Guild Wars 2

Dagger 5 also does not function with offhand training. It reverts to 900 range in combat.

I posted on the bugs with you and reported it, so I guess maybe wait to see if there’s a response. I know for certain that the dagger 5 is screwed up, and I noticed the tooltip change on dagger 4 as well.

So it’s probably an undocumented change. However, did anybody ever test to document how long the evade was pre-update? Just a thought.

That’s why I can only say that I’ve noticed the tooltip change. However, I can say for a fact that offhand training is not working at all with dagger 5. I’m not sure how updating for Dragon Bash breaks weapon skills, so it would be nice to finally get a dev response for one of the bugs that are inflicted.

Well the balance reason why the longbows rate of fire is bad is that, for a power based weapon, it offers really poor sustained damage output, ESPECIALLY with the range requirement.
I’ve already mentioned before that the closer the target is, the faster the longbow should shoot, since it both logically makes sense AND is the biggest problem the longbow has; the inability to sustain damage when skill are on cooldown.

Also, rapid fire is not okay. For the power based weapon variant (the condition based one is the shortbow), it should not be shooting at the same rate and the same damage as the shortbow. Rapid fires damage should be increased by at least 100-150 per arrow within the channel. This would help differentiate the weapons roles, and increase rapid fires viability as a skill because as it stands right now, it’s just like having the shortbows autoattack on a cooldown.

Hunters shot is the only skill that they got right, as it it one of the best sources of vulnerability in the game.

Knockback shot, while understandably defensive with a few select offensive purposes, would really function much better offensively and defensively as Pin Down (warrior skill); aka a 3s immobilize. This way, you could stop an advancing opponent and then distance yourself for a defensive purpose, or you could immobilize them and barrage or rapid fire them, for an offensive purpose.

Barrage is kind of okay, but not entirely. The arrows don’t hit the target fast enough, giving them too much time to escape without taking any real damage. Barrage shouldn’t necessarily be an arrow cart on a weapon skill (aka, not a damage increase), but it should be more threatening than the way it is now. As it stands, if the function is left the exact same, then they should remove the player rooting as it’s currently an extremely poor risk/reward tradeoff.

Not just this, but dagger 5 reverts from 1200 range to 900 range even with offhand training being equipped, but it seems to only do it for me when in combat. Out of combat, the tooltip reads correctly (1200 range), but the moment I try to use the skill, it only goes 900 range and starts reading 900 range as well.

It seems like offhand training is breaking dagger skills now.

So this is a huge problem.

I reported it in game, but Offhand mastery isn’t functioning appropriately with the offhand dagger at all. As soon as you enter combat, that range of dagger 5 goes back from 1200 to 900, and then that issue you mentioned with dagger 4.

No I know. It’s more a preference than anything. I switch between the two variations depending on how stagnant I feel my gameplay has gotten. Neither way seems better than the other.

I definitely understand going hydromancy sigils, I just prefer having the geomancy for the damage of the utility of the chill. Either is a viable choice.

@Xsorus, I was the same way before I switched over, and that was partially why I made the thread comparing it the shortbow, because I figured “why use Axe/Dagger if it does the same thing as the shortbow.” So I then made this thread to see exactly how similar they are, and it turns out, the Axe/Dagger is a much better choice on an Apothecary set.

Also, after playing axe/torch sword/dagger for so long, switching to Axe/Dagger felt more suited to how I personally play, because of how offensively I play, especially when using Sigils of Geomancy. There were times when I didn’t need to be in my Sword/Dagger set, but switched anyways because I wanted the damage from the Sigils, and ended up not having the damage output I wanted for 9s because I swapped at an inopportune time.

I’ve also seen a particularly interesting variation of a trap build that uses shortbow/axe+dagger and takes advantage of offhand training and the long lasting poison so running snake trap was unnecessary, opening up the 3rd utility slot.

Ranger has lacked polish for a long time. It’s a rough around the edges class that hasn’t met it’s full potential in any area of the game yet. Though I do apologize that you can’t enjoy a class that doesn’t have flashy looking skills, but I understand.

I’m the complete opposite, I feel that guild wars 2 is filled with a lot of “fluff” animations that crowd the screen during combat and at times make reacting to combat almost a moot point, and I would love to see some of the skill effects dumbed down a little so gameplay would look smoother and be easier to follow.

Personally I hate Bark Skin (when choosing between it and Empathic Bond).

I switched up my build and I’m running 0/0/30/20/20 with the 10 extra points grabbing Nature’s protection, which to me acts like a pseudo Bark Skin with a different conditional. Also, another 1k vitality and 10% added to my regen/boon duration doesn’t hurt either.

I haven’t really missed those 10 points in BM yet.

Varani.9207:

jcbroe.4329:

Interesting to see the responses. I really expected more people to favor and have supporting arguments for the shortbow (since that would reflect my ingame experience with other rangers).

Just like an fyi type of thing, weakness isn’t as strong as it could be because it doesn’t affect critical hits. Meaning that against glass cannons, who are stacking crits as much as possible, it doesn’t necessarily reduce their ideal burst at all. Against bunkers, most bunker builds damage output is already fairly low, so while it doesn’t hurt, for a ranger, really, the most effective class to use weakness against is a D/D or S/D ele, as some of their skills have fairly high damage coefficients for survival builds, and weakness will really help if you miss your dodges.

Other than that though, there is definitely talk of buffing the effects of weakness, as right now it just isn’t strong enough. Ideally what’s being considered is 25 or 33% of ALL attacks have a chance to be glancing (not just noncrits), meaning the axe will instantly become an even better weapon than it already is for rangers.

The reason i don´t use shortbow anymore (at least not in WvW, in sPvP it´s another thing though) is simply that it has nothing to offer in terms of AoE damage, which is very important in WvW. I´m running a BM build while skirmishing with a group of 3-10 people, especially in situations where we´re outnumbered axe + either dagger, torch, or even double axe seem to be much better. It´s really sad that in order to get at least some AoE damage on our bows we need to put 20 points in MM. Alright, barrage on LB is offering AoE damage. At least every 30 seconds or so. So in my opinion axe is way stronger since shortbow only shines when you´re chasing someone. I have to admit, that the moment I realized how thieves´shortbow is working I felt kinda depressed. It´s so cheasy to use and you can basically spam all over the place…

Besides the axe autoattack and torch bonfire, the majority of my AoE comes from Sigil of Geomancy. PBAoE 7s of 3 bleeds is really strong in a condition based BM build, and I think the only other sigil option I would run is Energy sigils for more dodges, but I would lose a fair amount of DoT (damage over time).

Sigil of Geomancy is fairly strong for most builds, it’s even considered strong for power builds by some people, but there isn’t a lot of info out there on them. Still, go to the mists with a crit build and the sigils on and watch the battlelog, and you can see why it would be a favorable choice for adding extra damage on builds like D/D eles.

Not saying it’s more competitive than other choices, but it is an option.

ilr.9675:

jcbroe.4329:

<snip>.

Spare us the Rant. Gw1 PvP was boring too. …assuming anyone could even play anything above RA due to the Rank snobbery.

Congratulations on your ability to share your individual and not representative of any other persons opinion.

Please go back and read examples of implementing gameplay with incentives and spare us trying to argue why you didn’t like mechanics of a game, or are upset when people didn’t pick you for your teams because in their minds you were too casual for them, since I didn’t seem to mention any aspects of the gameplay other than why incentives worked to make the game better.

It’s hard to keep talking about the topic when EVERYBODY has agreed the pig F2 abilities need so fixing since LAUNCH.

Even if everybody in the ranger community came into this forum and put /agree (I feel like this has already happened on this topic multiple times over the course of 9 months), we would get no dev acknowledgement, and probably wouldn’t see a fix for it in the works for awhile, because it honestly just isn’t the highest priority on the list.

I’m not saying I agree with that, but it seems fairly obvious that it’s how it’s going to go for the next few months.

Interesting to see the responses. I really expected more people to favor and have supporting arguments for the shortbow (since that would reflect my ingame experience with other rangers).

Just like an fyi type of thing, weakness isn’t as strong as it could be because it doesn’t affect critical hits. Meaning that against glass cannons, who are stacking crits as much as possible, it doesn’t necessarily reduce their ideal burst at all. Against bunkers, most bunker builds damage output is already fairly low, so while it doesn’t hurt, for a ranger, really, the most effective class to use weakness against is a D/D or S/D ele, as some of their skills have fairly high damage coefficients for survival builds, and weakness will really help if you miss your dodges.

Other than that though, there is definitely talk of buffing the effects of weakness, as right now it just isn’t strong enough. Ideally what’s being considered is 25 or 33% of ALL attacks have a chance to be glancing (not just noncrits), meaning the axe will instantly become an even better weapon than it already is for rangers.

Actually just in use, I think the biggest selling point for Axe/Dagger is that using Dagger 4 offensively into Splitblade feels like the perfect combination, even when compared to axe/torch. With axe torch, splitblade feels more clunky, like it doesn’t have a proper weapon skill setup to combo into it.

Some of you’re guys anecdotes is why I have started training myself to keep my pet on passive more and more. Having to press the F1 key to initiate the class mechanic is a pretty basic concept to begin with, and the F1 acts as a lock on which actually makes target management for me easier personally.

Not to justify what’s happening at all, I’ve seen times in WvW where my pet seems to think trees are mountains and they take themselves out of the fight completely to go slaloming while I’m in desperate need of their help to get the kill.

I’ve heard this suggested, and I disagree with; making pets hit moving targets. Since that could essentially make them unkitable. However, their attack speed should be brought up, to about twice what it is now (for some pets), factored into the the nerfing of their damage that’s about to happen of course (which I can only say I disagree with if they don’t redistribute the lost damage appropriately like any person who can draw a simple picture of a 2D scale would be able to see).

So yeah.

Well the ideal setup faceoff is shortbow/sword+torch vs axe+dagger/sword+torch.

As is, I’ve only found a use for shortbow on a BM build sitting on keep walls in WvW. There are a few rangers here and there in s/tpvp that run shortbow on their BM build (particularly Ovi), but aside from that, I don’t see an instance where the shortbow is better.

But that’s why I made the thread; somebody out there thinks the shortbow is better, and I’m assuming that I’m approaching it narrow-minded because I can be stuck in my ways sometimes. So I was hoping to pick their brain on the issue.

Thought I got it on the 4th ‘+’ down under the axe dagger section. Or does it need to be more descriptive/better placed?

Toughness roughly reduces damage by something along the lines of, for every 100 armor added on top of the current armor value (toughness adds directly to armor), it is about a 3.4% damage reduction.

This number is just a general, I believe there was some math done showing some sort of diminishing returns at some point, but for a person not wanting to do math, this is one of those close enough numbers that it isn’t necessarily significant to get an exact calculation.

Ideally though, the game shouldn’t be a min/maxing battle of glass cannons versus bunkers, it should be more of a rock paper scissors of advantages disadvantages, that looks like:

Glass Cannon beats Sustained Damage (think HGH engi)
Sustained Damage beats Bunker
Bunker Beats Glass Cannon

Right now, the sustained damage builds are the ones lacking, whether its due to how many classes have viable access to that sort of build, or because of how good certain bunker builds are, which is what offsets those types of those builds and results in the min/maxing; the bunkers are so good, the sustained damage builds don’t counter them well enough, and glass cannons beat sustained damage builds, so they lack a place in the metagame.

The only reason why HGH isn’t an example of this is because it’s AoE output is a humungous boon to any team, but the example was to serve more as an idea to base what type of sustainable damage I was referencing.

This is more of a comparison and asking for peoples opinions than anything else.

In healing/apothecary/shaman(pvp) based builds, the typical weapon set for the build is axe/torch and sword/dagger, or axe/dagger and sword/torch.

My question is, what purpose does the axe/dagger serve when compared to the shortbow?

They have their minor differences, but in general:

Similar:
-single evade skill
-bleeding is main source of damage
-soft CC (axe chill, dagger cripple, shortbow cripple)

Different:
-shortbow bleed requires flanking positioning for bleeds, axe requires point blank positioning
-axe chill is stronger CC than shortbow cripple, but shortbow cripple can make your pet apply bleed, for more damage, while axe applies weakness, which is good, but needs (and is probably getting) a buff
-shortbow has an interupt
-axe/dagger has a longer evade, and that evade applies poison, for offensive and defensive uses, while shortbow has an evade that gives an arbitrary amount of swiftness, and a poison cone

Shortbow Pros/Cons:
+1200 range
+fast firerate = good autoattack sustain
+interrupt
+1200 ranged cripple CC
+evade
-flanking requirement for full damage
-poison cone means needing to get point blank, eliminates the 1200 range strength
-shorter evade than dagger
-less useful additional effect on evade than dagger

Axe/Dagger
+Bouncing autoattack = semi AoE
+Ability to apply 5 decent length bleeds at once
+Chill is amazing AND access to cripple as well
+Addition ability to bleed and cripple with dagger 5
+very long evasion frames on dagger 4
+dagger 4 applies a long lasting poison
-less damaging autoattack = poorer DPS than shortbow
-shorter range than shortbow, basically a melee set
-Dagger 5 is easily avoidable
-have to choose between using Dagger 4 offensively or defensively, so evade may be on cooldown when needed if not careful

So overall, what does everybody else thing? I still haven’t settled on either. Sometimes I really appreciate that 1200 range, but at other times I feel that axe/dagger is stronger.

Terkov.4138:

Ryan.8367:

“However, this should not be accomplished by just a damage nerf. Rather, it needs to be done through a transfer of the percentage of damage the pet makes up for versus the player.”

Putting damage into the ranger’s side will make us more op than before you nerfed the pet damage to originally nerf the build in the first place as damage from the actual player is more reliable damage then our automated pet ‘facerolling people left and right’. Why would they do that?

You call for pet nerf and say that it’s a good idea, but then say we need more damage on ranger’s side. It’ll even out if you buff ranger’s side with the pet damage nerf, it’ll be as if you didn’t nerf pet damage in the first place. So if that’s the case, why even make a change at all? I mean, since pets are ‘facerolling’ everyone, right? Just seems like you’re confused.

It’s all about BM bunkers. Pet doesn’t scale with ranger, so we can go full tank and still have full dps part of class. Transfering dmg to ranger would still nerf bunkers and buff weapon-dmg specs.

+1

Thank you for answering this for me, couldn’t have said it better myself.

Raven.9603:

Zenith.7301:

If someone rolled a ranger to play zergs then he’s playing the wrong class. An ele, necro, or engineer will do the job of ranged/damage and CC much better.

And if you just want a raw damage guy, play a longbow warrior and weep for hor comparatively miserable the ranger longbow is.

I really dont think casuals sit at the starting screen and ask themselves what would be a better class in the zerg, and thats really what we are talking about, the majority of people who get caught in the open with bad 1vx weaponsets, their weapon choices are for group combat. additionally, longbow auto hits harder than necro staff and harder and faster than ele(fire) staff auto, and it brings more burst than both. certainly it lacks much aoe, but its hardly terrible for zerging.

jcbroe.4329:

What makes the longbow a good zerg weapon? Barrage? Because everything else aside from the vulnerability is done better by the shortbow with piercing arrows. Better damage, higher refire rate, more opponent control.

The longbow is a bad weapon. 1500 range traited doesn’t make it less bad, it just makes it bad over a longer range.

thats a pretty extreme dismissal of benefits. 1500 range in zerg standoffs and siege is pretty kitten useful. Barrage is a huge advantage as far as bags go (which is what zerglings care about), and rapid fire doing 8-12k (+potential for piercing arrows) is pretty snazzy. its not a bad weapon. shortbow is better in most situations, but the longbow has some good advantages in a zerg and thats where these “bad” rangers are headed. it doesnt make them bad, it just means they want to be good at something specific, and that something isnt 1vx. hence, the AJ mentality whenever i see a staff ele or LB ranger (etc) getting jumped.

The ONLY benefit of the longbow is barrage and the extra 1500 range. Everything else mentioned can be accomplished by the shortbow, just by hitting 1, AND they don’t have to spend 30 points in marksmanship (since you mentioned having Eagle Eye and Piercing Arrow).

It has terrible marginal benefit with little reward, and my dismissal of it is completely justified, as barrage, while being the best option we have for ranged AoE, is fairly weak all things considered (meaning rooting, cast time, recharge time, and damage).

Especially since, when compared to all the other classes, only engineers can trait to hit something at 1500 range, and with the 1200 range weapons, most classes don’t have many strong options, making the ranger shortbow already a very strong option for the strength of the autoattack and the refire rate alone. The only other weapons that are really dangerous at 1200 range are the Mesmer Greatsword and the Warrior rifle.

And if we’re talking about zerging, Barrage has an abysmal recharge, so the 24s (traited) its on cooldown, the shortbow is the best weapon of choice for range.

DeWolfe.2174:

How can pet’s melt someone’s “Face” off when the last stupid balancing has them now going behind the enemy? As a condition Ranger, I noticed it immediately in Orr. Using SB I noticed all the Risen would bypass the pet and come straight for me. Then as I try to flank to get bleeds on them. They literally just pivot like a top to always face you. Now, whatever damage my pet can do from behind, if the target completely stands still, is getting nerfed?

Great design you have there Dev’s!!!!

So… when is the Golden Child and his sister the Mesmer getting their burst output nerfed? How about that broken stealth mechanic? That’s all secondary to one bunker build because the game has to revolve around John Sharp and his precious sPvP. #smh

I’m honestly really happy it isn’t balanced around PvE. PvE is the most faceroll content ever, I could literally go into PvE with no traits at level 80 and kill things efficiently with no struggle.
That’s just basic trash mobs and Orr stuff, I’m not talking Dungeons, but dungeons are an extremely hard mechanic to balance around as they have features that don’t exist anywhere else in the game.

Versus another player is the highest skill cap you can possibly reach in an MMO, because it’s skill vs skill instead of skill vs choreographed mechanic.

The damage does need to come down on pets. Having a mechanic completely controlled by AI doing a large majority of the damage output is just not competitive, as it allows the player to make the pet do damage with little micromanagement skills (compared to heroes in guild wars 1 for instance) while focusing more on just staying alive and dodging attacks than actually dealing damage.

However, this should not be accomplished by just a damage nerf. Rather, it needs to be done through a transfer of the percentage of damage the pet makes up for versus the player.

If the player gets the damage potential being taken from the pets, and we see something more realistic like a 90%/10% player/pet split (without traits. As in, every class functions at 100% with traits, and then goes to above 100% with traits), it will not only open up more build versatility, but it will make rangers much easier to balance in an evolving metagame, and more fun to spectate in a tournament match (which ANet seems to be trying to streamline; watching pvp on twitch).

Raven.9603:

jcbroe.4329:

I have the instinct that longbow rangers are bad. 99.99% of the time, I’m correct. So I make it my duty to kill them in order to show them they are using the least viable weapon. This isn’t just WvW either, this is PvP as well.

but thats only if you assume they are out for 1vx. as far as zergs go, its the single best weapon we have. these LB rangers you are finding are probably on their way to the zerg.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Off topic, but this reminds me… with the observer mode in pvp, and the possibility to check out the builds ppl are running… omg. O M F G.

The builds. The weapons of choice. Some haven’t even used all of their trait points. Some have traits like Quick draw, despite using axe as one weapon, and greatsword as the other…

This is hotjoin ofc, but still… (and doesn’t apply only to rangers for that matter)

Laurels are given out for doing Daily pvp, which essentially is tag a few people and participate in a few matches. you are probably seeing pve’rs just hotjoining to lose 3 matches and get their free laurel.

What makes the longbow a good zerg weapon? Barrage? Because everything else aside from the vulnerability is done better by the shortbow with piercing arrows. Better damage, higher refire rate, more opponent control.

The longbow is a bad weapon. 1500 range traited doesn’t make it less bad, it just makes it bad over a longer range.

To whoever mentioned guild wars 1, Distracting Shot, Savage Shot, and Apply Poison were really never nerfed. Those were the bread and butter of like 99% of all the builds viable in competitive play.

Forzani.2584:

jcbroe.4329:

OGDeadHead.8326:

jcbroe.4329:

WvW makes me very depressed with a lot of the community that plays ranger (nobody in particular, just saying).

Off topic, but this reminds me… with the observer mode in pvp, and the possibility to check out the builds ppl are running… omg. O M F G.

The builds. The weapons of choice. Some haven’t even used all of their trait points. Some have traits like Quick draw, despite using axe as one weapon, and greatsword as the other…

This is hotjoin ofc, but still… (and doesn’t apply only to rangers for that matter)

Bad builds and weapon choices are like, my number 1 pet peeve (ask my girlfriend, who plays Borderlands 2 with me, and has no care what she assigns skill points to or the guns she uses, and doesn’t try to learn how it works. I ask her literally every 5 minutes to reassign trait points, and I take the controller from her and equip weapons for her so she can at least be helpful).

.

Soon to be ex-girlfriend

Lol we’ve been together for 3 years now though, and have been playing borderlands 2 together for about a year :O

She’s fine with my pet peeves, cuz she kicks my kitten at Injustice lol.

OGDeadHead.8326:

jcbroe.4329:

WvW makes me very depressed with a lot of the community that plays ranger (nobody in particular, just saying).

Off topic, but this reminds me… with the observer mode in pvp, and the possibility to check out the builds ppl are running… omg. O M F G.

The builds. The weapons of choice. Some haven’t even used all of their trait points. Some have traits like Quick draw, despite using axe as one weapon, and greatsword as the other…

This is hotjoin ofc, but still… (and doesn’t apply only to rangers for that matter)

Oh no, I know. It’s really bad. I mean, we shouldn’t suspect that all people in guild wars 2 are experienced, but it really shouldn’t be so hard to read up on game mechanics to make the best character possible, ESPECIALLY when entering an arena based mode.

Bad builds and weapon choices are like, my number 1 pet peeve (ask my girlfriend, who plays Borderlands 2 with me, and has no care what she assigns skill points to or the guns she uses, and doesn’t try to learn how it works. I ask her literally every 5 minutes to reassign trait points, and I take the controller from her and equip weapons for her so she can at least be helpful).

I can’t even begin to describe for guild wars 2, how many times I’ve tested and retested traits and weapons for the ranger mainly, and my secondary pvp classes (engineer, mesmer), and how many times I’ve read and reread the wiki on traits and their functions and skills and their functions to get a better understanding of how everything works, and what I could potentially be up against.

Which is also why so many of my posts are about how bad certain weapon skills and traits are lol.

I have the instinct that longbow rangers are bad. 99.99% of the time, I’m correct. So I make it my duty to kill them in order to show them they are using the least viable weapon. This isn’t just WvW either, this is PvP as well.

Krugan.7901:

Rewards are not necessary for making pvp bigger. In gw1 gvg was big and all you get for winning a game was more rating, your kitten gets bigger and that’s all. HA had some little rewards, but people never played for the rewards, they did it just for the rank and the animation (or enjoyment)… again, kitten. You don’t need shinies when the actual gameplay is enjoyable.

Also, I won’t get too hyped about wildstar. To me that game looks too much luke wow 2.0: arena, gear dependency/gear gind, and 40 gazillion people raids.

I thought they eventually implemented win chests and increased faction rewards (which could be traded for balthazar keys and sold or RNG’d at the chest for gear) because, even though the gameplay was captivating, even that wasn’t enough to keep people coming back to the game.

HA was definitely all about the ranks, because you could /rank people to show off. AND you could obtain rewards. It was the best of both worlds.

More importantly, it’s an incentive. Guild Wars 2 no longer has the competitive playerbase driving the game, constantly creating hype and energy for the PvP content (it doesn’t help for the game modes to be so separated). It needs extra incentive to draw players in and keep players. I’ve been playing WvW for the last 2-3 months instead of doing the PvP I would usually do, and I realized, instead of being rank 33 or 34 (I can’t remember which I am right now), I’d probably be like rank 42, with nothing to show for it other than some new PvP armors.

It’s that right there that will make a person quit PvPing in this game until there is some additional incentive. Rank means nothing because time != skill. There needs to be some sort of gold conversion for glory, or some way to make armor skins earned in PvP translate to the rest of the game, or something else similar. Something like: “awesome, now I have the money to go do this other thing” or “cool, now all these things I get in PvP matter outside of PvP, so I can show off how awesome I am to people who don’t PvP through the gear I obtained.”

For Wildstar, I’ve never played WoW and have no desire to ever play WoW. What I do see is a game that has implemented the same sort of mobility based combat guild wars 2 has, but with lots of class differentiation to the point where, if balance is correct (or corrected within 2-3 months of launch), every class will have a unique and meaningful role, but be able to self sustain as well. PvE looks extremely casual, and it looks like the PvP in that game is going to be what it should; high skilled content to the point where it’s deserving of being endgame content (endgame meaning in this instance, the place you go to get better after facerolling through PvE a little).

Xsorus.2507:

He wasn’t a bad player, he was actually really hard to kill.

He switched to pig cause in previous fights I was killing his dogs over and over again soon as he swapped to them

I do agree that there is a lot of bad rangers out there….I mean a lot..Who will AJ every fight they see…I actually let whoever i’m fighting kill the person who aj’s on them if they can..I’ll pull off and let them beat em..then I tell the ranger he shouldn’t AJ

My personal favorite part yesterday was me fighting a thief, that just killed a ranger…I’m bout to kill the Thief when the ranger shoots him and kills him, i’m like wtf you doing… and he’s like “I wanted revenge for him killing me” and i told him “get revenge by winning the fight”

I don’t think its just rangers though…People in this game just ugg… I don’t know..Maybe i’m just an old foggy having played DAOC…. but I view a lot of people in this game very poorly

I miss guild wars 1 for that reason, the pvp made the game. I’m not sure what the original intention of guild wars 1 was, but pvp is where it saw its success, and its what captivated the majority of its audience.

Right now all my instincts are telling me the next truly competitive MMO is going to be Wildstar, but it’s in closed beta and I won’t know for certain until I get to experience the feel of it.

It’s sad, because guild wars 2 has so much potential. They just aren’t capitalizing on it fast enough to hold the attention of a large audience. Also, PvP shouldn’t feel like an added area. It should feel like the endgame content. There should be items obtainable in PvP (this also holds true to WvW, but WvW kind of has some of this, albeit, it’s limited) that are only obtainable there, but can be used across the game, to make people play pvp more.

It could be something extremely simple, like spending the amassed amounts of glory players have to turning armors unlocked in pvp item skin that can be applied to content accessible to the whole game.

If you jump into the game right away, I doubt somebody who just learns as they go ever even discovers PvP and WvW, because they are icons on the UI that aren’t mentioned anywhere else throughout the game.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

The point is that for the most part, the game only ever challenges player to get good at PvE, and they can receive every reward they want from doing that (and spending gems at the gem store). WvW and PvP need to be more rewarding so that players have a desire to accept the challenge to get better against other players, and there by, get better at the game.

Dungeons would be the third part of that, but dungeon mechanics are always going to be undermined by people who optimize the dungeons to be run as fast as possible, to be farmed as fast as possible. It’s just another PvE mentality that only encourages players to learn more or listen better, instead of genuinely playing better.

WvW makes me very depressed with a lot of the community that plays ranger (nobody in particular, just saying).

I mean, really. There are guides and videos from good players all over the place now. And sometimes, it must be an issue of mechanic understanding, because when I fight other rangers, I sometimes think they aren’t even aware they have a dodge key.

This could be just being in a server that isn’t the highest possible tier it could be, but…. seriously. Though there are just as many bad thief players, this isn’t exclusive to rangers haha.

Sorry, /endrant. Just thought it fell in line with the whole, players not performing well and doing the absolute strangest, least tactical, least useful things imaginable in fights.

Setun.4368:

jcbroe.4329:

RaO is very useful in pvp for point holding, and just as useful in WvW for escaping. The might is useful, but fairly inconsequential. The Fury, Swiftness, and Stability are pretty big though.

I would even go as far as saying as it has the potential to be stronger than Entangle against other players. Simply because most classes can escape or destroy the vines easily, but RaO can only have it’s boons ripped by a select amount of sources, and can shut down the opponents ability to line up bursts long enough for you to gain the advantage in the fight.

RaO would be crazy good if it also acted as a stun breaker upon activation. I noticed that since so many people these days are running stability more people are using immobilizes, chills, and snares way more since stability doesn’t prevent those and can be just as devistating in pvp.

To go along with how RaO is our only skill in the Pet family tree (the ingame description), I would really like to see all of the shouts converted to a pet family, with more traits interacting with this created family.

Certain reworks would be nice too. Guard should be merged with S&R, so that S&R becomes ground targeted and grants the pet the initial stealth and protection, and have the cooldown on S&R with this change increased appropriately.

This would leave an entire new utility slot skill open for a new idea.

Also, Protect me should be more like “for x amount of seconds, incoming damage is split between the player and the pet.” That way, it isn’t just a pet sacrifice, and it still has its defensive potential.

Since I’m on a tangent now, I’ll continue onward to spirits. One of three things needs to happen:
1) Make spirits unable to take damage
2) If they remain as is, their buffs need to be increased to reflect them being worthwhile targets and not AoE fodder
3) Make spirits pulse some kind of AoE damage through natural function or trait. This way Spirits Unbound isn’t a “come die to AoE when something looks at me” trait.

I just can’t believe the game has gone so long without any fixes to any of the classes utilities in this game. Utility choices and trait choices are the biggest thing holding back every classes versatility.

Ryan.8367:

“Rapid fire isn’t just about the damage. It’s a channel that can still hit people in stealth, procs sigils and traits often, "

While I sort of agree , you’re still in the end using a broken mechanic to get an upper hand. When the tracking is fixed, which it of course ISN’T supposed to track people into stealth (aka its a broken mechanic , much like EB was before it was fixed and pet swap f2 before it was fixed) what will be left for the LB? It’s the same bug with warrior’s killshot.

These are simply not supposed to track a person into stealth. It’s a bug that will eventually get fixed and I know I for one don’t like using broken mechanics that will eventually get fixed to have an upper hand currently. But that’s just me..

I’ll add onto this GS #5 does this as well, which will also end up getting fixed too. It’s just a matter of time before the complains roll in enough for them to do it.

To add to this response, I’m not going to screw myself over just because I want to hit somebody that goes stealth.

Also, to the proccing sigils/traits, how does rapid fire still do this any better than the shortbow? Shortbows autoattack does more damage AND has that rate of fire at all times.

I’ll say it again, the only justifiable reason there is to use longbow is that it is a persons playstyle preference. By no means does that make it an optimal or viable weapon.

DeWolfe.2174:

I bought Settler’s Armor/accessories right away. Not bad stats at all. Problem I’m running into is flanking targets with short bow isn’t as easy as it sounds. Power long bow / great sword seems like a lot easier of a build.

Going to do a power build next and see how it goes. With the pet nerf coming, I’m guessing my BM is going downhill anyway, right?

It’s better run with some variation of Axe/Torch and Sword/Dagger (the variation being Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch).

RaO is very useful in pvp for point holding, and just as useful in WvW for escaping. The might is useful, but fairly inconsequential. The Fury, Swiftness, and Stability are pretty big though.

I would even go as far as saying as it has the potential to be stronger than Entangle against other players. Simply because most classes can escape or destroy the vines easily, but RaO can only have it’s boons ripped by a select amount of sources, and can shut down the opponents ability to line up bursts long enough for you to gain the advantage in the fight.

I want to see protect me reworked a bit so that instead of an invulnerability and the pet taking all of the damage, incoming damage is split between the player and pet, 50/50.

As for guard, I’m really not sure what the purpose of it is. It doesn’t really do anything all that useful, except for maybe a band aid fix for pet issues in dungeons. It should probably be replaced entirely.

S&R should heal at the very least twice as much as it does now, and it should definitely be ground targeted. Just merge how guard works now with S&R and increase the cooldown to be the same as Illusion of Life and the necro rez Signet.

Sic’ Em really is the only one that is okay as is, but barely. There should be more of a benefit for it to the player through traits.

I say all of these skills be turned from shouts into Pet Skills, just like Rampage as One, then rework some traits to make them affect those lines, since there is literally only 1 trait for rangers that affects shouts at this point.

Terkov.4138:

jcbroe.4329:

Melpomene.2367:

Zenith.7301:

This guy has no idea 5-7k damage from a 5 second channel is pretty terrible.

Really? All the hours I’ve played ranger? That channel, plus your pet, plus the super low cool downs on sword, dagger, GS. Come on dude. Anet themselves said rangers are about sustained dps. We are NOT warriors or thieves. I think it’s a good thing they are reducing some of their dps. BM bunker is way too strong, I’ve put many hours into that build.

Rapid Fire is terrible because Crossfire (the auto attack on the shortbow) does the same damage until somewhere in the 3000 attack range (and the different is maybe 40-70 damage), and even then, the shortbow is like using Rapid Fire all the time with no cooldown, so it maintains a higher DPS.

So, if that’s the longbows burst, then the shortbow is simply bursting all the time, with utility options on top of that. So yeah, rapid fire could definitely use an increase in damage, and I made that comparison within the ranger class alone.

Rapid Fire has some advantages: tracking stealthed players and triggering confusion only once.
Idk wtf is wrong with ppl… if LB did more dmg than SB, then why would ppl use SB? LB deals more dmg on 1000+ and can use Rapid Fire if is forced to close distance for short time. Crying it’s weaker than SB in close combat doesn’t make sense.
Yes, it needs fixes to “obstructed” and arrows need to fly faster. Barrage on move would be nice too. Increasing dmg so it is as strong as SB on <1000 would simply make SB useless.

I see how the conversation has progressed with Puandro, but to answer why people would use shortbow; it would make the shortbow the optimal condition ranged weapon of choice.
Role distinction is extremely important when there are multiple weaponsets per class. Right now, shortbow performs on both the condition and power damage spectrum, outclassing the longbow in almost every possible instance.

The design flaw isn’t the shortbow however, it’s that the longbow really doesn’t bring anything all that unique to the table for a power build except barrage (I would have said knockback, but shortbow has an interrupt as well and they serve similar functions). If the power damage was higher, it would immediately distinguish the weapons.

Because right now, other than preference, there is really no optimal situation to be using a longbow. Which is truly unfortunate, but hopefully (maybe) at the very least, the power trait line will be improved next patch to make this different. Opening Strike really really really sucks, as do most of the traits in that line, and it would be nice to see some more traits centered around performance enhancement as opposed to the many conditionals there are, or the useless traits that are in desperate need of replacement/polish.

It actually got nerfed in PvP to have a longer cooldown. This was done I believe because of the pet leash range, so rangers had the ability to rez a player potentially 5000 range away.

Or something of the sort. Either way, in guild wars 1, every class could take a rez to PvP, with a few support oriented classes having options to different types of rezzes. I think it should be the same in this game (PvP wise) or no rezzes at all.

Melpomene.2367:

Zenith.7301:

This guy has no idea 5-7k damage from a 5 second channel is pretty terrible.

Really? All the hours I’ve played ranger? That channel, plus your pet, plus the super low cool downs on sword, dagger, GS. Come on dude. Anet themselves said rangers are about sustained dps. We are NOT warriors or thieves. I think it’s a good thing they are reducing some of their dps. BM bunker is way too strong, I’ve put many hours into that build.

Rapid Fire is terrible because Crossfire (the auto attack on the shortbow) does the same damage until somewhere in the 3000 attack range (and the different is maybe 40-70 damage), and even then, the shortbow is like using Rapid Fire all the time with no cooldown, so it maintains a higher DPS.

So, if that’s the longbows burst, then the shortbow is simply bursting all the time, with utility options on top of that. So yeah, rapid fire could definitely use an increase in damage, and I made that comparison within the ranger class alone.

The gain in effective damage reduction from toughness being the primary stat should be high than the loss in healing per second. Making the build slightly tankier.

Jalad Lantana.3027:

Bas.7406:

SOTG has zero to do with pve or wvwvw. Unfortunately at this point there is no SOTG for WvWvW or PVE. Though from conversations I have had this may be coming soon.

Unfortunately SOTG has everything to do with PVE, since Anet has never practiced what they preach about splitting PVP and PVE balancing. Almost every single PVP nerf carried over to PVE and none have been removed once given to PVE.

Based on past performance there is little evidence they will ever do anything but keep their head in the sand in regards to PVE dungeon balance.

It’s “trickle down” balancing. The highest skill, highest tiered gameplay ideally comes from a player facing off against other players, and if a person can do well against other players, then the idea is that they should be able to do well against PvE creatures, but PvE creatures have predictable movesets, actions, and algorithms that determine how they function in a fight.

Then the argument of balancing primarily for WvW or PvP comes into play. The reason why it isn’t WvW focused is because of the amount of variables there are. Between the mixtures of equipment, with the necessity to grind for top quality gear, and the sheer amount of people there are at times, it would be extremely hard to reach true balance in WvW.

SPvP has the most demanding team composition with the most observable versus gameplay to balance around. Unfortunately, the devs seem to forget that they shouldn’t be balancing strictly around a conquest style game mode, ESPECIALLY if they aren’t going to be splitting changes that often.

Not to say dungeon balance doesn’t deserve any love, but the idea behind balancing SPvP first makes sense as it covers most of the games content.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————————

Back to my OP, with the recent discovery that there could be a trait change that opens up some different builds, my hopes for the next update aren’t entirely killed. However, I’m extremely skeptical as well, since the game was released with those traits and they’re just NOW being addressed. In my head, I know it probably won’t go very well for rangers in the long run.

Regardless of the specs, those aren’t the things that are the issue.

The issue is the simple mechanics the pvp game is designed around, which are just: do damage, avoid damage, and hold capture points.

In guild wars 1 there were specs dedicated to shutting down other specs, or specs entirely dedicated to boosting the entire teams efficiency, while having little to no impact outside of a team setting.

However, we’re left with a damage focuses/oriented game, where counter building has taken a backseat to min/maxing and optimization, allowing for people to build entirely for damage, entirely for defense, or entirely for node holding (probably defensive, categorically speaking).

The issue at it’s core is that with the simplicity of mechanics, it doesn’t require a “high skill” build to effectively accomplish what needs to be accomplished to win a game, and that is probably the core problem; the mechanics allow the game to remain too casual(by casual I mean low skill cap) at times.

@Battosai, That’s no problem, real life definitely comes first.

With Spirits Unbound. I was examining it more from a function as a trait than how spirits function. By that I mean, I don’t think it’s that trait that’s making it a bad choice, it’s the implementation of how spirits are.

Also, with how you said pets could be more supplementary so they could be more control/support, I’ve been wishing that for awhile.

Unfortunately, and it may just be bias, but I think the devs have such a point of pride with what they’ve done so far that they aren’t willing to scrap the ideas they launched the game with in favor of ideas the community comes up with. I would love to be proven wrong on that though.

My idea on pets, which a lot of people seemed to hate and I’m not sure why, was something like this:

-Pets do a static damage number with no possible crit chance. This number would increase statically by adding points into beastmastery.

-Current pet actives are replaced with much stronger utilities, that can be made even better through traiting (F2 gives boons, trait doubles the duration of the boon, another trait gives a boon everytime an F2 is used, another F2 shares damage incoming damage between you and your pet, but reduces damage taken to both of you by xx%, etc)

-For people wanting to go damage with their pets, there will be damage specific pets with no active abilities, and a grandmaster trait that adds a crit chance/damage multiplier (I was thinking it could either be static with the skill, or based off of the stats of the player).

-Pets survivability brought in line with the new changes to have enough survival, particularly in PvE, to be useful, but not so much from a PvP standpoint that the pet is unkillable. The survivability should be based on how strong the pets utility is, or if the pet is a damage pet (damage pets easier to kill)

-To compensate for the drastic change, all potential DPS on the pet that is lost to the change is added back to the ranger player through damage values and coefficients

Of course, that would require an extreme polishing of the game, and right now, the devs haven’t gotten around to trait polishing for all of the classes yet. But it’s nice to hope/dream lol.

Manekk.6981:

jcbroe.4329:

Manekk.6981:

jcbroe.4329:

Stuff

Stuff

Stuff

Good idea, now to convince anet to delete thieves and mesmers hmmm you pick the last one

Lol well here’s my analysis from a class mechanic standpoint:

Warriors and Thieves share a similar mechanic; they both have a single button press. Warriors charges by adrenaline, in a similar manner that Necro Death Shroud accumulates, while thieves is just a simple cooldown, similar to how Toolbelt skills from Engineers and virtues from Guardians.
The only thing unique to either mechanic (Warrior or thief) is how steal interacts with the different professions in the games, meaning that to get the most desired skill possible, thieves have to prioritize targets.

Engineers and Guardians, as mentioned, have a similar UI and concept; there are additional actives available if they are needed. Guardians get passive effects while engineers choices are affected by utility selection, which is really the only different.

This UI model, and particularly, how Guardian Virtues work, are related directly to Rangers pet mechanic. Pets are like the guardians passive effects with more RNG, they are passively accomplishing something and you have a UI to actively control them. Necro pets most likely spawned from the ranger pet mechanics, while having another health bar to worry about is a direct relation to how Necro death shroud works.

Mesmers are a bit of a diverse mixture. The UI mimics Ranger, Engineer, and Guardians, but shattering is a completely unique mechanic, even though clones are probably derived from the pet mechanic (for those programmers out there, inheritance anybody?) Rangers use, albeit it has been dumbed down a bit to incorporate the use of shatters to get full use out of the clones.

Elementalists are also similarly diverse but unique. Most closely related to Necro Death shroud, each attunement is basically a weapon swap with the cooldown of a weapon swap, but compared to how Death Shroud functions, both are activating the class mechanic to bring up a new set of usable skills, although elementalists weapon selection affects what skills are on each bar.

That being said, the 5 classes with the most unique class mechanics should be the ones that stay.

-Guardians (heavy armor class, accomplishes the nice mixture of good passives and actives, elegance in simplicity),
-Thieves (medium armor class, stealth is annoying but they own it, risk/reward gameplay, has unique functions),
-Rangers(medium armor, the most elegant pet system, has the capability of doing everything the warrior can do if values are shifted around and the game is polished), -Mesmers(light armor, very unique mechanic, works well integrated into gameplay, can accomplishes a variety of different areas of offense and defense), and lastly -Elementalists(light armor, large arsenal of skills at their disposal at a time, can accomplish lots of different roles, encourages skilled gameplay to master).

That’s just my take on it.

I’m surprised the mods haven’t closed this thread yet lol.

FrouFrou.4958:

jcbroe.4329:

This is a good discussion, I hope this keeps up. I would say ANet can’t ignore us forever, however we as a community have been in full agreement about certain ranger issues for awhile with no acknowledgement ever. So…. I guess all we can do is keep it up.

They have been doing exactly that whole time and will most likely continue doing so. By the looks of it we will prolly get Aquaman part 3 patch as an exchange for the nerfed pet DPS.

These sotg videos always makes me really sad since there isn’t anyone out there putting up a fight or standing up for us. So my next question would be where’s Robert? What happened to all the amazing suggestions we piled up for him to present for the team? Did every single suggestion get ruled out? He got the agony resistance added in and hotm pets fixed but they are broken yet again. I know he said he can only bring things up and he is not the one making the decisions, but since he is the only member in the team playing a ranger, I don’t really have any hope for him being the saviour of ranger class.

Everybody log in and spam bug reports on their rangers about traits not functioning and pets not functioning and weapons not working. If the entire ranger community did this, I’m pretty sure we would flood the support team with so many bug reports saying the same thing that it would have to get passed along to a different team at some point.

Saying this and actually trying to get people to do this is two different things though lol :/

Manekk.6981:

jcbroe.4329:

I’ll just be rolling a trap ranger build, that has a higher DPS than the current BM build with still good sustained healing.

Alongside that, I will running a cheese build thief that has high DPS and survival without going glass cannon, just cuz I want a break from a class that gets so little attention, and receives only detrimental updates to this point (Damage nerf from beta, Shortbow attack speed nerf, Empathic Bond Nerf, and now Pet Damage nerf).

Don’t forget the Jaguar (wich really is the only pet with very high dps) has already been nerfed atleast once or was it twice? I can’t remember they took a big burstdamage hit on bite anyway.

That too.

I’m really to the point where I feel like, from a balance standpoint where balance is centered primarily around tpvp, that with teams only being 5 man teams, there should have only been 5 different classes.

It’s a pigeonhole principle, and if there are 5 slots and 8 professions, that means that at any given time, up to three classes are going to be left out of team comps. It would have been easier just to design 5 classes, each with an obvious primary function and the ability to perform decently at secondary functions, and call a 5 man team made of each of those professions built around their primary function a balanced team. Then, based on taking more than one of a profession or the changing of a build, the team could be made offense or defense heavy.

Right now, looking at all of the professions and traits, the game is just a poor mix of a bunch of different ideas with very singular core concepts that have been stretched too thinly between too many different professions, and to make everything seem different, they added 1 almost unique quality to every class; the class mechanic. Which in reality, every class mechanic is just a mixture of other classes mechanics.

So now it’s this big clusterkitten, and the cleanup of which is not being handled well at all.

Straegen.2938:

nagymbear.5280:

I fully understood your post. And I stand by mine. I also don’t like people always bashing on new rangers (not saying you do that all the time, don’t get me wrong).

I don’t think my post or the follow up posts are bashing (well except those directed at me on a personal level). I do not believe any decent player with minimal WvW experience does these things. I also believe rangers that are doing these things are doing it because nobody told them not to.

nagymbear.5280:

Maybe I read something into it. The OP set up a feel for this thread, which I don’t like.

Its funny to me that someone points out some REALLY obvious bad WvW ranger tactics and several people lose their kittens about it. This includes the nasty in game messages and a couple posts here.

I do notice most posters here don’t really disagrees with me save for some very specific circumstances.

If a disclaimer like this one was added to the OP, then the response may have been different from some people than they way it’s going. Just pointing that out. There’s an explained thought process here that shows that the intention isn’t to highlight negative behavior, but to identify it in order to avoid it and better the playerbase as a whole.

However, your OP was much too factual, and if skimmed over, it comes off as (paraphrased): “Rangers, don’t do this. I know this from my experience, and now I’m telling you so you know.”

It doesn’t seem like that’s the way it was intended, and I’m sorry to hear people have been more rude than understanding. But hey, if everybody likes you, you’re probably doing something wrong, that’s how I feel anyways.

nagymbear.5280:

Maybe I read something into it. The OP set up a feel for this thread, which I don’t like.

Oh no, I agree, that’s why I avoided commenting or responding to the OP entirely lol. There’s a huge difference between learning tactics versus just not caring enough to read what your skill does and how its going to affect the situation the opponent is in.

That being said, I personally probably have a bias against knockback shot. While it functions as intended and allows you to keep some melee off of you, it doesn’t knock the opponent into a range where the weapon would have a truly optimal performance. Rapid Fire is only real usable skill after knockback shot, and it just has disappointing damage (it should be doing much more for it being the obvious ranged power weapon of choice, but the shortbow ties it in damage output).

In my opinion, Knockback Shot should have been like the Warriors Pin Down skill; a 3s immobilize. This would allow for the player to setup a burst, or play keep away with a melee opponent, and would have lots of synergy with Barrage, weapon swapping to a melee weapon for burst, AND setting up with our pets for some guaranteed pet hits.

So that could be part of the issue with me personally, but I have seen as many good uses of Knockback Shot as I have bad too.

nagymbear.5280:

I fully understood your post. And I stand by mine. I also don’t like people always bashing on new rangers (not saying you do that all the time, don’t get me wrong). They were fooled by adverisment thinking ranger is an archer in this game. The concept of using your weapon skills as a utility, instead of a damage source, might also be a new concept for some. The dodge mechanic is also probably something new to them, and they think all they can do to defend themselves with is #4 on longbow.

But that’s my point, where you see bashing, I see education. If a player screws up others simply because they don’t understand that they shouldn’t be knocking opponents out of situations where they are trapped in AoE, then they deserve to be on the receiving end of peoples rage, as that is part of the educative process if a person doesn’t take them time to read through and understand key concepts before going in like they’re Leeroy Jenkins, when really they’re pulling a kitten Cheney.

nagymbear.5280:

jcbroe.4329:

I guess it knocks the enemy around and makes them feel manly or something.

No, its just that it is the only defensive skill you have on the longbow.

Please read through the entire content of my post before responding to something taken entirely taken out of context.

Unless people feel the need to defend themselves against immobilized/stunned/entangled opponents by knocking them out of the immobilize/stun/entangle….

Which in that case, I’m just going to tie my hands behind my back and smash my face against the keyboard when I play, and I guarantee I will be playing better than the people who play how I described in my previous anecdote.