Guild Wars 2

Overthrust.2659:

Nothing… a sPvP game doesnt become good just tossing rewards, it needs to be fun, have diferent maps, diferents gamemodes, give you the feeling that you are actually in a league earning respect like in GW1 with the GvG…
Now.. you have to grind the same boring Spvp.
At the very least they are doing something.

Fair enough, I see your point.

I’m just very excited just to know that all of the time I’ve spent PvP’ing (and on my ranger) can finally be used for something. I only have like a million glory, I’ll finally be able to do something with it.

Finally!

Can’t wait til Dec. 10th now.

Taken from the blog post:

“Gold and Experience in PvP

In the December 10th update, you’ll be able to earn gold in PvP as a match reward. As an extension of that, you’ll also be able to spend glory and gold to purchase account-bound Tomes of Knowledge, which grant a level each and will allow you to level up any of your characters. The Tome of Knowledge will be found on a new glory vendor that has several items available for purchase with both glory and gold.

Also in this update, the Skills and Balance team will introduce new healing skills to the game. To acquire new skills, in both PvP and PvE, players will need to spend skill points to unlock them. Unlocking the skill unlocks it for all parts of the game. Going forward newly added skills will require skill points. Existing skills will remain unlocked for PvP."

Now that PvP is shaping up to look like it will be more than just a “mini game for when you’re bored,” how do people feel? With a proper reward system in place, and the ability to use earnings to level yourself and other characters, is this going to be a place you invest your rangers time in to?

Does this change anything for you?

Discuss.

I’m just saying, all you need to be a commander is 100g.

It is in no way, shape, or form a measure of tactics, intelligence, or even ability to play outside of a champ train.

So the next time you see a commander being rude to rangers, just remember that the only thing that makes them different from being a terrible player is a waypoint on the map that is drawing in all of the mindless drones to start a zerg at that spot.

Not that this is true for every single commander out there, obviously. But maybe giving PvE their own commander type tags, and then for WvW, implementing a world rank requirement to be a commander would have been a better idea, so that being a commander actually indicated something to players other than a monetary status.

Aka; just because there are commanders out there and they say stuff, it doesn’t make them right, and it doesn’t make them good players who know what they’re talking about.

Josh Davis.6015:

Patience, young Padawans.

Patience leads to frustration.

Frustration leads to anger.

Anger leads to hate.

Hate leads to….

Wildstar.

JK forget that game, but hopefully the blog post is likeable so I don’t have to take myself seriously and play that crappy looking game over this one because of reasons (idk, better reward system and balance at launch versus waiting a year for a blog post saying it will be here sooner than the next blog post saying we’re getting other things that should have been in at launch?)

Sorry, got carried away with my rhetoric there.

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

Heal as One should remove (not transfer) 2 conditions by default, and it should be turned into a shout so the shout reduction trait affects it, making it a 16 second cooldown with the trait.

Unless I’m mistaken, at this point, Heal as One is one of the most basic functioning heal skills in the game. No additional effects, long cast time, and not even that strong of a heal.

I believe it has the highest increase of health out of all the heals in the game but because it has an absurdly long cast time (just long enough for the enemy to do enough damage to negate any addition) and no effect means it really has no use when Trolls heals for a couple thousand health more over it’s duration and spring cleanses and creates a field.

I’ve tried messing with it recently but it just takes too long to cast to help in pvp but it does work pretty well in pve when you can kite before using it.

What about Healing Surge or Signet of Resolve?

Or an engineer deploying their turret, activating it, and then detonating it, plus the initial regen tick? (this all happens in the course of like 1 second)

Or mesmers with any sort of illusion management and Ether Feast?

Necromancers base heal is weaker than HaO with Consume Conditions, but at least 2 conditions on them nets them a better base heal, not to mention that it’s always a full cleanse.

Granted, I’m not trying to be argumentative or anything. I’m just legitimately asking if we can have a more interesting mechanic to our Heal as One skill besides it being the best base heal for it’s cooldown, because clearly it is the least used of our heal options for a reason, whether it be lack of enough effects, or just lack of being an interesting to use skill.

To whoever (can’t be bothered to quote it or find it atm) said that just tacking on condition removal to the skill isn’t enough, I’d say that’s an agreeable statement, but it’s also a good start. No, it doesn’t fix the Apex Predator trait system we have when it comes to building for condition removal. But it isn’t unhelpful either, and would be a more than welcomed addition to the effectiveness of the very bland as it is skill, Heal as One.

@Solandri;

Thanks for the numbers. Interesting.

I only at this point am using my pets as a source of immobilize to lockdown enemies and lol autoattack spam them to death with the shortbow, and either traps or spirits (mainly just for the burning pressure on my condi build).

With no BM investment, I’m not really sure of the exact DPS I’m losing without Signet of the Hunt, although on trap builds and spirit builds, that extra utility slot is much appreciated.

I haven’t really noticed a drop in my performance since switching away from SotH and to Travelers Runes though, so either people are getting worse and worse at the game, or I’ve adapted to not having the best possible performance available on my pet. Or, spiders are just amazing, except for that irritating poison field.

Heal as One should remove (not transfer) 2 conditions by default, and it should be turned into a shout so the shout reduction trait affects it, making it a 16 second cooldown with the trait.

Unless I’m mistaken, at this point, Heal as One is one of the most basic functioning heal skills in the game. No additional effects, long cast time, and not even that strong of a heal.

Sarision.6347:

As long it truly removes condis rather than transfer them to pet, I’m all for any changes to EB. That’s pretty much my main gripe with the trait, along with Signet of Renewal active, because the design is just so kitten.

I mean, it transfers condis to pet, and we consider it to be condition REMOVAL?!

That’s exactly what I want to change.

Right now, from a balance standpoint, it makes sense that there is a drawback for removing 3 conditions every 10 seconds, because it is passive and requires no active investment in the function other than traiting it.

By making conditions be removed on pet swap, I think the fact that you have to swap your pet out, interrupting whatever they are doing at that time and relieving the enemy of the pressure you were putting on them, on top of not necessarily being the pet you want out at that time, but needing to swap to survive, is drawback enough.

So the literal programming functionality I’m suggesting is this: you activate the pet swap. In that time frame, the current pet, before deactivating, transfers 3 of your conditions to itself. Then, a new pet is activated, and no more conditions.

Also, for anybody reading, that means the default timeframe for being able to do this is 20 seconds, 15 seconds with loud whistle, which is a nerf to how often conditions are removed, in favor of a more on demand option.

So, pros and cons really.

Isn’t empathic bond and our lack of condition removal the single biggest deterrent for opening up builds?

Since day 1, yes.

Bringing it down a tier would definitely be a good thing, and would definitely help open up builds, but ultimately, I’d rather see the condition removal spread around through other traitlines. Skirmishing particularly, aside from trap traits, is filled with absolutely awful options, especially the master slots and Moment of Clarity.

I would love to see some condition removal outside of Wilderness Survival, but I could definitely live with a Master Tiered Empathic Bond.

Not bumping this without a purpose, I want to ask, is everybody okay with my leaving Empathic Bond as is?

Because the other option I’ve been contemplating would be: “your pet removed 3 conditions from you on pet swap.”

Any thoughts? Make the change, or leave Empathic Bond at its current function?

I’m aware of the testing done on the DPS of pets versus moving targets, but now I’m curious, does anybody recall whether it made that much of an impact on spiders? If not, I’ll go and do some forum searching.

Ever since my switch to travelers runes, and especially since they made immobilize stacking a thing, I’ve been using dual spiders, particularly with my shortbow and spirits/traps. I haven’t noticed a loss in damage at all, but that could also be attributed to people paying less attention to the spiders hitting them since the spiders aren’t chasing them around and all. So it could just be visual psychology, since with nothing chasing them, they perceive to be taking less pressure from a pet.

While I’m not outright disagreeing with why the solution is being proposed, I do have to ask:

What happens when a person keeps their pet on passive, then hits F1 to engage a target. Now that it is attacking, I would assume that it would become vulnerable to damage.

But now, how would F3 (return) play into this? Would the pet remain vulnerable to damage now that it engaged something, or would F3 trigger it to lose aggro and become invulnerable again? If so, it could cause some serious issues with players being able to solo any of the games content (that their pet can kill) by using their pet in this way and using F3 as an on demand invulnerability with no internal cooldown.

Just trying to get a refined mechanic suggestion going here, because I do agree that something needs to be done about pet survivability versus implemented content that isn’t pet friendly (like mines being triggered by pets in the Nightmare tower, along with the other used examples).

HoMaki.4813:

@Petrol.9086
im not going to agrue with you, i just wrote my facts.
And it is last rapid arrow, i sad UP TO 16k critable. Its not dealing 16k over 5 seconds, its like 1.2 – 4.1 – 7.3 – 9.4 – 10….. etc crit dmg -> up to 16k (the highest dmg i made with last arrow). Which is over 30k just per that skill, for example.
cheers

You might want to try enabling your “battle” log in your chat.

The numbers in a channeled skill are a running total, you aren’t seeing “damage per hit” displayed.

DeadlySynz.3471:

Giving the pets even everything I listed above still puts Rangers behind the ball compared to other classes because our damage still suffers due to their presence. That and they still die too quickly.

That’s how bad it is.

runeblade.7514:

The problem with that is balancing.

Bombsaway.7198:

Anyone having much luck with the trait that allows cats to bleed on their basic attack? Wondering if it stacks fast enough to make a difference for a condi/BM.

Considering I can go 20 BM AND have spirits in the next patch, it seemed interesting.

I wouldn’t go more than 15 in BM personally, unless the Vigor on swap ends up being super valuable after the patch.

More interestingly, a condi build can do something like 10/10/30/20/0 with a decent amount of crit (around 25-30% minimum) and Sharpened Edges and the gaining Sharpening Stone with opponent at 50% health and with a minimum of a sun spirit and a shortbow just become a pressure machine.

Alternatively with no crit chance (or even with it), you can go 10/0/30/20/10 for Mighty Swap and either the 50% Sharpening Stones trait or, if you’ve taken a liking to spiders for the immobilize with the new immobilize stacking mechanic, pick up Malicious Training, and then just lockdown and pressure away.

But really these four will be your best bet for working spirits into a build:
0/0/30/20/20
10/10/30/20/0
10/0/30/20/10
0/10/30/20/10

And for Power Builds:

20/0/30/20/0
or even 0/0/30/20/20

Now only if we could get both of the trap traits each moved down a tier (at the very least). That would make for some interesting hybrid builds.

Still having trouble finding a trait slot for Signet of the Beastmaster when Marksmanship is so overloaded with useful traits for power builds.

Valentin.2073:

there’s nothing wrong with shortbows. it has stun, daze and evade. it’s perfect for me. clearly, you are underestimating rangers who use shortbow too much.

I main ranger, and clearly, you are evaluating the effectiveness of the functionality of the skills, while I’m evaluating the overall actions per minute it takes to effectively do damage with the weapon.

They are two completely different things.

NO weapon in the entire game should ever rely solely on it’s autoattack to reach peak DPS. That’s very bad design, especially for a competitive atmosphere.

Soilder.3607:

Me thinks those stun wars should be taken care of first.

December 10th is a start to that, but I don’t think it addresses the issue with Healing Signet.

Still, the patch is changing Warriors far more than it is even affecting rangers. Meta builds will barely even change for the ranger, except maybe becoming even harder to kill with certain setups.

The point still stands that the shortbow needs to be made to have more active investment in using it in order to have it do it’s full damage potential. By active, I mean doing something more than just autoattacking for max DPS.

Because I honestly can’t tell anymore.

Maybe the weapon itself needs to be reworked to be a little more active.

But why stop there, I’m sure the class could use a little more shine and polish than just that

Substance E.4852:

jcbroe.4329:

Am I really the only one that wants it to be a stun breaker? I mean, regardless of what the active is, if it were a stun breaker, it would be infinitely more useful to every single build because now it has a function outside of being just an increased movement speed passive.

It would help tremendously with skill bar compression to the point were it would even open up another utility slot that at this point is otherwise being used for Lightning Reflexes or Signet of Renewal. Especially on Trap/Spirit builds which generally need 2 utilities of their category to even be useful, often sacrificing the last slot for either a stun breaker or Signet of the Hunt, which now with a stun breaker added to SotH wouldn’t be necessary.

I’d rather they change our minor BM trait to “Break stun on pet swap” and get rid of the kitten one they gave us currently when they decided quickness on swap was all of a sudden “super leet!”.

I’m not trying to bump my old thread (honestly I’m really not) but I think I address everything I want to see happen with traits here, which I think would alleviate most of the not good ones (don’t wanna get infracted cuz I said something mean about the not good traits other than them not being good).

Here: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Trait-Rework-extensive/

Solandri.9640:

jcbroe.4329:

Substance E.4852:

Actually we did kind of get dumped. His last post was on how he had an interesting idea to address sword rooting and would fiddle with it when he got to the office and then nothing. we have no idea if his idea worked at all or even what he came up with which is rather unsettling since the current sword is working as intended for the most part.

Every single one of the profession pages had a topic from the devs addressing them, and every single one got “dumped” around the same time frame.

They didn’t get dumped. There was a generic post from JPeters thanking us for the feedback, saying he read every single post in each of these profession-specific threads, and closing out the community input on the Dec 10 update.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Dec-10th-Balance-Preview-Updated-Nov-6th/page/35#post3175331

That’s why I put “dumped” in quotations lol.

I just think the ranger community needs somebody to “spearhead” communication with the community. Not necessarily an ANet employee, but perhaps a “top tier” ranger player that actively streams (or uploads) themselves in the different types of content and with different, usable playstyles besides just the “meta” builds.

Guildwars2pvptv has a lot of great players that play a decent amount of all of the professions in the game except the ranger, which just doesn’t do the class justice when there really are no readily available and up-to-date tutorials/guides/videos about the ranger class, except the same players posting videos of roaming in WvW over and over again, which is good, but not an extensive look at the class.

Maybe if somebody like Eurantien would stream or record videos, it would be a good way to show off the class at a higher tier and in a way the would help the community out greatly (though I’m not sure if Eura is a dungeon player or does much WvW, but still).

How about Eura? (if you’re reading this)

Am I really the only one that wants it to be a stun breaker? I mean, regardless of what the active is, if it were a stun breaker, it would be infinitely more useful to every single build because now it has a function outside of being just an increased movement speed passive.

It would help tremendously with skill bar compression to the point were it would even open up another utility slot that at this point is otherwise being used for Lightning Reflexes or Signet of Renewal. Especially on Trap/Spirit builds which generally need 2 utilities of their category to even be useful, often sacrificing the last slot for either a stun breaker or Signet of the Hunt, which now with a stun breaker added to SotH wouldn’t be necessary.

You could always roam in full melee as a power build. If anybody remembers Puandro, this build is an adaptation of his. It has very decent crit ability, as long as the weapon swaps are being utilized.

I left the weapon sigils out, but you’ll want some “on swap” types. Battle is always good, or you could try to put the health steal ones to good effect, or even Hydromancy.

Link: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAR8YjAVV2BWKWsWCg2jMtET+hD/Hi1VY0LWqKJ-jUyAYMB5knyaWUQsuVENWFDmqEQfmUlak9GFRrGA-w

Dardamaniac.1295:

Once i did 8k dmg to a glassy target in spvp with my Jaguar..No BM at all, this was the build….
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQJATRjIV91BWKWs2Bi1DCtf/wUcIG5UgKPlxPlI7B-ToAA1CnIGSNkbIzQyhsDNEZJC

Tell me again a class that can do this kind of dmg in spvp with a Soldiers amulet?
The only problem is that is not reliable..
They need to fix the pets functionality…and skills like signets will come along

I’m pretty sure a thief can, or at least come close, with backstab if they stack some crit damage runes and go 30 in Critical for 100 crit chance from stealth, and take all of the damage bonuses they can stack with traits on top of that.

runeblade.7514:

Atherakhia.4086:

runeblade.7514:

Atherakhia.4086:

runeblade.7514:

jcbroe.4329:

Healing Signet

Every single one of these is useful for both their passives and their actives.

This is wrong.

Healing signet heals for 3k on active.

In 20 seconds, healing signet could regen for 7k.

You won’t regen anything if you’re dead.

I agree, but your point doesn’t back up any arguments.

runeblade.7514:

jcbroe.4329:

Healing Signet

Every single one of these is useful for both their passives and their actives.

This is wrong.

Healing signet heals for 3k on active.

In 20 seconds, healing signet could regen for 7k.

Your assumption =/= my assumption.

So you better explain clearly.

It’s a different type of healing. Yes, the passive heal is more potent over time than the active, but if you need to “burst” heal instead of regen heal, you activate the signet. So, if you’re at low health, you might not have time to wait 20 seconds for your health to come back, so you activate the signet to heal.

Regardless, just because the passive effect is more potent, it doesn’t make the active of healing signet useless. For a warrior, it’s skill bar compression. Rangers have to slot a heal and a signet to get passive and active healing, where in the same scenario warriors only have to slot their healing signet, which allows them to have their utility slot for something else.

Not to mention how healing scales with both classes heals, and the base amount that the warriors regen heals for, requiring basically no healing power investment to be a super useful and effective slot option.

Substance E.4852:

Holland.9351:

Solid Gold.9310:

And as Jon Peters hasn’t posted here for the past 17 days I would assume we have been dumped again.

They only had a short time reserved for discussing the new patch notes. Noone got dumped. He talked about all the classes, not just the Ranger. Jon did say it was a successful experiment, so maybe it will happen again.

Just don’t expect any other changes for the 10th of December since none have been confirmed for the Ranger. It’s not that odd since we almost only had buffs. We only really had Natural Vigor to complain about. I don’t think anyone even bothered to complain about the nerf to spirit actives.

I do hope they picked up on some suggestions for the next patch over.

Actually we did kind of get dumped. His last post was on how he had an interesting idea to address sword rooting and would fiddle with it when he got to the office and then nothing. we have no idea if his idea worked at all or even what he came up with which is rather unsettling since the current sword is working as intended for the most part.

Every single one of the profession pages had a topic from the devs addressing them, and every single one got “dumped” around the same time frame.

It isn’t something specific to the ranger class, and there is a point in time from the devs perspective that responding to a thread isn’t helping any more because there just isn’t anything else to say.

Not that I think the patch is going to be amazing or anything (hahaha I’m actually chuckling in real life. good ranger patch, that’s a real knee slapper).

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Just about everthing other classes get through activating their signet we get in our pets. That is why our signets effect our pet. That seem balanced to me. We could be like engineers and get no signets.

No other class has invulnerability on a signet. Other classes get 1-5 seconds of invulnerability.

Fine you want to be like other classes take out signet of beast mastery make protect me a regular immunity and reduce it to 3 seconds. Now we are like everyone else.

Seems like a nerf to me. But that what everyone else has.

As far as traits that affect signet with the exception of The Ele written in stone there isn’t anything I like. Look for yourself. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet

Signet of Mercy
Signet of Resolve
Dolyak Signet
Healing Signet
Signet of Stamina
Signet of Rage
Assassin’s Signet
Infiltrator’s Signet
Signet of Precision
Signet of Air
Signet of Restoration
Signet of Domination
Signet of Illusions
Signet of Spite
Signet of Undeath

Every single one of these is useful for both their passives and their actives (Signet of Air is a stunbreaker, something that our Signet of the Hunt isn’t).

The only ranger signets that even compete with the usefulness of any of the traits I listed are Signet of the Wild and Signet of Stone, and they require 30 points to be as useful as other classes untraited signets do.

The pets in no way make up for the functionality of any of the ones I listed, especially without Signet of the Beastmaster.

If Signet of Renewal had it’s range requirement removed (aka as long as the pet is alive it works) then it would be our best signet and on the list. But right now their are times when you need the condi removal on the spot and it just fails because the pet is too far away, which is just silly.

So yeah. The only thing I can add I guess is that this is just my opinion on it though, and not fact. But all of the listed signets are much more amazing than what rangers have access to, that aren’t made up for just by having a pet.

Rym.1469:

Signet of Stone effect would have to be adjusted then somehow. 6 seconds would be well…not bad to have, but I doubt.
If they plan to do anything like that, fix “Protect Me!” first. At least stability for both you an pet, maybe protection for one of you to lower amount of damage taken would make it a good alterative for SoS. Other way, be prepared than literally noone would take shout over signet. Especially when you can easily cut cd on SoS ti about 60 seconds with adept trait.

That’s probably going over board on it.

Signet of Stone will become the immunity signet for damage, and Protect Me can become something like “for x seconds, all incoming conditions are transferred directly to your pet.”

I mean, our utilities are basically all versions of all of the warrior utilities, so I see no reason not to give us rangers our own Berserker Stance option.

mooty.4560:

I’d like to introduce you guys to Arenanet. This is something I learned about them during the years of balancing efforts aimed at Guild Wars 1.

Not every skill will be useful or totally useful in this case(since we use the passive just fine). They will even intentionally nerf skills, while buffing others, to change which skills are in meta and keep play styles from becoming stagnant.

I’ve actually found balance to be the exact opposite that it was in guild wars 1. In guild wars 1, big changes happened frequently, the meta was always changing, and new options were almost always being brought up to be competitive.

The hundreds upon hundreds of skills weren’t all getting love, no, but it is a lot of skills to account for, and many of them had duplicate or almost duplicate functions anyhow.

Guild Wars 2 however…. Rangers for example have had the same exact builds since like Last September. Sure the effectiveness of them has been reduced (yeah, really only reduced. Shortbow attack speed nerf, quickness nerf, Empathic Bond nerf, pet nerf), but they are the same stagnant builds with the same stagnant play. Skills are almost never changed, and most of the changes made are so insignificant that the effect on gameplay is rarely noticeable, and it again, never changes the builds.

TPvP being the focal point of balance, the devs said last December Empathic Bond was a problem and that a big part of the rangers problem is that they had to rely on it for cleansing, and it was an Apex Predator problem that needed to be solved.

But really we’re playing basically the same game with the same builds that we were last year. Maybe a few builds have adapted to players that try to shift the metagame and popularize new variants of new builds, or OP perplexity runes get added that make people have to run hard counters, but overall, stagnant gameplay is the guild wars 2 balance teams trademark.

You can always rely on the the stagnant changes, the never-changing builds and gameplay, and the overall lack of exciting patch notes, which initially look good but never make a difference.

So yeah, there’s that.

Chokolata.1870:

A heal affecting both the pet and the ranger is no justification for something being weaker , because pets are actually killable . People need to start looking at rangers as a single entity with the pet being something extra , not a single hero slit into two parts .

Balance ranger as a single entity then tweak the pet to suit it , not remove utility , trait effectiveness and damage from the ranger because he has a pet . I am sick of this .

I feel like I’ve been saying this exact thing since October 2012.

It’s especially true when the pet isn’t even capable of being fully functional in all of the games content, aka insta-dying or almost insta-dying to content implemented with no regard for a class with a permanent pet and damage scaled for the pet being alive and attacking the same target as the ranger 100% of the time.

Josh Davis.6015:

Well, this seems like a great place to ask!

• What runes/sigils would you like to see added to PvP?

• And for any adventurous readers, what different stat combinations on amulets?

I think the best middle ground stat combination a class could possibly get right now is Knight’s (Toughness/Power/Precision).

It might give certain classes power builds the sustain they needed to be viable all along (maybe instead of buffing Healing Signet, for instance).

Agree.

/15chars

Regardless of what the effects are, I want it to be a stunbreaker. At least then it would guarantee that no matter what the function is, it wouldn’t be a totally useless signet that is only taken for the passive speed buff.

Nova Stiker.8396:

jcbroe.4329:

Nova Stiker.8396:

jcbroe.4329:

Daishi.6027:

IMO there aren’t any big “Condition” skills.
Mesmers use shatter 10 sec c/d + clones and easily avoidable.
Thief has Backstabbing combo not super easy to see but out playable.
Ele has one hit wonder easy to see instagib with ovbviois animation.
Old war had 100b.

Sure things like phats for Mesmers and heart seeker are supplementary moves to go between bursts but clear set up wins you a fight.

Condi dosent have this, if one condi stacking move misses it’s fine you still have auto attack and a bunch of other high stack skills, and all with reletively low cooldowns. I think some skills should be designed as major damage dealers but have more of a heavy shave on the other access to conditions. And I think the damage typing in this maner would justify the tankyness and would be balanced with current removal cooldowns. I think this is a simple but not lazy balance. (I say simple but I mean as opposed to major reworks )

Just wanted to say I like this idea and +1.

If they do this, they’ll have to reduce the amount of condition cleansing, which is a good thing.

Preferably making the majority of cleansing Active options as well.

It does however, bring up another issue.

If you force conditions to be more skill based landing, that actually hurts quite a few traits that spams conditions. Traits offer different ways conditions are inflicted. If they get nerfed, how should ArenaNet replace them?

They could be dealt with in a number of ways. They could get a Guardian treatment and become “every x numbered attack applies this condition.” The play/counterplay value being that users of it can figure out when they are about to proc it and then attach it to the skill they’d like to use to apply it, while opponents paying attention will know that their opponent is about to proc it, and react and dodge it appropriately, assuming they didn’t use/waste their dodges on something else.

Another treatment they could get is attaching them to the big skillshot skills. Assuming that these skillshot skills apply unique conditions (let’s say it’s the only way the class can apply burning now is to land this skillshot). Now we have skills traits that are like “the next time you burn/fear/etc (this in the unique condition on the skillshot) an opponent, you also apply x (burning, weakness, etc).”

For other passive procs that aren’t as strong, like the bleed on crit ones, they could be reworked into something like “every x bleeds you apply, you apply another bleed.” The pace of application can then be set by the number of bleed applications it would take for it to be appropriately balanced, and attentive players would be able to take advantage of this and evade/dodge/plan accordingly.

Really though, there is many more ways to deal with it. These are just the first few that came to mind.

More than anything, starting off as a ranger main, and branching out from there, I have to say that as far as cleanses go, I absolutely hate Empathic Bond, and I love the Eles water tree that allows them to cleanse whenever they gain regen, and gain regen by attuning to water. In this sort of example, a good fix for Empathic Bond would be to change it so that it removes x conditions on pet swap.

Just another way to take examples that are already in the game and then apply them as fixes to areas where they are needed.

Nova Stiker.8396:

jcbroe.4329:

Daishi.6027:

IMO there aren’t any big “Condition” skills.
Mesmers use shatter 10 sec c/d + clones and easily avoidable.
Thief has Backstabbing combo not super easy to see but out playable.
Ele has one hit wonder easy to see instagib with ovbviois animation.
Old war had 100b.

Sure things like phats for Mesmers and heart seeker are supplementary moves to go between bursts but clear set up wins you a fight.

Condi dosent have this, if one condi stacking move misses it’s fine you still have auto attack and a bunch of other high stack skills, and all with reletively low cooldowns. I think some skills should be designed as major damage dealers but have more of a heavy shave on the other access to conditions. And I think the damage typing in this maner would justify the tankyness and would be balanced with current removal cooldowns. I think this is a simple but not lazy balance. (I say simple but I mean as opposed to major reworks )

Just wanted to say I like this idea and +1.

If they do this, they’ll have to reduce the amount of condition cleansing, which is a good thing.

Preferably making the majority of cleansing Active options as well.

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

Lately I’ve been testing out a Nature’s Voice build in WvW so that I’m used to it for Dec. 10th when I theorycraft and test some new builds.

It’s a condi Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch, and when I join in a zerg I tend to be the one on the frontlines pushing.

Not saying that I’m up front destroying everything in my path. Quite the opposite, most of my condis get cleansed by an enemy group, and because I’m not bursting them like my necro does for AoE pressure, really the only thing I’m doing is being a distraction and an annoyance and drawing attention from other people in my zerg and keeping pressure off of them.

That’s better than nothing I guess.

I really think you overstate your annoyance/distraction factor. Necro conditions are an annoyance/distraction. Without any real way to spread conditions and our reliance on lengthy cooldowns to deliver AE condis, we really don’t put out any real pressure. At least in the Necros case, they still provide a ton of other things to a group whereas the Ranger doesn’t have those really strong tide turning abilities like so many other classes posses.

No, that’s actually the exact point I was trying to make, that the only thing I’m doing, if anything, is throwing a body out there that’s hard to kill, especially since my condi output can be easily cleansed.

So really, it all comes down to the intelligence of the group I hop into. Do they realize that as long as they keep cleansing I’m harmless, or do they actually devote any attention to me?

Either way, I’d probably be more useful sitting at max range with a longbow in my power damage setup, but then people complain and say I need to be more useful then just max range pew pew.

Just the everyday ranger paradox.

If longbow could actually burst things, and not have to rely on a million hits of sustained damage, nobody would complain about rangers “pew pew’ing.” Just like nobody would complain about our condition builds if ANet had bothered to give us options to keep up with the power creep that is the Necromancer.

Daishi.6027:

IMO there aren’t any big “Condition” skills.
Mesmers use shatter 10 sec c/d + clones and easily avoidable.
Thief has Backstabbing combo not super easy to see but out playable.
Ele has one hit wonder easy to see instagib with ovbviois animation.
Old war had 100b.

Sure things like phats for Mesmers and heart seeker are supplementary moves to go between bursts but clear set up wins you a fight.

Condi dosent have this, if one condi stacking move misses it’s fine you still have auto attack and a bunch of other high stack skills, and all with reletively low cooldowns. I think some skills should be designed as major damage dealers but have more of a heavy shave on the other access to conditions. And I think the damage typing in this maner would justify the tankyness and would be balanced with current removal cooldowns. I think this is a simple but not lazy balance. (I say simple but I mean as opposed to major reworks )

Just wanted to say I like this idea and +1.

Lately I’ve been testing out a Nature’s Voice build in WvW so that I’m used to it for Dec. 10th when I theorycraft and test some new builds.

It’s a condi Axe/Dagger Sword/Torch, and when I join in a zerg I tend to be the one on the frontlines pushing.

Not saying that I’m up front destroying everything in my path. Quite the opposite, most of my condis get cleansed by an enemy group, and because I’m not bursting them like my necro does for AoE pressure, really the only thing I’m doing is being a distraction and an annoyance and drawing attention from other people in my zerg and keeping pressure off of them.

That’s better than nothing I guess.

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

Uther.2538:

Natural Healing is a joke.Seriously 133 heal per 3s?what difference is that going to make.I am not saying to make it 1333,but please replace it with something useful.

For a grandmaster trait, should at the very least equal Warriors Adrenal Health in terms of effectiveness/potency. Maybe a little less than warriors since rangers do have better inherent survivability, but certainly stronger than what it is now.

Why should it be weaker? You’re comparing a GM major trait to a master minor trait. It could be weaker simply because it heals the pet and the ranger, but I personally feel that’s a horrible balance issue making things weaker simply because it affects our pet too.

Not weaker because it effects the pet, weaker because most of our weaponsets have more built in evasion/defensive capabilities than warrior weaponsets, and theirs is dependent on their adrenaline level as well, where as we would just be slotting it and getting regen.

I’m not talking much worse though. Warriors strongest level of regen at base is 360 healing every 3 seconds, so 120 healing per second. I’m talking letting ours, with the 300 healing power gained from the traitline, getting something like 270-300 healing per 3 seconds, for like 90-100 healing per second, and then fix it to make it scale a bit with healing power.

After the last pet nerf, I really haven’t found a reason to put more than 15 points in BM, and I’d very much like to see Natural Healing buffed, and like, every trait beyond those 15 points that I currently consider a waste (all of them except Zephyrs, which isn’t worth it due to its poor position as a Grandmaster).

Uther.2538:

Natural Healing is a joke.Seriously 133 heal per 3s?what difference is that going to make.I am not saying to make it 1333,but please replace it with something useful.

For a grandmaster trait, should at the very least equal Warriors Adrenal Health in terms of effectiveness/potency. Maybe a little less than warriors since rangers do have better inherent survivability, but certainly stronger than what it is now.

Valentin.2073:

what about necros? i think they are fair contenders.

They’re good but I think they lack a fairly defining feature that the other three classes I mentioned previously have.

For Necros, you really have to commit to the the fight. You just don’t have the mobility or the escape utilities to “change your mind” and live to fight another day, like you can with a Ranger/Engineer/Mesmer, or even Thief, which I didn’t mention because reasons (I honestly don’t know, I just find them to be much frailer and needing to be played more opportunistically).

So while you can definitely duel with a necro, I’d argue that more mobile classes are better suited for the role. If anything, Necros function more like nukers than anything. They show up, output tons of pressure/damage, and can be a serious threat if they aren’t dealt with.

May as well just do this now, assuming meta builds:

Warrior: Tank
Guardian: Bunker
Engineer: Duelist
Ranger: Duelist/Support
Thief: Spike Support
Elementalist: Duelist
Mesmer: Duelist/Spike Support
Necromancer: Nuker

That would be my general assessment.

Nova Stiker.8396;

Okay, yeah, we’re on the same page

For a simple solution, I think Dhuumfire and Incendiary Ammo could be nerfed to only be able to proc every 20 seconds. That and/or Dhuumfire should be made into Torment, since Necro already has access to every other condition, except confusion.

Then on top of that, base durations that conditions are lasting, particularly those on auto attacks, need to be reduced significantly. 3-4 bleed stacks should be the maximum that is sustainable through just autoattacking, on autoattacks that apply bleeds.

3 particular classes all have their own quirks.

Necros are good at stacking conditions, but Dhuumfire puts it a little over the top, and then with Terror, you can basically guarantee your conditions tick while adding a new, super powerful tick of fear on top of the rest of the conditions. Dhuumfire changes have already been mentioned, but Terror could probably stand to be reduced in damage, or be made more conditional (scale with the amount of unique conditions more strictly) in order to deal it’s full damage.

Engineers can put almost every condition in the game on you in a near instant, and because of that, have poorer stacking techniques than other classes. That being said, with how sustainable Engineers have the potential to be in fights, the amount of burning they have access to can probably stand to be toned down, mainly Incendiary Ammo, as mentioned earlier, and maybe some duration changes too if it needed to be harsher.

Rangers at their base are probably the most balanced class in terms of base output, and should be made more of the baseline for condition output balance. The issue with rangers, aside from some of the cheese options like Sun Spirit which I already mentioned, is that there are no skill shots to raise the skill ceiling with, making the class a little too simple to play sometimes in a competitive environment, especially particular weapons like the shortbow. Making the class more active, like giving ranger players skill rotations to maximize effectiveness, or something just to invest players attention in and create a necessity for a higher amount of actions per minute would be good.

The original ranger trap build is probably about where condition output should be balanced around though, maybe a little stronger with Necro torment procs and Engi still having more consistent access to burning, as well as confusion.

Just my thoughts though, we all have our own solutions (except ANet who has yet to publicize their solution haha. Not a shot at you devs/mods, just a little humor).

I can’t argue the merits of longbow in PvE. Mainly because it’s PvE and I don’t think you can be unsuccessful in PvE unless you are genuinely trying to fail, because it takes more effort to be bad at PvE than to succeed (this obviously is implying open world, and not instanced, content).

As far as PvP/WvW though, it has it’s situation and it’s uses. My biggest personal use for it is in my power build. Plucking people for 2k hits at 1500 range to try to draw them in closer. I keep chipping them away with Rapid Fire and Autoattacks around the 1.5-2k area, and when they finally get too close after kiting them and playing keep away with LB 3 and 4, I switch to my sword and generally, most people are so low that either the sword kills them or scares them away. I sword 2 back into my LB if I need to, but generally, most people either die before I ever even switch to my sword, or they die to my sword.

Otherwise, it’s sword 2 back, LB 4 to create the biggest range gap possible, then continue the process of chipping away.

Shortbow just can’t do this because of it’s 900 range. At 900 range, most classes can close in on you too fast, and the shortbow is meant to be more of a short range skirmishing weapon to begin with, which means I lose out on my long range utility, something that I feel power builds most desperately need in WvW (unless they have healing power); range.

Top 3 imo are ranger, mesmer, and engineer, in no particular order.

I think that the issue isn’t so much as what the OP is highlighting as much as it is how effective you can burst with conditions versus how effective you can burst with a power spec, and the direct stat allocation it takes to be effective in each category.

First off, condition damage only relies on 1 stat for maximizing DPS (duration is for damage over time). Power damage relies on 3 (Power, Precision, Critical Damage).

Now, sensibly that would mean that power damage, because it takes more stat investment, would have a higher range of damage available than conditions, which only take 1 stat investment.

Unfortunately though, and where the complexity of the situation comes in, is that conditions can be burst, and they can be burst effectively enough that the damage is significant enough to actually making running Power specs, with their less defensive setups, less of an attractive option.
This is because conditions specs, on top of being able to load up a target on almost every single damaging condition in the game in very short, repeatable time frames, also lack strong enough counter measures.

Traits like Dhuumfire and Incendiary Powder, and skills like Sun Spirit, proc a burn for 2-4s every 10 seconds, on top of all of the conditions being put out by a class. What is supposed to deal with that? They are hard to predict procs on very short time spans and the game has a very limited amount of cleanses, and the durations of the burns are so short to begin with that it is very hard to actively react to and deal with them.

What condition builds should be are classes built around sustained DPS through conditions that gradually get stronger and stronger over time, necessitating an eventual well timed cleanse by an opposing player in order for them to win the fight, assuming they aren’t getting outplayed in the “position wars” department. These condition builds should have harder to land skills (aka skill shots with harder to spam cooldown periods) that either stack conditions more fiercely or apply a stronger condition, that introduce the play/counter play mechanic of timing it against players cleanses (do I use it before they use their cleanse in order to get them down to a threshold I know I can finish them off at, or hold off until they’ve used their cleanse so I can hit them with it’s full damage potential).

Instead, what we have now is a bunch of short cooldown, easy to land, strong condition attacks being backed by even stronger passive procs that basically allows players to spam conditions in a burst manner/playstyle, and there is nowhere near enough passive cleansing or enough reactive cleansing to deal with it.

I’m just asking because I only have limited experience with a Nature’s Voice build myself (it’s something I’m considering running in a hybrid Spirit build starting Dec. 10th).

Personally you seem to have a lot of the same playstyle preferences that I do, particularly where you decided to cap your healing power at (I always keep mine around 620 and always run with Signet of the Wild).

So I swapped builds over mainly because I picked up travelers runes but realized I dropped more survivability than I wanted by losing the perma-regen I got from Dwayna, and I ended up with a build like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fnAV0FclFKWwaZAZVAQaPyEzDTcPGF/LELZULB-jUCBIOCy0CwkHBKPqIaslhFRjVPDQfETxaR1eFLqGA-w

Unfortunately the gear isn’t optimized though. The ideal optimization would be more like this: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fnAV0FclFKWwaZAZVAQaPyEzDTcPGF/LELZULB-jkCBIOCy0CwkHBKPSZNTSQsMsIas6jYqVCpKWR2rgIqGA-w

I switch back and forth between Shortbow and Axe/Dagger depending on how badly I think my opponents are kiting me (well played engineers can be a real nuisance).

Overall though, that’s why I was asking for advice and such, don’t let me derail the thread haha

I just appreciated seeing something that isn’t entirely the same as every other ranger roaming video out there (not the players fault, our builds haven’t really differed all the much for about a year now). I’m also quite jealous of the Frostfang, as it’s one of the few legendaries I actually want (I’ll never have a legendary unless it gets easier to make or I spend real world money haha).

Not sure if this happened due to hacking or not, but here’s an interesting little problem:

Ahhh, okay, I thought it was 1000+ healing power because I misread one of the Troll Unguent healing pop ups.

Yeah, I can see how it would help with disengaging. I’ve been spoiled on sword for such a long time that I forget the some of our other weapon sets just don’t have that getaway mobility.

And no problem I admittedly went in skeptical because I was unsure of the success of running a mainhand axe on both weapon sets, and there certainly aren’t that many people that play Nature’s Voice; and if they do they sure don’t make videos.

How necessary are you finding the dire gear? I just recently got around to getting myself a set of it, but I mixed it with rabid instead of apothecary/settlers which is what I’m assuming skewed my results and made me not like it as much since I dropped my constant healing.

I’m curious what you’re reasoning is behind using “Protect Me” in so many of the clips, over using Signet of Renewal more often, or even dropping that and picking up Signet of the Wild for higher constant regen (it looks like you have healing power of 1000+ so it would be worth it).

I see that you also had a preference for Spiders in a lot of clips. I understand the pet choice, but I’m wondering if you think it would be worth dropping the 10 points you have in Beastmastery for reduced Shout cooldown to go 10 in Marksmanship for Malicious Training to make your spiders immobilizes that much longer.

Nice vids either way.

Easiest:
Other Rangers
Thieves
Eles

Hardest:
Warriors (any warrior with a semblance of a brain)
Necros (the condition building variety)