Guild Wars 2

I’m looking forward to making a power/healing hybrid in PvP with a Valkyries Amulet with the longbow, but I can’t do anything until a fix goes out for this.

^Totally agree. The game is in need of polishing.

Star Ace.5207:

jcbroe.4329:

It really has been beaten to death. Truth is, there is an argument for both sides, and no matter how many people want to be able to save names, there are just as many players that are fine with the current system, or that just don’t care.

Ultimately, if doing the change impedes the dev team from providing other updates that would actually affect gameplay and not just be aesthetic (name saves are aesthetic and don’t affect how the game plays at all), then it should be a last priority item.

However, if it would be a different team (a content team versus a balance or design team) that took over the job so that the balance team could continue to roll out more important changes, then it can’t hurt the class.

Really though, there isn’t an issue, because you can already change the name of the current pets you’re using, which should be enough for now.

Then the naming system is flawed and should be rightly removed (especially since many players don’t care about naming pets, as you say), because there’s no point in it. I am not trying to be mean to developers, but if the pet name is going to be deleted as soon as you switch a pet, it’s rather pointless. In fact, this wouldn’t be an issue if there wasn’t a way to name them in the first place, which was probably the better design decision given the supposed limitations in the current naming system (to be honest, I don’t believe it will “produce lag” at all if properly fixed/redone.)

Also, the logical conclusion about balance in this game is that it would be a perennial work in progress-meaning that the flaws in the pet naming system will NEVER be addressed, because there will ALWAYS be higher priority issues in the game.

At least the generic names for our pets on GW1 were better than in here (and no, I am not a “GW1 always did it better!” player.) Hearty Pet (for instance) sounds much better than Juvenile Pet, especially since it probably is no longer a Juvenile as it travels with you.

WvW has options to show even your own team members in generic colors with generic animations, and opposing team pets are shown with the tag “Enemy World Beast”, so I don’t think it would be a problem there, or else where. Which shows that it’s a fixable problem, but thanks to many players who don’t care enough-as proven on this thread-they will never pay someone to (which is as many team members as it would probably require) to try and fix it for game polish’s sake.

Of course, I don’t mean any offense to those who don’t care about naming pets at all, but it IS selfish to say that because it’s an “aesthetic” choice that doesn’t affect gameplay, that the issue should be set aside and accepted as a perfectly working system, because it isn’t, and they know it. Many players do take way more than ten seconds to name their pets (I often do a quick research online to find out a proper name for it, according to the nature of the pet and its role with my ranger.) So don’t personally care about it, but it’s an issue that deserves merit, and claiming that there are “better things to fix” just means that it will never be addressed, as it should.

I didn’t mean it as an issue that doesn’t deserve merit. I guess I wasn’t clear. I mean that it doesn’t deserve any priority if it is being handled by the balance team.

If another team that isn’t in charge of improving gameplay mechanics and balance mechanics is in charge of it, then nobody should be against the change at all.

More so, the only issue where I think players should take issue is how ANet would choose to use their allocation of resources to take care of the issue, because there is a way the would clearly provide the most benefits for rolling out changes for the ranger class, if the resources allow.

I’m in total agreement that the current system isn’t a well thought out system. But I’m also not going to demand that it be changed immediately because I don’t know what resources the dev team has to handle the issue. Also, before it is said, I do also agree that the game should not have launched with problematic or poorly instituted systems and mechanics, but I wouldn’t know the business details about why that decision was made, so I’m personally choosing to deal with and and salvage the amount of enjoyment I can get out my gaming experience, in hopes that improvements come in the future.

It really has been beaten to death. Truth is, there is an argument for both sides, and no matter how many people want to be able to save names, there are just as many players that are fine with the current system, or that just don’t care.

Ultimately, if doing the change impedes the dev team from providing other updates that would actually affect gameplay and not just be aesthetic (name saves are aesthetic and don’t affect how the game plays at all), then it should be a last priority item.

However, if it would be a different team (a content team versus a balance or design team) that took over the job so that the balance team could continue to roll out more important changes, then it can’t hurt the class.

Really though, there isn’t an issue, because you can already change the name of the current pets you’re using, which should be enough for now.

Godofallu.2935:

I will admit that the casters usually don’t do that great of a job. I mean i’ve seen them miss lordpushes more often then actually notice them. That said they’re there doing this for free for the community. Who else wants to volunteer so much time?

It’s not that bad and it’s better than nothing.

I don’t blame the casters at all personally. In most cases, I blame the overbearing amount of graphical effects that are occurring on the screen at one time, and the lack of visual indicators to show spectators when passive effects are taking effect or being procced.

Just an overall issue of “combat clutter.”

It doesn’t make sense because its a weapon that wouldn’t have a unique role within the current weaponsets. And having 2 weapons the serve the same function is pointless.

Reading through everything, I get what all you guys are saying. It doesn’t necessarily indicate a need for the reduction in ability (though why the Spirit has the potential to do 2 on demand rezzes and a third on death does seem a bit much, but maybe not after this next part).

It sounds like the best change would be to reduce its health pool. The Spirit itself offers an interesting (idealistically) concept in that it can be an elite than can be countered with a quick enough counterplay. So objectively speaking, if what you’re saying (in terms of the difficulty of killing the Spirit) is true (or the overall consensus), than it absolutely needs to be an aspect that’s looked at. It should be a target worth focusing due to how potentially dangerous it is and the need to shut it down, but it shouldn’t be so hard to kill that it just determines the fight due to being to difficult to kill to provide a valuable counterplay.

So I absolutely see where that argument comes from, and if we’re talking about reducing the survival of the Spirit, I can definitely support that argument and change.

So an elite skill that has multiple hard counters and can only be used twice a game is too powerful?

Seems to me that it’s just an issue of not wanting to prioritize targets that should be taking priority, especially if its something that can be decisive to a team fight and you have the potential to remove it from the equation.

But I guess not wanting to adapt to strategy is a call for complaint… I guess.

Inb4 Defektive reminds everybody that this is for tier lists and not for discussion…

Anywho:

S:
-Necro
-Thief

A:
+Guardian
=Ele
=Engineer
=Ranger
-Warrior

B:
+Mesmer

At least currently.

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

Tsohg.1798:

We also don’t have a healing signet. Only class that does. wait, Engi’s don’t even have signets…I take that back. But still. Signet plox

Made me think of a heal as one rework:

Heal as One, Signet, 25s cooldown (20s traited).

Passive: Pet attacks heal the player, and player attacks heal the pet.
Active: Heal you and your pet for x health

Just add a new heal with the new Utilities, “Signet of Companionship” Passive (as you said), Active: Heals you and the pet, if your pet has more health (%) than you, you are healed for more, if your pet is dead they are also rezzed, 25s CD.

I’d love that, but its so much like a Guild Wars 1 skill that the devs are sure to not do it. But I personally love it, and would +infinity it if I could lol.

Because underwater combat is the epitome of balance in this game. Half the skill descriptions even look like jokes to begin with.

To the Thieves vs Rangers argument, thieves that aren’t specced for removing condis (or for about 30 into shadow arts in general) really shouldn’t be kill roaming condition rangers (BM, Shout Heal, even Spirit).

Thieves that go 30 into Shadow Arts with condition removal in stealth can be fairly difficult to kill, but there really isn’t any reason why that thief is killing the ranger. If anything, that should come to a draw, and the ranger player can pretty easily disengage whenever they want, provided either they are running sword or greatsword.

Note that I’m mentioning roaming builds (builds with the specific purpose of self sustain and fighting 1v1 or being and and fighting against small groups), and not necessarily berserker/damage builds that don’t build for any sustain in a fight really.

Schlieffen.2054:

When the casters don’t even go over the builds, it’s pretty stupid. Yeah the people who are up with the meta know the builds for the most part, but when one of my friends is watching (someone I’m trying to get to come back to competitive pvp) and he doesn’t even know the builds there just isn’t much for him to watch besides a bunch of characters running around damaging each other.

I actually think gw2 is almost ahead of its time in how fast and intense the combat is. Kind of like football, it would be amazing for the casters to be able to show slow motion replays of key parts of the previous match in between matches. GW2 is going to have to figure out a way to train up its potential esports viewers to the point they can follow what’s happening (casters need to be trained up too).

Suggestions:
Minimap for viewers – this should be wayyyy more clear so that viewers can readily see the movement of all players. The minimap is too detailed and has too much color, so the dots aren’t very obvious. Simplify the map, put it in grayscale, and fade it. Make character symbols (for guardian/ele/necro/etc. like when you open the map) appear on the minimap and make them large enough and bright enough to be obvious. The minimap should be faded grayscale because what viewers need is to see movement. The only relevent details of the map are the capture points and secondary objectives. The rest are just pathways to access those points. Right now the map drowns out player dots and reads like a map for someone to get an understanding of the details of the entire zone. That’s a lot of unnecessary information and it makes it hard for viewers to easily get the important information.

Builds – can we stop with the ridiculous secrecy of builds? A decision needs to be made: do we care more about expanding the viewership by letting them get into the details of the game or do we care more about protecting super secret builds from supposedly pro players. My take: players who are really pro will win out, even when builds are not secret. It’s more important to grow interest in the game by letting viewers in rather than shutting them out. Casters should ALWAYS review builds and discuss them. It’s an integral part of the game, but casters are completely mute on the subject.

Casters should have the ability to replay previous matches and show slow motion replays from various character perspectives. Teldo escaping from 3 players at mine? Hell yes, I want to see replays of that to see exactly what he did and what the other players were doing to try to catch him. There are so many key parts of these matches, rezzes miliseconds before a stomp for example. Going back to see highlights would be amazing, both for entertainment purposes and for educating viewers to better understand what’s happening during real-time matches in the future.

Anyway, GW2 as an esport is more intense, busier, and more complicated than a lot of other esports. Care needs to be taken to present all of this information to viewers and potential new players in a way that they can appreciate the timing and skill required to win a game between top players. Please give casters (and, in the future, spectator mode) these tools.

Edit: one more thing — for the big matches, ANet should consider recording the match from every players perspective and make these videos available for anyone to watch whenever. Heck, even get a Caster to voiceover what the player is doing while he’s doing it. This would be so interesting, I’d watch big matches from every player’s perspective probably multiple times. GW2 doesn’t need to slow its intense play down, it just needs to recognize that viewers are going to need additional tools to properly follow and enjoy matches. Give players these tools and watch GW2 esports get moving in the right direction.

I’d like to +1 this too.

I agree with everything said, and think it needs to be reiterated. Especially; IF the UI isn’t going to be changed to show passive traits and procs from traits that can be activated, then it is all the more reason to go over the build at the beginning to explain the potential of things that can occur at one time.

Spectators shouldn’t really ever be entirely lost, which, when having no indicator for passive procs and no build reviews, is an easily foreseeable occurrence.

shinreigari.7318:

We already have signet of the Wild for passive heal, don’t we? The active effect doesn’t heal, but still…

Well generally I wouldn’t assume that a signet heal would be doing something other than passively healing, so on my particular suggestion it at least takes the thief/ele version to passively heal through being active.

However, it could be reworked into a passive condition removal (one of the areas the class severely lacks diverse options for, removing conditions) and an active heal.

Rangers are pretty good across every game mode. Rangers are top tier in PvP, one of the best roamers (if not the best) in WvW, as well as having one of the best abilities to do damage at 1200+ range (important for zerging/large groups).

For PvE, every class can complete PvE combat scenarios efficiently, and rangers have arguably better survivability then most classes barring guardians, with an additional tool to grab aggro for the ranger to pull off bursts.

For Dungeons, while I don’t have extensive experience, the fastest speed run to date was done with a ranger, with the rangers Frost Spirit and Spotter Trait being irreplaceable for increasing group DPS.

I really fail to see in which area of the game ranger is lacking, other than they lack value purely based on players perception, which doesn’t even closely resemble fact.

Tsohg.1798:

We also don’t have a healing signet. Only class that does. wait, Engi’s don’t even have signets…I take that back. But still. Signet plox

Made me think of a heal as one rework:

Heal as One, Signet, 25s cooldown (20s traited).

Passive: Pet attacks heal the player, and player attacks heal the pet.
Active: Heal you and your pet for x health

I’d actually like it, particularly, since it is heal as one, it could be worked in to a trait in the beastmastery line.

It’s definitely an issue of way too much animation happening at one time. Not telegraphing either, just colors and flashes and effects all over the place.

And when you mix that with the sheer amount of passive procs that can go off, that with such a fast paced combat, it really leaves you wondering what exactly just happened.

Forget the UI clutter argument, if people have skills that can proc passively, then just as the ones that are constantly active in (like constant +150 power/precision/etc), there should be an indicator that it is active and ready to be procced, and should disappear when procced to indicate that it occurred and is on ICD, then “reapply” coming off of ICD.

A combined effort between a reduced mess of effects and passives (particularly things that can proc, or occur on an ICD) being added to the UI, and you end up with a much more watchable game from a spectators PoV.

I didn’t read every post, but I have a question since I saw multiple posts making class specific burning requests (exclusivity).

What would rangers torch weapon do, if not burn?

Just wanted to bump this up (if that’s okay). I think it was a good show and was wondering if people were aware about that it occurred, and wanted to discuss any of the things that were said or had any questions for me at all.

Anyhow, I appreciated being a part of the show and can’t wait for the next one.

The Spirit Build is seeing the most play right now from rangers, and is currently considered our best build:

There are a few ways to set it up, either with axe/dagger and sword/torch, or right now, more commonly, shortbow and sword/dagger.
Builds:
Carrion: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8YjEVN1lVeVg2BgVBBbPyUTMdPKl0TB-TsAgyCpIATBmDMDYSwsgN8Y5xeBA

Shamans: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8YjEVN1lVeVg2BgVBBbPyUTMdPKl0TB-TsAg2CrIaS1krJTTymsNN8Y5xeBA

If you’re going axe/dagger and sword/torch, switch Vigorous Renewal to Offhand Training, and put a Sigil of Smoldering on the Torch (other sigils remain as 2x Geomancy, 1 Corruption).

Edit: Here’s a link to a “top tier” EU ranger player soloqing with the axe/sword setup: http://www.twitch.tv/symbollix/b/435679213

He switches to BM and then to warrior about halfway through the video, but about the first hour and 30 minutes show off the build.

So, there have been a lot of really great ideas being thrown around on the forum in attempts to get the class to that next stage that it could be in. So, I figured I’d throw out something that incorporates some of the ideas I like and some movements, consolidations, and adjustments to existing traits, or trait configurations.

-First line item, Moment of Clarity. Remove this trait.
-Remove Instinctual Bond.
-Combine Alpha Training with Opening Strikes and move Precise Strike down to the Master minor trait spot.
-In place of Instinctual Bond, have the pet gain an Attack of Opportunity on Pet Swap
-In the Grandmaster minor trait spot in Marksmanship, have a new trait that provides +50% daze/stun duration.
-Add a 1s daze to warhorn 4.
-Add the effect of the player gaining an Attack of Opportunity on Pet Swap to the Zephyrs Speed Grandmaster Trait.
-In the Skirmishing Grandmaster slot that is now empty, add Burning Arrows, rangers version of 100% chance to proc burning on crit.

Obviously there could be more done, but something as simple as this would open a wide variety of options for builds.

With everything the way it is right now, Remorseless should be combined with Precise Strike (the minor). Especially since the Grandmaster trait focuses on the longbow a bit too much, and doesn’t improve any weapon other than the longbow at all (at least piercing arrows has some effect).

Then they would have an open grandmaster trait to work with. The same thing could be done to Moment of Clarity imo (make it the 25 point trait, 10% damage while flanking and daze/stun lasts 50% longer).

That would open up 2 slots to play around with that could essentially be “cornerstone” traits, the way that Spirits Unbound, Traps Unbound, and Signet of the Beastmaster are (traits which take a set of tools that the ranger has and makes them more defining and better in function).

For the dagger, I’d rather the cripple be on the leap, and the torment be on the Fan of Knives, but that’s a personal preference.

I’d just like to say I’m glad our heads are in the same place with the change:

jcbroe.4329:

Really the biggest issue comes up when you have Terror and Dhuumfire combined. There wasn’t too much of an issue before Dhuumfire was added to the game, but when it was, people immediately called it broken, specifically in Terror builds.

Dhuumfire burns for 5 seconds with Nightmare runes (a fairly common selection) and is able to do that every 10s. Coupled that with the ability to inflict every damaging condition in the game rapidly and on a fairly short cooldown, and that’s when it gets a bit too much.

Really, because I can’t comment on whether the patch reduced Terrors damage enough (Terror by the way being strong with the amount of damage it has the potential to do in a short amount of time when Death Shroud fear is available at the same time as staff 5), my initial reaction is to reduce the burning duration on dhuumfire to about 2s (that’s about an extra free 1k+ damage every 10s), and/or to add an ICD to Terror so that it can’t just be used to overkill people with fear and every other condition in the game.

Of course, adding an ICD to Terror would also imply that hidden ICDs are no longer hidden (something that desperately needs changing with the amount of important ICDs there are in the game currently), so that a person would be able to time their fears better and not have to guestimate/stopwatch themselves, which would add an interesting interactive element to it, because Necros would be able to choose when to use fear better with this setup, and not just spam/throw it out their whenever the hope it will work (which inevitably will happen).

But yeah, 2s Dhuumfire burn, and/or ICD to Terror.

:)

Daecollo.9578:

jcbroe.4329:

If they took this change, they would also have to change protection on the same logic, since protection essentially makes low base health targets take more damage than high base health targets.

However, I really don’t agree with regen being changed because the way you aren’t considering (or aren’t explaining) is something along the lines of:

Warrior and low health ally (lets say ele) have 75% health. Regen gets applied, it adds 1k health to each characters health pool. Percentage wise, the ele got healed more, but point by point, the heal was exactly the same. Regen, therefore, is affecting every class equally, but that doesn’t mean the every class has the same level of sustain (and they shouldn’t, classes need to have disadvantages at certain things).

However, giving high health targets better heals, or better abilities to sustain (mist form, etc), would be the best option. Being able to refill big chunks pf the health bar on a high health character creates the same sort sustain that regen creates on low health characters, so really, it would balance out, because while lower health characters rely on consistent healing to sustain, high health characters would rely on “spike” healing to push the health bar back up after the opponent has blown cooldowns to get it low.

That being said, that doesn’t make the idea you’re suggesting wrong to me. Just a difference in the ways a solution could be implemented.

That would make the classes to much alike.

Yes and no. Ultimately, the difference would be that the classes that receive increases to their heals still wouldn’t have the ability to consistently heal themselves throughout the fight, so they still wouldn’t be able to sustain as well as other classes (Guardian, Ele), and also, interrupts of any sort could completely destroy the sustain of those classes, something that doesn’t commonly happen to current bunker or sustain builds all that often if at all (can’t interrupt an attunement switch, for instance).

It would still allow for classes to maintain their damage roll without having to build for sustain through traits, so that those classes could maintain their dominant niche, but it would give them more sustain in the process, which is ultimately what is being asked for; the ability to stay in the fight longer when needed.

Again, just an opinion and idea though, there are many ways to go about solving the same problem.

If they took this change, they would also have to change protection on the same logic, since protection essentially makes low base health targets take more damage than high base health targets.

However, I really don’t agree with regen being changed because the way you aren’t considering (or aren’t explaining) is something along the lines of:

Warrior and low health ally (lets say ele) have 75% health. Regen gets applied, it adds 1k health to each characters health pool. Percentage wise, the ele got healed more, but point by point, the heal was exactly the same. Regen, therefore, is affecting every class equally, but that doesn’t mean the every class has the same level of sustain (and they shouldn’t, classes need to have disadvantages at certain things).

However, giving high health targets better heals, or better abilities to sustain (mist form, etc), would be the best option. Being able to refill big chunks pf the health bar on a high health character creates the same sort sustain that regen creates on low health characters, so really, it would balance out, because while lower health characters rely on consistent healing to sustain, high health characters would rely on “spike” healing to push the health bar back up after the opponent has blown cooldowns to get it low.

That being said, that doesn’t make the idea you’re suggesting wrong to me. Just a difference in the ways a solution could be implemented.

It’s really just a hurdle that a lot of people don’t feel the need to overcome just for one weaponset (I think of it as the simple control scheme on Marvel vs Capcom 3 where you can just press one button and the game does entire combo chains for you, versus using standard controls to be able to make your own combos that are even better than the preset ones in simple mode).

I honestly don’t think your change to the spirit ranger is enough (just for reference, I’ve mained ranger since beta).

Really, one of the biggest issues is that throughout a match, rangers can keep their spirits up 100% of the time if nobody ever takes the time to kill them. For opponents, killing the spirit can be a double edged sword because there is no visible timer on them, and with Nature’s Vengeance, there is a real chance that they can kill the spirits, have them use their actives on death, get hit by those (with procs that last a few seconds after death), only to have the ranger resummon them almost immediately at times and be at no disadvantage whatsoever.

My suggestion is to make the duration for the spirits shorter than their cooldown. Now, rangers have to play their build a bit more actively, and think about when they use their spirits. “Do I use them all now to win the duel, and then have them on cooldown when I get to the teamfight? Or do I use them at the teamfight to win the teamfight, knowing that with my skill level I’ll be able to hold a sidepoint without them, or until they come off of recharge?”

Yes, the passive effects are strong, but the lack of needing to know when to use them, and just being able to keep them up all the time, is worse.

They all have their different roles. Carrion is pretty strong for the current condition meta, as with the way its setup there is a decent amount of protection uptime to begin with, so the vitality gained from going Carrions is the best defense against conditions.

Shamans however, combines healing aspects from the BM build with the offense of a rapid or carrion build, kind of like a hybrid healing build. It also brings the high toughness that many players prefer.

Rabid really hasn’t been run as much. It’s really the full offense build of the group, not bring any sort of addition survival stat on top of the toughness it provides. However, it also has the highest pressure capability due to being able to proc bleeds on crit with no ICD (think landing around a 1k splitblade from bleed damage on the first tick). It would also arguable be the best build to take advantage of warhorn if you wanted to go that route, because hunters call would proc a fair amount of bleeds, making it less of a wasted skill than it has the potential to be in the other two setups.

That being said, for the best mix of offense and defense, the Carrion and Shamans are probably the best way to go.

There’s 3 different ways I’ve seen it built:

Carrion:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnY8fjEVN1lVeVg2BiVBB1ekJzjJ3jSRqTB-TwAgyCpIATBmDMDYSwsgN8Y5xWg5CA

Shaman:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnY8fjEVN1lVeVg2BiVBB1ekJzjJ3jSRqTB-TwAg2CrIaS1krJTTymsNN8Y5xWg5CA

and Rabid:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnY8fjEVN1lVeVg2Bi2jMZeMxKYI3jSRqTB-TwAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNN8Y5xWg5CA

Right now I would argue that you can switch out torch for warhorn so that you can blast finish in your own healing spring for more healing on any of the builds, as the sun spirit provides more than adequate burning uptime.

Drake Phoenix.6158:

Combined with the change to remorseless, plus the vuln on Rapid Fire, I actually like this change. The net effect is that Hunter’s Shot is now useful for more than just an occasional Vuln spike, it can now be used to improve survivability, regain range, and with remorseless, reset Opening Strike for additional vuln. Plus the vuln on rapid fire now means that we can maintain a higher level of vuln for better frequency than we could manage before. And considering we weren’t expecting much of anything until the late August patch, I’m happy to see them trying to make LB better without waiting.

This is still not good enough to really fix LB in my opinion, and some further improvement tweaks would be welcome, but I think it is a step in a good direction, and I do like the weapon better now.

I still want to see an improvement to trap direct damage for power builds though, like changing Trapper’s Expertise to boost both direct damage as well as condition duration. I really want to see power trapper build be effective for AoE like condi traps are (doesn’t even have to be that good, but close to that good would be nice).

The one thing I will say about the change to LB skills though, is that I now have to relearn the best opening combat sequence. Opening with Hunter’s Shot is now pointless. I’ve been opening with Rapid Fire instead, but I’m wondering if it wouldn’t be better to open with auto attack at max range, then Hunter’s Shot, then Rapid Fire. That would give 5 vuln from auto attack, reset opening strike and boost pet’s close speed, 15 vuln from Rapid fire (5 from the reset opening strike), and 5 vuln from pet attack. Time to experiment with rotations I guess.

I’ve been doing something like auto attack → rapid fire → hunters shot → knockback shot → auto attack → rapid fire. With the stealth, it seems like the most efficient cycle to play keep away while rotating the damage cycle well.

It really is a great video, I’m glad I was scrolling through other topics in other forums and found it posted in a balance thread.

Since I watched it, I think it’s made a lot of the skill functions and trait functions possible design philosophy (unfortunately I’m not an ANet dev to know if it is their actual design philosophy) more transparent, and it’s something I’ve been keeping in mind when I theorycraft builds and make weapon and trait selections.

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

With the new change in full Knights Armor with some berserker mixed in (I’m sitting on 50 crit chance and 42 crit damage), with full Marksmanship to pick up Remorseless, doing the simple rotation of stealthing into Rapid Fire always nets me between 7.5-9k Rapid Fire channels, and that’s without the Sigil of Fire proccing.

I mean, I’m sitting on 3k armor, at 1500 range, and I’m able to channel almost 10k damage in 4.5 seconds, every 12s. AND Precise Strike isn’t a guaranteed crit (bug), which would probably put the damage at a consistent bottom range of 8k.

There really aren’t that many other classes that can do that damage at range AND build for the evasion and escape tools that rangers have access to.

At 1500 range, maybe. At 900-1200 range though?

Dragon’s Tooth
Phoenix
Feast
Comet
Path of Scars

I’m sure I could name a half dozen more with little real effort. And almost all of those are AE. 8k over 4.5 seconds is not a lot of damage. Thief can do it with unload 3 times in a row :/

Making a comparison between a 1200 range base weapon and 900 range base weapons is already giving bias to the 900 range weapons because of the risk/reward design philosophy about doing more damage in melee range. Theoretically, the farther away from your opponent you are, the least damage you should be doing. So of course 900 range weapons outdamage 1200 range weapons, that only makes sense.

As far as comparing it to other 1200 range weapons, MAYBE the warrior rifle can compete in overall DPS, and I wouldn’t know enough about the Ele staff, but it doesn’t seem to have the amount sustain mechanics to equal the DPS output, and specializes more at AoE damage, and bursting.

Overall though I would argue that ranger is fairly dominant at a 1200 range.

With the new change in full Knights Armor with some berserker mixed in (I’m sitting on 50 crit chance and 42 crit damage), with full Marksmanship to pick up Remorseless, doing the simple rotation of stealthing into Rapid Fire always nets me between 7.5-9k Rapid Fire channels, and that’s without the Sigil of Fire proccing.

I mean, I’m sitting on 3k armor, at 1500 range, and I’m able to channel almost 10k damage in 4.5 seconds, every 12s. AND Precise Strike isn’t a guaranteed crit (bug), which would probably put the damage at a consistent bottom range of 8k.

There really aren’t that many other classes that can do that damage at range AND build for the evasion and escape tools that rangers have access to.

I don’t use a naga, but I have had some issues with utility skills and at times rams or arrow carts since the patch, where I think what’s happening is that I’m spamming the skill key to use it too fast and I cancel the skill with itself.

Generally, I’ve noticed it happening for my Spirits a lot, but it wasn’t doing it before the update. Maybe I need to learn to slow to my APM and trust single presses to eliminate the issue, but it really shouldn’t be an issue lol.

Really the biggest issue comes up when you have Terror and Dhuumfire combined. There wasn’t too much of an issue before Dhuumfire was added to the game, but when it was, people immediately called it broken, specifically in Terror builds.

Dhuumfire burns for 5 seconds with Nightmare runes (a fairly common selection) and is able to do that every 10s. Coupled that with the ability to inflict every damaging condition in the game rapidly and on a fairly short cooldown, and that’s when it gets a bit too much.

Really, because I can’t comment on whether the patch reduced Terrors damage enough (Terror by the way being strong with the amount of damage it has the potential to do in a short amount of time when Death Shroud fear is available at the same time as staff 5), my initial reaction is to reduce the burning duration on dhuumfire to about 2s (that’s about an extra free 1k+ damage every 10s), and/or to add an ICD to Terror so that it can’t just be used to overkill people with fear and every other condition in the game.

Of course, adding an ICD to Terror would also imply that hidden ICDs are no longer hidden (something that desperately needs changing with the amount of important ICDs there are in the game currently), so that a person would be able to time their fears better and not have to guestimate/stopwatch themselves, which would add an interesting interactive element to it, because Necros would be able to choose when to use fear better with this setup, and not just spam/throw it out their whenever the hope it will work (which inevitably will happen).

But yeah, 2s Dhuumfire burn, and/or ICD to Terror.

Miflett.3472:

jcbroe.4329:

Miflett.3472:

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

That’s a really good idea, though personally I would just scrap the function of Moment of Clarity entirely. The +% increase to dazes and stuns is nice, but the weapons they are on (besides the greatsword) really lack any way to burst off of landing a stun/daze. It’s a nice utility, but the secondary function of Moment of Clarity really just doesn’t do enough to be a Grandmaster trait.

Scrap it and put something better while possibly retaining concepts from the original function.

Torment on interrupt would be cool; it’d also lend nicely to tight circle kiting.

Both bows would get some love: LB with its stealth and hopeful future improvements, and SB with an actual mechanic.

That sounds cool!

My suggestion has always been to make it quickness on interrupt for you and your pet. It would allow longbow users to punish people they hit with knockback shot harder and provide potential setup into barrage, for shortbow it could help stack bleeds up if they are interrupted when being flanked, and for greatsword, it would allow the pet to get a more reliable boosted damage hit off, as well as let rangers land a Maul more safely with less of a chance of whiffing it.

But really I could list ideas for days so I better stop before it gets out of hand and derails the thread lol.

Miflett.3472:

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a decent question, but it has it’s limits.

On the one hand things should feel worthwhile without traits, on the other hand nobody is walking around with a blank trait template or makes a habit of wielding weapons outside their build direction.

If you felt you needed Remorseless to make Longbow work that would be a problem. Feeling the need to do some level of investment into the power trait line while using a power weapon just seems like a standard of character building that should be taken for granted.

I find that investing that heavily into MM to make longbow something that it should already be, questionable. Stopping at 20 should be more than enough to get some nice pickups for the LB, and it kinda is, but this trait line more than any needs some consolidation work.

I’d really like to push for moment of clarity and remorseless to be integrated into minor traits as they seem what should be a very integral part of both the SB and LB respectively.

That’s a really good idea, though personally I would just scrap the function of Moment of Clarity entirely. The +% increase to dazes and stuns is nice, but the weapons they are on (besides the greatsword) really lack any way to burst off of landing a stun/daze. It’s a nice utility, but the secondary function of Moment of Clarity really just doesn’t do enough to be a Grandmaster trait.

Scrap it and put something better while possibly retaining concepts from the original function.

ilr.9675:

jcbroe.4329:

Traps honestly would be really bad just thrown into the Wilderness Survival line, as it would force users to either build for offense or defense, and currently with most builds, building into WS improves survival with that build, but it would literally force trap builds to go full offense

This makes absolutely no sense. And Nec’s / Thieves with high conditions builds have a fraction of the Survival there (in upper PvE … where stealth doesn’t help). But nevermind that… I’m still trying to figure out how a line that would give you 300 extra toughness along with the best CC resists, could possibly be considered lacking in Defense??

Are we even playing the same game?

Not the passive benefits, the active benefits. As is, Wilderness Survival is the only trait line that provides any additional tools to deal with incoming CC, and any way to deal with conditions (Oakheart Salve, Empathic Bond), and one of the few ways we can gain additional boons (protection on dodge, vigor on heal).

If traps just get thrown in, most of rangers defensive options would have to fight for a slot with traps. Engineers don’t have to choose between Immunity to Conditions, their elixir cleanse trait, and Grenades/Bombs, and Necros don’t have to choose between their survival line and their traits the deal with CC skills and Dhuumfire or Lingering Curse.

I was just trying to get at the point that I would prefer not to have traps put into the line where most of the best defensive tools we can trait for are. Either spread the defensive traits out more, or remove some of the garbage traits in Skirmishing for more power options.

It doesn’t really help that most of the beastmastery traitline and half of every other trait line except Marksmanship and Wilderness Survival is fairly useless.

But basically, just moving the traits across lines as they stand wouldn’t be enough, and it would actually limit build versatility by forcing trap rangers to not take their best condition cleanse in a condition heavy meta.

What another part of the problem is comes from each trait line having a focus: Marksmanship-Signets, Skirmishing-Traps, Wilderness Survival-Survival, Nature Magic-Spirits, Beastmastery-Shouts. In that sense, Wilderness Survival doesn’t really do much for survival skills, and survival skills don’t really work together towards a common theme on the skill bar the way traps, signets, and spirits do (shouts are in the same boat).

What COULD be done is switch Skirmishings focus to survival skills (doesn’t make sense name wise at this point but still), revamp the survival skills to make them more complementary to each other, and to a specific damage type (preferably power for right now), and then move traps into wilderness survival, and mix and match the defensive traits throughout the two trait lines where holes would be.

But all and all, it needs more than just taking traps and putting them in wilderness survival.

I just watched through this video and found it extremely relevant to the initial knee jerk reaction to the patch.

Hopefully by watching it, it will either relax some players by being a nice distraction for the usual harshness of the forum, or, more importantly, it will provide some insight about the patch process that most companies (including ANet) use, as well as latter parts of the video (FOO skills, etc) providing some insight for players that might be viewing changes as barriers more so than healthy changes to stagnant tactics and a stagnant game.

Link:

I’ve been using it on my spirit build in PvP. Running 10/0/30/30/0 with Shamans, runes of undead, and I switched from sword/torch axe/dagger to sword/warhorn axe/dagger. Shamans already helped with survival on heals, but now theres a leap and a blast finisher on one set to use in healing spring, which is pretty strong because you’re still getting burning from the sun spirit.

With a very basic crit tank setup (30/10/30/0/0), Steady Aim, Eagle Eye, and Remorseless, using a basic skill rotation of opening with rapid fire and then stealthing into rapid fire is netting me consistent damage outputs of 7.5-9k if every arrow hits. My Sigil of Fire also procs often for about 1.2-1.5k, and while waiting for cooldowns on stealth and rapid fire, you have the option of barraging, knocking back, or just autoattacking, for about another 1k on autoattack and knockback shot, or however much damage you get out of barrages channel.

And that’s with knights armor. You can only imagine how much full berserkers is doing.

Sentry.3691:

Miflett.3472:

Everyone is clueless when it comes to why people are upset about longbow. IT’S BECAUSE PvE POWER RANGERS AND WvW RANGERS HAVE TO SHARE THE SAME BOW, AND WANT DIFFERENT THINGS OUT OF IT.

Stop shouting please. Everyone understands why you are upset. You thought that the longbow needed different changes than what it got. I certainly never expected to have stealth suddenly thrown into my lap, but I couldn’t be happier.

The simple fact of the matter is that the change to longbow is very minor. PVE players just seem to be complaining because they have to change their skill rotation.

Yes, the longbow still needs a damage buff, and I wish rapid shot had simply been removed as a skill and replaced by something like the Sniper Shot from the Snowball Mayhem minigame. It could still happen. (Honestly, I wish the ranger class played more like the scout class in that mini-game. The devs now seem to be moving in this direction and I love it.)

The Ranger trait lines need a ton of work still as well. Too many hugely useful longbow skills are crammed into the Marksmanship trait line; they need to be merged or moved elsewhere.

I have also never understood the overall design of the Skirmishing trait line. It is all over the place. Why are trap traits there at all when the trait line provides no bonus to condition damage? They should be in Wilderness Survival. And why is the sword and great sword trait in Wilderness Survival instead of Skirmishing? It doesn’t make any sense.

Traps honestly would be really bad just thrown into the Wilderness Survival line, as it would force users to either build for offense or defense, and currently with most builds, building into WS improves survival with that build, but it would literally force trap builds to go full offense without any bolstering defensive options, making them much worse than other condition builds on other classes.

Skirmishing makes sense with the existence of rabid armor. Either that or rabid armor shouldn’t exist and traps should be moved. But with rabid armor being the stat combination that it is, it gives trap builds very high pressure capabilities while allowing them to build defensively at the same time.

BUT, it would make more sense for more skills that are useful for power builds to be put into skirmishing as well, at least at the adept and grandmaster tiers (quickdraw is okay as is, but could be merged with Eagle Eye or Piercing Arrows, so that players aren’t overburdened by the amount of useful traits in Marksmanship with the inability to take them all, even though they’re almost all needed to be as fully effective as a different class could be when building for power).

darkace.8925:

Raven.9603:

A dissenting opinion? The OP is pretty clearly in the minority of people who are upset about the longbow buff.

I’ll bet my opinion is shared by the majority of players who don’t PvP or WvW. While I’m sure a lot of PvP/WvW players are tickled pink at the prospect of using stealth as a ranger, it’s not such a great addition to the PvE player’s repertoire…especially since it comes at the expense of a fantastic weapon skill.

You’re right, it doesn’t benefit PvE players much at all. However, I think even dungeon players appreciate the change because of how much you can contribute to vulnerability stacking, and most other players have some crossover into different gametypes, which is why you don’t see as many people agreeing with you as you possibly would.

That being said, for those of us that like the update, we’re happy, and for those of us that don’t; do what you did when you didn’t like previous updates, deal with it however you have in the past.

Thanks for the link to something like this Chopps. Highly entertaining to watch the video, as well as just read through the thread lol.

Sol.4310:

Allot valid point’s, I totally agree with the necro being overpowered, but there is no need to fix spirit’s, how hard is it for 1 person on the other team to kill the spirits in a few seconds. The spirit build isn’t the major problem here its the player base refusing to do something about it. Remember when HgH engineers were left unchecked they could spam nades like not tomorrow royally messing your team up. The same goes for spirit builds leave it unchecked what do you thinks going to happen. Your leaving powerful team support skills unchecked when they are so easy to counter.

Sure you can change the Passive effect to only last 30 seconds that I’m fine, as long as they change the CD on the active skill to match the nerf along with buffing the HP of the spirit so it can’t be killed so easy.

Most of the time in team fight’s spirit are long dead before they come off cd, so really it wouldn’t make a major change. The reason your seeing so many back point spirit rangers due to they can run Storm Spirit, that Active skill replaced the F2 on our burst pets with BM/Bunker builds, and having that extra protection and burning damage from other 2 spirits put it back in the game in terms of bunker and damage output. Also the Elite Spirit is major support skill for your team making the back point bunker vital part to almost any type of team comp. But it can be countered rather easy where as the bm/bunker couldn’t.

But in saying that, a spirit ranger will not beat a Engi 1v1 if that engi is running condition immunity which most are, its dead fight, most of the time the engi will win the fight. So does that mean we nerf engi’s so we can kill them 1v1. No it means there are counters out there players just don’t see it.

Don’t get me wrong jcbroe.4329 I respect you as player and you make allot good posts on the forums. But on the spirit topic I’m firm believer its the lack of knowledge on the players side that makes the spirit build seem so powerful.

When I face a spirit team, in TPvP i personal take down there sun spirit within seconds and rangers have rather low damage. Allot of the time at start of a fight I use my drakes F2 to nuke down there spirits, combo’ed with his blast finisher normally kills all 3 spirits.

Lol don’t get me wrong, I’m not arguing that the build is super strong at all, and I really don’t see any part of it being OP (other than why in the world they made the Storm Spirit not scale with power damage, but have its own scaling mechanism. Really don’t see the design philosophy behind that).

All in all I just want the game to be less mindless. Right now, even just watching myself or any other ranger play spirits, at the beginning of the match, Spirits aren’t so bad, and with the ranger in sight you can keep up with timing the cooldown on the spirits to make sure they have extended down times. But as a match progresses, there is more and more potential for rangers to gain 100% up time from their spirits, which basically just makes them a constant, team wide passive buff, with a very mindless playstyle that rewards the player just for using it.

I really personally don’t feel the build is OP at all, but when I put my bias aside and look at the game as a whole, I don’t think that any utilities (aside from signets) should be capable of having 100% uptime, which isn’t ranger exclusive.

So yes, while the majority of the problem players are facing is not knowing how to play against the build (or choosing not to), I still don’t think it justifies fire and forget mechanics (and the goes for every class, not just rangers for anybody else reading).

This topic could have been a very constructive topic too. Sadly it’s been repeatedly side tracked and arguments have been drawn out and it’s pretty pointless.

So really, here is where it needs to be discerned and redirected (I’ll use my opinion to hopefully kickstart a series of following discussions that are more constructive):

Passive play across all classes is bad for raising the skill cap on competition, but it isn’t ALL passive effects; just ones that have a very unrestricted scope. For instance, there are pretty fair passive effects like flanking conditional ones or stun conditional ones the provide bonuses to the player based on position or the state the enemy is in, which is competitive because it can be made to be a centric feature for how their build works.

THEN, there are traits like Incendiary Powder and Dhuumfire (and etc), that are basically bonuses for building a particular way that proc randomly, easily, and consistently, and basically equate to an averaged 3k damage every 10s on top of crits and other damage, just for picking that trait and having precision.

Those traits are horrible because instead of defining or refining a playstyle, they just give you some bonus damage (or effects) and reward you basically for doing any attack with certain stats built.

Moving on to the specific topic of Spirit rangers, it really is a mixed bag. On one hand, rangers have to sacrifice utility slots that could otherwise be used for more survival or potentially damage, and they have to sacrifice trait points to make those utilities viable for competitive play.
However, due to the nature of Spirits, their really isn’t much thought that has to be put into when to use them. As long as rangers are staying out of cleave, Spirits are basically a fire and forget mechanic, and because of that they really aren’t good for pushing the level of competition in the game either.

The simplest fix for ranger spirits would be to make their uptime be shorter than their cooldown period. That way, ranger players have to put more thought into which engagements the Spirits are used in, and aren’t just being spammed on cooldown. That in turn could raise the skill cap (having to use the spirits at the right time, like Spirit of Nature), and create a more interactive playstyle.

Bunker rangers are still viable, they just don’t offer as much to a team fight, and aren’t as capable of standing up to the amounts of condi cleave in the meta than before necros received Dhuumfire, which when procced has the potential to melt any class if they land their fear on top of it.

The EU meta seems to favor more Bunker ranger builds than NA. Currently, most NA players have switched to a Spirit build, either with a Rabid amulet, or with a Carrion amulet for more vitality to defend themselves against the current condi heavy meta.

Terkov.4138:

Who cares if it’s bug or not? If it isn’t, then instead of saying “plz fix” ppl will say “plz change”.

Because (I would assume) bugs, due to not being intended functions and potentially harmful or gamebreaking, would be taking priority over mechanic changes.

The differentiation I was trying to make was that bug means “priority” and “fix now its broken.” However, once we say that it is a mechanic, people can start to transitioning from crying to constructive feedback and constructive threads in order to state what exactly they don’t like about it, how it negatively affects their gameplay, and possible fixes.

As far as it goes right now, every mainhand sword thread turns into a cry thread, which just spreads more negativity in an already very negative community.

nagymbear.5280:

Shiren.9532:

I’ll sum up the video for you. He uses Swoop, Hornet Sting and Monarch’s Leap. A lot. There are a few fights in there but at least half of it is Hornet Sting and Monarch’s Leap.

He has two swords equipped, did you expect him to run around and spam 1?

Zoose thinks so XD

Too soon? Lol.