Guild Wars 2

The new poison master works as advertised, but for one critical bug – pets that natively apply poison (such as forest spider, murellow etc) apply regular (unbuffed damage) poison, which blocks the application of the damage-enhanced poison.

This pretty much means you can only use the trait with non-poison-applying pets, which is kind of the opposite to what the trait suggests. Poison applied by swap, rather that by the pet functions as it should.

Repro:

• equip trait
• equip forest spider pet (do not swap to it in battle)
• attack a bad guy
• observe that spider applies 10+ of poison and that its damage sucks as per usual poison, and that applying poison yourself (eg: shortbow #2) does not increase the poison’s damage

Lothirieth.3408:

Hunting for skills as we did in GW1 was something that was asked for I think during the horizontal progression talks in one of the CDIs so I appreciate that the devs have tried to do something like that with the needing to unlock the new traits. Unfortunately I feel the activities they are making us do to unlock said traits aren’t great.

This. The event unlocks aren’t nearly as satisfying as the signet of capture system from GW1.

First, I’m not sure that reducing the number of trait points to 14 was a great idea, feels like it takes forever to progress a lowbie alt now – there’s no perceptible progression for 5 whole levels.

Elementalist
New trait “blinding ashes” is good in theory, but in practise the 5sec CD cripples it, due to a lot of random procs on incidental rather than intentional targets. Feels like it should work for AOEs as well (like a smoke field) but on a longer CD.

The application of blind from AOE burns should be deterministic, not random.

agree, it’s a lot better than the average.

Dolores.5471:

Well, sucks that it’s an universal cooldown, but then again if it weren’t eles would be able to blind up to 20 ppl with a single skill.

You mean like thieves can with any of their smoke fields?

If the blind were short, I don’t see a problem with no CD on the trait as the challenge would be how quickly you could apply and clear burning.

As it currently stands, it’s an adept trait.

I think it’s incredibly lazy to still have the same 3 copies of the 1 BL 18 months after launch… It’s almost like they’ve completely run out of ideas.

Ruins were a total failure and EOTM is a nonstop champ farm – they might as well have made a single-texture 500m x 500m square map.

I think the biggest problem is that anet over design their maps to the extent they end up more like the layout of a pinball game than world geography.

Bear in mind lots of people run -condition duration these days so maxing +dur is a good counter, regardless of cap.

In GW1, i’d say it’s mostly true that the players balanced the game, because that game in particular had the depth that there was always a build X that could be crafted specifically to counter build Y.

I don’t think this is the case in GW2, the same level of depth isn’t there. Course, the other problem with GW2 is that the intra-class balance is so bad – entire trait lines & utilities continue to be useless 18 months post-release.

Conjures are game design failure left to rot in apathy.

2 thieves and a mesmer IMO.

Forzani.2584:

I am guessing…and I stand to be corrected, is the DS allows he to be more aggressive bombing into a group because he knows he has a good chance of escaping because most of the CC will be absorbed.

DS does nothing after taking around 1800 damage. You don’t try to escape when 90%+ health. Does not compute.

Like I said, it would make a lot more sense to run the cleansing flame fire trait and +10% fire damage, both of which always work and both enhance burst. Not to mention 200 power is way more useful that 300 condition damage in a GC spec.

All I saw is a mostly GC executing the same combo over and over on other GC noobs and uplevels.

Which is fine, but then my real point is that DS really is not doing much for this spec as it’s all about bursting. Outside of rock solid, which is of definite benefit, you’d be better off with points elsewhere IMO.

The main reason to bring a ranger is the high vulnerability stack uptime plus frost spirit.

Yeah, it’s bad. Should have been fixed as a bug a long time ago.

Jocksy.3415:

If one does 2 -go in, then what? attacking would break the #2 chain, so either attack and have no “get out” ability or #2 in, #2 out, then wait for weapon swap CD?

No. #2 would leap forward and the skill would flip to the ‘leap back’ option and stay like that until 1) the leap back is used or 2) the CD for the leap forward is up and the skill chain resets.

Alternatively, make the current #3 the 2nd in chain to the leap forward on #2, and make #3 the leap backward. Then you could choose to leap forward or back in any order.

I think it would be better all-round for #2 to leap in then out with evade so ranger can property fill the role of “mobile melee DPS” with evade as the core mitigation mechanic.

The auto clearly needs fixing, weapon skills shouldn’t cause you to lose control of your character.

Exedore.6320:

There is nothing wrong with conquest.

No, but clearly, there is something wrong with GW2’s implementation of it. I too have enjoyed it in other games but not in GW2- IMO it’s not fun at all. I am still convinced that it’s downed state that is the underlying cause of spvp’s failure to thrive among the general player population – IMO it just does not work in PVP on any level and fundamentally detracts from the game.

runeblade.7514:

I know for sure that, Dueling should definitely be higher than Living Story.

intra-class trait/weapon balance (aka build diversity) > duelling > living story.

i think it’s appalling that there are still whole weapons/trait lines that are flat-out crap 18 months after release when there’s LS updates every 2 weeks. talk about getting your priorities wrong.

besides, living story is a massive developer resource hog, and it’s not that good anyway.

Kanto.1659:

No Power amulet has Toughness but the Condition ones do.

soldiers amulet says hi.

It’s a lot more simple than that – spvp flopped because it isn’t fun. If it were fun, people would play it.

For me, the reasons spvp is not fun: downed state and game mode.

I think anet’s best tack would be to get back to ensuring the game is FUN, instead of e.g. including a widely-loathed downed state that exists only to sell finishers.

I do not want to run story modes again – they weren’t fun the first time.

Games are supposed to be fun as the #1 priority or have you all forgotten that?

This is a mistake. The problem with spvp is simply that it’s not fun, not that it’s too complex to understand. It’s more confusing that there is a difference between wvw vs spvp.

From my POV, amulets need more jewels not less.

It’s no wonder pvp changes are so kitten slow when you keep going off on these crazy tangents that have little to do with why spvp has flopped.

I think there’s plenty of players for whom the UI is pretty dysfunctional but who have given up hope of change. Don’t.

Karl McLain.5604:

• Blinding Ashes ICD (Internal Cooldown) is ‘global’, where it activates once and goes on recharge.

I hope you seriously reconsider the global CD, it kills the trait, as it means AOE burns will apply blind randomly (as distinct from skilfully). This is definitely a significant downside. I think the trait would be better if AOE blind were applied by AOE burns (such as from staff fire #3 or elemental surge) but the AOE application doubled the CD to 12sec.

I think Ele has too many source of AOE burning for this trait not to accommodate AOE applications of burning in some useful way.

• Elemental Contingency’s Internal Cooldown is currently once every 10 seconds.

If the CD is a singular global, I think this trait compares very poorly with evasive arcana, it wouldn’t even be worth considering. IMO have 1 CD per effect and increase the CD to compensate.

• Lightning Rod has no ICD. It will activate as often as a target allows you to interrupt them. The damage value of this trait is similar to that of Halting Strike.
  Weakness duration is 4 seconds base.

IMO good trait as given, though i wonder if Ele has enough interrupts outside of D/D to make it worth it.

yeah 5sec global ICD ruins it as the blind in completely unreliable when burning is applied in a AOE, which sucks.

if the ICD was triggered per spell instead of global, it could have been the trait that made Elemental Surge viable.

This. The current ui is a horrible UX. One of the worst aspects is that some of the most important elements (buffs, conditions) are tiny and located in the noisiest area of the UI. The game has way too many particle effects to be relied upon for info so it all comes down to reading tiny icons.

It’s also ridiculous you can’t turn off the quest tracker.

Horrible ui.

Yes, discussions on gear are fairly pointless, what matters is final stats, since there are multiple gear combinations that can achieve the same set of stats.

It follows that the lowest HP, least armoured class ought to have the best active defences right? There’s no way this is the case in gw2 – ele is easily the squishiest class. So IMO something needs fixing, I don’t see anything in the incoming patch that will really change that.

Eve online has a better “living story” than this game or any theme park game ever could, because the story derives almost entirely from player actions and events.

Disappointing that the new traits don’t address at all the uselessness of rangers in wvw.

Sign. Rangers got shafted. The only trait worth considering is the survival condi cleanse and even that is in the wrong tree.

Forzani.2584:

Aridia.3042:

Terravos.4059:

This game needs a PTS like every other bloody game does

Take SWTOR, it has a PTS, and when they were getting ready to add a really overpowered ability to Sniper in the coming patch, the PTS showed how overpowered it would be.

a Competitive PvP game with no PTS for the population to test and point out overpowered stuff before hand? Completely stupid

This 1000×.

It’s lol really. Like a perpetual beta test on live.

lol I was just thinking about an aircraft maker having that philosophy.

“Hey Bob, I have a great idea on a new wing design”
“Sounds like a great idea Frank. Lets implement it”

6 months later

“Hey Bob, my idea didn’t work out very well. 9 planes have crashed and thousands have died”
“That is awful Frank. Lets fix it. I have an idea how e can do it”
“Should we test it first?”
“lol why?”

this is actually pretty close to the truth. i work in game development and nowhere else in the software industry have i found such a contemptuous attitude to one’s customer base. It’s definitely a game industry thing.

On topic, I think the ranger GM traits are pretty weaksauce. Specifics:

• survival GM trait in the nature line? should be in the same line as the 20% survival CD reduction trait (currently in wilderness)
• a GM trait just to make basic attacks hit reliably? this is a bugfix, not a GM trait. Also, there are way too many bow traits already as others have said.
• 15% chance to block ranged attacks while in melee seems very weak and more like an adept trait TBH.

Lastly, rangers are easily the worst class to have around in WVW, as they don’t do much damage, have much utility and die fairly easily. I don’t think any of the proposed changes stand a chance of changing that.

• balance trait/utilities so that i can feel like there’s some reasonable choices in this horribly stagnant game.
• introduce new weapons/skills every now and then. 1 new skill per class in 18 months of release is a joke.
• remove downed state from PVP zones

i think it might have worked better had the capturable objectives been slightly more linear geographically, ie: you’d need to take an outer keep, then a middle keep, then the enemy’s home keep, similar to how DAOC originally did it. Highly unlikely to happen now of course, but in retrospect, I think the map layouts could have been a lot better.

I’d still like to see a WVW dungeon in the same vein as (DAOC) Darkness Falls that combines PVP and high-end PVE and effectively serves as a reward to the server holding the most keeps.

The problem with Ele is that it’s balanced around peak performance, not average performance, and the difference between how the class performs at low vs high skill levels is really large.

IMO the base performance of the class as a whole needs to be raised and the ceiling brought down if needed.

Put another way, the gradient of the performance to skill curve needs to be flattened towards the skill axis slightly.

IMO, Ele is too inflexible, due to high trait line and utility imbalances: arcane/water are essentially mandatory as far as I’m concerned, utilities outside of cantrips and arcane are horrible. So:

1) Solve the water/arcane problem — make a caster-only version of Elemental attunement baseline, with a trait to restore the AOE version, with the 15 water and soothing mist traits switched.
2) Balance the utilities — signets, glyphs and conjures all need a serious rethink. signet skills need buffs, glyphs need new trait(s) and glyph of elementals reimplemented, conjures need a mechanics change.
2) Thorough trait line review & improvement, not merely swapping them around — loads of really useless traits, earth

Alekt.5803:

Sylvaries have access to a 3 seconds invulnerability frame with their ultimate. While spawning a couple of turrets. Considering that elementalists can swap atunements during that cast, they synergize well with it. It will serve its purpose because you will have 3 seconds uptime to wait for your healing cooldown. Elite skill. 150 seconds cooldown.

When roaming in WvW, you also have access to Binding Roots which immobilizes for a potential 7 seconds and deals damage every seconds (approx 100 × 7) on a 45 seconds cooldown, utility slot.

Both skills are interesting for an elementalist.

This. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Take_Root is really strong.

I’d have said the successive nerfs to RTL are what really killed d/d.

Black Box.9312:

Zenith.7301:

Black Box.9312:

Bryzy.2719:

Warriors have nothing to complain about. Have you SEEN the offhand axe Ranger skill 5? Thought not. Also, damage-buffing Warriors, whether it would make them OP or not (even though every other profession knows warriors are OP anyway) should be the last thing on the devs’ priorities list right now.

Ranger axe 5 is actually one of the best skills ranger has, considering the massive amount of utility on top of the damage it deals.

LOL

“Hey guys, im going to self root, effectively CC’ing myself just to reflect projectiles while doing less damage in this long channel than my own autoattack chain!”

MASSIVE UTILITY INDEED. THAT’S WHY SO MANY POWER RANGERS ARE AROUND.

It reflects, grants retaliation, deals aoe damage, and stacks vulnerability. It’s an incredibly useful skill that people like to underestimate.

In PVE it’s fine but in PVP it’s a joke. Just needs to be usable while moving.

Oh, and traps should be 900 range so they’re reasonably usable in WVW. 600 range is a serious limitation in WVW, unless rangers were to get more access to stealth.

I play both warr and ele regularly. I’d say they’re functionally pretty kitten similar. Similar enough to compare CDs anyway. Trying to act like it’s “nowhere near” as good is a gross exaggeration.

Rush is of course affected by chill but warr has such good condi clearing now that rush being affected by chill is not really a problem. Both RTL and rush suck as gap closing attacks that deal damage so no real discrepancy there. In fact i’d say in general the gap closers in this game are all pretty badly done – the only good ones are teleports and savage leap.

IMO RTL deserves its lower CD back and both skills should be improved with respect to reliability of gap closing.

Ok I Did It.2854:

But overall GW1 was a better game than GW2,
…
if I had known that GW2 would have turned out the way it did, I don’t think I would have bought it

This sums it up for me. Outside of some standout aspects like the art, WVW, and the addition of combo fields, this game has been a huge letdown.

@OP, I think the AI in this game is terrible as a result of a deliberate design decision to keep the AI CPU budget relatively small to save on hosting costs.

well they should never have nerfed the anti-gravity aspect of RTL, perhaps the most fun thing in the whole game died that day.

As for the CD and distance, it was definitely overnerfed. 25sec 1200range or 15sec 900 range seem like the sweet spot IMO.

IMO barrage would be fine if the channel were shorter and usable while moving.

Irene Jane.9605:

Well, there are a lot of things wrong with trap rangers, I played trap just last night and the common theme for me is that traps do not offer any defensive mechanics.

hence the smoke field on spike trap suggestion. smoke field blinds enemies standing in it, and a ranger with warhorn/sword/GS and/or a drake could stealth from it. both good defensive moves.

if you want big damage numbers, roll a thief. don’t roll an Ele for damage.

The key weaknesses for me:

• not really usable in a CC build, CC durations are far too short to matter
• not really usable in a condition build, only inflicts burning. Also, it’s a condition trait in the boon duration line.
• too many arcane traits in a line that is already full of good traits

potential fixes:

• move it to another line
• if it can’t be moved, add a boon so it at least benefits from the trait line bonuses: fire=might, air=fury, water=regen, earth=protect
• buff the chill and immob durations

oZii.2864:

Rabid S/S + LB is lame build imo it’s so face roll you don’t need to worry about dodging especially if your running it super lame with shout heals in full apothecary. It still is weak to a P/D perp thief and I wreck S/S LB condi with my phantasm S/S Staff mesmer no PU.

Actually it’s even cheesier than that — i run it with O/H shield and (2) physical utilities for the interrupts + perplexity runes + confusion on interrupt trait + sigil of tormenting. Nothing gets away from it over short distances and it can apply 8+ confusion stacks per interrupt + plenty of covering conditions. I don’t really have trouble with PUs with that setup (but then, i play a PU myself as well, so…).

Like i was saying before though, my warr is more mobile and more deadly than my D/D ever was before the nerfs.

scerevisiae.1972:

• Traps are vectors for condition damage, having all their traits in the precision/crit dmg line makes no sense
• IMO should be 900 range when traited. 600 range might be fine for sPVP but it is a serious limitation for WVW.
• Would make a lot of sense if Entangle were a trap

actually it would be cool if spike trap could be reworked slightly to generate a smoke field. would be cool if rangers had more access to stealth.

yes. signet + adrenal health is OP.

and:

they are the best class is all areas of the game.