Guild Wars 2

Guanglai Kangyi.4318:

Listening to map chat was your first mistake. Sigil of Fire is crap. Also drop the shortbow. This isn’t really the appropriate thread to preach about how bad bows are but in all seriousness, even if bows were amazing, if you are having trouble with Risen mobs swarming you in melee, a single-target ranged weapon is typically not the best choice. Greatsword and 1H sword should clear the Risen easily, as should swapping out your bear pet (I know you’re using one, everyone runs bearbow) for a more DPS-oriented pet like a feline or bird. Having a tanky pet is pointless when the glassiest pet still has a billion HP and armor and mobs don’t aggro it in the first place.

I did most of my story with SV/LB + sometimes axe, no problems at all. Especially when I had piercing arrows

You have huge survivability so I would suggest changing S / W to A / D for more bleeds & control.

Here are multiple suggestions that does overall the same:

New trait:
Move 25% faster if you have a bow in your hand

Affects:
Signet of the Hunt – 25% movement speed the two would not stack

Where to put it:
Marksmanship adept trait.
Merge Speed Training and Commaning Voice in BM and move Malicious Training to BM to make place for new trait.

Marksmanship minor master trait.
Merge Opening Strike and Alpha Training into minor adept trait. Add new trait as minor master trait.

Less logical solution(s):

Beastmastery adept trait.
Merge Speed Training and Commanding Voice to make room for new trait.

Wilderness Survival adept trait.
Merge Speed Training and Commanding Voice in BM and move Expertise Training to BM to make room for new trait.

Why do we need this trait?

Read; Warriors are masters of martial skills. They rely on speed, strength, toughness, and heavy armor to survive.
Warriors have mobility through trait, strength through their weapon skills, toughness through their HP pool and defende and heavy armor through, you guessed it, heavy armor.

Read; Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.
Keen eye – 1.5k ranged Longbow
A steady hand – dead accurate hits and rate of fire on Shortbow
Traps – We do have some strong traps-
Spirits – They are used but mostly because there is no ICD on frost spirit

Unparalleled archers – We need something that makes us stand out to make this true. We have 1 evade and 1 stealth that let’s us mitigate damage. The Longbow requires us to fire from long range to deal ‘unparalleled ranged damage’ and the Shortbow requires us to flank the enemy to do the same. The problem is that staying at range is difficult, especially when the enemy has gap closers and we don’t have the speed to recreate the gap before taking heavy damage. We have one knockback, which is easily predicted. Our stealth doesn’t stealth the pet which forces the ranger to command the pet to attack in order to make good use of stealth.
The shortbow has one evade. Flanking is easier the closer the enemy is and the shortbow is a close quarters weapon. Unfortunately, there is nothing special with shortbow that makes the enemy cautious of coming closer.

How does a speed trait improve this?
For longbow, the stealth combined with it lets the ranger gain a large enough distance. It also makes it even more difficult for the enemy to close the gap.

For shortbow, it would help tremendously with flanking and synergises well with #4 and #5.

That’s all I can say.

Wow, I didn’t even notice, let’s just not reply anymore.

Berserker or DPS build?

Big difference

The thief has one F button.
The pet skills are not random.
Bear has condi cleanse, which I realised works quite well since my rage on it.

Still, your second paragraph is stupid. You DO have to sacrifice to gain something.
More Defense = Less Offense
More condi cleanse = less anything
and so on…

The problem with the bird bleed is the fact that it’s a long duration bleed rather than mutliple short duration bleeds. It makes the bleed very unreliable because it deals it’s damage over a long period of time and is very suspectible against condi cleanses.

The key point to stealth is:
Stops new damage
Does not stop old damage, i.e. conditions

I put down my spike trap without the ground targeting trait. The small radius makes the thiefs position easier to guess. When he walks into it, he gets bleeding with cripple. Then I shotgun him with either poison vollet (he’s likely to heal within 10 secs) or splitblade. He’s dead if he took the shotgun to the face.

Posted in the general section
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Empathic-Bond-swap-with-Hide-in-Plain-Sight

Please reply to that one too!

The only problems with rangers are their pet AI, which only occurs when you use your pet for 100% damage. Their traitlines which locks you into a specific line. E.g. if you run traps, you always need the double duration trait for them otherwise they suck.
Lastly some utility skills. Sigils have high cooldowns and less value when compared to other classes’s sigils. Spirits are still love or hate.

The bunker spec is only good because all the others were worse. It’s based on outlasting your opponent. As Axyl said, other specs are starting to emerge.

neko.9028:

So, first off, to remove some of those people who don’t agree with me and their assumptions:

I’ve more than enough AP to get into generally any group that I want, unless it’s a AP15k+ group, if they even exist.

The reason I believe this is for the better is how the system currently works, if you’re friends or in group you can see their level, character an AP. If you’re in a guild you can see their crafting and AP(and no last logged in which is pretty ridiculous by now). And this is OK in some way.

AP is used to measure if someone is skilled at the game or not. In other games, like Guild Wars that was measured on things that ACTUALLY could say if you were good, such as titles(champ, hero, glad, GWAMM, LB, EoTN titles)

AP is in itself just a “Who can farm the most achievement points”.

It is not a measure of skill and can’t be used as such, and the amount of low IQ people I find around the game in groups that require this is the same as of those that don’t.

I don’t really care that people use it, but I feel AP should be a private thing. It is not a title, it’s not a measure of worth and so it shouldn’t be used that way. If they want people to show how skilled they are ANet needs to make titles appropriate to PvE dungeons etc.

I’m not even the kind of person who encourage the whole: play how you want with your full cleric healing thief! I honestly understand the need for skilled players but I feel it needs a better system to filter them.

A person who’s done all the JP’s and daily’s aren’t going to be skilled in your full berserker Arah run.

I don’t really care about achievements so 95% of the ones I have came from not trying to get them.

I have around 600 hours playtime and I have never seen anyone discriminating solely because of low AP. Neither have I seen someone require other to be above a certain AP and neither have I seen anyone ever mention that High AP = High Skill so I have no idea where you got that from.

Ranger solo dungeon and champions #swag #yolo

To gain more survivability and make rangers less locked into spending 30 into WS, I suggest that Empathic Bond is swapped as it is with Hide in Plain Sight.
Hide in Plain Sight can be buffed to have a place as a grandmaster trait with either shorter CD or made into a Stealth.
Empathic Bond is not fully a cleanse because conditions are transferred to our pet. That includes immobilization, chill and cripple which severely limits the damage output of the pet. In some cases, heavy damage conditions are transferred and it forces the ranger to swap his pet to avoid the one minute cooldown. It might be that the pet was a Wolf with much needed fear which can’t be used because a swap was required, a Moa’s screech that now can’t be used or a Spider’s venom that would have helped with kiting.
Empathis Bond is not a trait that only improves the ranger because the player also accepts the fact that the pet has to be swapped if there are too many conditions.

That’s my 2 cents to it.

This has also been posted in the ranger forums

I also thought about prysin’s suggestion but I didn’t want to suggest something that basically requires making a new trait.

Thanks for the replies

To gain more survivability and make rangers less locked into spending 30 into WS, I suggest that Empathic Bond is swapped as it is with Hide in Plain Sight.

Hide in Plain Sight can be buffed to have a place as a grandmaster trait with either shorter CD or made into a Stealth.

Empathic Bond is not fully a cleanse because conditions are transferred to our pet. That include immobilization, chill and cripple which severely limits the damage output of the pet. In some cases, heavy damage conditions are transferred and it forces the ranger to swap his pet to avoid the one minute cooldown. It might be that the pet was a Wolf with much needed fear which can’t be used because a swap was required, a Moa’s screech that now can’t be used or a Spider’s venom that would have helped with kiting.

Empathis Bond is not a trait that only improves the ranger because the player also accepts the fact that the pet has to be swapped if there are too many conditions.

That’s my 2 cents to it.

No way, but if you must…

Tie 2 pets to each weapon swap. When swapping weapons, the pet will be swapped too without cooldown but it has the same percentage of remaining health as the pet before.

F4 could be either global or local for each set

Having the same pet for two sets, e.g. Jag/Spider – Jag/Wolf, will not cause the *Jag*uar to be swapped to the same Jaguar if the Jaguar was the active pet.

Guess what, I ran around with a zerg today and none of my pets died while I was close to the commander. I barely had to swap them

It doesn’t

15char

It should be like “Pull all conditions and transforms them into boons”

Think about this when making a build based on zerker gear:

What do you have?
A lot of damage. That is a lot of power, crit chance, crit dmg.

What do you not have?
Damage mitigation or defense.

What do you need?
1.CC to mitigate damage and deal damage.
2.Condition Cleanse to prevent conditions killing you.
3.Evasion to evade spike damage or escape the enemy.
4.CC Counter to avoid being CC’d and killed to death (hehe).

How can you acquire those?
1. SB#5, GS#4, LB#4, AXE#4, AXE#3. Traps and muddy terrain. Trait that cripples, etc
2. Bear, Healing Spring, Signet, Empathic Bond, Sigil, Rune, Evasive Purity, etc
3. Natural Vigor, Vigor from utilities, Vigorous Training, etc
4. Shared Anguish, Stun Breakers, Condi Cleanse for soft cc, etc

You absolutely don’t need more damage if you’re going to play WvW.
For regular PvE outside dungeons, sure, but you should at least have a little bit more survivability for dungeons.

Also, you can kill mobs in very short time. Moving some trait points to gain more survivability will make you kill mobs in the same time plus 1 to 3 seconds. That’s not the world’s end.

I tried to use my pets as utilities for the first time and it fails.

I can use wolf to interrupt someone 4 times, but it’s impossible to time the attacks when not downed.

The wolf once feared 5 people of a cliff out of pure luck, but the fear never comes when I want it.

The pig was chosen once because I thought I could knock people to death but it often missed.

ETC ETC

Why is there even a mini-CD when a pet skill fails?

Trying to use the godkitten cleanse when it’s needed and it goes on mini-CD two to three times in a row. It’s supposed to be a half second cast so it should be pretty kitten close to immediate.

Using lyssa runes would be better because you get the same effect with half the price.

naphack.9346:

1. It might be worth looking into putting these 10 points from nature magic to marksmanship for malicious training.
Will make your pet’s immobilizes even work against those melandru lemongrass monsters. Also, the traitline bonus(+10% cond duration) is probably welcome.

2. Also might be worth a shot looking into giver’s weapons, which might free up the runes for a full set of any rune, which would provide more overall stats and possibly some utility.

3. you are overstating the potential bleeds, you can dish out.
Keep in mind, Sigil of Earth has a 2 second icd.

Edit: Just made a build with my suggestions:
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMMQNAnYVnIVUXZcFaBxaZgYVAQtHTy8Yi9wQO6RlspoA-jkCBIggohBiWAkqIQJnFRjtEcIaFMhVxETBjIq2YuIa1RBATA-w
70% cond duration, 100%(total) bleed duration.

Having the bleed at 100% means, sharpened edges will have an extra tick.

Wanna say first that I am not the OP, because it seemed like you were replying him but then you continued with me :/

1. I strongly disagree with this suggestion because Nature’s prot helps a lot against burst.

2. Good idea, but will the extra duration equate the lost condition damage? Gaining an extra tick on one source might be worse than more damage on all sources. (I will check if it does or not)

3. Splitblade = 5 bleed + sharpened edges gives at minimum 2 and can give up to 5 + sharpening stone gives 5 + 1 from sigil = a total of 13 bleeds

I’ve read something about condition duration sigils don’t work, is that true?

EDIT: Regarding point #2
Here are the results:
Left of | is your build
Right of | is the original with rabid gear
Used only 4 sources of bleeding.
Splitblade - 12s 5868 | 11s 6581
Talon - 16s 4694 | 14.25s 5025 (~5000)
Spike Trap - 15s 4401 | 14.25s 5025 (~5000)
Sharpened Edges - 4s 391 | 3.75s 359 (~295)

We can see that the 3 sources of bleeding are better with the original build but you build, as you said, makes sharpened edges tick an extra. The choice of which build to use is mostly personal preference imo.

Here are the stats with giver weapons:
11.75s 6322 (~6250)
15.5s 5173 (~5120)
14.75 4828 (~4750)
3.75 345 (~275)

1 improved, 3 didn’t. Sooo, don’t use the build with giver weapons.

Conclusion;
Someone running Rampagers might value sharpened edges much higher than rabid because there is a noticable crit chance difference.

Figuring out if one or the other is better requires more math because sharpened edges is percent based.

Tried this one out with rabid gear and zerker weapon (because those were the ones I had) in wvw with a necro as partner.

I used sharpening stone instead of protect me because I wouldn’t need it.
He called a target, I went in with SB #1, point blank daze, axe #2, dagger #5 and spike trap somewhere inbetween. Boom, epidemic. 25 stacks on everyone else.

Also swapped HS to heal as one because there is already enough condition cleanse

The single CC transferred to the pet helps alot. Thieves + someone with CC usually try to immob or stun.

Empathic bond can be switched if you have time to check out who you’re fighting against.

Against thieves, they try to stealth after 2-3 sb pew pew so I daze them after that, throw spike trap, they stealth, throw axe #2 in their face and they are most likely downed in stealth.

Sharpening stone + axe 2 = at least 13 bleeds

What I really like a lot is that there are basically no casting times.
You use skills when you need it.

Why heal as one?
Because it’s immediate.
TU requires a prediction and using it will be either too late or too early.
HS requires you to remain in the zone

Pets?
The spiders are good for using them as shields against ranged enemies. Two is, however, not needed and one might benefit more from a wolf or dog. But it mostly depends on how one uses the pets.

Hi!

I often play with a friend (mostly my brother atm) but there is so little to do besides regular PvE or WvW roaming.

I think it would be great if you could balance some of the dungeons / fractals for 2-man parties or even make new ones.

For example, I remember one of the asura story mission had you place turrets and mines to defend against the countless golems that came through the asura gate. (Part of VOED missions) We said “It would be so fun if there was a tower-defense mini-game that we could play together in gw2”.

When I started playing, me and one of my friends played together and we always had more or less the same amount of exp and completion so that we could enjoy the game at our current level when playing together…. That stopped when we realised we couldn’t do Caudecus’ Manor without partying with random people. The “playing together” feeling ceased when we partied up with random people.

Then I told him that there was something called Fractals, we could try those. So we did, to realise these can’t be completed either.

I don’t know how many others think like I do but a game is always more fun and lasts longer when playing with a friend. Also, not everyone has 4 (irl) friends available at the same time.

TL;DR
Please balance dungeons/fractals for 2-man parties so that people can enjoy this part of content with their best friends (and siblings). Will also grant you players that remain active for a longer time!

A great way to do it at first (because you’re very busy) would be to just place a debuff on the mobs in the dungeon. Put it in the game as an ‘alpha’ content and make clear that this will not give rewards as good kitten -man parties because it’s still unbalanced. Pick one dungeon and test on it. According to logic, it would be enough to to nerf the stats of the mobs to 2/5 for a 2-man party.

Well, I can’t spit out more words, so I thank you for reading my suggestion and maybe taking it into consideration.

An answer would be awesome and highly appreciated!

Let’s say anet decides to make rangers stronger and just doubled the stat bonuses from traitlines.

30% crit damage to 60%
300 toughness to 600 toughness

What would follow? Rage? Hate? “OP” ?

I will rate my preferences from 1 to 10 and you can tell me which profession qualifies
Please

Build bound – 3/10 I’m okay with running a specific build, but it would be nice to experiment something viable

Solo capability – 8/10 I play mostly alone so I don’t want to to be dependant on others

Party capability – 5/10 It is nice to support the party, but I don’t want to fully concentrate on that. (I like supporting with weakness/vuln/CC more)

WvW Zerg Bags – 6/10 Some bags are always nice

WvW Zerg Support – 3/10 I usually just run into the zerg with my other toons and cleave the enemies a few times and then get the heck out of there

WvW Roam – 7/10 Since I play mostly alone, solo flipping and dolly slapping happens often.

PvE Capability – 5/10 I’ll put this in middle because there really isn’t anything special with pve…

Which profession do you think fits my ratings?
I have, since having the game 1 year ago, always wondered which one I should choose, but didn’t know how the game was so I just picked one. After some time, I realised this game has it’s differences but I simply don’t have the time to level 4-8 characters because of college and other matters.

Thank you for reading this!!!

Dardamaniac.1295:

No guys Durzlla has some very valid points..

To simple give us another F like and F5 for another pet skill isnt going to work..
Its a lot of work to rebalance the whole skills to adjust em in the active control.Cause right now some of them are strong cause of the RNG factor..

But i will agree that we need more control over pets.

I think being able to choose which skill we wanna use in F2 would be great…Drakes tail swipe is more important to be a active skill than their current F2..
Moas too, i dont think that there is a right time to give aoe fury, just give it as soon as we engage..I dont care..Healing tho is more importan to be active..

Also remove the cone aoe from some spells..

You can still micromanage the pets to make em hit more often the uncontrolable abilities but its not fun gameplay and it doesnt pay you off for the effort youve made…

Example:you keep your drake close to you and you miss some dmg cause hes not autoattacking…After seeing the target immob you unleash him with F1 and some swiftness buff…Still its not effective enough for the effort you put on..cause he may still have a miss debuff on him, he may try some strange path, he may just decide not to do it by the time he reachs the target, etc etc…We defently need more control over pets and that this will raise the skill floor is a myth….
The skill floor on pet managing is already very high……

Durzlla is wrong. See my other reply.

F1 – Attack/Return (tap to toggle)
F1 Held (0.3 to 0.5 sec) – Swap pet // This can be double-tap too, but mechanics for held buttons are already in the game.
F2 – Skill 2
F3 – Skill 3
F4 – Skill 4

I don’t really see your point and it seems like you are contradicting yourself.
“that this will raise the skill floor is a myth….”
Are you saying that it won’t raise the skill floor?
“The skill floor on pet managing is already very high……”
Then why is this a problem?

The skill floor is low enough for the normal player and will teach him/her how the pet moves around the ranger and also how to call/send them back properly.

Imagine an invisible rubber rope connected to you and your pet. The rubber flings the pet to your other side once it’s stretched too much.

Yes please. I want to be able to use my eagle’s swiftness when I’m fleeing.
I want to be able to attack with my wolf and have the knockback ready if anything goes wrong.
I want to be able to stealth my jaguar and burst with it the way I want.
I want to be able to immobilize my enemy with my spiders.
I want to be able to heal my party when it’s needed with my moa.
Etc….

Regardin the challenge the game should give:

Give each type of enemy a special attack that the enemy uses frequently enough for the player to be worried about.

After that, make the player fight more than one type of enemy at once.

It would be beneficial for both Anet and the players if there was a website where changes and coming changes were listed with a possibility to vote on it with a rating from zero to five.

This would give Anet an insight on what the players think/want and also get them involved.

After each balance (or ‘bigger’) patch, players would receive an in-game mail that reminds them to vote on the changes before the new patch.

Why before the new patch?
Because the players were given a good time frame to experience the changes.

This would create a very strong connection between Anet and the players who will feel ‘listened to’.

The voting form could look like this:
“text” is voting page label (summarises multiple voting options)
—> is next page
‘do’ is stating what to do
/conditon/ this is just an IF

‘login’—>“type” ‘choose between common or profession based change’—> “sub-type” ‘choose between wvw, pvp, pve, profession’
/wvw, pvp or pve/—>“changes” ‘rate each change from 1 to 5’
/profession/—>“professions” ‘choose a profession’ —>“changes” ‘rate each change from 1 to 5’

—>“info” ‘fill in basic info like hours/week, favorite playstyle (pve,pvp,wvw) amongst others’ —> finish

Players can receive a minor reward for completing it to motivate!

Thank you for reading this!

This is a new bow only build I’ve been working on:
http://intothemists.com/calc/?build=-F;4wEFt-h2NDV-0;9k29;29TT;25;13A-7B;1U-k6;2DucYDucYPtFz0-96;3i-m0r1wY1_759eWPk4R06Rk06R;9;9;9;9;9;5Ek3q

Haven’t tested much but it seems to work qutie well.

Anet did actually describe rangers as “Unparalleled archers”

If kiting, how much do you think swiftness helps versus having no swiftness at all?

If you have access to perma swiftness, do you think it’s worth not having 25% speed out of combat then?

Advantages/Disadvantages?

Furious Grip is supposed to give 9 seconds of fury, but it only gives 5 seconds of fury.

Why was this not “hotfixed” the same way as LB fury was?

It is easier to fix it because only a change in one variable is needed.

Look at all the sheep in this forum.

Someone says something, they all follow and rage at anet.

Zorby.8236:

A leap is uninterruptable by design.

That alone shows that they didn’t think it through.
In a game like this, the best option would be to make an interface for each type of skill and let the skills inherit from the interfaces.

That way, the only change needed to make a leap interruptable would be to change the “interruptable” variable to ‘true’.

Maybe if everyone reacted like “Wow, nice stealth buff to the ranger!” instead of “They broke LB”, “Anet messed it up again”, “Probably just a bug” etc, then it might have been left in the game…..

But no, an unintentional buf that buffed the LB is till seen as something horrible and makes anet worse, right? -_-

1, the pet mechanic is not a bug, it’s a simple pathfinding variable which can’t be increased because it would create lag on the server.

2, the sword rooting is intentional if you haven’t noticed. Not being able to interrupt it with dodge or others skills is the bug.

TROLL

This is with full rabid gear….

1) Trap Potency: Change the “Condition duration part” to be default, add “Traps remove one condition when triggered and recharge faster”

2) Poison Volley: New skill “Poison Bomb”, shoot a (normal) arrow that explodes on hit and applies poison to up to 4 enemies around your target.

Here are my suggestions:

1. Gives us sliders that we can change to alter the pet’s stats.

2a. Give pets 3 armor slots. Head, Body, Legs
2b. If that is not possible, give rangers an extra slot (or use an existing one) that can be filled with a special item which changes the layout of pets.

What if 5 rangers in a part bring healing spirits? That is a lot of healing per 10 seconds

Now only if spirit actives were gound-targeted…

Is there any updated trapper build that is fairly good to run with?
Haven’t seen one in a while :/

I remember anet mentioning something about the impossibility of going over swiftness’ speed bonus.

Anyway, I think the speed should be a fixed trait or just give rangers 10-15% faster movement speed than other classes. It would definitely make ranger “special”

EDIT: Even if it’s only in combat speed boost

Soilder.3607:

Substance E.4852:

Soilder.3607:

solrik.6028:

Now if only SoH was buffed to “Your next ability does 150% damage”

That would be so insanely op. Pop SoH, pop quickness, and then watch as rapid does a 24k feed…

You are never, ever going to rapid fire someone for 16k damage unless they are a single digit up lvl theif and you’re full glass.

Full glass cannon ranger can easily reach 8k with rapid fire on a non-glassy target. Now change SoH to affect your next ability, not attack, and increase it’s damage boost to 150% and you have so insanely op rapid fire.

Are you insanely stupid or are you trying to play the cool guy who opposes others?

No one in this thread has mentioned anything about a boost being 150%.

“Does 150% damage” means NormalDMG + NormalDMG/2
“Does 150% extra damage” means Normal DMG * 2.5

It is within the game triggered (and is counted) as a signet, which means that it will be compatible with runes and traits that affect signets.

Soilder.3607:

solrik.6028:

Now if only SoH was buffed to “Your next ability does 150% damage”

That would be so insanely op. Pop SoH, pop quickness, and then watch as rapid does a 24k feed…

Still a slower 24k than other professions.

Now if only SoH was buffed to “Your next ability does 150% damage”