Guild Wars 2

Errant Venture.9371:

jcbroe.4329:

You CAN blame the devs though.

I think that’s the whole point of this thread

I thought the whole point of this thread was to cry about having balanced pathing on the thief shortbow, then making inaccurate claims about how homing and “godly” the ranger shortbow is and how high bleed stacks can get (there is a flanking requirement, if you let somebody shoot you in the back to stack bleeds, you deserved it. Otherwise, the stack only sustains at about 2).

But anyhow, yes, now that the thief shortbow autoattack has been changed, the flight time does need increasing.

Amaterasu.6280:

fakeblood.2576:

Please don’t compare the thief shortbow to a ranger shortbow lol

Thief shortbow does WAY more damage and bounces between targets .. I’d give 300 range for that.. Also the bleed for rangers shortbow is if your behind or on your side of your target.. Who fights with their back turned besides nade engys lol

Do complain more and shortbow is not your only diffence you got stealth and blind deal

Tell me a ranger who doesn’t use sigil of earth on SB. Auto-attacks BLEED, and it stacks FAST. The ranger’s SB shoots easily 2x as fast as a thief’s.

Yea you shouldn’t compare the thief SB to Ranger’s SB, because the Ranger’s SB is mindless auto-attacking = win.

Just as a challenge, name a stronger source of damage or a skill rotation that does better damage than using just the auto attack.

You can’t blame people for optimizing damage on a weapon (even if it is just autoattacking) when the weapon was designed that way. You CAN blame the devs though.

Xsorus.2507:

I have a feeling this guy thinks Guard works on the Ranger…

Well you can achieve NEAR 100% protection uptime with 30 Nature Magic, a proc’d Spirit of Earth, 2x each of the 10% boon uptime runes, 2x 15% protection runes, and dodge rolling with 15 Wilderness Survival after getting that proc (which lasts ~4.5 seconds plus ~3 seconds = 7.5s of protection).

Though I seriously doubt anybody who’s decent thinks that the build this is going to end up being viable lol.

The ranger community is complaining because they same builds that were the top builds at release in pvp, are still the top builds.

Believe it or not, not everybody wants to play a pet based or trap based ranger build. There are people out there who want to play weapon based builds (as in, where the weapon is the focus of the build).

Forzani.2584:

Class envy. It’s why all developers end up avoiding the forums. Impossible to stop the whinning.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/WHY-ON-EARTH-WOULD-YOU-BUFF-RANGER-PETS

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Why-is-ranger-pet-better-then-Warrior/first#post1934214

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/pvp/pvp/Rangers-New-fotm/first#post1933512

tldr: Rangers feel they are kitten and Anet hates them. Other claases think Rangers O/P and gets too much love from Anet. Both groups are going to quit then slit their wrists.

From what I’m reading that isn’t QUITE accurate. More accurately, the pvp community has (and has for awhile now) had an issue with how strong the pet is for awhile, with the amount of damage it can output, and the leash range (meaning you can have it attack somebody on midpoint and then go back and sit on home point).

pot.6805:

jcbroe.4329:

pot.6805:

Pets may have needed a buff in PvE or something but not in Spvp!

When you can figure out to to split the way mechanics function between game modes (AI functioning different in PvP than PvE), I’m sure ANet will hire you to do it.

Um it is not hard to split the amount of tough/vit ranger pets get in PvE vs spvp. They already have splits on other skills.

Obviously they thought that the base amounts weren’t enough (and outside of a BM focused build they weren’t).

Again, as I mentioned earlier, everybody, INCLUDING a large majority of the ranger community, would rather see the damage on the player than on the pet. I cannot stress this enough, as the survival and function of the pets are in good spot across the board.

I cannot stress enough that pets wouldn’t even be an issue if they only hit ~300 damage per hit with the same amount of survival.

pot.6805:

Pets may have needed a buff in PvE or something but not in Spvp!

When you can figure out to to split the way mechanics function between game modes (AI functioning different in PvP than PvE), I’m sure ANet will hire you to do it.

The way the ranger pet performed was a much needed quality of life improvement in terms of AI handling, and the stat point increases aren’t really noticeable except on (lol) bears.

As far as what the AI improvement seems to have done, it appears that the only difference between pets pre patch and pets post patch is that they don’t move their footing every time a person strafes outside of their last location.
What I mean is that you can’t circle strafe them, you actually have to move OUTSIDE of the attacks range.

As far as the amount of damage the ranger pet does, MOST of the ranger community would rather the pet serve as mostly utility while the damage be controlled by mostly the player. So I would say the majority of the ranger community has probably wanted to not have to rely on the pet so much since release.

I’m hoping MORE people play BM rangers now. Maybe it will finally send a message and will result in getting buffs to the class that people actually want.

Aridia.3042:

If you ever played any FPS, you can see the perception of the people I’m referring to. Just look at claymores. A lot of players don’t like them, because they feel it’s cheap, despite that you can see them and blow them up. Before BF3 came out, DICE posted frequently on the UK forums, and there were multiple threads asking claymores not to be included in the game.

Look at people’s reaction to snipers. Again, it’s “cheap” because people feel like they can’t fight back. It’s the same thing. Just because it’s realistic doesn’t mean people won’t be turned off by them when they’re on the receiving end of said weapons.

And really you guys are arguing semantics with the RNG comment. The point is what comes out of the pet is not controllable. Just because the underlying formula is not real RNG doesn’t change the fact that the output is basically RNG like. Sure you can keep track of the pet routine but are you going to? No one can when they play it because you’re watching your own toon so the outcome looks completely random. And by focusing on my description of it totally missed the point of the issue, that is pets introduce far too much randomness, imbalance and skill debasement into the meta. Things like that don’t translate well into the skill category on a competitive scene.

But you again missed the point I believe I made in this thread(and if it wasn’t this thread I truly am sorry) where I’m stating that a large majority of the ranger community does not want pets in their current implementation, and would much prefer them to be less RNG based.

I just agreed with the sentiment with a much longer description of my thought processes before.

Side note: yes, anything in a first person shooter that is a 1 hit kill that is hard to see or predict to counter is going to be called cheap. The cheapness factor should be translated directly into how effective a kill can be achieved with it. I’m not disagreeing that traps are annoying, but I find them to be only a minor annoyance on the cheapness scale that is Guild Wars 2.

Vox Hollow.2736:

It’s a bit deeper than that.
Sometimes a pet won’t use a skill at all unless specific requirements on the battlefield are met (ex; Devourer Retreat, Moa Harmonic Cry).

…or I guess another way of thinking about it is that all pet Family Skills have a requirement for activation, it’s just these requirements can be as simple as ‘be in range + skill off cooldown’. So certain pets seem to operate like clockwork because their requirements are really easy to satisfy, while others are less so because they have more complicated ones.

Our profession mechanic is honestly one of the deeper ones in the game. It’s just kind of shame we’ve been so busy licking our wounds over being last pick, we haven’t put much of our collective intelligence into discovering it.

I wouldn’t say that’s true for everybody. I definitely agree there is depth to it.

But I find that from how I feel and what I read, there are quite a few people who are frustrated with how specific a lot of those pets skills are for activation requirement. Moas heal for instance, would be extremely powerful if players could control when and where the player used it by micromanaging (and might actually warrant a decrease in the amount it heals for in that situation).

However, those things are hard to control. Similar to getting drakes to use their blast finisher in one of the l many combo fields we can provide. Yes, there are situations where we can MAKE it happen, but I feel people want more control over when they can make it happen and how they can make it happen (throwing down healing spring for instance, then calling the drake to it and having it use its blast finisher in it).

But because those conditions are so specific, it frustrates players who can see that we have access to these types of effects but the skills are too specific to get the full effect out of a lot of the cool things we have access to.

Along with the incompetence/ignorance you mentioned of course lol

The Spiral King.2483:

jcbroe.4329:

The Spiral King.2483:

jcbroe.4329:

I feel like, while this is true for necromancers, it isn’t their class mechanic.

A more suitable equivalent would be Ranger spirits to Necro minions. You can invest a lot of traits that overall don’t account for much, and in the end, there are just better slot options.

But a find that a class mechanic, being the defining mechanism in which a class is based upon, should be polished as efficiently as possible, before the game is even sold. It would literally take 1 minute of watching a pet try to attack something moving and then watching them try to activate their F2 to notice that it isn’t optimal.

And apparently our class wasn’t worth that 1 minute of time before the game was released, and that is the part that’s really poor on ANets part.

That’s not true at all. They gave us a firm solid look in the BWEs. And then they decided to turn the Greatsword into a foam noodle. I miss my BWE GS. Even now the auto hits like a noodle, the maul update was nice, but why aren’t we allowed to have powerful skills like, oh say, the entire Guardian and Warrior GS bars.

But in the BWEs, as you’re pointing out, the pet didn’t feel as though it carried so much of the rangers direct damage (because it didn’t), so it was made into an issue when damage for rangers started getting hit.

Exactly. Everyone in this forum has known the issue since release, trusting an ai with a large chunk of our damage will always leave us weaker. The only way to fix this would be to make the pet so powerful that the inherent weaknesses of a kittenty ai are overshadowed. And then it would just be OP and quite frankly not fun at all.

OR reduce pets damage and make them land attacks more reliably on moving opponents (kind of like what they attempted and semi-succeeded at) in guild wars 1, so they are more of a constant pressure mechanic with a unique F2 feature than they are such a large portion of damage.

The inability to attack on the move is a huge hindrance.

I personally would be fine with pets damage output off of the no cooldown attack they have be ~300, then next lowest ~500, then ~700, with no ability to crit whatsoever, and more interesting/powerful F2 abilities for them (with appropriate recharges). This would be in exchange for pets reliably being able to hit moving foes and move while attacking, and if necessary, making a trait necessary for them to have a movement speed advantage to keep pace with a player (so at default, they would hit moving people reliably at the cost of an aftercast, and they would move slowly enough that it would take them a little to catch back up and hit again untraited).

So actually, there are more ways to fix it than one.

The Spiral King.2483:

jcbroe.4329:

I feel like, while this is true for necromancers, it isn’t their class mechanic.

A more suitable equivalent would be Ranger spirits to Necro minions. You can invest a lot of traits that overall don’t account for much, and in the end, there are just better slot options.

But a find that a class mechanic, being the defining mechanism in which a class is based upon, should be polished as efficiently as possible, before the game is even sold. It would literally take 1 minute of watching a pet try to attack something moving and then watching them try to activate their F2 to notice that it isn’t optimal.

And apparently our class wasn’t worth that 1 minute of time before the game was released, and that is the part that’s really poor on ANets part.

That’s not true at all. They gave us a firm solid look in the BWEs. And then they decided to turn the Greatsword into a foam noodle. I miss my BWE GS. Even now the auto hits like a noodle, the maul update was nice, but why aren’t we allowed to have powerful skills like, oh say, the entire Guardian and Warrior GS bars.

But in the BWEs, as you’re pointing out, the pet didn’t feel as though it carried so much of the rangers direct damage (because it didn’t), so it was made into an issue when damage for rangers started getting hit.

Aridia.3042:

jcbroe.4329:

Am I the only one frustrated with the hosts/guests of the SoTG due to how poorly they handled ranger questions YET AGAIN.

Every other class they get devs to explain things further or examine details more thoroughly in terms of positive changes for a class. For rangers, all the managed to squeak out was asking about nerfing pet leash range.

They didn’t ask about any changes that would increase build versatility, they didn’t ask about any changes that would increase weapon versatility. Yet at some point, it seemed every other profession had a question the pertained to asking those.

I’m just curious as to why rangers always have to suffer through the poorest state of the game representation. When things like our pets toughness and vitality get concerned responses from the hosts, it lets the ranger community know how tunnel-visioned these “top-tier” players are, and that their opinion on things doesn’t even always reflect the actual state of the metagame (for rangers. like maybe they would see less frustrating BMs that they don’t like, if there were other strong builds besides it and traps).

Can we get an active, appropriately pvp “tiered” player who actively plays ranger with at least a partial degree of knowledge about the class that people who main ranger have? Then we can give him some sort of metaphorical “taxation without representation” tag in the chat to appropriately summarize how under-represented or misrepresented the ranger community has been and actually have a person who mentions issues of build and weapon versatility.

You know, the same stuff that got discussed in at least some detail for every other class?

Just a theory.

1. Not a lot of pros main rangers. It almost becomes a vicious cycle. No one asks questions so devs don’t really focus on the class. Devs don’t really focus on the class so no one mains them to have questions to be asked.

2. Rangers feel cheap and annoying when you play against them so there’s an inherent bias against them. Your best builds involve traps, which are invisible; and BM, which is a glorified bot with RNG. Not usual characteristics associated with “skill” in pubs or competitive settings.

Yeah I have to go with Sebrent when he says pets aren’t RNG, aside from crit which affects more than just pets (and pig F2).

Also, when you say the word trap, does it really sound like something that should be blatant and avoidable? It kind of undermines the philosophy of trap. Oh wait, there’s also engineers with Incendiary Powder who provide a much more constant on target bleed with Incendiary Powder AND poison if running pistol. So the only thing left to argue on “how powerful” traps are is spike trap, which is basically a glorified sigil of Geomancy with a longer cooldown, that’s unblockable if you walk into the area rangers just overhand threw a big obvious clump of whatever becomes a trap onto the ground and then begin circle strafing around it.

Necros were discussed with their marks in the state of the game, and they were wondering how they could make Marks even less avoidable (which would essentially be making them more like ranger traps).

Maybe it’s just me, but holy contradiction batman, I’m mindkittened!!!

Those wouldn’t be the only options if people actually talked about improving other options.

I feel like, while this is true for necromancers, it isn’t their class mechanic.

A more suitable equivalent would be Ranger spirits to Necro minions. You can invest a lot of traits that overall don’t account for much, and in the end, there are just better slot options.

But a find that a class mechanic, being the defining mechanism in which a class is based upon, should be polished as efficiently as possible, before the game is even sold. It would literally take 1 minute of watching a pet try to attack something moving and then watching them try to activate their F2 to notice that it isn’t optimal.

And apparently our class wasn’t worth that 1 minute of time before the game was released, and that is the part that’s really poor on ANets part.

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

jkctmc.8754:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Durzlla.6295:

I always love seeing warriors getting ready to kill shot when I’m on my staff ele, my Mesmer, my engi, or my ranger while using axe/axe… So essentially everything I play! Oh reflect how I LOVE you…

I seriously think I chuckle everytime I see a warrior get on one knee….

This is why I kill shot people engaged with someone else, never anyone facing me. <winks>

Nerfed or not, I still hit regularly for over 20k, unless they’re insanely tanky, and it’s roughly 13k.

I love kill shot because its one of those moves you need to use skillfully or you’ll never land it, I think the damage it does is more than justified seeing as how it may be the easiest player skill to avoid in the game…

Barrage is way easier to avoid. You have to see killshot coming to avoid it, whereas barrage paints a bright red ring around you. That’s what makes it so hard to land in WvW, half the time your enemy doesn’t even know what’s being thrown at him but he sees a red ring and rolls out of it.

Um…. If everyone avoids my barrage I’m pretty kittening happy because it means I’ve just cleared out a pretty big area, if someone avoids a kill shot NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS. And barrage is hardly “easier to avoid” i guarantee that at least one shot will hit them and then they’ll blow a dodge roll to get out.

If you want to compare the ability of avoiding an AoE you should probably compare it to another AoE, like Meteor Shower, or Glyph of Storms, or Lava Font, not to a single target, reflectable, dodge able, LOSable, block able, and evade able shot.

You’re right, it isn’t really a fair comparison because AoE skills are generally indicated by the red ring, otherwise they’d be way too OP. I was just pointing out how easy it is to avoid the longbow’s theoretically high damage, which was the original premise of the thread.

EDIT: And you won’t hit them if they blow a dodge roll, you’ll only hit them if they decide to walk out of the ring and save the endurance.

No you’ll hit them because when the red ring appears they’ve already been hit by the first wave, a parting gift if you will…

And go to sPvP drop a super high damage barrage on a contested capture point, congrats! No one is going to want to leave that point and you’ve just done a TON of damage, and if they -do- leave the point you just helped your team cap it, it’s a win win.

I just sit on the point, using dagger 4 and sword 3. Then I usually laugh to myself at the ranger using LB against either of my builds (traps or BM) as I kill them while dodging all of their shots as they try to use LB as a primary weapon.

Of course that is my personal experience against rangers using longbow in spvp. When I get bored, I theorycraft longbow specs and run them and I definitely don’t feel as though I use it as poorly as the situation I described, but I feel like a lot of people in this thread do lol.

Well if you’re hitting that ranger with traps he’s either A) a very kittenty longbow ranger or you just lost your point to the roaming thief who was coming to burst you down because EVERYONE wastes their evades on my rapid fire/barrage so they can stay on the point as I pew pew from 1500 away.

Team work is an amazing thing, it’s kinda required with long bow since its a very control oriented weapon with the Area denial, knock back, and vuln.

But then I can weapon swap to shortbow with sigil of energy and have another weapon evade and dodge lol.

So while I agree it is a support weapon, I wasn’t highlighting a scenario in which a person was using it as a support weapon.

I was trying to highlight people who try to build berserker longbow builds, attack a few dummies (basically), and then say rangers have no problems and scold the rest of us on the forums for gasp being constructive and honest (even though a lot of us might have a negative overtone about the class the comes out at times, I’m sure that stems from the stagnant feeling we get from the game at times and the want to love the ranger class more and see its flaws removed).

solrik.6028:

Barrage can’t be reflected. It is not projectile(s)

They probably meant retaliation.

So I’m 100% positive that people calling for ranger nerfs don’t play or understand the issues the class has at all.

Yes, there is a ranger build or two that is strong at holding points. But that is literally like, the only thing that it is desired for. Outside of a point holding environment (WvW for example, even though I only pvp) the pet AI is a welcomed and necessary change, especially when a class should be able to take full advantage of its class mechanic.

Also, the ranger community is majority in agreement with wanting the damage moved from the pet to the player. Until now it was a nuisance to have to rely on shoddy pet AI for damage, and people generally only play that way because they know it’s powerful but feel pigeonholed into it.

But as usual people would rather cry because they personally aren’t effective against something and call for a nerf, instead of try to understand what position a class is in and realize that maybe until the game is rounded out more and subpar things are brought up to the current level (with new hard counter mechanics being introduced), over nerfing things just hurts the metagame for any profession affected by the nerf (like with what haste did to warriors, for example).

There isn’t a single class that anybody would agree is balanced, and that really is because they all need work, because not a single class is in a good spot in its entirety.

It looks like the patch notes address that, although I think we all can agree that we all hope that patch note list is longer than that (as usual).

This chart/page should prove insanely useful for gauging how much condition damage you want: http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Condition_Damage

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

Daemon.4295:

Durzlla.6295:

jkctmc.8754:

ItIsFinished.9462:

Durzlla.6295:

I always love seeing warriors getting ready to kill shot when I’m on my staff ele, my Mesmer, my engi, or my ranger while using axe/axe… So essentially everything I play! Oh reflect how I LOVE you…

I seriously think I chuckle everytime I see a warrior get on one knee….

This is why I kill shot people engaged with someone else, never anyone facing me. <winks>

Nerfed or not, I still hit regularly for over 20k, unless they’re insanely tanky, and it’s roughly 13k.

I love kill shot because its one of those moves you need to use skillfully or you’ll never land it, I think the damage it does is more than justified seeing as how it may be the easiest player skill to avoid in the game…

Barrage is way easier to avoid. You have to see killshot coming to avoid it, whereas barrage paints a bright red ring around you. That’s what makes it so hard to land in WvW, half the time your enemy doesn’t even know what’s being thrown at him but he sees a red ring and rolls out of it.

Um…. If everyone avoids my barrage I’m pretty kittening happy because it means I’ve just cleared out a pretty big area, if someone avoids a kill shot NOTHING GOOD HAPPENS. And barrage is hardly “easier to avoid” i guarantee that at least one shot will hit them and then they’ll blow a dodge roll to get out.

If you want to compare the ability of avoiding an AoE you should probably compare it to another AoE, like Meteor Shower, or Glyph of Storms, or Lava Font, not to a single target, reflectable, dodge able, LOSable, block able, and evade able shot.

You’re right, it isn’t really a fair comparison because AoE skills are generally indicated by the red ring, otherwise they’d be way too OP. I was just pointing out how easy it is to avoid the longbow’s theoretically high damage, which was the original premise of the thread.

EDIT: And you won’t hit them if they blow a dodge roll, you’ll only hit them if they decide to walk out of the ring and save the endurance.

No you’ll hit them because when the red ring appears they’ve already been hit by the first wave, a parting gift if you will…

And go to sPvP drop a super high damage barrage on a contested capture point, congrats! No one is going to want to leave that point and you’ve just done a TON of damage, and if they -do- leave the point you just helped your team cap it, it’s a win win.

I just sit on the point, using dagger 4 and sword 3. Then I usually laugh to myself at the ranger using LB against either of my builds (traps or BM) as I kill them while dodging all of their shots as they try to use LB as a primary weapon.

Of course that is my personal experience against rangers using longbow in spvp. When I get bored, I theorycraft longbow specs and run them and I definitely don’t feel as though I use it as poorly as the situation I described, but I feel like a lot of people in this thread do lol.

Didn’t realize I chose the aquaman class….

How to put this delicately…… If you changed my character to look like a gigantic glowing adult toy, I would still care about what the skills do and what functionality/mechanics need changing first.

Yes, it might be an intended bug fix, but this can happen next month when balance is getting put aside for bug fixes. Unless changing the rainbow jellyfish reverts the stealth crossfire change (you know, another animation update), I’m sure most players really just don’t care at this point if it doesn’t change the feel of the gameplay.

Am I the only one frustrated with the hosts/guests of the SoTG due to how poorly they handled ranger questions YET AGAIN.

Every other class they get devs to explain things further or examine details more thoroughly in terms of positive changes for a class. For rangers, all the managed to squeak out was asking about nerfing pet leash range.

They didn’t ask about any changes that would increase build versatility, they didn’t ask about any changes that would increase weapon versatility. Yet at some point, it seemed every other profession had a question the pertained to asking those.

I’m just curious as to why rangers always have to suffer through the poorest state of the game representation. When things like our pets toughness and vitality get concerned responses from the hosts, it lets the ranger community know how tunnel-visioned these “top-tier” players are, and that their opinion on things doesn’t even always reflect the actual state of the metagame (for rangers. like maybe they would see less frustrating BMs that they don’t like, if there were other strong builds besides it and traps).

Can we get an active, appropriately pvp “tiered” player who actively plays ranger with at least a partial degree of knowledge about the class that people who main ranger have? Then we can give him some sort of metaphorical “taxation without representation” tag in the chat to appropriately summarize how under-represented or misrepresented the ranger community has been and actually have a person who mentions issues of build and weapon versatility.

You know, the same stuff that got discussed in at least some detail for every other class?

CMF.5461:

awesome thanks jcbroe, a starting point is better than nothing. Yeah I noticed a lot of those were pve, but hoped they translated to other areas or someone like you could pick them apart and find the good ones.

I’ve main’d ranger in PvP since launch lol (couldn’t drop the class after 7 years of it in guild wars 1). I like the purpose of this thread a lot. So far it’s the closest thing to an active pvxwiki(active build database) guild wars 2 has. There are databases out there, but not ones that sort through meta builds and for what areas of the game they are meant for (efficiently).

So great thread. Keep it up.

Yeah, most of (I’m not reading every single one of them) the ranger builds are either PvE or WvW centered, or garbage.

I can provide basic outlines for the two most common variations of competitive builds, but they will be basic and quite a bit of them is left up to player choice (heal and stunbreaker, for example).
Copy and Paste links:

Trap:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjAV11xVuVoWCg2jM1ET2DDd8xvAvgC2UB-TsAAzCpIaS1krJTTymsNN+Y9xeBA

BM:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQRAnf8YjAV91BWKWo2Bi2DNZeM9eEL13eXhRVwmK-TwAg2CrIuRdj7GzNybs3M8Y5x+g5CA

Obviously, traits and sigils and runes can be swapped around based on preference, these are just some basic layouts.

It’s simple; the ranger class has not seen an improvement since launch. Note I said improvement, not update.

Anything that was changed in the past to make it function more towards its intended function is a bug fix, that a finished product shouldn’t have had during the launch of the game. The 2 biggest ranger specific mechanic alterations are reducing the effectiveness of Empathic Bond and the attack speed of Crossfire.

Traits, utilities, and weapons have not changed in the slightest. They still have the same function and the same (or reduced) gameplay value since launch. The trap build and the BM build have been the same since we theorycrafted them at launch (I can’t speak for other builds).

Summary: The class is the same class (gameplay wise) that it was at launch.

On original topic: ANet apparently will never do what they did with guild wars 1 and post some of the update notes before the date of the update (my guess is they like trolling us). That being said, the update should be next Tuesday.

HotHit.6783:

Splintershot, chilling whirl and for a while, at least near release, I thought feeding frenzy was the most ridiculous skill in the game. Harpoongun in general is just amazing.

Fine. Ignoring underwater combat. Crossfire. I need a reason? Crossfire, crossfire, crossfire, crossfire…

I just want to comment on this, looking from a damage perspective, crossfire is the highest damaging skill on the shortbow, bar hitting all 5 arrows from poison volley. Overused =/= overpowered.

Alas, as much as I could pick apart other peoples thoughts, this is an opinionated thread, and the above is merely fact.

To add, apparently from a s/tpvp perspective, there are people in the community that feel that a rangers ability to build for survival coupled with being able to attain what they consider strong pet damage that they don’t believe is “fair” for a bunker style build is something that people think is OP.

You can dodge roll through traps AND the animation is obvious. So imo until they nerf thieves stealth (also something that you cannot see to dodge) traps should remain as they are.

(That’s me commenting on the two meta top builds in a pvp setting. Dunno about other areas of the game)

Interpret Interrupt.3824:

Bringing up to par and bringing down to par are the same thing per say.

Depends where the “par” is set I guess lol. If new mechanics are introduced (the whole boon punishment idea/discussion/eventual implementation) then it could be a level that doesn’t even exist or hasn’t been thought of yet.

Just a thought, let’s speculate and say every class now has a weapon or utility skill that can rip boons, that doesn’t require a specific build to make use of other than sacrificing that weapon/utility slot. Isn’t that essentially an HGH nerf in a way?

All I meant was that, if a build is to be nerfed, why does it have to be made less effective? If everything else is made more effective at making something less effective, that’s essentially a nerf as well. And it would help to keep the number of viable builds per class we have from getting reduced.

Ostricheggs.3742:

jcbroe.4329:

Ostricheggs.3742:

Kaon.7192:

jcbroe.4329:

Grenix.1576:

Prior Stuff.

More Prior Stuff.

Prior Stuff.

Yea, you’re probably right on the ranger burning thing. Incendiary powder IS very strong and allows engis to apply other condis at the same time which is far more powerful than just applying only burning.

What I meant was that throw torch and flame trap are both very strong and much easier to use than blowtorch is which is our only access to burning outside of incendiary powder.

But as far as cookie cutter builds being imba, I wouldn’t quite say so. The logic in that is flawed. A GS axe/shield warrior is cookie cutter, but it isn’t imbalanced by any measure.

True. I guess what I really meant was more along the lines of “if there is a trait in a particular slot that is getting more use across builds than other traits of that tier.” That doesn’t necessarily apply to Incendiary Powder, but it does apply to many of the lackluster grandmaster Traits in the game. Which, I believe, extends to the degree where we see builds like HGH emerge and considered so powerful, because there just really aren’t better options.

I definitely agree blowtorch should be better though. If Incendiary Power was ever to be looked at as needing an effectiveness reduction, I would be on the side of increasing the effectiveness of blowtorch first.

Throw torch and flame trap are definitely easy to use. To that degree I would argue that damage in the game (in general) should scale with how difficult the skills and rotations are to use. Unfortunately everything seems to trend towards becoming more faceroll and spam to win (in a general sense as well) to see success, in order to please “casual” or “new” players.

Sorry that I’m trying not to comment so much on the Ranger. I just main the class more so than my other classes, and I would prefer not to bring my bias into an otherwise very good discussion. Again, in a general sense, I believe that everybody thinks the class they play needs work, and to a degree, everybody is correct in that sense.

I said it previously in this thread, but I’ll say it again for the sake of reiteration; we should not be so quick to call for a nerf before all of our current options are even close to resembling a competitive state. I’m not saying builds aren’t clearly powerful. But if some of our trait and utility and even weapon skills options were changed/buffed to hard counter some of the currently powerful mechanics in the game, then who’s to say that builds people are trying to call OP now wouldn’t be balanced at that point?

It would just be much better balance wise if everything was brought up to par before things were considered for a nerf. It would help to show which builds are truly too strong, and even possibly provide a good data read on which mechanic of them makes them so strong. This thread in its entirety is already a good indicator that peoples bias or opinion on something outweighs truth factors, so that even if their opinion is correct in that something is OP, their reasoning is inaccurate, and if the devs are truly listening, it could give them false data reads and changes could be made that are either inconsequential or detrimental, which are things that the community just doesn’t need any more of.

Sorry for rambling lol.

Ostricheggs.3742:

Kaon.7192:

jcbroe.4329:

Grenix.1576:

Prior Stuff.

More Prior Stuff.

Prior Stuff.

This might just be true. Honestly the crux of the entire build is the absurd amounts of damage from burning. Burning has an EXTREMELY high base damage (8x the base damage of bleeds) and scales very well with condi damage (25 per 100 condi damage)

At 25 stacks of corruption it’s not rare to see 800 burn ticks in this build.

But the oddest part of it all is that it’s not the entirety of the build and we have less access to burning than rangers with a torch offhand and flame trap.

I agree and disagree at the same time. I agree about it not being the entirety of the build, but I disagree about having less access than rangers to burning.

I don’t fully disagree, rangers definitely have access to the lowest cooldown burning sources and some of the longest duration burns. But it is more so just a different type of burning application, because rangers do have to take those specific tools with long(ish) cooldowns (long in this case meaning if it were to be cleansed, the burn can’t just be reapplied).

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not disagreeing that rangers have powerful access to burning. But I feel the burning they can apply is a bit more predictable than the on crit proc which makes the on crit proc so strong. Rangers throw torch can be dodged, and nobody is forcing anybody to stand in a flame trap.

But with an engineer, even if you dodge the Blow Torch, there is still the constant threat of burning being applied through a trait, which in a condition build is A LOT of pressure that engis are able to apply, because the ICD on the trait is so low. Probably just a little too low.

Like you said, it isn’t really the crux of the build, but it sure isn’t a weak trait either. If there were more meta/viable builds for engineer, I’m sure this wouldn’t be the only time I would feel the trait needs to be examined and the ICD increased ever so slightly (like, 5s max). That’s only because I’m predicting that in the future, with other rabid amulet setups, it is still going to be a preferred trait, and as somebody mentioned earlier (that I agree with), having a cookie cutter build is the definition of something being imbalanced.

Chaith.8256:

Bringing a teamfight to far point would be nearly impossible. Every competent enemy you encounter would drop elites & revive utilities, and then graveyard rush the point, dropping elites & revive utilities again.

Highly exploitable. So, no.

Reminds me of something one of my monk teammates would do in guild wars 1 (good tactic imo). He would switch to his high set when forced to, then if the circumstances called for this, he would expend all of his energy, then if focused at that point, we would let him die, then rez with full energy while the prot monk took care of the team in the amount of time he was down.
Of course that’s high level play for you.

So yes, it is apparent why this isn’t a feature; it was cause team fights to last decades.

From a strictly spvp point of view, full melee can be a potent bunker in the right hands, allowing for a passive evade on auto attack, a plethora of defensive options (sword/dagger evades, block with knockback on GS and a stun). On top of that, you can leap twice through your healing spring, which is going to be around an additional 4k heal.

You might not kill fast (or at all), but you sure can stall with the best of them. Evading knockbacks and contesting for days being a complete and total distraction, or holding points until the rest of the team.

Also, spirit watch orb running.

Oolune.4357:

Great stuff, Xsorus. After watching one of your videos, I guess my question is really how much do you think Pain Inverter does for your build? Is the build worth it without it? No doubt that retaliation and confusion helps a lot. =P

I don’t think otherwise, mind. Just wondering your thoughts on it.

I would say that Battosai pretty much runs the spvp version of this build. I wouldn’t feel right copying and pasting his build without permission though, so I’ll do this: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Battosai-5620/showposts

Playing as a trap ranger, it feels almost necessary to throw traps in succession accurately while strafing.

And that trickled down into using it on all other classes.

Taran Redleaf.7912:

I have played Ranger as my main since the betas. But I just don’t see the “successes” Robert speaks of… high damage numbers from pets, lots of utility, sustained dps….

But I accept that perhaps Robert, as a dev, knows more about this game than I. So Robert, if the Ranger is really as good as you say, show us. Show us your builds, traits, gear, utility choices, weapon types, food buffs, runes, and jewels… and show us what you are doing that makes the Ranger so good. Just record your playtime for us and post it so we can all see how we ‘should’ be playing our Rangers to get the results that you seem to be getting. I’m sure we’d all love to get the most out of our Rangers.

I would love to see this. Most people give a lot of credit to Hrouda, being a dev and all. But we are at a point of contention in the ranger community where players feel they have hit the ceiling of the class and squeezed out the entirety of success they can experience.

We don’t want to bash Mr. Hrouda for seeing success (that lots of us feel we can’t reach certain aspects of) if the success is legitimate, but there are a lot of nonbelievers or people that feel they have been strung out, so as descriptive as you try to make your posts, a lot of the ranger community feels they have been deceived for too long and these are just words at this point to many people.

We realize you probably don’t have much free time, but a video of some sort that could qualify the success you’re having would be immensely helpful for the ranger community.

TheMightyAltroll.3485:

Rangers don’t need a buff unless you nerf Trap ranger.

If you mean that AoE needs to be nerfed across the board like they said, yes. If you think that just because a class has an apex predator problem with a build, that build should be nerfed before it receives any additional improvements, then that would be a terrible way to balance any class.

Just like with the rest of this thread. There is more than one way to go about balancing out classes other than nerfing them, like adding counter mechanics or giving other classes better options to deal with builds that are currently strong. There are many ideas that people are fond of that make for good options for balancing out the game (like introducing more boon removal and condition removal).

Regardless of whether such ideas are implemented, no class deserves to have its only viable metagame build(s) nerfed BEFORE it receives any additional improvements. It would be better to buff all the other options first, then see what builds/classes are still outperforming others and why that is the case, and then nerf from there. You can’t just start throwing nerfs around before that point because you never know if the build that people consider OP would still be OP after other buff are presented.

Grenix.1576:

HGH is a strong trait. Its also our ONLY strong trait. The rest of Engineer is pure crap, and a lot of stuff is bugged. (snipe, deployable turret for example) Also our elixer U has been broken with new changes. Now 1/3 of time those skills do just nothing at all because they removed invisiblity barier from the RNG.. If you think Engineer is OP then seriously look at some thiefs/mesmer/elementalist.. They are gods that you cant even touch sometimes.

And turrets just dont work well in pvp OR pve.. maybe in a 1vs1? I dont want my engi for just 1vs1 with turret builds.

I wouldn’t say its the only strong trait. It is a very strong trait, yes. But Incendiary Powder is also strong, as proccing the strongest damaging condition in a condition build definitely is useful.

Not all of the classes have access to burning in the game, or are considered viable when building for that as opposed to building for something the metagame considers them strong at.

Not that it is an issue with the class either, but it isn’t like this particular trait is making condi engineers any weaker either.

Wait, what’s this about a thief having to build glass to do big damage?

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fYAQNAoaVlUmiP3eS5E95Ex2jeqTiy9gpGtpaFoJA;TsAA1CnoqxUjoGbNuak1ssYQxECA

Oh wow… Yeah, I’m done. I quit lol

This is why in guild wars 1, zaishen keys/chest were ingenious because (PvE/PvP didn’t have split armors and weapons) it allowed you to earn things that were cross content, and certain skins were exclusive to a PvP environment.

Whatever the change in philosophy, it has completely divided the player base and offers no incentive for a PvP player to do any content outside of PvP (other than laurels, and those really aren’t that useful either, especially to non-80 character).

AND Pv kitten tagnant (as everybody else mentioned as well) on top of it.

It’s working as intended. Pets are fairly easy to kite. Also, MAYBE it was a power build, but all of the BM builds posted are with condition damage and nowhere near autoattacking for 500.
Actually, for a shortbow, you would need around 3200-3300 attack to be in that range, so that wouldn’t technically be a bunker because the healing power and toughness is going to sacrificed a bit to reach that substantial power range.

Also, if it was a healing heavy build, you don’t have access to poison, which is basically a counter to bunkers because it heavily hurts builds that rely on healing.

Lastly, it shouldn’t be posted in a general topic area, nor should it be posted here if you wanted to avoid bias. It should have been posted in the Structured Player vs Player area, right above WvW.

Every class in the game has another class the don’t inherently perform as well against, just like they have a class they perform better against. So no, the build isn’t OP, but maybe the debate should be whether limiting tools used to counter certain setups to certain classes is a design flaw/working as intended.

I just can’t believe the unwillingness from ANet to allow the devs to speak about updates early. Granted, there shouldn’t be anything mentioned that isn’t definite.

But there has to be a good list going for things that are going to change a week in. In Guild Wars 1, there were a few previews (the SotG could technically handle this, but everything is so vague or ambiguous that sometimes it’s hard to understand what devs mean) the week before, with a write up and a general philosophy, and then the patch notes would contain explanations of reasoning behind changes for everything (or groups of objects) so people would understand exactly what influenced it.

Did the writer quit or something?

Seriously though, while there are a few logical reasons to withhold some information on things not ready yet, if a balance change is geared up and ready to go, I don’t see why hints can’t at least be dropped. This whole silence until patch notes is creating a very distressed and frustrated community (as a whole) which seems like that last thing a company would want to do to its customers.

If things that were ready to go were slowly introduced on the forums beforehand, just like the balancing is being slowly introduced into the game, then people wouldn’t explode all over the forums and eliminate all chances of constructive discussion. It would give people in the community a chance to discuss positives, negatives, and reasoning before the debate drops, to help discover and understand the reasoning behind the updates, which would encourage healthy growth for professions as people theorycraft ideas until they are excited to discover new ways to play in upcoming patches.

But when patches are dropped on people like bombs (quickness change, and I thought they were trying to avoid a kneejerk reaction…hmm), of course there is only going to be like 1% of the community who sees at as positive. People are still upset about it, partially because it destroyed the way they play and they weren’t ready for it, and it created a negative mindset where people shut down instead of wanting to expand and adapt.

If we keep playing Russian Roulette, somebody is bound to get shot…

Reading through posts, I’m really not sure why people always equate a classes strength directly to damage.

People who say warriors are great at PvE for instance (I’m not disagreeing, I’m making a point); go PvP with them, and you get stuck with what rangers are stuck with in PvE; providing little to no utility to a group, or utility that is more easily covered by a different class that can do more on top of what you would provide.

There’s also this thing called outliers. People who think the ranger class is amazing at everything and doesn’t need to be touched are outliers (even the devs admit the shortcomings of the ranger class, and they created the class). Just like people who think they are the absolute worst at anything rangers try to do, those are outliers as well.

The majority of the community lies somewhere in between the extremes. We think the rangers at good at some areas, but are poor at other areas. It doesn’t matter what any individual thinks regardless though, because we all have different perceptions, so what our opinions are actually used for is to create a statistic to determine overall feedback (if the devs are monitoring as they say they do).

So really, we should try to, when expressing our own opinions, be respectful of other peoples opinions (this includes people misinforming people by using their opinion as fact). People who PvE and have little experience in a PvP environment have no place calling a PvP perspective on the ranger inaccurate.

Myself, I have no place saying anything about dungeons, because I don’t do dungeons, for instance. And I’m not going to sit here and say other people are wrong because I do so well with my ranger in pvp, because that’s a nonsensical, rage inciting statement.

This topic started off so well too.

The truth is, there is no way for your build to deal with a trap ranger, other than maybe putrid marking some conditions back and DPSing them down a little with autoattacks.

The ranger can outheal your damage, and your damage requires you to be in trap range, and with no way to mitigate large amounts of conditions, you are at a complete disadvantage.

So in a sense, a condition build is a counter to your build. I’d wager you’ll run into the same problem with an HGH engineer, the only difference being that HGH is less evasive than a ranger so your damage will land more reliably.

Nothing against you or you’re build, it’s just more of a build wars type thing (a reference to the fact that ideally its one big game of rock paper scissors lizard spock).

I think its just a mix of an AoE nerf (that was mentioned in a state of the game and then never heard about again) and maybe a boon nerf (this isn’t engineer specific either, and the boons themselves don’t need to be touched, just checked with more counters/removal really).

I think another part of it stems from the lack of condition removal that a lot of classes in the game suffer from.

Sebrent.3625:

Still, you have to stack up to get that. Other classes can do that alone without stacking up. I don’t see the advantage over others.

I’m actually curious since I don’t spend time with many other classes, which other classes can get perma regen (besides ele?).
I mean, I guess mesmers can too in certain builds, but I don’t think necros or engineers could do it. I’m not entirely sure about other classes (Guardian can probably do it).

garethh.3518:

jcbroe.4329:

Personally, I think against evenly skilled players, the necro has the “easier” time in the fight, which is largely influenced by the health pool, the condition removal heal, and the condition transfer options.

Death shroud is almost more of a weakness than strength for most necro specs against at very least, my ranger.
I can stack up conditions against the guy to hell and back while they are in it, forcing them to have to either land a putrid mark or heal skill or die… nothing a well timed interrupt or dodge roll can’t deal with.

The main thing is just know the empathetic bond timer and to instant death shroud fear the heal skill if the guy is weak.
Empathetic bond removes 3 conditions every 10s, so if you stack up your kitten at the 9s mark it just goes poof, but if you do right after the tick, unless they are running one signet, they pretty much have to eat the conditions.

Yeah agreed, necros that overuse DS are going to have a tough time. DS in the only build (0/30/10/0/30, and picking up the grandmaster that gives stability when entering DS) I really use is going to be mainly used as a free way to absorb incoming CC/stuns.

Slightly offtopic, I actually think troll unguent could go for a slight buff. Nothing serious, just a categorization of being a Survival kill so that it is affected by the cooldown reduction. This isn’t for a direct comparison balance reason, this is mostly because, unless I’m mistaken, rangers are the only class where the heals aren’t affected by a cooldown reduction trait.

Sebrent.3625:

Null field, corrupt boon, boon removal on shatter, arcane thievery. Time to stack up again ;-)

That’s one mesmer, there’s 5 rangers, how do you know which ranger you need to strip at the beginning of a match? What if there’s more than 1 BM?

Somebody on some node is going to retain that regen advantage for the first minute of the match. Unless there is a team comp of all mesmers/necros, or they add more boon stripping across all classes (nerfing certain classes the the community is calling OP, without nerfing the classes themselves? No, it’s probably too much to have to think through that cause and effect logic for such great balancers) lol.

Sebrent.3625:

Regen, Fury, and Swiftness are trivial for many other classes to stack alone. These are what you’d be able to stack with Horn + Healing Spring. The might stacks in quantity instead of duration, but, again, others do that better.

The advantage a Ranger brings to the table is the fact that they can be put on the defensive, even running for their life, and still be doing 30% to 40% of their damage to you (yes, that’s my pet biting your backside)

The fury is the most important one though. It would mean that points wouldn’t necessarily have to be dedicated to precision, if a team as organized enough to get the people with warhorns to roam well and maintain on the necessary group members. With the base of 4% crit damage, fury is about a 10% increase in damage output. That, coupled with sigil procs, could have a fairly significant effect.

75s regen on a ranger in the group that could have a bunker setup with dwayna runes, for instance, is going to get 75s*63% duration = 122s of regen (if it isn’t stripped, but there aren’t many classes that can strip boons). For that bunker, that would equal (estimated) 400-500 regen per second? That sounds pretty powerful to me

Here’s an interesting concept, you know how thieves can stack stealth through leaps? I wonder if the 5 man ranger team can stack 5 healing springs at the beginning and thereby potentially 75s of regen and, if traited, vigor. That’s without and trait or rune duration enhancements…
2-5 warhorns as well?

I’m not sure what does and doesn’t stack, but a 5 man ranger team does have the potential to stack up nice long durations of boons if things like this stack.

It’s a condition war. Proper condition management is a key to success, and if you are good at managing fear (with the trait that makes fear do damage), you can kind of “spike” rangers down. This is due to a necros ability to maintain poison (which mitigates how useful troll unguent is, because it means it ticks 10 times for a total of only about 5.6k health return, which you can then outdamage).

Normally, I would tell any other class complaining about trap rangers to just watch the obvious animation then avoid the traps, but because you are a necro, as somebody mentioned already, eat the traps, return the damage. The biggest source of a rangers damage is a burning, followed by high stacks of bleed. Bleeds don’t tend to stack high for the typical trap build unless you allow the ranger to flank you, and burn is only applied by torch offhand and flame trap. If you can learn how to minimize those conditions on you (or remove them entirely), then you will win the attrition war because of a superior health pool and superior range and style of condition application.

Of course, this is taking into account that I am thinking of a specific build for necros (some variation of 0/30/10/0/30 or 0/30/20/0/20) with scepter/dagger and staff, generally with 6x runes of nightmare (or a mix like 4x nightmare 2x lyssa, there are other viable options) to increase damage and duration.

Personally, I think against evenly skilled players, the necro has the “easier” time in the fight, which is largely influenced by the health pool, the condition removal heal, and the condition transfer options.

Rangers collaborating as a team to get the absolute most out of our class? Sounds fun, and I’m always solo Q anyhow, sign me up.