Guild Wars 2

I think the biggest issue that needs looking at is ease versus effectiveness.

There has to exist some skills/builds with a low barrier of entrance that are effective. Those are essentially “training wheel” builds, that are there to allow an easier and more casual experience to be enjoyable for players that are new to the game/class, in order to allow them to benefit the team and provide a sense of contributing to the outcome of the game, while giving them gameplay experience to graduate to the next level.

Where I think we’re seeing the issue is once we examine those specs versus specs that require more know how, more rotations, and more complex strategies.

When the specs that require more skill to use effectively don’t have a higher (or high enough) output of contribution (damage/utility/etc) than the “training wheel” specs, then people are going to opt to continue to use those “training wheel” specs because not only are they easier to use, but they provide basically the same contribution as the harder to play specs, making it almost pointless to even put the effort into playing the harder specs since they aren’t strong enough to be used over the easy specs.

It seems right now that there is a lack of… direction I guess. Really, it seems like there is a lack in understanding of where the middle ground needs to be. There needs to be a level that gets set by the devs where the bar is set where they say “we only want the easier to use specs to be this effective” (preferably lower than where a lot of them are now).

Then, once that is established and the specs that are too strong for the level of difficulty are adjusted down, there can be some exploration into exactly what peak of capabilities they are willing to allow some specs achieve. On that note, there needs to be a direct relationship with how difficult rotations are and how “clutch” performances must be versus the output of capabilities.

tl;dr: Metaphor: A button masher is still allowed to have a degree of effectiveness, but up against a practiced and knowledgeable veteran, the button masher should rarely win; only when the veteran is making mistakes or the button masher gets lucky and accomplishes something skillful.

swiftpaw.6397:

Back to the spvp forums with you, you can go swim in tears over there with the rest of em!

But look at the chart! Lol. The ranger only has the advantage against 2 classes apparently. Which means that there are just a lot of people who don’t play their class to a high enough standard ha. It’s too bad I get infracted every time I tell people it’s a skill issue and they need to L2P.

Natronix.9827:

My ranged ranger is zerk while having tank pets with having all 30 points i beastmastery they almost NEVER die due to their defense and perma regen. Even as a zerk based ranger i can still take a lot of dmg and just regen up, and my longbows rapid fire chained with quickness will take anyone from full hp to down or 20% left unless they dodge or have any invul skill up.

It at falls to your playstyle and skill, i like the current pet system i can easily put them on a target and pull em back whenever i want without having any issue. I really dont understand all the complains about the class

To sum it up; people don’t like having a lack of control of their damage/utility. While crude though, I agree the pet gets the job done.

Still, being able to have control over things like the moas heal, the birds swiftness, or the drakes blast would be that much better, and it’s a real tease seeing that we have good utilities like that with no consistent way to use them at our leisure.

I guess at the end of the day, most people feel in some degree or another that the system is too simple to be as efficient as they feel they have the potential to be, especially when compared to other classes they play.

Ranger will forever be my main though, regardless of the little quirks and lack of features that bug me. Longbow is still the best 1200 range DPS weapon in the game, and there aren’t many classes in the game that can match the survival and DPS rangers can build to have at the same time (with the DPS, I think only like Eles and Thieves can build to have the same sustain with damage output, and that’s saying something because of rangers ~5k higher base hp pool).

Follidus.8027:

Lordrosicky.5813:

That is evident from solo q.

I agree with OP (this is something a lot of top-tier players have been saying for I don’t even know how long), but I don’t think solo q gives evidence for anything except solo q. For example, a team of 3 spirit rangers and 2 necromancers will dominate solo q, but not necessarily against top teams.

The big issue with these builds is that they’re incredibly easy to be effective with when compared to other builds, so when you throw them into a pug environment, of course they’re going to dominate.

I think the bigger issue isn’t how effective these builds are, but rather how simple they are to be so effective with. I’ve been saying this for months, but literally all you have to do with a spirit ranger is spam your offensive abilities. Using your defensive abilities is what starts to separate spirit rangers, but even then you have SO MANY that you can spam them most of the time.

The thing about conditions is that right now they’re effective because they’re being spammed. Not only are they being spammed, but they have access to SO many of them. Ontop of this there are SO MANY condition clears. So basically if you don’t have a ton of conditions to spam, you’re not viable. And if you don’t have a ton of condition clears, you’re not viable unless someone on your team does.

What I think needs to happen is there needs to be less spam, but less condition clears. When Necros don’t have access to burning, for example, then they can synergize with something that does have burning. It turns less into a mindless spam of conditions, and more of a “lets coordinate our bigger condition abilities together when we know they’re out of clears.”

On the flip side it’s currently a mindless spam of condition clearing as well. There’s so many conditions, with so many procs, from so many different classes, that you can’t isolate an ability (ex. engineer’s blowtorch: a long burning), or even from a certain player. It’s “oh, I have a long kitten burning on me, I can clear it now, but I have no idea when another long kitten burning can come” because their necro, engi, ranger, and guardian have either burning procs or aoe burning buffs that are given to themselves and allies. It’s stupid.

With that said other things need to be looked at. For example, CC warriors seem like they’re going to dominate if other things get nerfed. Not only is it good because of the insane uptime on CC, but they can also do a ton of damage ontop of it. A way to help balance this is to make it all pretty telegraphed, (which I know some of it is, and at least I know I can get a lot better at recognizing and reacting to them, but all of it needs to be recognizable and reactable.) but ontop of that they shouldn’t be able to kill certain things 100% in CC all by themselves.

A thief’s steal when traited also needs to be looked at (instant, usable when CC’d, prioritizes stability on boon stealing (or at least it seems like it), and is a 21s cd.) What am I supposed to do against this? I have no idea.

Same thing with stealth spamming and shadow trap. What is the counterplay here? How do I “outplay” someone that plays a sustain build that stealths every 4 seconds? How do I “outplay” shadowtrap when I have no idea where it is, when it’s activated, etc.

Finally, burst needs to be toned down as well. There’s no reason 1 player should be able to “global” someone, or even multiple people. When condition classes come down, there also needs to be a decrease in power damage. I don’t think it needs to be that big, because when you decrease everyones damage the bunker meta just comes back.

I think the biggest thing this game needs right now is for everything that’s important to have a cast time and a visible animation that can be reacted to.

p.s. I like how people engineers argue that elixir R isn’t a guaranteed res, when spirit res isn’t either.

Have to agree with the whole, pushing for more active play/counter play. +1

The best way to nerf (imo the build isn’t powerful enough to need it, especially with the matchup chart on the spvp page) the Spirit Build while keeping it viable but making it harder to play, there is an extremely simple solution:

Make the spirits lifespan shorter than the duration of the cooldown (pvp change only).

If the spirit build wasn’t capable of keeping spirits 100% of the time, more thought would have to go into when to use the spirits, especially if you’re a player that hops off and on midpoint for support. You could potentially get “caught with you pants down” and in that time, that would be when counterplay is available, and it would introduce a skill differentiation where good players would be able to realize when to and to not use the spirits, while not as skilled/experienced players would provide less overall support to themselves and their team by trying to spam them or use them at unnecessary times and then not have them available during crucial moments (this is already exactly how the Elite Spirit is by the way).

Here is your current matchup guide with meta builds: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Meta-Build-1v1-Matchup-Chart-Project-8-10-13/first

Please note that this is the most accurate and up to date match chart, and that rangers have an equal amount of beneficial matchups, if not less than a few other classes.

In terms of tiers of unkillable/unbeatable, ranger is middle of the pack (Guardian, Necro, Warrior, Engineer, Ranger, …)

I think that’s just about /thread, especially since there is already information on topics like this (I just posted a link to one of those sources).

Shaman’s: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnY8fjEVN1lVeVg2BiVBB1ekJzjJ3jSRqTdwvaP-TwAg2CuIATBmDMDYSwsgN8Y5xWg5CA

Forge runes can be swapped out for Undead for damage, or Dwayna for healing.

Carrion: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8YjEVN1lVeVg2BgVBBbPyUTMdPKl0TP4XtH-TsAgyCpIATBmDMDYSwsgN8Y5xeBA

Carrion is for going up against more condition based teams, and is run by a lot more EU teams (for whatever reason) than NA teams. Each build has their merits, although more than likely, if you’re solo Qing/Hotjoining, the shamans build is going to be better since you have higher toughness and people you’ll be up against won’t be coordinated enough to run condition heavy teams.

Just a matter of preference really, I personally switch back and forth depending on the team I’m up against and the team that I’m on/what position I’ll be playing.

thefantasticg.3984:

I like the ranger. I hate the pet. I don’t like John Sharp for what he has voiced about the Ranger on the STOG interviews because its lies.

Until they give me the option to perma-stow my pet, this class will never be great. There has been better pet AI ten years ago. That’s not exaggeration. That’s fact. You can blow hot air until you are blue in the face or deny until you die, but it is beyond a shadow of a doubt that the pet is the Achilles heel of this class. There’s no debate on this despite the blow-hard denialist on this forum that are convinced the pets are worth a dam when they aren’t.

I would love LOVE to have a Ranger and not a Beast Master.

I’m really with you on this one. Myself, being a culprit of not being vocal on my dissenting opinion of the other “loud” or forum regulars. But I think the pet absolutely limits the class.

It’s a fair design, poor in practice concept that is basically just a constant source of damage with toddler skill level management abilities necessary. If ANet were willing to make the pet more controllable by the player, it would raise the skill ceiling away from the floor a little, and provide some comprehensive gameplay, and a controllable pet (just think, being able to control the Moas heal or the Drakes tail swipe) would definitely be the direction to take the class in if the current dynamic is the one that the devs want to keep.

However, until then, the pet is an anchor. It is a mechanic that the devs refuse to touch in a serious manner for the most part, that gets factored into the balancing equation, and then the final product isn’t at all what the ranger community is asking for (as a blanket general request, more viable power damage and more control of things in the players hands. More active gameplay) because the pet had to be factored in to the balancing which then lowers the amount of tools that the devs allow the player to have access to, because combined with the current pet implementation it might be too strong.

I will forever remain adamant that a full redesign should be made, and that the pet should act like other classes F1 (it’s basically like pokemon lol):
-Pet is stowed, out of harms way. F1 brings the pet into the battle, and toggle to a return/heel while the pet is summoned.
-F2 is an ability unique to the chosen pet
-F3 is an invulnerability for the pet
-F4 is a pet cancel. Basically, the pet is out, on a cooldown (exactly how the spirits work). It comes out, it does damage until it’s time is up, then it has to be brought back out. F4 will cancel the pet prematurely and go on cooldown for whatever time was remaining til it could be activated again. The pet being killed puts in on full recharge.

Boom, now the ranger isn’t the only class whose mechanic can also be a liability (name one other class where you can completely disable their mechanic in combat). Instead, players have the option to do damage without their pet, and instead of the players damage being reduced to compensate for the pets damage, the pet is an additional damage or support source on top of what the ranger is capable of.

Notably, it also still allows people to be beastmasters, since there would be an entire redesigned tree to focus on recharge reductions, damage improvements, and mechanic enhancements.

Sadly, we are agreeably stuck with just about the most subpar pet system that any gaming community has ever had to put up with.

It’s unfortunate, and I do think the ranger is in a fair or better spot for the majority of the games content, but that pet system to me is just too simple and also unbelievably inefficient compared to what I will ever want it to be, unless by some miracle the devs are listening to the few posts I’ve made on this topic lol.

Durzlla.6295:

Mesmer AND warrior have A LOT of good condi removal, the problem is those specs aren’t played by the masses because they aren’t “OMGz DMGZ!!”

Keep in mind warriors are probably solid in A because they are balanced around having poor condi removal, IE they’re not meant to have as good of condi removal as anyone else.

I mean, for Mesmers torch isn’t the most viable weapon in the world (one source of condi removal) and doesn’t remove enough conditions per cooldown skill, and signets are the same way, with worse cooldowns. As far as (this was censored -.-) Shattered Conditions go, unless something has changed, it only removes 1 condition regardless of how many clones get shattered. Null Field and Mantra of Resolve are probably the best removal per cooldown for skills, but you wouldn’t take both at once and sacrifice a more useful damage escape.

So arguably Null Field is a mesmers Empathic Bond (only viable condition removal), but that is largely because of condition based the meta is, and because of how spammable condis are, Null Field just doesn’t last long enough or recharge quick enough to be a game changing skill for the mesmer.

As far as warriors go, I feel like you have to sacrifice a bit too much utility to reliably deal with the output of conditions the meta offers up. That utility for warriors at this point could be more useful for sticking to targets, but because other options are needed, it pigeonholes warriors (again, this is all opinion) into very specific weaponsets and trait setups, particularly, forcing every build into Cleansing Ire, and a lot of builds to have to go with longbow for pin down (or build a CC heavy build).

Every class is of course forced into something, but my opinion is that the current options mesmers and warriors have access to provide too little sustain for the mesmer, and too little mobility for the warrior, compared to the outputs they are capable of achieving. How obvious and telegraphed their skills are is another huge factor to where I placed them too, because really you can see what they are going to do a mile away, and classes I ranked higher either don’t have such obviously telegraphed attacks, or don’t have to rely on a rotation to be successful (rotations lead to scripted encounters making damage easier to avoid for practiced players).

However, the entire point was just to highlight (regardless of tiering) that rangers are pretty middle of the pack. They are capable of performing adequately at most things in the game, which is tremendously useful, and people who don’t think that either prefer to heavily specialize or have bought into the perceived power creep philosophy, that even if they can one shot something, if another class can one shot it with a higher number, than whatever they are playing isn’t viable.

Battosai.5620:

think i’ve said it quite a few times already, one change that would adress a lot of the issues currently occuring in the meta with condition providing too much pressure with little to no counter play to procc related traits and abilities ( such as dhuumfire, sun spirit procc, incendiary powder) would be to change the procc chance to 100% with the following conditions being met :
- add a skill icon to the affected players health bar that informs opposing players that his next attack will apply burning ( just like doom sigil f.e. )
- if the attack misses due to blind,block or dodge or some other circumstance the internal cooldown is triggered

this would allow for actual counter play, spam would be less effective and you’d actually need to put some thought behind your actions and count dodges, defensive skills etc. to apply the same pressure you did before.
it’d also help people to see who is actually doing it right – it’s really hard to gauge any skill in this current meta unfortunately.

furthermore – controllable pet skills, make it happen!

I’ve been wishing for a change like that since like last october lol. If we have a game that is so heavily invested into passive abilities and procs, there still needs to be an active way to counter passive plays in order to retain skill vs skill matchups where counterplay is a possibility.

Just having a UI change to show off passive procs would be amazing.

For pets, I think the first step would be to merge F1 and F3 into a toggle (F1 says attack, then toggles to a return. To switch targets, you can just juggle the key to tab target, hit return, then hit attack again). Opening up that F3 to a new control function for the pet would be a great first step towards an improved pet mechanic.

If I was going to tier classes specifically from a pvp standpoint:

S-God
A-Good place
B-Approaching Good
C-Needs work
+-Approaching next tier
=-sitting strong in current tier
-close to dropping, borderline

S
-Guardian (if every team comp uses one, then something about it must make it so necessary)
-Necromancer (insane damage output, fair amount of sustain as well)

A
+Thief (evade spam with big damage, easiest class to play with highest reward)
=Engineer (lots of different options, can fill a few different niche rolls, can have a high damage output or high survival ability)
-Elementalist (They can just about do it all, but are really forced into one spec, and don’t have the health pool even then to sustain in the current meta)
-Ranger (current specs could place into god tier, but overall, very poor access to condition removal in a condition heavy meta which really ends up being the killer, and no active way to deal with them)

B
+Warrior (lots of good options, still doesn’t have the condition removal to move to the next tier)
=Mesmer (strong damage output, but dies when looked at in a condition meta. attacks have been learned, damage setup is obvious, and shatter builds can’t keep the clones up long enough to shatter due to cleave)

In general though, that tiering translates well in a general sense to open world and to wvw. Rangers are really middle of the pack at most things, with a few specialized builds (pvp and dungeons particularly) that have the potential to put them above the rest.

Yeah. To be fair, I personally don’t think the build is overpowered. I would make the argument that it’s too easy, but I feel that way about every build for every class in the game, so that’s just bias lol.

If anything, I don’t think you should be able to put down a permanent boon for your entire team (any class) that is available on recharge if it isn’t killed, with no visible timer on its recharge. I mean, it would be different if you could see the spirits remaining lifespan when you targeted them or something, but the biggest issue the Spirit Build brings in pvp is if a person decides to kill/cleave the spirits, they can die, proc all of their actives (which usually results in 3k damage from storm spirit + 6s burning), and then be summoned almost immediately because their timer was almost up.

That’s really the only thing I take issue with, because in that situation, the person who chooses to use the proper tactic still sees no reward, and is even punished for it.

If anything gets nerfed, I hope it’s only a lifespan nerf, PvP only. If spirits were only up 45 seconds with a 60 second recharge, it would make people have to be more mindful of when they use spirits in a match and more careful with their positioning. They would have to weigh choices like “okay, my spirits are about to be down for 15s. Should I ask my team to drop back in case I get pushed and can’t handle it with my spirits on cooldown” or “should I summon my spirits and win this side node fight, and risk not having them available for my team when I get to midpoint to help them out?”

Of course I’d be just as happy with no nerfs lol. But I get the feeling sometimes that when a class has one really powerful build, the devs let it ride and avoid making any potentially necessary or useful changes to that class just because it has a different tool that already works. Meaning that I get paranoid that because our spirit build is so good, the devs aren’t going to give rangers any goodies for awhile to make other weaponsets or utilities any better,

or worse, our funky, obsolete since day 1 traits that still need reworking, as well as some grandmaster traits, and most pet related traits.

Oh, another honest problem is how much storm spirit is capable doing doing on proc. Sometimes it seems a little too much like free big damage, and it isn’t necessarily thakittens hard to see, but that if all spirits actives are used at once, it kinda just throws crap all over the screen and makes it that much harder to avoid.

Viridi.5467:

First off, I like to play Ranger myself. I’m also all for the “any class should be powerful if the player is skilled” system. But at the moment this is not the case for rangers, in my opinion.

If I play any other class, and I come across a ranger with the spirit-build, I almost automatically lose. They just CANNOT die, and if you magically manage to down them somehow, a.k.a. through the help of a teammate or trebuchets etc, they can summon their elite spirit right before going down just to get back up again before you can finish him.

I’m sure I’ll get a lot of hate for this since it’s the ranger forum. But I’d like this game to be as balanced as possible, so just letting myself (and potentially others) be heard.

That elite spirit is on a 3 minute cooldown, so the likelihood of a ranger being able to use it every single time is very low, and if they are using it that way instead of in teamfights, than it is a poor decision.

Beyond that, other Spirit Rangers (lol I know), BM rangers (a spirit rangers literally cannot outdamage the healing on a BM ranger, as long as they are evading properly), stun lock warriors (spirit build only has 1 really long built in stun break, warrior can stun rangers to death, while cleaving the spirits into nothingness), and necros with their cooldowns available, are all counters to the build.

That being said, there is a general consensus across the board that the spirit build is much too rewarding for the amount of work it takes to make it functional at a high level. That doesn’t make the build OP in the sense that it is powerful and needs to be nerfed, but OP in the sense that it takes too little skill to be effective, and needs an increased skill ceiling to make the build better at a competitive level.

Again however, any changes really need to be split for PvE, and even WvW, as the spirit build just isn’t even remotely as strong outside of PvP.

PVStar.3658:

jcbroe.4329:

Power specs are punished with Protection/Retaliation and not enough ways to remove it. Conditions don’t proc retaliation and go through protection, and certain classes have tons of AoE spam conditions (which can even be made unblockable).

And…

Now condition meta.

Not to mention power specs require 3 offensive stats to do anything, while condi builds only require 1. And….condition meta.

Forgot lol. Though if power specs didn’t need 3 specs, we might end up with like, a Soldiers Meta. Of course, that’s basically what we have now, just condi damage over power damage…
…huh.
sigh

Wombat.3510:

Of course if you nerf spirits, we all know that nobody will use them. You might as well just get rid of them and add more damage to the SB or LB so rangers can be somewhat competitive with other classes.

I think you’d still see spirit builds over Survival or Shout builds for the ranger. Both of those lines are just all over the place with their effects, with some pretty mediocre effectiveness across the board and no real reason to build heavy for them since they have little to no synergy with each other, and are barely effective mixed in with other utilities aside from Lightning Reflexes (whose only use is a stunbreaker).

But I personally don’t think that anything suggested in this thread would knock the spirit build out of the meta. If anything, some build versatility is needed in order to give options to shift the meta. Improve some lesser used utilities, add/move some defensive utilities out of the condition damage tree etc.

What I think we’re seeing is a result of how strong conditions currently are and the evolved need of versatility from builds (instead of just sitting on side point all game with nothing to contribute to team fights, for instance). Rangers particularly just have no need to build for power, and aren’t the best choice for a power build (especially since more damage is sustain damage than burst, which is more easily countered). Until power builds are brought up to par, spirit rangers are here to stay, and other viable/semi viable condition builds will continue to be overshadowed regardless (BM is still perfectly viable, as well as traps, although what traps do can be accomplished by engis/necros).

Power specs are punished with Protection/Retaliation and not enough ways to remove it. Conditions don’t proc retaliation and go through protection, and certain classes have tons of AoE spam conditions (which can even be made unblockable).

And…

Now condition meta.

Castaliea.3156:

jcbroe.4329:

There is no place for rifle within the already existing weapon skills. Between the longbow and shortbow, there is nothing left for the rifle to bring as a unique weaponset.

If anything, the ranger class is desperately lacking in control based weaponsets on the power side. Personally, for nostalgic reasons, I would love to see a hammer.

However, if somebody is creative enough to put the design themes that the current weapons lack into a reasonable skillset for other weapons (aka rifle), there probably would be less opposition to the idea of rangers receiving a rifle, as the core argument against rifle is that is doesn’t make sense thematically (it would need to be similar to the harpoon gun to make sense), and that it would just be another ranged weapon with no unique purpose.

However, if ranger rifles functioned as shotguns, maybe with a basic autoattack, a block/evade, an immobilize, a blowback, and a big damage point blank attack with a possible stun, I might finally get on board with the idea (same tools I would want on the hammer).

Screw it man. Bring back the Bunny Thumpers!

I know, especially because of how little access any class has to hammers. Heck, I’d even take a revived Bunny Thumper build with a mace mainhand lol.

I like the changes, particularly the Elite change since it currently is really (almost, if not gamebreakingly) strong to have so many instant rezzes available in teamfights.

I just don’t think that RNG reductions (or introductions) are enough of a change (though they could be, its an opinion after all). Personally, I would really love to see the lifespan of the spirits be shorter than the cooldown (45s lifespan, 60s cooldown, 15s downtime minimum. That’s my suggestion).

While at higher level play, teams are much more coordinated at taking out targets, so that they can keep the spirits down, as a match progresses, without a reliable way to count recharge other than stopwatching, the spirit build has the potential to get focused, have the spirits killed, proc all the actives on an opponent, and then have them ready to summon again instantly.

Having something that has permanent uptime like that (to me) really keeps the skillfloor low. You don’t have to think about when to use the spirits, you don’t have to have good timing (bringing them out in a teamfight for the upperhand as a good player, versus bringing them out too soon on a sidepoint and not having them available for your team at mid and losing that pressure/help). That’s the part that I really think makes them so mindless, they are fire and forget, and with the exception of the elite spirit (who has a shorter lifespan than recharge), you don’t even have to think about when you fire.

That’s just me though. I could be being too kitten the build lol.

There is no place for rifle within the already existing weapon skills. Between the longbow and shortbow, there is nothing left for the rifle to bring as a unique weaponset.

If anything, the ranger class is desperately lacking in control based weaponsets on the power side. Personally, for nostalgic reasons, I would love to see a hammer.

However, if somebody is creative enough to put the design themes that the current weapons lack into a reasonable skillset for other weapons (aka rifle), there probably would be less opposition to the idea of rangers receiving a rifle, as the core argument against rifle is that is doesn’t make sense thematically (it would need to be similar to the harpoon gun to make sense), and that it would just be another ranged weapon with no unique purpose.

However, if ranger rifles functioned as shotguns, maybe with a basic autoattack, a block/evade, an immobilize, a blowback, and a big damage point blank attack with a possible stun, I might finally get on board with the idea (same tools I would want on the hammer).

Gorath.5076:

Thanks for the builds!
Nice that spirit rangers finally seem to have found their niche in sPvP.
Yet for wvw it’s the old problem of the spirits dying in AoE? You suggested not to take the trait that allows spirits to move for that reason.
But can you use them effectively when you have to summon them for every fight and then can’t move out of their perimeter? I’ve a hard time imagining how this is supposed to work?

Btw: precasting the spirit ress is awesome I only really use the spirit for under water point holding in Capricorn. As a bm bunker you are already a pain to take down underwater. And having an instant ress is just hilarious

Well for solo roaming, I just don’t recommend a spirit build at all. Having said that, it isn’t inefficient, it’s just that the spirits tend to die more than they can be useful, and with the effects of each spirit, you may as well go into either BM or Traps, and you’ll get a very similar survival ability and damage output, where as the spirits damage output can be inconsistent depending on whether they get cleaved (I’ve even seen them get instant cleaved by camp NPCs) or not.

That being said, if one chooses to go solo roaming with them, they should probably take the movement talent.

But since you asked, instances where you don’t necessarily need them moving: zerg vs zerg. The spirits only affect 5 team mates at a time, and if you have a 40 vs 40 going, they are going to insta-die anyways. However, if there is any semblance of organization, the spirit can be planted and people can stack and move in and out, receiving the buff, proccing it on the enemy zerg, etc. That or it can just be placed for backline people that aren’t going to go zerg diving. Defending an area is very similar, if you are up on the walls with moving spirits, the walls can be targeted by a lot of professions, and there’s a fair chance that they well get cleaved down on walls by AoE. However, you can opt to place them just out of range of any cleave damage and still receive the benefits.

For those reasons, I do think the spirit build is more optimally run in small groups, where it can buff the whole group and there are enough bodies to be able to keep enemies focused away from your spirits, or at least have other people to draw fire or aggro away from your spirits.

That’s all just my experiences and opinions though, other people can feel free to chip in!

Bas.7406:

Chopps.5047:

Lol I need the inbox full hint achievement though T_T y r u bugged anet???

Seriously, I’ll clear it out today. If anyone knows how to get that achievement just send me in game PM. Lol!

I meant your forum inbox, but I will catch you in game today or tomorrow. I just remember chopps teaching me about positioning the spirit pets in dungeons, and thinking whoa there are levels to spirit pets I didn’t know about.

Here is a question is it worth it to take the talent that allows the Spirit pets to move with you outside of open world pve?

In PvP the moving talent is just part of the build hands down, getting in for rez range and active range, and allowing you to be a mobile buff for your team.

In WvW, it’s much more situational. I wouldn’t recommend it for zerging or for solo roaming, but I would recommend it for small roaming groups. Solo, you want more selfish utilities, and with evade heavy weapon sets the only useful spirit becomes sun spirit, which isn’t worth going 30 deep for. However, apply sun spirit and stone spirit to a small group and the usefulness increases much more, being able to apply a group wide damage increase and reduction (also frost spirit).

Solo, the spirits, when moving, die much more from cleave in WvW than PvP in my experience (I’m assuming its to do with damage scaling and the effectiveness of meta builds for pvp vs wvw).

Depends, there are 2 generic builds being run right now, and the split in popularity really does seem to be a NA/EU split.

In NA, most of the rangers were/are running this, give or take variations: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnY8fjEVN1lVeVg2BiVBB1ekJzjJ3jSRqTVwmK-TwAg2CrIaS1krJTTymsNN8Y5xWg5CA

In EU, this is the more popular setup currently: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8YjEVN1lVeVg2BiVBB1ekJzjJ3jSRqTVwmK-TsAgyCpIATBmDMDYSwsgN8Y5xeBA

There’s pros and cons to each, and there are places that each perform better or worse in. The Shamans version is more support oriented and less self sustain oriented, it allows players to play up close and personal, putting out lots of pressure, while having decent healing that can benefit the whole team. Because of the healing, it has more support options going into teamfights.

Carrion however, allows users to build high vitality to counter the condition meta. With forge runes, you get 3s of protection on dodge roll, plus another 15s of protection when player health hits 50%, With a fairly decent armor rating, a huge health pool, and strong condition damage with a decent power boost, the build is made more for sitting back and poking with the shortbow, while using the sword/dagger set as an evade heavy set with a decent powered auto attack due to the power boost. This build has lots of personal defense and is capable of beating any other spec 1v1 (skill level argument is there somewhere), and is best suited for roaming, and helping teamfights when needed.

Both builds have their strengths and weaknesses, it really comes down to preference. Though my opinion is that running Shamans is only going to be as effective as a team is organized, because running it imo doesn’t benefit the ranger player nearly as much as the other option.

Miflett.3472:

jcbroe.4329:

Just my two cents on it. Arenas wise, it is the most viable build given the meta, capable of covering more ground than what most of our other tools can accomplish, which really is only indicative that other utilities and build options need to be worked on a bit (power builds still aren’t viable in top end competitive play).

I like your view on it; very balanced and cautious attitude about things without pretending like every new build is the next best thing (only to get nerfed each patch after its discovery). Power builds really do still need some love.

Yeah, I think the Spirit Build is going to get nerfed after the Pax tournament (so sometime in September), though I don’t think they are going to nerf the effects of Spirits directly.

If anything, it’s going to be a damage nerf to storm spirits active, a nerf to spirits being able to proc the passive effects of each other with their actives, and/or a reduction to the 60s lifespan spirits have so they can’t be kept up indefinitely.

Any of those changes would be completely called for in PvP, but they would need to definitely be split of ANet even remotely wants spirits to stay viable for PvE/WvW.

Although I am liking that there is a large portion of the (vocal) PvP community basically saying to make rangers spirits like banners; untargetable so they can’t soak up damage meant for the ranger. I mean, hey, if that’s what the community pushes for as a nerf to the build, I think rangers will just sit back and let that one happen lol.

It’s a very strong build. Being able to proc team wide protection, and team wide burning onto essentially a single target is a very strong tool to take to a team fight.

Something that definitely needs to be given some consideration is why its so strong meta wise (condi cleave meta). With so much AoE being able to be put down onto areas (especially cap points), in an organized team, being able to throw up 3-4 more targets on a point, plus your pet AND you (5 targets without the elite) is incredibly helpful to the team in order to stack and soak up AoE damage for the team (due to the AoE 5 target limit).

It’s actually turned the ranger into a teamfight and midpoint profession; something that people originally thought the ranger had little to no use at doing (it really doesn’t outside of the spirit build).

I do want to address the idea a lot of the competitive community seems to think: the build is OP. Well… it isn’t. It’s only strong given the meta. If there wasn’t so much cleave damage, in and out professions (like thieves, mesmers) would be able to get in safer, take out the spirits the instant they are summoned (already the best strategy, but not that safe with all of the cleave), and render the build useless. However, because of all of the cleave, classes that are capable of doing that are forced to run builds more survival centric in order to make the meta more playable for their profession, leaving most classes without the ability to deal with the spirit build.

Just my two cents on it. Arenas wise, it is the most viable build given the meta, capable of covering more ground than what most of our other tools can accomplish, which really is only indicative that other utilities and build options need to be worked on a bit (power builds still aren’t viable in top end competitive play).

The reason I can imagine for not keeping the winning team together is to discourage quitting. For example; somebody’s team loses, the Q up again, and get paired up against the same team that just beat them (not a statistical impossibility). That person recognizes it, and quits out of the game early, having already been beaten and not wanting to go through that experience against the same team again.

IMO, it’s to make the experience for everybody a source of continual enjoyment, and to make the least rage inducing experience possible.

The Spirit Build is considered the best in high level competition right now, and is the one you’ll probably see the most of in this weekends MistLeague NA qualifiers.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8YjEVN1lVeVg2BgVBBbPyUTMdPKl0TLYTF-TsAgyCpIATBmDMDYSwsgN8Y5xeBA

Storm Spirit is mainly being used for its active (which averages around 3k damage and can crit). However, some players have been dropping Storm Spirit for Signet of Renewal, depending on the enemies team composition/personal preference.

I’m with Chopps on this one, I find the sword to be one of the more interesting weapons in the game, and it works very well at what it does, allowing you to stick to a target and deal continual DPS without allowing them to escape easily.

I’m extremely happy with it having a learning curve, and not just being another one of this games faceroll DPS, hit one button and dodge when needed weapons.

In a sense, and yes I’m aware this is a two sided argument, but removing the current function would take the fun out of the sword. Now (I have autoattack turned off) I have to actively engage my targets, ready to dodge and stop pressing attack at any given moment, or use my evade/escape. Remove that, and people will do exactly what they do with shortbow; 1111111111111111111111, but not even pressing it themselves.

There isn’t much easier the rangers weapon skills can get. I personally enjoy the learning curve. I know that other people don’t and you won’t hear a complaint out of me if things do get changed in the future. I’m not here to disagree with what people want, I just wanted to express why I enjoy it as it is, as its uniqueness hasn’t lost its entertainment value (even though I’ve been using it since launch).

Atherakhia.4086:

The longbow change was inconsequential in my view of things. Do you think ANet came up with the idea of stealth first or the remorseless trait first? I think remorseless came first honestly. The stealth is simply too clunky to use effectively because it’s so unreliable. The vulnerability on Rapid Shot makes sense logically, but it doesn’t really work out practically. And we’re still left with a Rapid Shot that needs a second trimmed off its duration.

The shortbow nerf I find the largest insult to this class because a lot of people out there use shortbow #4 and #5 to help kite. While the intended purpose of #5 is an interrupt, the travel time and unrelaible nature of shots can be a detriment on those clutch heals, fears, stuns, etc you’re trying to interrupt. When they reduced Shortbow’s range to 900 to match the axe, you left the 2 weapon sets being almost identical. A ranged snare, an AE condition, and an auto attack. With the changes, they should have removed the facing requirement for Shortbow’s bleeds and even with this, Axe is still probably a stronger overall option.

Now you’re right, a lot of the weapons have strong defensive options, but not every weapon for every class is split along these lines. There’s nothing wrong with expecting a class to switch to another weapon set when things are looking bad. Especially when one of those weapons is a Ranger’s greatsword which would probably be the most overpowered weapon in the game if it were given to any other class.

As to the traps, you’re right… some variety is nice to have… but the 3 traps are excessive. There’s no reason to have all 3 and Frost is the least used of the bunch (by me). When this class has such an obscene lack of AE and burst damage, having skills that are all functionally the same are among the first things that should be dropped to add it.

I’m going to derive one of the very good points you made, because I think it really needs to be said, rangers have a real lack of meaningful AoE damage outside of traps (and most classes don’t have to resort to their utilities for their AoE damage).

The ranger is one of the few classes that (imo) doesn’t bring anything in place of that lack of AoE. Other classes (particularly thief, who is extremely single target oriented with most of their attacks) bring high burst damage or control abilities for offensive compensation, which is something that the ranger class just hasn’t quite managed to tweak out yet. That means, that when looking to be in a group, all things equal, the group will choose the class with the better AoE capability.

Since ranger lacks (or has extremely niche) group support, they get thrown into the mix with other damage dealers (who can also support at the same time, but that’s besides the point), and those other damage dealers almost all bring better AoE to the table, and when they don’t, they bring higher burst. It really leaves the ranger unable to compete for a role in a group at times.

It’s even prominent in PvP; there’s a reason why rangers are choosing to go Spirits (it isn’t just strong for them, but for their whole team), and why that even then, they are backpoint holders/roamer/far point assaulters, only participating in teamfights when necessary. Rangers are amazing duelists, and one of the better PvP classes, but that in itself is because of the specific role they can perform, which doesn’t really translate at all into other gametypes other than WvW roaming.

I don’t think the issue lies with retaliation, I think the issue lies with not having any reliable ways as a ranger to remove retaliation. Boon Removal/Punishment is one of the biggest features of a lot of successful power builds (the other being poison access to suppress healing on bunker, for bunker buster style builds), and rangers are in desperate need of it.

Leaderboards are most likely going to be largely similar to Call of Duty leaderboards (not necessarily representative of skill, but of overall experience with the game, and the ability to win).

Leaderboards are terribly vague (and therefore not a good indicator) and don’t represent everything a player brings to s match, so there really shouldn’t be any reason to fret over them for Solo Q. For instance, they don’t (and have never) indicate amount of kills per game (or damage points dealt), there’s no on-objective percentage, or objective captures, or secondary objective participation numbers.

So, while there will be a large portion of the leaderboards that will be representative of skilled players (probably top 100 or so), it will more than likely need a larger sample size before people can be distinguished between the actual “good players” and the people who are being carried by said good players towards victories. Over time, the amount of players getting carried should go down based on matchmaking logic, which would stabilize the leaderboards, but that also has a requirement of a large enough amount of players participating.

I would assume though, that eventually, if you play seriously and take it seriously, you will be matched up with like minded players, and if you don’t player seriously or take it seriously, than you will be matched up with those players. That is the ideal scenario, but I’m also going to assume that the system has to be fed a large enough sample size for that to happen.

Atherakhia.4086:

The ranger has a bad reputation because of how straight forward its gameplay is. If you really think about what you do while playing a ranger, 90% of it is running in circles spamming autoattack all day. The melee weapons aren’t much different really as a lot of the strength in sword/greatsword is the auto-evade mechanics and not so much their side effects.

I was very disappointed in particular with the shortbow nerf when they dropped it down to 900 range. The weapon is almost identical to axe, and since I have a thief and warrior among other chars, I still don’t understand why it needs directional placement for bleed stacking.

The class is just very boring to play and a lot of people equate the shallow gameplay to the class being more faceroll than skill. Class really needs a lot of work to make it ‘fun’ imo.

That’s another part of it, definitely. The biggest thing that I think the ranger classes weapon skills lack is damage increasing skill rotations. Stunning into damage, knocking down into damage, etc, in general, rangers lack burst skill on weapon sets. The damage is very sustained, and because it is sustained, even the available rotations are boring, or provide little overall positive effect to compensate for completing them.

I’m a huge advocate for making the gameplay more active/interactive. It is my number one most requested change to the class.

I do just fine with my auto attack turned off, and haven’t experienced a DPS loss, other than the trained practice of hitting dodge instead of queing up another attack. There wouldn’t be a single ranger in this community that would complain if the ability to dodge during the attack chain was changed to become more reliable.

Seeing as how I’m not the one coding the game, I can only offer tips to make the experience a bit better.

Around 600 healing power (like 610-620) is the first time you’ll get 100+ hp per tick of SoTW. It’s a good place to start imo, if you’re focusing on healing. If not really focused on it but still want the bonus, my personal point for it is around 400-500.

This has always functioned like this. Essentially, the best way I can describe it is that even though rangers cast Entangle as a pbAoE, the vines themselves are like their own AI entity (thus making them targetable, etc), and their attack is a single target attack. That means that when a player stealths, it does to the vines what it does to the player, and it drops the target.

That means, that the vines can no longer target that player until they come back out of stealth. It has always worked like this, although I don’t believe anybody has ever made it a point to call it a bug before, since from a mechanic perspective, everything that is described is working as intended (no broken mechanic), but because the attack itself is unique, it seems to be broken within that unique niche, as stealth really shouldn’t be a direct counter for the only pbAoE rangers have.

Turn of the auto attack. You can dodge better, time attacks, and not lose DPS if you can press the attack key about once every second or two.

Paz Shadow.9715:

To add to all of this, the OP touched on a very important note. All things considered (where ranger has been in the past) we are in a pretty good state right now. There are a few builds out there that are nice, and it seems as if the devs are pushing the rangers in the right direction.

All that being said, there is one issue with the ranger that really sucks the fun out if it: its image. The ranger has one of (if not the) worst reputation in the game. Sadly I don’t think this is anything that will ever change, since this image of the ranger has been building up in the GW2 community for such a long time now. Anyone else agree with this?

Absolutely. At times, I tend to find that the ranger community does it to themselves though. If you were semi new to the game, and were looking to explore classes without having to make a new character and invest too much time to find out whether you like it (looking for endgame experiences to know what you’re working towards), then logically, you would jump onto the forums where people are discussing their class and how it deals with content.

Jump onto the ranger forums, and maybe 20% of the threads are positive and constructive (and that’s generous, because even if they start that way, it ends up turning into complaining, crying, negativity, and dev trashing 90% of the time), while the rest of the just ooze negativity that, when summed up, gives off the impression that the ranger is a bad class.

When the loudest advocates for rangers being in a bad place come mostly from the ranger community, it really tends to spill into the rest of the game, and give the rest of the community that perception, especially when most of the community won’t invest the time into the class and is willing to just take the ranger communities word for it.

Not every player is negative, but there are enough threads and enough people at it in every thread, that the positivity gets lost, and the perception therefore continues. Look, how Chopps posted a video of a world record speed run for rangers, something extremely positive (and awesome), and it gets lost to all the complaint threads.

It’s just… sad.

NinjaSonic.1392:

Oh no I’m not complaining about precision/crit damage being in the same line, it’s fantastic. Just the traits in that line are really bad. If you’re not running traps there are no good grandmaster traits to take.

I completely agree. There really aren’t any good adept tier, or master tier traits for power builds to take either, except for maybe niche builds that use Honed Axe (10% more crit damage with axe in mainhand). Skirmishing is heavily bogged down by traits that affect pets, and the Beastmastery line is filled with mostly useless (more useless than the pet traits in Skirmishing) pet traits.

I’d say, in a list form, these are the traits that need to be reworked/moved:

-Pet’s Prowess (could easily be Master/Grandmaster in beastmastery)
-Trappers Defense (one of the least useful “on revive” effects. Guardians get Sanctuary… -.-)
-Companions Might (this one is iffy, as it actually functions with rangers having crit chance, so it kind of makes sense here)
-Agility Training (this could easily replace Instinctual Bond without breaking anything)
-Carnivorous Appetite (perfect for Beastmastery line, since only the pets own crits heal them, and BM increases pet precision)

Traits to remove entirely:
Moment of Clarity (put the +50% stun/daze on a minor grandmaster somewhere, maybe the attack of Opportunity for the pet on pet swap in Beastmastery, and then open up this grandmaster trait for a new, more useful to power builds option)

That would probably be the most ideal rework I can foresee. It would leave a lot of options for things that could be beneficial to power builds, without killing any current builds, or making anything OP.

I don’t know, 30 WS is a godsend for a lot of ranger builds. In one traitline, you can make every weapon but bows better, increase dodging, decrease taken damage through armor, protection on dodge, and bark skin, grant vigor, potentially AoE vigor, add a passive stunbreak, deal with CCs, and remove conditions, all the while increasing Condition Damage, which in itself is a separate source of damage that isn’t pet reliant, and gives rangers 40 more trait points to do whatever they please (You can essentially go Signets, Traps, Spirits, and BM, all with 30 Wilderness Survival).

There are many other reasons to go 30 into WS, more condi removal is just another perk, and also allows player to build offensive and defense at the same time. Not too shabby.

1) Traps are fine where they are; having to sacrifice our strongest defense trait line for traps would completely destroy current functional builds.
2) Lots of classes would LOVE to have their precision and crit damage in the same line. Rangers are one of the lucky few that get that consolidation.
3) Spirits aren’t being toned at all due to how strong they are in PvP. Expect bigger changes to them in the next coming months, as with ANet having their 10k tourney and Spirits being the meta build, it’s bound to be on the devs radar.

-Skirmishing, more than anything, just needs some trait changes to make it more “power friendly.”
-There are many traits spread out across the trait lines that aren’t even considered in 90% of peoples builds. Before any of the current effective traits are changed, those traits need to be reworked/replaced/consolidated in order to create some more function, interactive, build bolstering, and useful traits, that don’t seem like they just came out of meta.

That being said, those are just opinions. But Traps REALLY don’t need to be in Wilderness Survival, because WS already suffers enough as it is with lots of strong defensive traits and already having a tough time between picking strong traits. In the future, if the condition removal gets spread out a bit better, then maybe the traps into Wilderness Survival would be a good choice. Until then though, 30 Wilderness Survival is a necessity to any build that doesn’t want to melt to other classes (unless people want to fight extremely uphill battles), and just throwing traps into it as is would basically just kill the trap build for most people.

To add to another part of what’s missing to the whole pet mechanic; useful traits that interact with the pet. Most of the Master tier traits for Beastmastery are completely and totally useless.

(Slightly offtopic) In fact, Beastmastery seems to be competing with Skirmishing for “trait lines mostly used for their passive effects” (unless with the Skirmishing example you’re running traps).

Dumping 30 points into Beastmastery doesn’t really increase functionality or improve mechanics at all, and barely provides any interactive benefits other than maybe Zephyrs Speed. This is a HUGE part of the problem (imo) because all Beastmastery really serves to do is increase healing and make the pet hit harder, which, while valuable, provides a lot kitten nuses than what most other classes mechanic specific trait line offer in terms of affecting gameplay, which leaves the whole entire pet system feeling stale, knowing that traiting for pets is only maybe increasing their survivability, and shaving seconds off of their kill times on motionless targets.

Besides my 2 cents on it, I’m entirely agreed that the pet system is in need of mechanic reworks.

Leap backwards on sword 2, 180 turn, leap forwards. Even without swiftness, if you can practice doing this on cooldown, you’ll end up having more mobility than most classes in the game.

Swiftness is always useful as well. So depending on the situation, you can either drop a spirit for signet of the hunt outside of fights for mobility, or you can carry a warhorn for the swiftness boost.

Overused != Overpowered.

More so, if something is being used a lot, the argument exists that it could be overpowered, but the similarly, the argument also exists that the condition of the rest of the game is forcing the overused option to be utilized.

You can’t just look at one thing and go “it’s being used a lot, it should be nerfed.” It’s a trail that needs to be followed back to find the reasoning behind why something is being used. If classes are using it as their only viable source of condi removal, then maybe that classes inherent condi removal should be increased before the runes are nerfed.

Many classes that are using Runes of Lyssa would prefer to be using better runes for their spec, like higher damage runes, but simply can’t because of the lack of condi removal in a condition heavy meta.

Arguably, the current meta either needs to have condi spam reduced, or condi clear increased, and the use of the runes of lyssa is just a symptom of the meta.

The problem with the rifle is that it would not have a unique function among the weapon sets already available. There is already a ranged power weapon and a ranged condition weapon.

You’re not getting a weapon that doesn’t have a unique function or purpose. There are an abundance of other classes to play if the weapon is more defining to you than the actual mechanics behind the gameplay.

/thread

Yeah I don’t even see how people are this bad. It extends beyond game skill issues…

Huh, I’m having the same issue…

Shortbow in WvW does seem pretty hard pressed to find an ideal role.

The only unique role it has currently is probably in tpvp for people running Spirit Builds, so that they can maintain range while keeping their Spirits up and out of cleave, poking opponents to try to land the bleed and eventual burn. I’d say it’s very similar to the way thieves use their shortbows in fights.

QtHman.6502:

All this RAGE AND MADNESS….

Incoming Sparta joke lol

The best out of 5 should have been disputed going into the matchup; this is not the time or place to be doing it.

It was apparent that each team agreed to that set of rules, and while the tournament may have not been run to the best of standards in some peoples opinion, there were opportunities to disagree and use the support that people are showing (rules page) listed here.

As of now, after the results, its easy to have some hindsight to find arguments as to what should have been different, and how you feel slighted. It isn’t that bad points are being made here either. Even if I asked “would this argument even exist coming from the same OP if the other team had won,” the answer would most likely be some sort of escape in order to try to give the image that no bias is a part of this argument.

Again, there are good points that are being made, but the time and place to be making them has already passed (it passed when both teams went through with the entire matchup).

Durzlla.6295:

Ugh no, if I wanted to be an engineer I’d be an engineer, I chose ranger for having my pets.

Granted, I wouldn’t be opposed to us summoning the pet (does the F2 immediately) and then helps us fight for X seconds before leaving, that would be totally fine in my book.

I wish this was the mechanic more than the current one though. +1