getting hot-fixed? Naw. Working as intended.

What the actual kitten are you people smoking?

Shortbow with no power investment in PvP and WvW:

Tyler Chapman.1832:

We understand you obviously are in favor of this bug…I mean I would be too on my Ranger. The point is that it was an unintended change and we are obligated to fix it. We were just talking and one thing we do want to do with Ranger is find more places to place Fury. A lot of these posts are just erratic emotional responses filled with tons of hyperbole. The Ranger isn’t going to “go back into being useless” because of this fix, because it’s already strong. Sure it has it’s flaws like all classes but it is one of the top classes in PvP and in PvE it is competitive with top burst damage. It’s got better support than many classes and it has probably the best elite in the game. I mean it’s got an 87% participation rate in the 2v2 tournaments that have been happening every weekend. What that means is that one was on every single team in the tournament except one.

Sorry I don’t have more time to chat but things will be getting better for the Ranger in the future. You can count on it.

That’s all I was asking for

Nice to see you guys are listening/lurking, thank you!

nagymbear.5280:

I think poorly handling it would have been staying quiet, and after its fixed come on the ranger forums and say something like: “Allright all you professions, everyone without Fury on their Longbow autoattack take one step back….. you too Ranger.”

I’m not saying it wasn’t necessary. I’m saying it’s bad practice to have left it in as long as possible, and then just remove it with nothing but a simple dev confirmation that it’s being removed, without any actual discussion with the ranger community with where they actually think the longbow stands.

Because, if the thread wasn’t apparent enough, there seems to be a very huge disconnect between where the devs think the weapon stands and where ranger players think it stands. It would be nice to get a “Ranger CDI” and have them actually try to bridge the communication gap a little so rangers aren’t always up in arms towards the devs, and the devs feel a little less hostility when they come on the forums.

If there is no follow up to the issue, then even though we all know it wasn’t working as intended, the people who felt that the improvement was a necessity for the weapon to hold it’s ground are going to remain that much more distrusting and unsatisfied with ANet as a developer.

I would just think that in the grand scheme of things, the goal of a developer shouldn’t be to kitten off your players, especially when it could be alleviated with a simple discussion, where in all a dev has to do is either confirm or deny that the weapon is not in the spot it should be, and then if it needs buffs, say “we are looking to buff the longbow in the future to make it a more diverse, interactive, and effective weapon.”

Tyler Chapman.1832:

This issue has been on our hotfix list. Enjoy the fury while you have it. x.x

Thank you for handling it about as poorly as it can possibly handled.

Understood that there are certain restrictions about what you can and can’t talk about, but unless you (or somebody who can talk about it) makes some sort of PR move and explains why the current iteration is broken (it may seem obvious, but perception != reality) and where the longbow currently stands from a development perspective and how, if any, improvements or improvement discussions are on the list of things to do, then:

Ranger community meltdown and even more negativity being thrown at the devs than ever before in 3… 2…1.

What’s humorous is that we’re the only ones that know. Like, it hasn’t even made this weapon a “thing” or a meta yet. That’s how not gamebreaking it is, that nobody has even noticed or complained about it being OP or too strong.

Honestly, that tells you right there where balance is at with our class. Like with Dhuumfire, people knew a few hours after patch how broken it was and called for nerf. Same thing with Healing Signet.

But this?

Nope, no problems, hasn’t shifted the performance of rangers in anybodies minds in the slightest lol.

It’s even funnier to me because, let’s assume with a full pvp zerker build, it’s around 50% chance, 50% damage. That’s a straight up constant 20% damage increase over time from the longbows output, and nobody has even noticed or said anything about our longbow as far as a noticeable difference in performance goes.

Just….
/facepalm

Well, with a Rabid Amulet and Undead Runes, with max traits for toughness and condition damage, you can hit 1500 condition damage. That should be 88.25 damage per stack per second of Torment without moving, which is 176.5 while moving.

4 stacks of torment while moving will do more than 632 damage per second with this (706), which would still have to hit around 19 times.

Illusionary Counter and Impale both seem to be capable of doing this.

It doesn’t seem broken, but I’ll keep my eye out when playing today to see if I see anything suspicious.

Honestly, it really doesn’t need all that big of a change. Agreed that the active needs to be made more valuable, but ideally, the passive needs more counterplay features. Rather than taking the skill apart though, it really should just function exactly like adrenal health (and the mesmers new signet) by functioning off the class mechanic.

For instance: 0 Adrenaline, 0 regen, 1 bar, 100 hp/s, 2 bars, 200 hp per second, 3 bars, 300, etc. Then, for the active, working like Troll Unguent is a fine change that would “burst” the health regen regardless of adrenal levels.

Ideally, this would “slow” warrior builds down because you wouldn’t just throw on Healing Signet and then (using hambow as example with Burst Mastery) Burst burst burst and never worry ever about activating a heal or having to micromanage healing in any way other than making sure HS is slotted.

The cost of choosing to use the burst skill and do higher damage would come at the risk of lowering survivability for a few seconds, which would be all the counterplay it needs, without ever introducing any more hard counters or bad features (like Diamond Skin) into the game, and would also help stifle power creep.

All of that is imo anyhow, but you really didn’t need to ask the ranger community for permission to base your ideas off of one of our skills, since we aren’t the ones who designed our class to begin with haha, and ANet surely isn’t listening to us any more than other profession specific communities.

The typical setup right now is to go shortbow (so you can pressure from a distance) and sword/torch or sword/dagger. Sword is used for its evasiveness and mobility (with no target, sword 2, 180 turn, sword 2 leap), and torch is the more common option for it’s long lasting burn and the ability for torch 5 to basically be flame trap when traited with offhand training.

Dagger is usually chosen for Dagger 4, for a very nice evade on a very decent cooldown, and then of course dagger 5 for more damage, making sword/dagger a very evasive and defensive weapon set.

That being said, I know of a person who had lots of success with shortbow and axe/dagger, if the sword doesn’t suit you or you aren’t comfortable with yourself using it. However, it sacrifices a lot of your mobility, and there are less situations you can use the axe in. Mainly, if you do decide to go with shortbow and axe/dagger, you should do it for when you need the dagger evade and the enemy pushes you and gets in your face. You’re going to want to swap, hopefully landing the sigil of geomancy, and then shotgun axe 2’s bleeds onto the person, and even land dagger 5 if you can. Hopefully they don’t cleanse it, which is something to look out for, but this build is going to play much more as a point defender without the swords mobility.

For the BM build, I use this layout: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjEVl19VKWg2Bi2jMZeM9UMLA4UUKSdxSVJB-TsAg2CuIuRdj7GzNybs3M8Y5xeBA

About the traits in that builder, they haven’t been updated yet, so 20 points in Nature Magic is for Spirits Unbound. Also, I left the last BM slot open because it’s really up to preference. Some people would prefer Vigorous Training now, but with a Wolf and Jaguar, I prefer Commanding Voice for shorter cooldown wolf fears and jaguar stealth bursts.

For Spirit Builds, Rampagers is usable and I have used it in the past for a decent amount of time, but the issue is that the stat allocation just dedicates too much precision, and in the current condition of the game it is better to build more defensively than offensively.

Which does bring up the question, why is Carrion an option with no toughness then? Well, it’s because it uses this setup: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjEVl1dVOVg2BiVBB1ekJzjJ3jSRqTdxSVJB-TsAgyCuIATBmDMDYSwsgN8Y5xeBA

Basically, the protection is meant to cover up the lack of toughness, and the vitality is to deal with the condition meta. An option now would be to drop the 10 in Marksmanship to run Mighty Swap, but it there hasn’t been enough time yet to test which setup would be more optimal, though I have a hunch that the 10 points in Marksmanship for Keen Edge is outright better DPS.

The rabid variant is this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjEVl1dVOVg2Bi2jMZeMxKYI3jSRqTdxSVJB-TsAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNN8Y5xeBA

I have had some dispute in the past about running Sharpened Edges, because people believe that it refreshes the bleed stack making it more likely to be cleansed. However, conditions in this game are cleansed off of more criteria than just First In Last Out, meaning that while it does use that criteria, cleanses also tend to cleanse conditions with the highest stack first anyhow, and because you’re autoattack applies bleed and ideally even without Sharpened Edges you would be applying and refreshing the bleed stack to begin with, I find it to be a poor argument.

However, some people do take Agility Training instead. Against a moving target, I’m sure there is a good debate against which provides better DPS out there, but I haven’t seen one, so I leave that up to preference as well.

Sorry, It’s a whole lot of information at once.

With the new patch: If you choose not to build around Nature’s Vengeance, it opens up 10 points to work with and a utility slot (no more storm spirit). The skeleton for the build would be x/x/30/20/x, depending on your selection. So, Carrion would be 10/x/30/20/x and Rabid would be x/10/30/20/x. There are quite a few different options to play around with this. I’ll list the ones I’ve though of out:

Carrion:
20/0/30/20/0
-Pick up Spotter for team support, may also run Frost Spirit for an entire team DPS boost
-Pick up Malicious Training and go with Black Widow (if available) and Jungle Spider for massive control through immobilizes

10/0/30/20/10
-Might Swap

Rabid
10/10/30/20/0
-Keen Edge and Sharpened Edge for about as much DPS pressure as you’re going to be able to achieve with a rabid amulet

0/10/30/20/10
-Mighty Swap

The two better builds you can be using right now are either a rabid/carrion spirit setup or a Settler’s BM build. Empathic Bond is an absolute must, and usually most builds utilize WS III for the free additional stunbreaker.

I can post out some builds if you’d like. Spirit choice is either Sun and Stone, or Sun, Stone, and Storm for the active. When only going for 2 spirits, run with a stunbreak as your third utility. Lots of people opt for Signet of Renewal for the cleanse factor.

Healing Spring is the preferred heal for the cleanse and group support, but Troll Unguent is the next best option if you don’t need the utility that Spring brings.

Wolf is the most common choice, with either Jaguar (usually more BM builds) or River Drake as the other pet choice.

Honestly, the rest of it is just PvP tactics. Hold points for as long as possible if you are defending and recognize when to rotate. Most solo Q teams don’t dedicate a player to pure defense on their home point, so recognize when you can go get a free capture or neutralize, and recognize when you are beaten, because giving the other team kills only makes the score snowball in the enemy teams favor.

Your goal is going to be to manage to hold 2 capture points out of three (all three if you can) for longer than the enemy team. More than anything though, recognize secondary objectives and when to/not to push them. Don’t give up a capture to go kill a forest creature, and remember when the important top and bottom buffs spawn on Temple (11:30 for double points, 8:30 for double points and three cap, game usually doesn’t last longer than this, but if it does, double points again at 5:30). Skyhammer is Skyhammer, but make sure you don’t dedicate too much effort to holding the skyhammer and not enough to maintaining capture points.

Those are just some basics.

Agreed.
/15chars

Ryan.9387:

I did enjoy running 9s skull fear for a few matches. Then I wen’t back to BM because it was still better.

Yeah, I still haven’t gotten around to trying my hybrid BM build (0/0/30/20/20 Settler’s with Spirits Unbound for Sun Spirit and Elite Spirit, and either Lightning Reflexes or Signet of Renewal, and Signet of the Wild, and then Mighty Swap and Vigorous Swap), I’ve been loving my new level 80 Engi too darn much.

thefantasticg.3984:

I guess if I PVP’d that’d mean something.

WvW isn’t PvP. It’s PvDoor and PvBlob

Jokes aside though, I can’t even remember the last time I saw a solo roamer to be able to engage in a PvP style. WvW is all about organizing zergs of players to make better tactical plays than the opposing zergs of players, and whose zerg is bigger. And by organizing I mean things like “stand here,” “DPS this,” “hold this,” and “suicide this tower/keep circle to add an extra millisecond to the time it takes that gigantic mass to capture it or get raged at for life by an angry commander who thinks 1 v 50 and that extra millisecond makes all the difference.”

So yeah, I can totally understand why a person would never enter WvW. PvP players can be even more elitist and toxic at times, depending on which end of the community you are dealing with, since competition seems to bring out the worst of everybody’s egotism, but at the same time, none of their own crap stinks.

Sorry that the update isn’t all that helpful in the area of the game you play! It isn’t really super overly helpful in general, but still.

I haven’t been on to test, but if this is a real thing and you can get a video of it, definitely post it on the bug forums, and try getting it to happen (not sure then next time I’ll be in game) on the heart of the mists or a PvP match (go to an empty hotjoin) and then post it in the PvP forums.

It is just much more likely to receive a devs attention in one of the other forums.

Looks like you guys are leaving your mark! I saw this in my guild chat and figured I’d share it. Keep it up I guess, you must be doing something right

I got powders from my brambles :/

Nihevil.8024:

Nike.2631:

Get over it. No, really. They’re reducing the most overpowered 5 point trait of any class

Pretty sure there’s more overpowered 5p trait on different classes.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Critical_Infusion
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Precision

“Any trait requiring on crit procs requires stat investment over trait investment. Rangers only required 5 points, Guardians/Mesmers require 5 points and decent enough precision to reliably proc the vigor consistently.”

Terravos.4059:

jcbroe.4329:

Terravos.4059:

Durzlla.6295:

Broken, or a stealth buff? This wouldn’t be the first time they stealth buffed longbow…. I’m just assuming it’s like that…

They’re probably testing it out, Most likely it meant to have a ICD, or they were fooling around with the Greatsword trait, and got them mixed up, That could also be a cause for it.

From a code perspective (speculating here), since Eagle Eye and the Greatsword trait also shared the 5% increased damage, it could just mean that either one is inheriting from another, or they are both inheriting from some other skeleton code somewhere, or that they are both being created out of the same object, and somebody just copied and pasted and didn’t go through it with a fine tooth comb.

Not exactly sure how ANet has their code setup obviously, but it seems like the most likely cases.

Yea, reason I think its probably got to do with the Greatsword change is because its also 3 seconds of fury just like the Longbow change, the only thing that Longbow as different is it has no ICD.

I figured the same thing lol.

Worst part about it is that if it was unintended but remains live too long, and then the devs decide to remove it, it’s going to get very ugly very fast, because the longer it stays, the more attached people are going to get to it.

Especially if it is removed with no “official” response to the ranger community about how “they plan on improvements, but this case wasn’t a time or a method in which they intended for the improvement to be implemented, but rather a bug that wasn’t caught before the patch went live.”

It’s just about the last thing the ranger community needs, so hopefully it was either intended (doubtful, I know), or they use some good PR when they do take away our “nice things” haha.

Terravos.4059:

Durzlla.6295:

Broken, or a stealth buff? This wouldn’t be the first time they stealth buffed longbow…. I’m just assuming it’s like that…

They’re probably testing it out, Most likely it meant to have a ICD, or they were fooling around with the Greatsword trait, and got them mixed up, That could also be a cause for it.

From a code perspective (speculating here), since Eagle Eye and the Greatsword trait also shared the 5% increased damage, it could just mean that either one is inheriting from another, or they are both inheriting from some other skeleton code somewhere, or that they are both being created out of the same object, and somebody just copied and pasted and didn’t go through it with a fine tooth comb.

Not exactly sure how ANet has their code setup obviously, but it seems like the most likely cases.

Unholy Pillager.3791:

Nike.2631:

Soilder.3607:

So just because one build has too much evasion, we’re going to Nerf nearly every single ranger build? Logic?

You just explained the logic yourself – when “nearly every single Ranger build” includes one trait, its pretty %#&@ing obvious that trait is overpowered for its cost.

The guardian version, vigorous precision, gives permanent vigor for the same investment. Why does a heavy class with strong condition removal have the better evasive trait?

Not technically true. Any trait requiring on crit procs requires stat investment over trait investment. Rangers only required 5 points, Guardians/Mesmers require 5 points and decent enough precision to reliably proc the vigor consistently.

I’m not sure what you’re talking about, I haven’t noticed any strange behavior

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

I wish people would stop suggesting putting Traps into Wilderness Survival.

Not because it doesn’t make sense, but because the last thing we need is an entire build whose offensive traits directly compete with all of it’s defensive traits. Our absolute best defensive traits are all in Wilderness Survival.

It would literally outright kill the trap build since in order to use traps you would have to sacrifice the little defensive trait options the build currently has in order to make traps usable.

INSTEAD, traps should do better direct damage so that they can be used by power builds as well. It doesn’t help that Skirmishing really has zero useful trait options for power builds, but Marksmanship is overloaded with too many to use at once.

So really, the better question would be: why are ranger traitlines all so bad?

Traits would need to swapped. The defensive stuff would just move and hopefully ANet would do it in a logical manner that would open up more build diversity and not narrow it. It’s not like they’ve move the traits and have 20 in one line and 4 in another.

Yeah, but then it brings it to exactly what Cufufalating said in terms of how many builds actually benefit from the current trait lineup in WS.

Honestly, it would be A LOT of work on ANets part, because there are a whole lot of traits that would need to be reworked and moved around. It’s just so much simpler to either make Traps a viable choice on Power builds, or make the Skirmishing Traits more interactive with power builds, since literally only Moment of Clarity does anything for power builds, and it doesn’t even do much that much good.

Skirmishing is just about the worst traitline in the game is all. It isn’t helping anybody to take the only good traits out of it and integrate them somewhere else, because then it forces some other spec to have to go into the same traitline that nobody wants to go into aside from it’s passive bonus, and that messes up other builds.

So I’m just suggesting that we buff skirmishing/traps is all, instead of nerfing our entire Wilderness Survival tree

It’s a little hard for me to evaluate it on a numerical tier basis.

So let’s try this:

S
-Guardian (Guard has always been desirable during every meta, and only looks to be getting better)
-Warrior

A+
Necro

A
Mesmer
Ranger

A-/B+
Engi (only because it’s ease of use versus output is worse than other classes that can achieve similar results with less work)

Don’t really have an opinion on thief/ele.

Thieves can be successful but I’d wager that players successfully playing thieves at top tier levels are outliers compared to how well the majority of players are capable of playing them.

I don’t know if anything eles are getting (even Diamond Skin) alleviates any of the problems that have been keeping the ele out of the meta up until now. It doesn’t seem like it, so ele would be in last, unless they get something drastically different or better than what the preview showed us, or I’m just an incapable theorycrafter for the ele profession that isn’t seeing something.

Spirit Rangers Storm Spirit is only getting 1k damage shaved off of it, unless ANet decided to go with a harsher nerf since the preview thread. So unless the Eles have 20K+ health, Diamond Skin isn’t going to help all that much, and the build itself isn’t really changing all that much, so really, I’m not sure where the patch is destroying that build.

I’d love to see some seriously harsh and shocking changes in the update though. Doubtful, but would be thoroughly pleasing.

awge.3852:

Noobie.1073:

I find that Retaliation is only a problem if you’re not paying attention. Barrage can be self interrupted by moving so retaliation does little if any damage to a ranger who is aware of retaliation. Zergs bust through other zergs all the time, stealth and re-position. Doesn’t take long to figure out that playing backliner depends on positioning. Even without Barrage, piercing arrows will be nice damage from range.

Besides mesmer and P/D thief, I’m not sure there are many classes that outdo a solo roaming ranger. Yeah, we’ve been nerfed to hell, but despite that, rangers are still kicking and screaming.

I use a condi based ranger and I am pretty successful with it, but the more balance update the game ends, the more outdated it feels. Even for trapper builds, I wonder what rangers roaming with high toughness + power builds have to say.

I feel like rangers haven’t been balanced enough to keep up with the rest of the games power creep being experienced by other classes, and that we’re all starting to get a little jaded with how slowly balance updates roll out, and how little they affect the described issue.

Still love my BM build myself though haha.

I wish people would stop suggesting putting Traps into Wilderness Survival.

Not because it doesn’t make sense, but because the last thing we need is an entire build whose offensive traits directly compete with all of it’s defensive traits. Our absolute best defensive traits are all in Wilderness Survival.

It would literally outright kill the trap build since in order to use traps you would have to sacrifice the little defensive trait options the build currently has in order to make traps usable.

INSTEAD, traps should do better direct damage so that they can be used by power builds as well. It doesn’t help that Skirmishing really has zero useful trait options for power builds, but Marksmanship is overloaded with too many to use at once.

So really, the better question would be: why are ranger traitlines all so bad?

Chaith.8256:

Silentshoes.1805:

Chaith.8256:

I wonder though, are you more let down that you aren’t getting rated solely on your good plays? Or is it actually the name of the Solo Arena really the thing misleading you?

Like many people, I get frustrated when I see the team I am assigned to not playing a reasonable strategy, and getting their tail kicked. Because I take a hit for something completely outside my control.

As I said, I need to learn the limits of what one person can do to help win.

Indeed, it is an age old problem with rated MMO game types that dates back to the very first pick-up rated game.

Unfortunately, I feel it’s too much a component of MOBAs & MMOs to ever get rid of – unless a next generation game decides they want to design around it. Kind of like what GW2 did with the Holy Trinity.

Ideally though, when ladders are finally introduced, I think the most optimal thing would be to have Unrated Solo Q, Rated Solo Q, and Team Q.

-Unrated would match you up, still using some sort of match making algorithm that gives you the best match in the best time frame, with lesser rewards and no leaderboard penalty.

-Solo would utilize the new ladder system with an MMR and try to find you the best match possible. Not as rewarding as team, but more rewarding than Unrated. Leaderboard loss penalties for a loss in this tier should be lessened compared to Team Q based on the random team element being a factor, and unfair matchups (aka 4v5s) shouldn’t penalize the losing team (but should penalize the person who leaves).

-Team Q. Basically the same implementation as it is currently.

With this system, hotjoin should be removed and replaced with just a custom server browser (so no unowned servers are available). That way, Custom Arenas feel more special and have more of a purpose, like for community tournaments and teams practicing.

Not the most ideal, but it at least takes a portion of the “hotjoin hero” community and pushes them towards more competitive practices, like having theme queue up for 5 man only game types, but not let it affect their ranking. That way it has more of a competitive practice feel and less of what it currently is (lolpubstomp and build trial).

I don’t know, maybe it’s just me that thinks this would be good. Honestly there’s probably a million ways to start to go about doing it.

A good first step would to not penalize players for unfair matchups though (4v5s).

Aridia.3042:

Nihevil.8024:

Aridia.3042:

If the devs are reading.

For the umpteeth time, it needs to cleanse all snares before rolling back, stun the target, and have the damage removed.

What’s wrong with the damage? I don’t see the reason of removing it.

Because it’s pointless. I’ve ran LR since beta and I’ve never ever killed anyone with it. No one in their right mind would use it as a source of damage nor is it a deterrent to the attacker.

It’s a defensive utility and I’d take a stun on target over damage any day.

Shoot, my bar is set even lower than that, I’d even take just a daze. The damage is just so pointless.

Suggested by myself and a few others now, including OP, absolutely, particularly the damage scaling on the traps. Increasing their direct damage scaling immediately makes them good utilities for their traitline, and as a much easier fix than virtually anything else ever suggested on the forums for traps ever.

So yes, I love your suggestions. They need to be repeated over and over again, because they are good, and deserve the devs attention and at least internal attempt at discussion/implementation.

+1

Well, the biggest advantage the Water Spirit is going to have is the ability to burst heal your other spirits (or teammates).

Earlier in the thread, I only evaluated it for personal use, in which case it loses to every other heal we have available.

BUT, let’s assume I’m talking PvP arenas, in a big team fight, being able to give your teammates a decent chunk of health at a given moment, every 10 seconds with the passive, and a decent enough AoE heal (active heals better than the thieves Venom heal I believe) has the potential to turn the tide of a team fight.

That being said, there is a lot can go wrong, and it’s still to early to tell whether or not just taking HS and making a Nature’s Voice hybrid Spirit build will be better team utility (doesn’t sacrifice the value of HS as a self heal, while providing all teammates perma regen with should be better healing over time than Water Spirit unless the spirit scales really well with a Settler’s Amulet).

The biggest usage factor for it will be how well it scales with healing power. If building for a typical amount of healing power (around 600-900) has a 1:1 scaling ratio, their could definitely be some “shaman” or “druid” stylized builds that see play.

Particularly, rangers are starting to look like a decently offensive class with access to Ritualist like support from Guild Wars 1.

Still a niche role though, that doesn’t translate in this game well to larger engagements (aka WvW). Like, half of this games classes don’t typically translate well to large scale engagements though (Warrior, Guardian, Necro, Ele all do, but Thief, Ranger, Mesmer, and Engi either don’t have their meta builds like Shatter/PU/Backstab/BombNades/Spirits for big fights, or are completely outclassed, like Necro > Engi, etc).

I dislike spirits mainly because their passive effects are what preparations from Guild Wars 1 could potentially be in this game, but are instead attached to a killable entity.

That being said, I will be integrating Sun Spirit into my build on December 10th, which will more than likely be this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjEVl19VKWgWCiVBB1ekp+jpXh07UUKSVwmK-jUCBIOCy0CwkHBKPqIaslhFRjVfETtCQxaR1eFER1A-w

Honestly though, depending on how that initially works out, I might opt for just going with the straight up 0/0/30/25/15 “old school” build, since with Mighty Swap, you and your pet can potentially have perma 3 stacks of might AND an additional 5% damage on top of that. Though I’m sure with Mighty Swap and 10 in Marksmanship, it’s about the same amount of damage output from you as the player (the pet probably does more in the second setup).

Still, Sun Spirit is basically our own version of Dhuumfire/Incendiary Powder, but with no precision investment needed. It seems worthwhile to incorporate it into a BM styled build.

Also, 0/0/30/20/20 could be worthwhile to pick up Vigorous Training, since WS 5 is getting nerfed down to 25% endurance regen.

Doesn’t increase build diversity, at all. As a matter of fact, it only makes the meta’s current Apex Predator build even better, and the build itself is the most hated build in competitive to date, besides any warrior (aka every warrior) running Healing Signet.

Every other class got some sort of utility that added to existing utility lines to make them better, or something to take a role the class currently under-performs at and make it better, except the ranger.

I mean, just give me a trait that let’s me play the game afk already, since the lack of required actions per minute for certain ranger builds (like the most popular meta build) is becoming so low, that I’m not even sure you need both hands to play anymore.

Well, if you take all Spirit utilities with the heal, you can now hit the AoE cap, and with the Elite, have more things on the field than what AoE can hit in this game.

Team support aside, as far as a self heal goes, it really isn’t all that great.

Bombsaway.7198:

Definitely, there is a problem with rangers and our conditioned expectations. When you try to play as you expect a ranger should play, you tend to get stomped. This is a whole different sort of ranger. I’m not sure that really was the going in premise of ANET at launch versus players figured out what worked and now you have something that works but is an oddball mishmash.

I will tell you the ranger build I am playing is not the one I thought I would play when I created the character. I really do wish a long range sniper build worked better.

There is not a lot of synergy. Look at how many threads there are on the fixes and the vast number of playstyles (pet v no pet crowd, melee v range crowd, spirits vs heck no crowd). There are so many unique facets to the class that it can lead to this sort of half cooked problem. Traps, Spirits, Pets all ranger. Now that makes placing traits difficult for ANET because you also have the fact that the lines are designed around Power, Precision, Toughness etc etc. So things always seem out of place and like they didn’t think about the full builds and skill/trait synergy. The overflows with weapon skills. What is the logical Spirit weapon? Traps? Typically, different trait lines logically lead to different weapons.

We have great parts. It is the sum of the parts that just lacks a little bit.

Reading boards I find the ranger class is a bit more fractured in terms of what they want. I would argue this is because our class isn’t what people expect a ranger to be and is such a mishmash that naturally you will have 4 people wanting 4 different builds/lines to be worked on first. That makes it tough to fix the class first, but it was a design issue from the start.

Exactly.

Personally, I would go at it personally from a weapon by weapon aspect first, as weapons are easily the biggest facilitators of what build is used.

Example: Longbow. The weapon idea is decent, but the final implementation is lacking. Fixes could either go two ways; making the weapon more defensive and better at sustaining its range component, or through traits and utilities that provide more active defense like condition cleansing and/or protection (we already have 2 damage deterrents, but one is a 30 trait point necessary signet).

Or, make the weapon able to burst damage better. It doesn’t have the best defensive sustain currently, but it doesn’t have a high damage ability in a short time period that’s capable of catching an enemy off guard (like mesmers Greatsword can iBerserker and shatter you for a nice, big hit in a short time frame). If Rapid Fire was either a more “rapid” skill, or a skill whose “fired” shots were much heavier hitters than they currently are, it could make a very huge difference for the weapon, with a very easily implemented number tweak.

I’ll do another, shorter example.

Greatsword: Almost a perfect weapon. It’s just a little too predictable for human opponents, and pets don’t really make up for it because you have to either rely on their RNG actions, or try to choose a pet that can lock down an opponent, which may not always be the best pet outside of that single fuction.

Best fix? Remove Greatsword 4s thrown cripple, and make it an immobilize. Instantly, the weapon becomes much better because you can guarantee some of your otherwise easily dodged Mauls.

It’s just little things like that could make a very huge, positive impact on the class.

Just made a post elsewhere, seems relevant:

“Somebody needs to make a PvP based Ranger timeline video starting with like, March, and show rangers every month with spirits out, shortbow autoattacking, and then make some snide comments about balance and the metagame and esports. It just really, really needs to happen.”

Bombsaway.7198:

Elctro that was very helpful. Thank you.
I do hope you can get both the caster heal and one of the 5 ally heals. That would make the healing quite respectable indeed.

The biggest challenge will be keeping the spirit alive for your big heal. If you lose the spirit, 20 seconds when you were counting on the heal NOW could be a problem.

Why is it called an interval? (Look at the link) vs an effect cooldown? Never seen the term interval being used in GW2 and wiki didn’t have anything on it too which is why I was confused.

But if you trait Nature’s Vengeance (moved to Grandmaster tier in upcoming patch) it means that on the spirits death you will get the heal.

@Thread;

Assuming that this leaked heal is real (I really wish it wasn’t but leaks normally are pretty accurate up until now), it didn’t accomplish opening up any build diversity.

If anything, it helps to further solidify the Spirit Build (petting zoo cough cough) as the Apex predator of PvP builds. Spirits Unbound was moved down in order to make spirits more available to hybrid builds, and then the skill team turns around and adds a skill that makes the prepatch trait layout even more desirable than post patch?

/facepalm

Once, just once, can we get a collaborative effort to get all the teams on the same page? Maybe read the forums and see how the ranger community has been requesting more available and active condition cleansing (easily one of the biggest things holding power builds big since they either need more defensive sustain or more damage) and more available roles to use the pet in (why is it just DPS? Can I make my pet more support oriented, or even condition oriented, since options are lacking all over?) since like last September.

I’m so excited for the PvP reward changes coming on December 10th. It’s just too bad the balance and skills dev decisions keep making me more and more depressed.

Somebody needs to make a PvP based Ranger timeline video starting with like, March, and show rangers every month with spirits out autoattacking, and then make some snide comments about balance and the metagame and esports. It just really, really needs to happen.

Rangers aren’t weak, they just aren’t interesting. There is a lack of flashy looking skills, and the mechanic is just about the least fun mechanic in the game, mostly because it isn’t as interactive as most of the other mechanics, and is kind of just a tacked on AI DPS source that desperately needs some more options to be able to build for (Vigor on Pet Swap is a good start, along with Quickness on Swap).

I’d argue that rangers are actually one of the best survival classes in the game. As a matter of fact, because of the pet and our condition builds, I’d actually argue that rangers have the highest damage build when specced for survivability, and that other classes when speccing for survival either give up more damage than we do, or have to use very gimmicky tactics in order to be as successful as possible, where as the ranger playstyle doesn’t really change much when incorporating a survival based playstyle and spec into the mix.

So yeah. I’d say for most people the class just isn’t what they wanted it to be, because they were used to high damage sniper type characters from previous MMO’s, or having more gameplay options than what Guild Wars 2 provides, even though Guild Wars 2 advertised itself as a “play how you want” game and then forces classes into particular necessary options (rangers: pets, engineers: kits, etc).

Best: Guild Wars 1: The literal definition of versatility. You could play turret style, or interrupts, or use a plethora of non-bow centric builds like stance heavy dagger evasion builds or touch rangers, or trappers, or spirits, or scythes, or bunny thumpers. You could even run support skills for allies and run heal/interrupt support.

Worst: Guild Wars 2: Never have I ever experienced such a horrible implementation of either an archer or a pet class. The pets are terrible at what they do programming wise, and game play wise, they are bland, boring, frustrating, and above all, more limiting to builds than expansive. As far as the archer portion, bows have never been more plain, boring, and lacking of any variety of function. They are either too slow and clunky or completely mindless to the point where you could literally play the game one handed. The utilities are simple and bland and lack defining characteristics that would otherwise make the class feel unique. The most unique utility is spirits, and lets be realistic; they are just warrior banners that can be killed, and can be traited to move. The traits are 50% useless, and the rest are so concentrated in 2 of the 5 traitlines that it’s literally impossible to make the build you would truly want to make.

The one thing Guild Wars 2 got right with rangers is the melee, and even then, the balance is arguably off due to power creep.

Remember that “raising the bar” commercial? Well, ANet, lowering the bar.

Seriously, back in Guild Wars 1 I could come up with great ways to change and balance skills, with high expectations and exact numbers to give for what would be balanced.

Now, my expectations are: “I just want something that works. Yeah, just works. Oh, and not more of the same. Maybe something a little different, the class really hasn’t changed since launch which is bad because every other class has received beneficial patches and rangers were left in the same spot but made gradually worse at it over time. So yeah, something that works, and maybe something a little different. That’s all.”

Shortbow and Sword/Torch or Sword/Dagger is the preferred setup.

In PvP (the builds do translate over to other areas, just easier to explain from PvP), typical builds are either Rabid or Carrion.

Rabid has a lot more rune options, typically condition damage options are used, like 6x undead. Carrion generally tends to run Runes of the Forge for protection up time on top of the health pool to cover for it’s low toughness and make it harder to kill, while helping out with burning.

You can run Settler’s, and there isn’t anything against it. It just isn’t the most common option. My personal preferred Settler’s setup, is 6x runes of dwayna, with Storm Spirit, Sun Spirit, and Signet of the Wild, with the typical 10/0/30/30/0 setup.

RyuDragnier.9476:

My problem with this spirit is one thing, the one thing that would make me get it over Healing Spring…it doesn’t cure conditions. That is the only thing making me go MEH about this new healing skill. We need more active condition cleanses…

Can not be said enough. +1

All I have to say is: Rangers? ANet should have called our class Minion Masters or Spirit Masters, or AI Spammers -.-

I wonder whose idea it was to go “hmmm, there is a significant portion of the community complaining about the ranger spirit build, as well as the necro minion build, and just AI clutter in general, calling them petting zoos. Let’s make more skills that do more of the exact same thing.”

Unless the skill is an amazingly good heal skill, I doubt I’ll even unlock it.

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Xista.7391:

Deimos Tel Arin.7391:

Xista,
the gold earned from participation in casual sPvP and competitive sPvP must be very significantly more than earning gold in casual PvE / WvW or else PvE / WvW players will not bother to check out sPvP at all.

the sPvP player population will remain low.

top competitive sPvP players need to control the gold economy via their sPvP skills, not the gold farmers in PvE.

I would like to see gold only in Team Queue and Solo Queues. Having it in hotjoins could just backfire making it a toxic place to be. People already AFK if they’re losing, and jump out into spectator mode to force auto-balance. If anything, it would have to be a very low amount in hot joins. Probably less than ~5 silver.

5 silvers is too low.
people earn about 10 silvers per southsun survival game of 10 minutes.
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Southsun_Survival#Rewards

PvE dungeon runners, they earn 1 gold from CoF path 1 per day. average 10 minutes as well.

gold rewards from casual sPvP should be much higher than PvE to attract new sPvP players from PvE / WvW.

the message must be clear.
sPvP is the end game to rake in riches.
not PvE farming.

Just want to echo this. +1

Justin ODell.9517:

Well, now that the news is out I guess I can spoil this one tidbit regarding matchmaking. In addition to your MMR, we will also be using your ladder tier when determining who you play against, so as you travel up the ladder the odds of being matched with new players is reduced. This filtering becomes less strict as you wait in the queue, so people can still find matches during low concurrency.

I’ll be working with Josh and the others to get a blog post out and start a discussion about matchmaking in the near-ish future, and we will likely talk about the 4v5 issue at the same time.

What do you guys thing we should do in the meantime while we continue to work on the new server infrastructure, matchmaking, ladders, etc.?

Stricter leaving penalty and an afk report function if possible.

First leave; warning.
Second leave; 10 minute PvP ban.
Third; 72 hour PvP ban.

Any amount over 3 leaves that happens within a given probation period once bans are lifted should result in that person being outright banned from the game, with an appropriately scaled time period, for malicious behavior and intent to harm others gameplay experience.

Personally I love it.

Gold as rewards and leveling in PvE? That’s perfect, especially if it a reasonably good amount of gold reward, and not a trollishly low amount.

Taking my armor from PvP to PvE? Awesome, I suggested this forever ago, and love to see it come to fruition. Not sure about PvE armor coming to PvP, but whatever, armor doesn’t make people more or less skilled players, and there will be ways to show off skill level, so no complaints.

Looks to me to be the icing the cake so desperately needed.

Now about the balance and punishing afk/leavers. Time to get on that.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Well ive been playing Ranger in spvp since the beggining…
Sure the new rewards made me happy but do you know what will make me really really happy?

Build diversity and rework on the current conquest game mode..

Also agreed, I’m in the same situation as you. But at least now, we have a reason to deal with it other than trying to squeeze what little fun we can out of it.

Now at least I’ll be able to finish leveling my last 2 underleveled chararacters, and then take them into WvW when I’m not PvPing to humiliate all of the players there than think they’re good because they can autoattack at you in a blob of people, but get picked off and call whatever profession did it OP.

That and I can finally start making money the way I like to play the game, so that maybe one day I might finally be able to buy a legendary.