Guild Wars 2

The stupid thing with that response is that they could just make a text file on the client’s computer that stores names for the pets. When you change a pet, the file is read and the game automatically changes the name if it is possible. I’ts so bullet-proof that it isn’t even possible to abuse it.

ApplePearOrange.9281:

4) Is there a reason why the Drake’s F2 “manual active” is a breath instead of its tail sweep? Wouldn’t it be better if the player had more control over a skill that has a combo finisher effect over one that didn’t?

There is, because the Tail Swipe is the first skill it will use when attacking

Rangers are sustain, Others are burst.

Rangers can’t do huge numbers, others can.

That is why others will suffer more, because rangers deal huge damage through many small hits so while others suffer a 500 to 1000 damage reduction, Rangers only suffer 100-200 damage reduction.

How would it turn out?

Instead of “15% chance to block incoming projectiles” it would be “15% chance to block incoming attacks while wielding a ranged weapon”

Discuss.

To utilize the effectiveness of ranged weapons you have to plunge into a world filled with teleporting/Low-CD gap closer classes and permastealth backstab thieves.

That’s my main problem with this game.
Rangers should imo be the ones who can deal as much ranged damage as anyone else’s melee damage.

Atherakhia.4086:

solrik.6028:

The poison application in that build, should provide 700-900 poison/second. Now apply 50% raw increase in damage/second and you are looking at 1050-1350 poison damage/second. Which is an increase of 350-450 damage, RAW output. _
_Now given our insane upkeep of poison, even without any condi damage except the 300 gained from WS, you will still do noticable damage, even if you run a power build with 30 points (or 6 with the new system that is coming) you can imagine doing 3-500 poison damage/second. It will help hybrid builds, condition builds, pet builds.

Did I miss something? Poison ticking for 700 would require at least 6000 condition damage. I still don’t see how it’s helpful, because Poison is mostly used for heal denial, rather than damage.

Poison hits for Bleed*2. The trait makes it hit for Bleed*3. No idea where the above numbers came from.

Official wiki says “84 + (0.1 * Condition Damage) per second at Level 80” or is it something I missed about the patch?

Edit: The big difference is that poison stacks in duration, which makes it much weaker than bleed, without considering it’s heal reduction. Bleed is also easily stackable and it is very rare that someone applies and maintains only one stack of bleed

The poison application in that build, should provide 700-900 poison/second. Now apply 50% raw increase in damage/second and you are looking at 1050-1350 poison damage/second. Which is an increase of 350-450 damage, RAW output. _
_Now given our insane upkeep of poison, even without any condi damage except the 300 gained from WS, you will still do noticable damage, even if you run a power build with 30 points (or 6 with the new system that is coming) you can imagine doing 3-500 poison damage/second. It will help hybrid builds, condition builds, pet builds.

Did I miss something? Poison ticking for 700 would require at least 6000 condition damage. I still don’t see how it’s helpful, because Poison is mostly used for heal denial, rather than damage.

all i can say is that these traits, especially the VS one, is very very strong. Forest Spider + Malicious Training with this new trait will equal 7x poison applications in short timeframe (ive already seen a spider apply 44 seconds poison duration in like 10 seconds just a few days ago….)[/quote]

44 seconds of poison will never be on the opponent for even half of that. Please explain to me, because I don’t see how 44 seconds poison is of any use.

Prysin.8542:

Substance E.4852:

Prysin.8542:

ITS OFFICIAL FROM THE STREAM; IMMOB REMOVAL ON LIGHTNING REFLEXES. YYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Have they previewed the other traits yet?

Yes;
Here goes;
Skirmish – 15% chance to block ranged attacks while in melee
WS – All poison damage does 50% more damage, pets apply poison on attack after swap (pet poison damage on swap scales with player condi damage)
NM – Survival Skills cleanse 2 condies and give fury
BM – Pet F2 heals allies in a AOE (i can just smell OP fern hound with this)

The NM and WS ones are really strong given our poison uptime not to mention stuff like Muddy Terrain will now cleanse condies, give fury and immob + cripple on 20 sec CD

Skirmish – This is nice, but is 100% RNG
WS – What is the point of the damage increase?
NM – That is really nice!
BM – AoE heal almost every 4.8 seconds with eagle? Hmmm… Sounds a bit fishy.

Instead of flaming Anet, I’m going to say this:

The ranger was originally described as an unparallelled archer. This was later changed. Even though the definition of ranger is not about “range”, rangers should still be more professional with ranged weapons. Rangers ususually have a bow because they are woodman and they hunt. Each trait listed changes something unique to the class and more or less global too. The Read the Wind trait changes one thing on one weapon. It would be much more welcomed if it increased the speed of every projectiles, or at least the two bows.

Even more welcome would be if the trait was paired with extra fire rate and double projectile speed for both bows.

House Calls.7641:

Rangers still turning on each other like our class hasn’t got enough issues.

Its a nice build, it works for you which is great but i am sure some other classes builds would just walk through the bleeds. I used to main Ranger until i discovered just how little conditions affect my warrior when geared and traited for it (which is 90% of the time) Melandrus, lemongrass soup and a couple of traits and you would likely pop and i would consider myself a average player. Nice video though.

I’m obviously trying to mess his build up, right???

There are two types of condition build players. One type are those who just spam any condition they can. The other is who carefully applies condition in an order that lets the most damaging one be cleansed last.

I seriously don’t know what the probem with the build I proposed is. Anyone can clearly see that every bleed does more damage.

AEFA.9035:

why dont you make a video of your self with your ranger? id like to see what you’re talking about since its a good suggestion and post it in the forum.

Sure, but it might take a while. I haven’t played for 2 weeks and got exams to study for.

It will be a different build but it’s still a bleed focused.

Vandiros.8375:

solrik.6028 whats ur goal when u play spvp ??
my goal is kill other players fast as I can
I try with must class and I can kill easy.
1vs1/ 1vs2 / 1vs3/ next video ill show u how I can kill 3 players by this build

ty.

I’m telling you how you can kill faster, if you didn’t notice, but you aren’t even reading it.
Sorry for being stupid, I though that your video which was showcasing your build in wvw was for wvw and not spvp. But it was obviously for spvp because you recorded in wvw.

I’m waiting for that next video, especially the 1vs3.

Vandiros.8375:

ty guys for ur notes.
but my build is full bleed that why.
i use Weakening Venom for
x3 Vulnerability (11s) 3% Incoming Damage + Weakness (5.1/5s) -50% Endurance…
Rending Pounce for
x4 Bleeding (14s) 5,990 Damage

That make me kill fast
1st broke him
2nd bleed him
3rd my axe + shortbow with bleed too very fast kill

That my tactic

Ever thought of actually considering what people are suggesting instead of dismissing everything like if we just proposed random changes?

Your current (bleed) build is wasting a lot of stats. Firstly, since you focus on crap-conditions first to put on your bleeds after to actually deal damage, a lot of condition duration is wasted. A condition won’t, in normal conditions, stay on target for over 7-10 seconds, depending on which class it is. That is why you can either focus on increasing the duration of your short-duration bleeds or focus on increasing condition damage for your long-duration bleeds (spike trap, splitblade etc).

The sweet spots for condition duration is usually 25-50-75-100 percent because those numbers tend to be whole. Your current build has a lot of wasted condition duration because you have skills with many 0.25/5/75 durations. Especially the crossfire which applies a 4.75 seconds long bleed.

Too much bleed isn’t good either because when you start meeting skilled opponents, you will have problems because you have so many bleeds on him that there is never a pause between them. That is, when you put cripple and the other conditions on him, the time to stack up bleed is very short because there is so much of it that the big stack won’t ever run out and it will just be cleansed after the first 2 or 4 crap-conditions you apply.

Nice video, but it only includes wins. Include deaths in it too.

Also some tips when playing with shortbow;
1.To really make the enemy break their target, you can run through them while firing the shotbow and force them to turn 180 while they (probably) are spamming one of their skill buttons. This will cause many people to auto-target something else or just completely drop target.

2. Entangle is not OP, it takes 4-kittens to kill it, the guardian was a noob for standing there and so were others.

3. You’d get more damage with flame trap instead of Keen Edge. Why? Because if you start with flame trap and then spike trap, you’r burning will cover your bleed stacks which causes them to linger more.

4. Since you got many conditions that you can apply too much of, you can do more damage with bleeding duration runes instead. Sharpened Edges will tick for one more and the bleeds from the shortbow will tick for one extra tick.

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMEQNBHhVakRlyVbXxgFqWDArCC2ekpkYyeYojPmyrSRVSA-zkCBYhCiUABiWAMFtIaslghtgJa1MBRJTIVdDTHLykCAipRA-w

This build lower the condi damage in favor for longer bleeds, which isn’t a downside because the bleeds are low duration bleeds (not like the ones on Entangle). If you want to play better, try to apply Chill/Weakness, Cripple & poison first, then try to land flame trap and then spike trap right after to catch them in fire trap. It’s very important to cover your bleeds with other conditions first.

(Btw, you should have one tanky pet on swap whenever you’re using EB. Conditions won’t kill any pet, but conditions + attacks from the enemy WILL kill squishy ones)

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Troll_Unguent

Says “Does not apply regeneration”. Troll unguent has it’s own type which makes it impossible to remove once applied.

Seras.5702:

rivurivurivurivu.3041:

Nike.2631:

Running Air and Fire together is amusing for random damage bursts.

but they share cd or are they changing that too ?

Yep!

I love these kind of logical answers.

A child is born and the mother asks “Is it a boy or a girl?” and the doctor replies “Yes”…

Durzlla.6295:

kiwituatara.6053:

Prysin.8542:

Please STOP USING EMPATHIC BOND
it is a terrible trait. It hurts YOU more then it helps you. Anyone saying anything else is a fool.

How? I know its not great, but its one of the best traits we’ve got.

It destroys your pet, which is a large portion of your damage, it doesn’t matter if the pet isn’t DYING from the trait, if it’s taking cripple, chill, and weakness the thing may as well be dead.

It does matter if the pet isn’t dieing from the trait. It can still deal damage.
You completely missed the fact that the pet will barely have any problems if there are points in BM, but if not; the ranger has CC, Evade and other kind of crap which can be used for a much greater benefit than some animal that would otherwise only be used for damage.

The fight isn’t lost when the pet dies, it is lost when the ranger dies. That is why it is better if the pet has the cripple

Don’t read further if you aren’t referring to PvP or WvW. If PvE, just skip reading what’s below. For PvE, just go full Berserker!

It is.

Especially when you pair it with Toughness and Empathic Bond (or even SoRenewal on top of those).

It comes with costs though.

Anyone else who’s tanky built will just live through your damage and you theirs.

It’s a good build if you are just learning because you can make a lot of mistakes and get a feel for how other people play. Later on, you can switch to a more offensive build because you know the tells and typical patterns people do which allows you to evade those and then strike.

When I first played a regen build, I was surprise at how many kills I got in comparison to deaths. Don’t misunderstand this, I barely died because I was so tanky!

Anyway, the major problems were (WvW) that it took a very long time to kill someone which gave plenty of time for reinforcements to come, taking camps took a long time and that anyone could escape whenever they wanted.
It came with some perks too. When small scale roaming, people usually focused me to later realise that they really can’t do anything because I’m so tanky (Protection and around 1800hp/sec on top of toughness and 4 conditions transferred per sec) and my teammates could just hammer them.

There was once a group of 4 enemy thieves roaming in WvW so I asked if there is any roaming necro around so we could kill them thiefs. What happened after was that once we found the thief group, all 4 of them focused me so I started running in circles to get them stacked and then used Entangle. It obviously caught them all and my necro friend used fear and other CC’s plus his AoE bombs to kill them off. Noob thieves.

With clerics, you should use Greatsword with Sword and Dagger. Your main damage will come from well timed poison which reduces the enemy’s healing. Your second damage source comes from Knockback + Maul which isn’t much but still around 1k in total. Use up your Endurance before using the evades on Sword and Dagger because it will have time to fill up. Leave 1 second spaces between evade skills

If you put 30 in BM, be sure to pick Eagle because their F2 skill helps a lot and when you activate it, don’t spam F2, just press it once.

Necros will hate you, because you can literally walk into their AoE skills.
Engineers are tricky, they require well timed dodges. (The torment and confusion is a killer)
Mesmers are annoying because you have zero AoE, but your pet can always find them if you specifically targeted the mesmer and pressed F1.
Guardians can take ages to kill. I litteraly fought one for 15 minutes and we were always very close to killing eachother but it simply wasn’t possible.
Warriors are easy if you can dodge their CC.
Elementalists are easy too except those tanky healing ones…

You just nerfed our condi cleanse, traps and a lot of other stuff.

Am I supposed to spend 50 (!!!!) points for traps now?

How many hours do you have on your ranger?

Medens.4960:

Did the dudes who disapprove the build even try it yet? Something tells me they haven’t…
Why don’t you just go and try it first and thén legitimately burn it to the ground with critisism (or not).
And don’t say it’s common sense.

Think a little bit…

To be able to say that eating poop is bad doesn’t mean that the person has to first eat it.
Same in GW2. If someone specs for ranged and uses melee then it doesn’t require anyone to play the build because it’s common sense if you notice that speccing for melee or using ranged is a better option.

It’s over exaggregated but I think you can see my point. It only requires common sense.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Himei, Rangers do about 45% less damage with our burst than a Warrior, with near the same stats. That’s a problem right there, especially with pets having been nerfed. If we did 25% less damage, I’d be okay with it, because even then we’d be dangerous. But 45% less? If we can’t even get to the levels of burst other classes can, we’re worthless as is, especially with the pets having been nerfed so heavily, because this means all our attacks are not doing well enough to pressure anybody.

As a thief in WvW, I see a Ranger, I laugh, they aren’t going to pressure me enough for me to go defensive, not with any build they have. I see any other class, I get weary because I know they have builds that are going to make it so I’m probably going to need to play defensively.

Exactly where do you get those accurate numbers from?

What will a warrior do after the burst, run around in circles until he can burst again?

Warrior has weaknesses too.

BlackenX.7386:

I have a suggestion in remaking the Opening strike trait like this:
Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Remake Opening Strike Trait as a special ability to Ranger instead of a trait

Goal of Proposal
To make Rangers weapon skills more and more useful in starting a fight

Proposal Functionality
Make this trait become a special ability to Ranger.
With this special ability, all Ranger weapon skill 1 will have a special skill when Ranger is out of combat.

Its very similar to Thief’s “Stealth Attacks”, but one is in stealth, another one is out of combat.

For example:
1H Sword skill 1:
Opening leap – Opening strike. Leap into the fight, crippling your foe.
(This requires more work than it seems. Anet needs to prevent spamming this skill (and others below) to move faster.)

Axes skill 1:
Cunning throw – Opening strike. Hit up to three foes with a single throw The first target is stunned, the second is Confused, and the third inflicts weakness.
(I’d rather have Weakness & Confusion on all three because one second stun at the start of the fight doesn’t help much.)

Greatsword skill 1
Bouncing Blade – Opening strike. Throw a greatsword to a target and bounce back to you, damaging the foe and giving fury to you.
Fury: 5 s
Combo Finisher: Physical Projectile
Range: 600
Greatsword Ranger loves fury.
(This is a very good suggestion. Make fury apply on hit and instead of bouncing the GS back, let me pull it out of the enemy and apply Torment or Cripple (if torment is OP))

Short bow skill 1
Torment Shot – Opening strike. Shoot an arrow that your foe inflicts torment.
(Yeah, why not… Let it apply 1-3s cripple too)

Longbow skill 1
Penetrating Attack – Opening strike. The foe inflict vulnerability, the longer range deals the higher stacks of vulnerability.
0-500 range: Vulnerability4 : 5 s
500-1000 range: Vulnerability5 : 5 s
1000+ range: Vulnerability6 : 5 s
(I think this should be a interactive skill. That is, a charge-up skill. Hold the button to charge for max 5 seconds
1 second or less: Cripple 5s
2 seconds or less: Immobilise 3s
3 seconds or less: Daze 2s
4 seconds or less: Quickness 3s, Fury 3s (if arrow hits)
Nothing in between 4 and 5, otherwise it would be OP
Full 5 seconds charge: Deal 50% of your targets current HP as damage. The arrow speed for this one is a little slower than normal and is much bigger with an additional effect to make it noticable. _This is very much required because 50% hp dealt is A LOT and it would be OP if a ranger just hid in a bush (and isn’t visible) and picked off people by going in and out of combat all the time. (Unaffected by damage modifiers)

At 3, 4 and 5 seconds, there would be a visual indicator at the tip of the arrow that tells enemies what’s happening.)

It will be good to interact with related traits:
Opening strike always critical hits.
Regain Opening Strike whenever you kill a foe or gain stealth.
Pets have Opening Strike. (We can also make pets to have special opening skills)

Associated Risks
Need a 10s Cool Down, even if the skill is used without any target,
or it will make Ranger spamming these skills.
(Just like Thief in stealth mode and spam his skill 1 when he hits miss until he hit)

(Bold part is made by me)
What do you think?

Serraphin Storm.2369:

Most ranger run condi so RaO doesn’t really compliment a condition build unless they rely on crit. Lots of things are ineffective in spvp yet you have taken the time to post here. Probably isn’t as ineffective as you would have everyone believe.

I take RaO for Stability and the extra Might.
Might affects Condi dmg and Power. So yes, it does complement a condition build!

gpassucc.5961:

Just because rangers lack active condi cleanse don’t assume other classes do as well. If you are facing anyone competent (besides another ranger who doesn’t have on demand condi clear) all they have to do is instantly cleanse after the ridiculously obvious animation and you just wasted your elite.

Just because other professions can cleanse better don’t assume their cleanses are always off CD.

Entangle is a great skill but very situational. It is strong against some but weak against others. Having 5 rangers in a zerg means 25 people immobilised for at least a second.
In solo fights, entangle can save your life and can also root an enemy if they cleansed a condition overload.

I do agree that Entangle is inferior though. Spirit and RaO are always more superior when considering versatile they are.

This is what I see in these changes:
Marksmanship receives the good traits and the bad traits are made less accessible.
A 4 second daze with 2s daze every 10 seconds is overpowered when coupled with other control skills.
Inverting signets is a careless change, because barely anyone would take SotB.

It would mean

• 6 seconds invulnerability
• Pulling all condition to the ranger, the profession that lacks condition cleanse
• Once again more power to zerkers

That could result in very tanky builds; 3s block (same as invulnerability to an extent) + 6s invulnerability (tanky pet + protect me) + 6s invulnerability (signet) + evades from weapon (sword if you have it)

After that, you got damage boost from MoC after 4s daze, plus the daze from GS, plus another 2s daze from longbow.

…

Chrispy.5641:

The thread was dead to me at about the point where I was clicking on the names of 90% of those posters in that thread, and realizing that most of them have never made a Ranger related post before.

I’m not saying thats bad, I’m just asking, “why did 50 + of you suddenly and finally pick this week to voice your concerns for the Ranger profession and finally post ideas?”

Yeah I noticed that too…. It’s quite sad tbh.

Some of them posted ~5-8 suggestions that were basically like (but as long texts and poor arguments) “Remove pet because it sucks”, “Make shouts instant because they suck”, “Change this trait to give more because it suck” and so on. Suggestions without any thinking behind it.

I use a trapper build with 100% bleed duration, full rabid gear, dire weapons and 0/30/30/10. I think this pretty much applies to your build too.

Pros:
*Good control
*Survivability comes from sword and weakness
*Allows for a high skill level
*Can be used for flanking zergs (small scale max 20 p zerg) thanks to spike’s immobilise
*Good catcher (thiefs, mesmers)
*Good zerg escaper (Sword 2, Dagger 4

Cons:
*Blindness is a killer
*Condition/CC engineers are annoying

The high skill level comes from which order you apply conditions.
Usually starting with burning then chill will cover quite a bit, but sharpened edges can mess it up sometimes which can make bleeds the first condition to be cleansed, but then fire will deal most damage.

There are some nice tricks for this build.

It is possible to start with flame trap and then spike trap if it hits, which will immobilise your enemy and flame trap pulses more burning on him.

Dogs…. oh boy. You can start with either cripple (dagger) or chill (and weakness from winter’s bite), sen your dog onto the enemy. The dog knocks your enemy down, you can throw a flame trap (while pressing F2), then a spike trap, dog will fear or immob or both (depending on which two you have) and you can splitblade their face for huge bleed damage!

Entangle is nice when fighting with buddies against 3-5 people. Make your enemies gather close to eachother then use entangle to trap them. Some will break free, but there is a big chance that they will get caught in the nearby vine.

Now other stuff….
Currently I have Sigil of Battle on both sets but I only ever change to sword/dagger if I’m fleeing or need to buy some time for a skill (and those situations are rare and 3 stacks of might is nothing) so I am considering changing to something else.
Your two sigils, the Earth and Blood, share and internal cooldown of 2 seconds but that will be fixed after next patch I believe.

The stats you chose is imo a little messed up. I always value Toughness over vitality if I have EB because Toughness makes every point of health worth more (not for conditions) and I have no idea how condition damage and power goes together in this build.

The trait sharpened edges is pretty much a waste here because of the very low chance to apply bleeding.

The damage spike and splitblade is a bit less then what I have but the actual damage dealt depends on how smart you play with order and how the enemy cleanses.

Healing Spring is a no go because this kind of builds require a lot of moving around.
*Running in circles around an immobilised enemy
*Rolling though warriors/guardians so they use their skills on nothing
*Avoiding necro circles
*Etc

Fighting against necros is fun because (depending on the necro) you can just run into everything they put on the ground (except fear that is) while throwing traps and doing everything you can to overload them with conditions. Just remember to swap to sword when they death shroud because I noticed it’s a waste of a skill to “kill” them in DS.

Engineers are annoying because they have a lot of control skills but are very predictable. They will most likely start with stun/daze/immobilise and then apply confusion and other annoying things. There seems to be an awful lot of engineers running with tormenting…

Mesmers play like engineers. They are going to do something big if they go stealth.

Thief require prediction to be beaten.

Please note that this is opinion and not hard fact… Anyway, that’s all I could write now. Thanks for reading!
Good luck with the new gear!

@Runeblade
Beastmastery will not get revived by a lousy 20% damage boost to the pet. Pet is not only DPS.

@Warriorjrd
There is one problem with that. Pets do not respond immediately after swapping which will waste about 1 second of quickness. Even though it’s nice, it works only in PvE. Any good player in WvW or PvP will notice the pet’s damage output and start avoiding it. If not, well, then you most likely didn’t even need the pet to win.

@Kai
I would understand why it’s GM if quickness was a 100% boost (that would requal 6s of 50% boost) because that would let us use a lot of skills quickly to spike a target. Imagine around 1k hits with the shortbow with 100% boost…. no, that would be overpowered (that’s why it was nerfed)

@Anet
You guys said you make small changes to find the sweet spot, not huge changes that could turn things upside down! What you did with ZS was to move it from the bottom to the highest possible spot on the traitline and then left it there.

Suggested Proposal Format

Specific Game Mode
General, I’m sorry but I won’t spam this thread with 3 identical posts!
This goes for all three but mostly PvE and WvW!

Proposal Overview
Zerphyr’s Speed and better support from ranger.

Goal of Proposal
The goal is to make Master traits in BM more worth taking and to allow the ranger to support party members more through the pet! A new space for GM allows for adding something that the ranger is weak in or lacks completely.

Proposal Functionality
I haven’t seen any ranger use this trait since it got moved to grandmaster level.
The problem is that this trait would be OP if one of the other professions had it, but it isn’t on ranger and here is why:

When swapping pets, depending on melee or ranged, problems arise for both types.
For melee pets, the ranged loses damage output because the pet has to run to the target. If the ranger is melee, the pet has to run a shorter distance, but the ranger is already taking a risk by being melee based.

Ranged pets suffer the less, but have a completely different problem. They can be used as shield that block enemy projectiles and let’s the ranged freely attack the enemy from range. When swapped, the pet is repositioned which means the ranger has to take damage while (s)he repositions. For melee rangers, the problem is that the pet is in melee range when swapped, which causes cleaves and AoE skills to hit the pet too. This also required the ranger to reposition himself to ease the pet.

Being able to choose two pets can be a difficult decision. Any good ranger knows why these decisions are difficult to make.
Should one pair an offensive pet with a defensive one? Should one take one ranged pet as defensive and a feline as offensive? What will happen with survivability when the ranged pet is swapped for the feline? Maybe a canine is a good idea, but is the ranger able to guarantee (through control) the knockdown leap will hit?

We not only benefit from Zephyr’s Speed but lose on it too. When swapping, we risk putting the swap timer on 60 seconds because the offensive pet dies. Then take two defensive pets? you might say… That is no solution, because taking two defensive pets means less damage done and those two are most likely chosen because the ranger’s survivability on it’s own is low because of build choice.

My suggestion is to move the trait to master level. To make room, Mighty Swap and Vigorous Training can be merged (these two merged into one trait would give good party support ability, if made to affect allies, to ranger and also increase the ranger’s survivability through the pet, but that is another topic.)
Intimidation, Stability Training and Rending Attacks can then be buffed slightly to make them compete with the new traits.

A new grandmaster trait will need to be created after the changes. This trait should be something that makes it really worth taking.
Gives place for one of:
-Active condition cleanse (on swap)
-Big stat bonus to pets (extra 150 in every stat?)
-Pets steal life for ranger (so much life that it would be worth to use movement impending skills to the pets benefit)
-Increase attack range for pets (100 to melee, 300 to ranged pets?)
-and many more that I can’t come up with by me’self

Associated Risks
Because I don’t know the game completely, I can’t be 100% sure about balance. 30 points for ZS is too big of an investment because the trait doesn’t only come with benefits!

Thanks for reading this!

Ehhh…. time to copy the thread I just made 1 minute ago

Can you tell me why it is on grandmaster level? No, you can’t.

I haven’t seen any ranger use this trait since it got moved to grandmaster level.
The problem is that this trait would be OP if one of the other professions had it, but it isn’t on ranger and here is why:

When swapping pets, depending on melee or ranged, problems arise for both types.
For melee pets, the ranged loses damage output because the pet has to run to the target. If the ranger is melee, the pet has to run a shorter distance, but the ranger is already taking a risk by being melee based.

Ranged pets suffer the less, but have a completely different problem. They can be used as shield that block enemy projectiles and let’s the ranged freely attack the enemy from range. When swapped, the pet is repositioned which means the ranger has to take damage while (s)he repositions. For melee rangers, the problem is that the pet is in melee range when swapped, which causes cleaves and AoE skills to hit the pet too. This also required the ranger to reposition himself to ease the pet.

Being able to choose two pets can be a difficult decision. Any good ranger knows why these decisions are difficult to make.
Should one pair an offensive pet with a defensive one? Should one take one ranged pet as defensive and a feline as offensive? What will happen with survivability when the ranged pet is swapped for the feline? Maybe a canine is a good idea, but is the ranger able to guarantee (through control) the knockdown leap will hit?

We not only benefit from Zephyr’s Speed but lose on it too. When swapping, we risk putting the swap timer on 60 seconds because the offensive pet dies. Then take two defensive pets? you might say… That is no solution, because taking two defensive pets means less damage done and those two are most likely chosen because the ranger’s survivability on it’s own is low because of build choice.

My suggestion is to move the trait to master level. To make room, Mighty Swap and Vigorous Training can be merged (these two merged into one trait would give good party support ability to ranger and also increase the ranger’s survivability through the pet, but that is another topic.)
Intimidation, Stability Training and Rending Attacks can then be buffed slightly to make them compete with the new traits.

A new grandmaster trait will need to be created after the changes. This trait should be something that makes it really worth taking.
Gives place for one of:
-Active condition cleanse (on swap)
-Big stat bonus to pets (extra 150 in every stat?)
-Pets steal life for ranger (so much life that it would be worth to use movement impending skills to the pets benefit)
-Increase attack range for pets (100 to melee, 300 to ranged pets?)
-and many more that I can’t come up with by me’self

Thanks for reading!

TL;DR
Move ZS to Master, merge existing master traits (which increased ranger’s party support), buff rest to make them compete with ZS, make new GM trait that adds something the ranger lacks.

Elite “Signet of the Hunter”
Passive: Gain Camouflage after 3 seconds of not taking damage and not moving
Active: Endless endurance for 4 seconds and recharge all (weapon?) skills (balance?)
Cooldown can be 80 to max 100 seconds.

Actually, I would really like skills that makes the ranger invisible in an area.

It would be like traps, invisible to the enemy. When I place it, a small ring around me appears. I would be invisible while in that ring but will become visible when stepping out (and revealed is applied).

Something like the Southsun Survival’s “Camouflage Kit”!

Forzani.2584:

solrik.6028:

I noticed you are using spiders!

They are great for close quarters ranged combat because you can keep them between you and the enemy. Control skills will land on the spider instead of you.

If he walks through the spider to your side, you do the same.

I have never heard of that. Is that because they are a ranged pet? …and only applies to control skills and not damage?

Yes, exactly. They are ranged and are less likely to move around like melee pets do.

It’s really fun when you see a War/Guard knock your pet around instead of you. Gives a little bit of ‘Evil laugh’ feeling.

With a little bit of practice, it has more or less the same effect as “Protect Me!” depending on who you’re fighting. It is really worth doing even if it’s one more thing to keep track of but it pays off by giving you better survivability!

Doesn’t help much against basic-attacks though that cleave and splash…. but on the other hand, why would anyone evade basic-attacks?

Without reworking the system too much, I would like to see a “combo” window that allows us to cutsomise how pets will behave.

One example would be:
If enemy crippled, then use knockdown skill (for canines that is)
If first attack, then use blast finisher (drakes)
If enemy health at 50% use X
and so on.

This would enable combos like 8s immobilise from spiders
If enemy crippled, use immob skill
If enemy immobilised, activate F2
If F2 activated, attack with basic skill.

ChillyChinaman.6057:

solrik.6028:

What community?

There only people here are a few who can play ranger, many that has a hum about what works and even more that are noobs and whine endlessly.

There are ways to make the current pet mechanic AI work better. Those ideas were never received well because people always flame.

I think you’re taking my post a little to seriously. Just having some fun and talking to fellow rangers, good or bad. Also where do you think you and I fit on your continuum?

I had a similar idea once which involved ‘stances’. Only one stance was ever activated, each stance would have either an on-activate effect or an on-expire effect. Also, each of these stances had a persistent passive effect. A stance would expire when a condition is met. When an effect is made “active” (i.e. it does it’s active effect, and not it’s passive effect) a pet is summoned.

There are for certain better rangers than me. When I fight about rangers I know what tricks my enemy might use and I also pay attention to what buffs (s)he has (food, signets, opening strike)

If I notice that (s)he has Empathic Bond then I try to cover my conditions with Cripple/Poison/Burning and then go in with the other ones.

I would put myself below the “Can play ranger” because there are better rangers than me, but still above the “Hum about what works” because I know every single skill, trait, weapon skill and tactics that makes the pet a punching bag and soaks up CC for me without traits.

Substance E.4852:

I also wouldn’t try to use this to one’s advantage. Exploiting a bug to use perma endurance, even one that costs you the ability to use skills, will almost absolutely get you banned.

I don’t know what you mean if you’re implying that I used it to my own advantage.

It gives no advantage. Capturing, killing, roaming, supporting or gaining any points is impossible. Sure, you can run with the zerg and get points for capturing towers but that isn’t an advantage because you miss out on the exp from fights and the loot bags.

I noticed you are using spiders!

They are great for close quarters ranged combat because you can keep them between you and the enemy. Control skills will land on the spider instead of you.

If he walks through the spider to your side, you do the same.

What community?

There only people here are a few who can play ranger, many that has a hum about what works and even more that are noobs and whine endlessly.

There are ways to make the current pet mechanic AI work better. Those ideas were never received well because people always flame.

Today, after breaching the outer wall, I was chased by a 30 man zerg. There was no one else close, it was only me. I was chased for about 30 seconds and evaded at least one million attacks.

How it happened? I have no idea.
I couldn’t do anything to fix it. I couldn’t WP back to fix it (in combat), I couldn’t suicide to fix it (no cliff nearby), it just fixed itself.

Sooo before this happened, I was running with a guild zerg. We charged another zerg, and I did what I usually do. Throw Frost, Flame and Spike trap, and fly around with the sword while sticking close to the commander.

When the fight ended, I noticed I couldn’t use any skills and that I have infinite endurance. Emote’s didn’t work either.

I decided to try it out. I just spammed the V button to dodge everything which ended up with a zerg chasing me for 30 seconds, taking my hp away with chunks of 1k every few seconds till I died.

I have no idea why this happens and it’s extremely irritating.

lguilliam.1639:

What is the point in nerfing rangers? They are the worst class in the entire game and you’re nerfing the one good build they have at the minute. Do not increase the recharge of guard because then I’ve just wasted 15 god kitten gold on the one and only decent WvWvW build (they’re also awful in PvE, average damage and no sustain with it if you spec for DPS) they have because it just makes the build useless! I don’t understand why you think this is a valid idea.

This is the exact reason Anet doesn’t read these threads.

If you really care, you have to make your point! Explain why it shouldn’t be nerfed instead of whining about your gold.

15g can be collected super fast and there is no build that needs shout mastery for the regen. Go with dwayna runes, regen trait(s), regen duration and you have perma-regen without problems. I used to stack up around 2 minutes of regeneration without shouting. I changed my build to something more fun though.

Thanks for the info

Nice to see there are more longshortbows

What the hell is your problem? These are pretty good changes! (except martial mastery)

Crossfire: This skill now correctly applies bleeding only when hitting from behind or from the side.
What??

Slash—Kick—Pounce: Improved functionality to allow players to cancel the skill chain with less difficulty.
There really wasn’t any problem with this if you turn off auto-attack.

“Guard”: This skill now has a recharge time of 25 seconds, up from 15 seconds.
There goes the awesome mobility. The skill should be remade into something else. I haven’t seen any ranger using this for it’s original effects. They always used it for regen and swiftness.

Skirmishing 5—Tail Wing: This trait now grants 9 seconds of swiftness, up from 5 seconds.
Good for kiting. Please do the same with furious grip!

Skirmishing IX—Honed Axes: This trait now reduces the recharge time on main hand axe skills by 20%.
Holy kitten this is awesome!

Wilderness Survival X—Martial Mastery: This trait no longer reduces recharge on greatsword and spear skills. This trait now grants 1 second of vigor when you successfully evade an attack with a sword skill.
If there isn’t any ICD, then it’s sweet. Otherwise, 1 sec vigor here and there won’t do much!

Wilderness Survival XII—Bark Skin: This trait now has a health threshold of 33%, up from 25%.
Empathic Bond is still superior. Except when you know who you will meet.

Beastmastery X—Ferocious Training: This new master tier trait replaces Vigorous Training. This trait now guarantees bird, moa and jellyfish pets to critically hit on every third hit.
This is so nice… I am serious. Every other Bird attack will crit. This trait basically increases Bird’s crit chance by 33%

On a side note, rangers were voted as the ones who need most help, but didn’t receive more fixes than other professions…. ???

Helloes!

Switched build and have no transtone so I have to put my ebon vanguard shortbow in the bank.

As you may or may not know, the ebon vanguard shortbow has the same length as other longbows.

Question is, are there any other shortbows that look like a longbow?

I personally hate the short length of most shortbows. They look like some homemade shortbow out of toothpicks.

Pelopidas.2140:

Healing spirit actually heals on cast, heals on hit every 10 sec and heals on active, so good burst heal and good sustained heal. No active condi removal, but you have other means to deal with conditions other than heals (empathic bond, bear, signet). Ranger has very good heals compared to other classes.

I agree that healing power could scale better. Get some facts straight before whining.

Every part I removed was just word-pooping facts that were obvious and unnecessary to be typed.

Bear removes 2 conditions every 25 which isn’t really going to help at all. Sure, it’s good for removing immobilise and other soft-controls but removing damaging conditions is a waste because they will most likely be re-applied again.

Signet, for one, forces me to swap the pet to prevent it from dieing and secondly, it has a very short range.

Empathic Bond is in short a must and it requires 30 points in a traitline one may not want to go into.

Anyhow, I don’t know what your problem is. There is no whine in my post. It was meant to start a discussion so please, keep that in mind. There is no need to be hostile.

Also, before you tell me to get my facts straight you should do the same first. Water Spirit heals less than troll unguent in it’s lifetime (60 second) with instant procs and active used. Conclusion? Troll unguent is more effective. Collective (party) healing from water spirit is higher, but it would probably be dead very quickly if fighting against people with a little knowledge.

Healing Spring offers a maximum healing of 8640 (without traits and HealingP) but that is only if you receive every pulse of regeneration.

Hello rangers, I was thinking about what is the thing that makes the regen or tanky rangers the most viable builds…

Then one simple came to thought, it’s the recovery they can do. Whenever I play with a tanky (which can include lots of healing power) build I have no problems healing up.

But when I use a build that has gear with one defensive stat (be it vit or toughness) the healing skills don’t feel like they are doing any justice. It’s a hard choice if I should heal or not, because my enemy will just peel that health away with a few hits.

Heal as One is a very weak skill, because the only function it has is healing…. a small amount which can be made less with poison. To give a little comparison, thief’s Hide in Shadows heals 5,760HP and can’t be affected by anything, because it removes poison (and the other conditions) before healing the thief.

In short, almost every other profession’s healing skills have a side effect. By that I mean condition like the engineer’s A.E.D.

Amongst the medium professions, thief and engineer both have something special added to each of their healing skills. Ranger only has healing spring which cures conditions. Heal as One, Troll Unguent and Water Spirit offer nothing more than pure healing.

The only difference is knowing when to use those three skills;
Heal as One should be used so that it brings you back to full health without wasting precious health. I.e. you would want to heal exactly 5k and not more if 5k is missing

Troll Unguent is based on prediction. Is the enemy able to keep a steady DPS so that you can use Troll Unguent with very little missing health? (and gain precious seconds on it’s cooldown?)

Water Spirit , I haven’t played much with this spirit but I would guess it’s a choice between summoning it as preparation or while in combat.

In my opinion, each of these three skills should have a side-effect that is special to the ranger and pet.

A 100% bonus would be too huge and you can already do what you wrote.

A bonus around 10-30% would be pretty nice imo.

Logic:
Rangers are hunters with trained pets. Trained pets are trained exactly for hunting which means that pets would logically have an easier time fighting other animals

Forzani.2584:

Strawman? How about hyperbole? First thing, I am impartial to his build. I am not defending it or promoting it.The only thing that I was trying to prove was a blanket statement saying that a lower health larger heal was better IS rubbish……. 24k health, 6k heal. A fourth of your HP. I’d rather have 17k HP and 10k heal. Sure, a theif would get me to 5-8k HP but I would get it back up to full after a few seconds.

Sorry, that statement is flawed. It’s like saying you would prefer to make 30k a year rather than 300k a year because you are taxed less.

Still, I understand your theory. How long will the fight last. What is your toughness. What are the timers on the heals. Do you have any other passive heals running. Are you(or enemy) a kiter. Do you have room to kite. Are you able to dispel poison frequently. ..etc etc

For a little more accuracy though take the original build listed, change out armor/trinkets and compare the results.

Original build. 24,363 HPs, 0 Healing, 6520 HaO, 62 SotW, 1936 Maul
With Cleric armor/trinkets – 18,062 HPs, 801 healing, 7321 HaO, 110 SotW, 1752 Maul
(I don’t see a 4k heal difference as quoted earlier)

So after 70 seconds, the Cleric gear will beat the Soldiers for effective HPs….(but do less damage.)

I gave an example of less vit more healing power. You responded with exaggearated examples that weren’t realistic.

Both builds have the same weapons, same traits, same everything except for gear.

I simply lack those fancy words to explain it so I will make it really simple:

The more vitality you have, the less each hitpoint healed is worth.

Having a high vitality makes the player a punching bag that will break because it can’t recover fast enough.

Having a high recovery rate makes the player a less durable punching bag that can recover fast enough so that it won’t break.

If Vit or Heal Pow should be used is only determined if 24k hp will save you or not. The healing from Signet of The Wild is doubled, which (if using HaO) provide 2k health instead of 1k. A thief can in no way backstab from over 17k which means that IF a thief backstabs for I don’t know how much damage, the player can recover by a massive amount of healing that actually makes enough difference to turn the battle, while the soldier’s gear heals so little that it barely makes any difference…

Anyway, just look into the past and you will see that builds with Soldier’s gear has great flaws. Cleric/Apoth has too, but not game-changing. Healing Power synergises better with Ranger’s traits that Vitality.

The build is okay, it has it’s flaws. Mainly the fact that you can’t really recover from damage.

You can obviously do well with the build, but your health pool is just a initial bonus. Like a shield that can be depleted but won’t recharge until you leave combat.

24k health, 6k heal. A fourth of your HP. I’d rather have 17k HP and 10k heal. Sure, a theif would get me to 5-8k HP but I would get it back up to full after a few seconds.

The problem is that everyone says what they want, without backing it up with anything. If you played sPvP and recorded it, then upload it to youtube, people would see how well it does (if it is as good as you claim.)