fighting a mesmer and all the freaking clones. Took me awhile to be able to identify when the idiot mesmer was, and even to this day i still get confused from time to time (when the mez plays possium and just sits there not giving himself away) and annoyed fighting that stupid mechanic.
If you have piercing arrows, then you will get stealth off of the first target hit, and then revealed on the second. If not, then it was most likely dodged, blocked or you were blinded.
^^this. Also if you cast it too soon after barrage, you will get immediately revealled if the arrows are still falling.
@ Shiyo
Well no Shiyo, I would argue power ranger is completely overpowered in less than 5% of the situations it is in. If 2 BRAND NEW players both picked 2 classes and one picked ranger while the other picked class X I would argue the ranger would win every duel between the two. Flash forward like a few months and I bet the ranger would start to lose as class X learns how to dodge, LoS, use his cds. Flash forward a year and the ranger is having a lot of trouble. Flash forward 2 years and the ranger cannot win a single fight because class X has learned how to play the game. The ONLY time ranger is overpowered is when people don’t understand how to play the game.
This is why ranger has very bad class design. A class shouldn’t be easymode instant win vs new players and completely useless vs good players.
mesmers are worse in this regard. The clone design completely perplexes all newbies (and some vets) who cannot pick the real mesmer out fast enough, and if the mez has any burst at all, newbies have little chance..
500-91
SW
game ended ~midmight
4 rangers and thief on one team. guard/mez/2 necros/warrior on the other
For me ranger isn’ t a balanced class.
It’ s totally broken.
No survival skills, No decent F skills ( if our pets die we can’ t use our lame F skills LOL ) No matter what build you play all the other professions if played decently they’’ll stomp ranger.
Rangers been waiting for some love for our class ( The longbow isn’ t balanced at all becouse you have 0 survival if you use it, whereas other classes despite running zerg builds have many survival skills too : balance stances, stealth and so on) and this love never came.
So man my suggestion is : Don’ t play ranger. It will never be competitive.A strong warrior will stomp a strong ranger, a strong ele will stomp a strong ranger,and so on…
I’m not sure if your serious or not. No survival skills? On my LB/GS ranger, I have LR, SS, ROA (or entangle depending on my mood), a stealth, a knockback and a cripple. Then my pets have a knockdown and fear (wolf) and usually either another fear/kd (hound) or spider imm. if my 2nd is a sword, i have a double leap to get distance, an evade, and whatever else its complement weapon has (usually i run dagger for another evade and crip). GS has a daze, a leap to get away and a block. A Thats alot of survivability right there. not too mention i’m doing all my damage from range.
In spvp, a LB/x ranger will completely destroy a necro, mez, some eles and engs. The only thing my lb has issues with are thieves (no chance against a good one) and a med guard. Warriors are about even, depending on their spec.
On my condi ranger (melee meta condi for most part) it almost flips. I eat thieves, eles and engs. warriors(power/condi) are about even depending on their build. necros eat me alive depending on their spec. Mez are an issue if i’m drunk or not paying attention to where they are in then clone spam.
Now in a team enviroment, its different for a ranger, as you always have bodies flocking to you. No real team support (HS i guess, but meh) unless your a spirit spec.
LB (and condi) have 0 team support for the most part.
Basicially on a LB ranger, if you allow a melee to get close to you, you deserve to die.
the only real problem i have with thieves is the exploit (and yes, i’m calling it an exploit) of preloading CnD, using steal, and hitting backstab all instantly for massive damage that can almost kill most folks. and on a realtively low cooldown.
Granted most thieves don’t know how to do this, but for the ones that do, there is no defense against this as its instant, and will take about 15-20k off a target, depending on crits. And if the stupid air/fire sigils proc, its an instant kill unless your a heavy that had aegis/prot up.
a large majority of rangers just use 2 buttons: RF and PBS. They really need to tone down not only RF but all long distance damage. And if people dont think range dmg is not a problem, explain why even 80% of meta warriors includes longbow, and very few, if any thieves take dont take shortbow.
That being said, I main a ranger, and rapid fire is a bit too OP. They need to either tone down the damage or take the bleed off. I can 2-3 shot squishies with absolutely no danger to myself unless they have a teammate to cc to me away.
My main issue with rangers is the number of them below ranked. In hotjoin or unranked, there is usually 3+ rangers in the match. If they have any semblence of skill, or coordination, the just overwhelm everthing in a match (thank god most hotjoin folks and uranked arent that good tho)..
yakslapper: should get it around 2023…
the real problem with rangers, and RF specifically, is the fact that unranked is littered with them..usually 2+ per team. Thats what makes them seem over powered.
odds are, they are a longbow though. I pvp alot, and the majority of the time, its a lb ranger. Not always, but a large majority.
But back on topic. the OP is right. It really isnt fun when you have so many of one class in a match. I wish they would make the dailies random for each account to break it up a little bit.
The absolute worse is when its ranger+thief day. Although a close second is necro+mesmer day. So many minions/clones its just one big joke of a match..
as others have mentioned, if people would creep out from their comfort zones, they may be surprised how much fun other games are.
In terms of the pve-only folks, it can be tough if you get a double-fractal day and your not into fractals. But, most of the wvw dailies can be done in EotM. And EotM is like pve anyway. Follow the zerg, get a tower/keep, gets some karma/champ bags, etc.
Only thing i can see that would be a negative is for new folks that do not have the level character needed for pve resource/events/champ dailies. But i’ve only seen one Orr dailiy, the rest are in the low level zones (a couple were in the 55 ones).
I was under the assumption that you could only earn x amount of points daily when using hotjoin or custom arenas. But it wouldnt surprise me that i was wrong I guess..
in pvp, RTW is imperative. So the choice comes down to EE or PA. I’ve played around with both extensively, and find more use out of PA if, and thats a big if, your movement is good and you can line up players/mobs/etc to hit more than one.
In WvW, i usually go EE (i roam alot), then hot swap it out with PA if i see a blob coming and/or i am soloing a camp. PA if i’m in a zerg with constant blob on blob fights though.
As usual on ranger day, 5+ rangers pure match. They really need to fix this crap.
Most folks, regardless of being an uplevel or not, do not mind fighting when its in the course of the objective, like holding a tower, taking a tower, or a random encounter on the way to an objective.
The problem I’ve seen with folks is when you have the kitten bags that like to harass folks (one in particular on my server, I just leave whether he is on my team or not, its just not fun either way after awhile). These idiots like to continously farm the other team. Whether its due to skill, or overwhelming numbers (which on my server is usually the case), this causes people to quit, run, etc instead of fight. How frustrating is it that every 3-5 minutes you turn a corner and see a red blob 4+ times the size of your folks magically finding you and chasing you all over the map?
If your running around on the map trying to do an objective and meet the other team, great, thats fair game. If you are trying to take a tower and other team defends, thats cool to. But being outnumbered and chased continously while the other team completely ignores objectives and just wants to harass you is a tad ridiculus.
But EotM is great inthat you can jump in, and when these idiocy occurs, easily jump out and either find another instance go to wvw, or spvp.
Rangers don’t have as many “Oh ****!” buttons as other classes (except maybe Necromancers).
This automatically makes them slightly worse than other classes and requires more skill to play effectively.
i dunno about this. Are we talking about the ranger class? Lightning reflexes and stone signet are in almost every pvp build are are very strong. Then you have the hide on lb 3. Then the kb on 4. Most folks take the aoe cripple as their third with low cd entangle cripple elite.
Now, assuming your lb/gs, you have aoe cripple (one of the 2) + swoop to get far away. You also should have the prot on dodge. If your s/x, you have the double leap that works even better to get away. Not to mention the swoop+HS to heal yourself up to full if you jump through it right to get it twice. And the block on GS, and stone sig.
I’d say the ranger has the most ‘o crap’ skills after thief.
Cele eles are borderline OP, due to the amulet. No way a class should have that much dmg, coupled with that much healing and then a heap of prot on top of that. The amulet needs adjusting.
That being said, the biggest OP about d/d ele’s is the LW. They need to fix that crap, as a simple macro and you can go from 1k to 20k in about 2-3 seconds..
If they make mesmer dailies more often, i hope they fix matchmaking first. I was just in a match with 7 mesmers, 2 thieves and a necro. Between all the clones, phantasms, minions and thieves guild, it was just a pile of bodies. Not fun in the least..
i very rarely see courtyard get votes. And lately, when courtyard is selected, i’ve noticed many people either dropping and not coming back, or dropping and relogging in with bunker engineers.
i think its pretty crappy when Courtyard pops, and suddenly 2-3 people on non eng classes leave the match and come back with bunker engineers.
you get a ‘feel’ for pvp/maps/positioning after about 50 matches or so. But stay the hell out of hotjoins. Your skill will never get better there, as its a hotbed of stupidity, with no match balancing…
I used melandru when i first starter my warrior, then switched to Hoel, and then strength.
I really do not see the survivability loss using strength, but the dmg increase is noticible.
In regards to arcing slice, I cannot understand how, as an axe/shielf GS warrior, you would use arc slice. with the low weapon switch, its so much more dmg to switch to axe and hit eviscerate.
i may be a noob, but i use a/shield + gs for pve, w/vw and pvp. Enough movement in wvw (3 charges, whirl), way then enough damage, and the block is nice if all aspects when i’m outta dodges and want to block a big hit. Zerk gear + str runes.. build is the meta pvp warrior a/s gs build with a couple of personal tweeks. I do have a 2nd armor set i swap in/out of when commanding though.
I also have a second warrior though, which i use for all sorts of crazy builds/setups when i get bored..
I’ll just say it once and I’ll try to say it in as tolerant way as possible.
Anyone who thinks that mastering the Ranger class is easy is a desperate.
Ranger’s highest damage output comes from auto-attacks – which is true – which means two things.
~ His damage has no burst whatsoever (they have very high tunnel potential)
~ Ranger cannot use any utility or defensive abilities while trying to maintain the damageIn order to compete with other PvE classes – the ranger has only 1 viable trait road that has close to no variations. Also, his auto-attack pattern on his highest DPS weapon (sword) is broken and will lead you to death plenty of times.
Regarding PvP – Rangers clearly lack the “stuff”. Power Builds are just not viable, even though I see plenty of players playing it and even more of those complaining about them (but doing nothing to deal with them – which is honestly a child’s play).
While Rangers do not need to press abilities to deal damage, they have to keep track of enemy casting animations in order to evade them, keep track of enemy cooldowns in order to root them in place or apply their conditions so they won’t get cleansed in a second… Axe actually requires a bit of skill, so I’ll assume that OP has problems with Shortbow Users. Those shortbow users that require around 4 seconds to set up some conditions that get cleansed in one shot and have to use most of utility abilities just to deal their damage.While Rangers do not need to think by which key to deal damage, they have to think WHEN to deal it, not to mention that their condition pressure is not even that high as other classes’.
I have to agree with this 90%. Sword is our highest damage melee weapon and i avoid it like the plague because of the locked in animation, and it causes more deaths than a BG Blob! Perhaps i am using it wrong, which is truly likely but still, i refuse to use this weapon.
For me when it comes to pvp, which i don’t do much of, its really 50/50 whether i am gonna win a fight. I either blow them up with a power build, or tear them down slowly with a condi build. Bleeds are the weakest of the condi’s and ya just cant get enough of them up to make up good numbers, you use to, but not these days.
As far as auto attack being our highest damage…im not so sure what you mean. There are plenty of burst skills, and even condi skills spread out across our weapons, which of course you have to use properly. Is this what you meant by timing?
For example: Torch 5 is a good burn, but if they dodge out of it yea…wasted, but if you can lock them in field….mmmMMM BBQ for everyone! Same with LB 2 and GS2 and axe 5 and wh 4.
sword is 100+ times better if you disable the autoattack on skill #1. I use to despise sword until i figured that one out (no more stuck in animation) and learnt to use the double leap properly.
I do not see what the issue here is with mobility. Are people concerned rangers cannot ‘get away’? You have swoop, 2-leap on sword, and even both the dagger evade and poison evade (when no target is selected) creates space. Then there is entangle, that roots their target and lets them create space. None of those work? Then you have a knockback on a 10s feated cd. Still no good? Cast LF which gives tons of space, abd cripple with either dagger or barrage or the pet.
Or is the complaint targets are getting away? Barrage has a cripple. dagger has a cripple. Entable is a root. And the axe has a pull.
And of course, you could choose to use the signet for added speed. One must make sacrifices if thats your concern (i wouldnt, but thats up to you).
I think the ranger community is getting a bit greedy lately.
I only hate mesmers because I can’t for the love of my life figure out how to fight them.
That’s the problem with the mesmer balancing.
The newbie players are getting confused by the clones and the teleport-mechanic, that the mesmer is too strong at the bottom tier.
But at some point, the players get better, don’t have that newbie problem anymore, figure out very easy where the mesmer is, and how to counter them, and then eat them for breakfast.
they just need to make clones transparent like phantasms. That change wouldnt hurt them against experienced players, and would help a bit with the newer players. To me, having the survivablity of both stealth + clones + diversion and then their dmg output is a bit much for one class.
This morning in spvp I have run into 5 different warriors, each of which was using a rifle, and hitting me for ~17k immediately. checking the logs, I got hit for 9-12k kill shot + 2-3k fierce shot. What was strange was that in each of these cases i was at full hp (17k on one char, 21k on another) and was dropped immediately. Logs only showed that ~15k, and doesn’t state where the other damage came from.
Since i’ve been pvping for a year now, and never run into a warrior rifle build before, then run into 5 different people practically one shotting me this morning, I’m curious if some new change was made i wasnt aware of…
Both fulfill those roles, although Guardian, at least a mediation guard, can keep on a target alot faster than a warrior. The warrior though, can escape and get away much much easier.
In short, a warrior has non-target dependant movement skills that do meh damage, and the guard has target dependant closing skills that cause blindness, teleport, and decent damage. and 2 of them are stun breakers.
Guard tends to be alot better against condi builds. I play a med guard in pvp, a warrior in wvw mainly, though both play in all modes.
as a necro, having 4 people chase me to a cliff, using SW and jumping off, then returning behind them and immediately casting fear wall. The idiots the didnt follow me over the cliff (there are always a couple) turn around to charge me, hit the fear wall and go over the cliff with their buddies anyway.
but my favorite one is on my mesmer coming up on a ranger, baiting out his PBS, then putting feedback on him, watching him immediately implode (and the standard chat qq) when they go for the cheesy rapid fire followup.
most range classes are faceroll. A ‘new’ warrior will get rolled very easily nowadays with the current balance. A complete newbie can log in on a ranger, use nothing by pbs and RF with an occasion hide shot, and get wins very easily, assuming they stay at 1200+ range.
Thats why you see many of the ‘elite’ warriors using bow + whatever. Range is king in this game now. But the bow isnt exactly newbie friendly on the warrior..
I main a ranger, and would like to see something along the lines of:
longbow:
Lower the range of point blank shot from 900 to 300.
increase cd to 20s (untraited) but increase dmg by 5-10%. make it a Blast finisher, rather than proj finisher.
Increase cooldown on rapid fire from 10s (untraited) to 15s
Lower Barrage cooldown from 30s (untraited) to 20secs, make it a combo field of some sort.
Whirling axe: let the ranger move while using this skill
fix the animation-lock on auto-attack on 1-hand sword.
Main differences are: lack of capture points in WvW. They also have access to food and higher stats.
In Conquest capture points obviously affect the builds. A necromancer Well can cover an entire point, and it’s a very strong AoE, but at least 1 enemy is forced to tank it unless they are willing to give you the decap/cap. In WvW roaming, enemies have no reason to stay in your wells, and that’s why that build replaced them.
The reasons behind trait differences is the same – because of capture points, team fights in small areas occur often, and with Unyielding Blast you can hit multiple foes with 1 autoattack, upping your AoE a bit. It has its uses in 1v1s too, mostly against mesmers.
i find wells are just as effective in wvw as they are in spvp. Like you said about pvp, a well on a capture point either denies the enemy the cap or makes them sit in it. In wvw, if your in a zerg, most folks wont see a well with all the other red circles/aoe spewed about.
And if you get in a 1v1 when roaming, dagger 3 can effective plant someone in a well quite well
using PBS in a zerg is just flat out selfish behavior. The mob is 99.9% way away from the ranger, so the only thing a knockback does is push the mob out of AoEs and melees range, at the price of the ranger not using an auto-attack filler.
I main a ranger, and what I would like to see is changing PBS to operate like the engineers #4 skill. Shorten the range down to 300, and knock both the target and the ranger back (ranger backwards away from target like the engineering skill of course).
Anet needs to just open up the gem store and stop selling time-limited items.
I understand the impulse purchase marketing strategy, but it is just one possible strategy and there are so many better marketing strategies that don’t leave a sour taste or punish the player base.
Personally I find impulse-time-limited marketing distasteful and underhanded and I won’t support it.
If they open up the gem store, I will gladly purchase the stuff I want, but if Anet only offers the stuff I want in a time limited way then I can live without a new skin and there are other games that I play whose honest marketing strategies I am happy to support.this
I was just thinking this same thing yesterday. Going through the outfits I realized that a witch outfit would lok cool for my necro, and since i was on vacation during halloween, I cannot get it for another year (if ever)….
I am having the same symptoms. Sometimes when I log in, I go straight to the eotm screen. Other times I get dropped in divinity reach (where they are all parked).
Its strange I can get into the regular WvW maps and pvp maps, but not Eotm though.
Only difference for me, all my characters hang when trying to enter Eotm. Including ones that I have never brought there.
I am experiencing a strange issue tonight. I can log into the game, and zone into all areas (pvp lobby, Wvw worlds, etc) except for EotM. When I attempt to log into EoTm with any character, it hangs at the loading screen for about 10 minutes and then tells me to restart the client.
Any ideas? This was working earlier today.
I assume this is a bug, but i could not find a reference to this anywhere. You use to go Other —> Utility effects to purchase oils/potions/stones, but all i get is an error ‘Sorry no items match this filter’. This is with the default filter. Playing with the filters does not resolve the issue, and i checked under foods, and other sections and couldnt find where these items would have been moved…
any ideas?
You can pretend all day long that it is a ktrain (with far more fights overall than you pretend, because usually zergs fight each others when they encounter each others, unless they aren’t green and are tired of being farmed 1v5 all day long)
It is a ktrain. And these so-called “fights” you’re talking about consist of 30-50 PvE uplevel zerglings that have never stepped foot in real WvW, and thus get facerolled by anyone that has, or one person just fearing entire zergs off cliffs. Even a group of 5-10 skilled WvWers in an EotM zerg can easily wipe out the better part of another side’s zerg…I don’t call that particularly fun. Give me the real fights in WvW any day.
Lets be truthful here and stop exaggerating. The only reason why 5-10 ‘skilled’ WvWers can take out a zerg in EotM is either the zerg is all uplevel and/or the 5-10 players are in voice chat, whereas the pug zerg has to rely on text chat. I’ve seen these so-called zerg buster guilds jump into EoTM to troll. And they have all sorts of success. Until they run into a pug zerg that actually knows how to stack might/dodge/pvp/etc. Then guess what? The troll guild leaves EoTM with their tail between their legs, and the zerg keeps on in EoTM.
I wish they would bring back some of the old GW1 systems and apply it to wvw. People are reward driven, so if it were me, i would do something like:
1. Add a new area (kinda like FotM) that is only accessible if you have x amount of points for your server (or win the map for a day). Of course you would have to balance the teams a bit better, but if it were per day rather than per week, that might help a bit cycling through off-times for different servers and whatnot.
2. Have this new area give unique skins/equipment, etc that will be in demand from the community. Have unique pvp finishers available here off drops from mobs. Have mobs drop better loot/money/karma here.
3. Each player kill drops a champion bag. Create more pvp finishers that have a chance as drops in these bags. The higher the rank of player that is killed, the higher chance of getting better loot (finishers, precursors, t6 mats, more money, etc)
This applies to WvW and not EotM. EotM is good for what its designed to be. Low key karma farming, etc. WvW is what is stale and needs more incentive to pvp and ‘win’.
Sticking with the zerg doesn’t guarantee survival, it simply relies on how big your force is and how good your commander is (with more, more variables than that).
I think this is good advice for later on but new players to WvW would be well advised to stick with the commander. The alternative (at least for those that have never done sPvP) is a quick and likely frustrating death.
i dunno about this one. At least in EotM, with the tag system, every muppet thinks they are now a commander. So many times i’ve seen the group ready to push, everyone is on the commander, and then everyones ’s dead and the commander and 4 other people are PvDing on a door 2 screens away, alive and happy.
There are some commanders i stick to like glue. Theres maybe 2-3 commanders i’ve seen where i would go full zerk on any class and never die if i stick by their side.
My advice would be first and foremost, get in a group, and try to get diveristy within that group. One, you share tags easier, but also boons and whatnot. find a guardian and stay close, the stability they throw out can be a life saver…
the part that irks me the most is the fact that these bug fixes always seem to be the ones that apply a fix for something that benefits the character. Whereas the real nasty bugs are the ones that players are asking to get fix are the ones that never get fixed (unless its a bug with their gem store of course).
how do you fix the issue where you push your way through a dungeon to the end, then kick folks at the end as a friend/guild member wants a spot in the group in at the end?
Having kicks dependent on party leader isnt a great idea either. Idiocy is not confined to the folks that follow…
you must be new to anet games. By bringing this to their attention, all that will happen is they will make the underwater LB the same as on land version. all under the pretense of balancing of course. No way they’d make the other stronger…
i run something similar, though my traits are a tad different. In WvW, I run either full zerk or Knight+Zerk. Bombs are pretty much power based. Zerk if you are use to dodging (dodge bombs, vigor on dodge traited of course)… Knights if your learning or take alot of hits.
Really depends on playstyle really. I use rifle with EG+bombs+TK. tho i swap out for stun break alot. I leap in. drop some bombs, AB myself out. I’m dodge and weaving around, so i can get away with Zerk most of the time. High risk, high reward. Other engs i know like to stand still and just drop bombs. They need tougher gear to take hits.
As for Dire/Rabid, etc, thats more for grenade builds than bombs, imho…
What gear are you using? Full Zerk?
if they were going to give the mesmer the warhorn, they better give them a 10s swiftness on a long cooldown for #5, like all the other classes that have warhorn access. I’m really getting tired of being the slowest person running around unless i use the useless focus and/or slot traveler runes.
Make warhorn 4 that summons a phantasm that casts protect/retal on you for a few seconds, and use #5 for 10s swiftness on 20s cd thats also a blast finisher.
But wont happen. For some reason, they are happy have mesmers as the slowest folks (well, with guardians anyway)..
I levelled up sword/axe, and have been using it since launch (i have LB or SB on switch). About 3 months ago, I switched to GS. In my experience (power setup, off-hand cooldown traits for axe or GS).
1. since the patch last week, the GS dmg is comparable, if not more, than s/axe.
2. s/axe has more kick due to poison decreasing targets healing, and the evade on #3 is nice.
3. I rarely use #2 on sword. one, it kicks me backwards, and the cooldown is too short to use it and save the leap forward to be that useful. Decent evasion in pvp if you want to run away and not use the leap forward.
4. The lock on swords auto #1 has gotten me killed countless times. So many times i’ve been pounding the dodge only to be stuck in that animation and get toasted.
5. When in WvW or EoTM, Sword #2 and #3 has gotten me killed so many times its ridiculus. And its the dumb variety of leap backwards off ledges/cliffs, poisoning off cliffs, etc. Swoop from GS is easier to control where you land.
6. Sword #3 is extremely useful if you trait for flanking damage trait, as it puts you in that sweet spot for the 10% increase dmg, and with the auto-s cripple and the new pred instinct, thats good dmg.
7. On GS, i use MoC (and martial to lower cooldown) and technobabble. gs #5 can daze for 3 secs, and if timed right, MoCs big dmg buff comes into effect.
8. When roaming/EoTM/WvW, GS is easier to get around the map with..
In short, i have more control of my character with GS. Too many auto-locks with sword/axe. two many wtf deaths spinning out of control. Though PoS and WA are my two favorite skills in this game, and if Anet ever lets us move while using axe #5, i’d use that exclusively. But i run GS/LB most of the time now, and switch into s/a when i know i’ll be fighting rangers (for axe #5) or a pesky warrior/guard that doesnt have condi removal..
maybe they should gate the Trading Post until level 50 as well.
i think you’ll see more folks flocking to the mesmer and rangers first. auto-attack torment is going to be ugly to classes that kite.