Guild Wars 2

Requesting yet another DPS meter? In this forum??

You brave, brave soul.

dont get? Think that way, the game has 1 big pve objective, Legendaries.

Oh look, the /thread reply.

There is no “1 big pve objective”. It’s purely based on what you want from the game experience. To think that every player has the same ultimate goal of grinding for legendary stuff in pve is moronic. Play the game how you want to play. If you like the super flashy super fancy legendary, then suck it up and understand that you will have to work for it (in game or real life if you are desperate lol).

You guys have probably all fought risen. Remember what happens when you kite them? They don’t follow behind you like normal mobs, they run along side you, at a very fast pace as well. It would be interesting to see the risen AI put into pets and minions when you order them to attack.

Got daily chest, monthly chest never showed up. I know because before hand and after hand, I still had 10 laurels less.

I can’t even log in anymore. Getting error 42 every time. Restarted my computer and everything. Was playing fine an hour ago.

I don’t understand why we lose the buff by going underwater, and changing to new locations. It’s not like the bond should be shredded just because we traveled somewhere else or go for a swim! Jeez. Bond should only be broken on death/down and log out.

Master’s Bond:

Riddle me this: I am “25 stack” bonded with my pet. We take a swim or we teleport to a new place. Suddenly, I am no longer bonded with the pet? Please fix this. The times I should lose “bond” is death or logging out.

The pet is the ranger’s defining mechanic. Yet, it is so uselessly designed within the game. Why remove the ability for us to revive our pets? Why is there no “stow pet” for dungeon traps and mechanics? Cough. Jade Maw. Why does the pet have stupidly long cast times/auto attack times, and are rooted while executing them? They should be able to do everything while moving, just like the ranger.

If the pet is such an integral part of being a ranger, why is there such a small amount of weapon skills that actually relate to the pet? As for traits, some of those should not even be traits. 30% increased move speed? That should be default. Natural Healing? That should be an added and scaled side effect of speccing into BM.

Don’t get me started on the AI. The new AI that makes pets try to flank opponents actually decreases my pet’s hit rate, since he now charges at the player, only to occasionally take another walk and try to go behind the player, at which point the player has already moved…

I honestly think they took a step backwards compared to GW1 pets. Sure, both versions have terrible AI, but at least GW1 pets had some personality. They took time to charm, had much more choice with how you could build skills around them, and even grew in size as they became stronger. GW2 has streamlined the whole system to oblivion.

Give a more unique progression for pets. Give compensation for the eternally terrible AI (AOE reduction for starters). The “class mechanics” of GW2 are so unbalanced it’s pretty crazy.

The thing is, what PVE are players doing now in the open world? Most, if not all are busy running instances and FOTM. Most of this open world PVE is pretty barren, especially the mid level zones.

“NCSoft already has a game like that called Aion. It too is free to play.”
Aion is nothing like GW2. It does not have WvW, awesome art, or smooth gameplay.
Nor does it have level scaling.

I definitely understand. I’m not really a fan of open world pvp either, because you can have so much griefing and trolling that result from that. However, if it was implemented in a sensible way, such as the invasion example, then it wouldn’t bother me as much. If they had systems in place that gave alerts to all players in the area – kind of like Rift’s event system, but with players instead of AI. I think it would give a nice addicting sense of danger to the PVE world, while not promoting random acts of killing/trolling/griefing.

From this, you could have new player titles such as “World guardians” who show up to defend the PVE world.

I have been debating with some friends over the idea of open world pvp in GW2. We threw around ideas such as criminal/hero system, alliances, and pvp/pve servers.

What if we added a feature to WvW where servers that are doing poorly have special scripted events that occur on the normal map, informing players about the current WvW status.

If a server has completely dominated another server’s home WvW map, players from the winning server could “cross” into the dominated server’s normal map only as invaders. These invading server players could continue to invade, and be marked as monsters for all the defending NPC/players. It would give a real sense of “event” danger, one that is not scripted or timed. The challenge for the winning server could be balancing the invasion of another server’s home map, with the on going battle in the WvW map. The server being invaded would have to rally up to respond to this threat.

Of course, there a lots of little problems with it such as populated vs unpopulated servers, but the idea sounds pretty sweet.

This is probably super hard and technical to implement, but it’s kind of cool and gives end game some more dynamic variety.

My friends and I always get these uncomfortable feelings while looking at at the cut scenes. There’s just something lacking in the presentation. The characters aren’t really facing each other, but in a weird awkward angle. The presentation is uneasy to look at because interaction is restrained to two characters only.
The two characters being animated gives this strange feeling that they are stuck in place and only able to do arm and head gestures.

When all of these factors add up, any brilliant voice acting becomes less brilliant, and any not-so-amazing voice acting becomes seen as emotionless and robotic. I realized this because I noticed how smoothly the environmental dialogues play out, compared to our personal story line cut scenes. It’s because when your out adventuring and you hear and see these conversations, you actually get to see the whole picture, of where the speakers are at and the entire 3D world.

Sometimes when I encounter the personal story cut scenes, I focus on the character speaking and imagine the same words being said but in an actual GW-like cut scene. In my mind, it instantly changes my view on some of the voice acting, and becomes much more comfortable to listen to. But when I switch back to this current way of portraying the cut scenes, I get an uneasy feeling staring at the two people trying to talk to each other, seemingly rooted to the ground.

A cool idea I thought of, if people really like this story book presentation, is to scrap the 3D models, and show beautiful illustrated paintings of each character. and make the voice over happen in the background. They can even add those cool effects in their storybook cut scenes like the ones you see during story mode dungeons or character creation cut scenes.

Alternatively, you guys(Arenanet), could try making a full 3D cut scene and compare the effects to your current model.

TL;DR, The personal story cut scenes can actually make the voice acting seem out of context because of how forced and static it is.

At least for fractals – the beginning levels are like “oh, not too bad. Learn when to send pet out and when to call pet back in, pretty cool. Don’t know what everyone is angry about. ”
Then you cross some annoying phases that instadown your pet. “:\ Whatever.”
Then you meet Jade Maw for the first time. “>.> little control over pet’s survivability.”
Then agony comes for the first time “-__- Okay this is getting kind of lame.”
20+ fractals later. “>.<, screw this – I’m gonna go troll in WvW”.

To flat out answer your question, no. You need to pay attention to your pets in dungeons and actively know when to let them attack and when to call them back/swap. Even then, some bosses just don’t work, like the Jade Maw or high level fractal bosses with agony. But I wouldn’t despair nerva, since the incoming months suggest patches that will equate to an expansion – so I’m sure that there will be quality of life changes for the ranger and pet.

I miss Enraged Lunge and Heal As One as they existed in GW1. Enraged Lunge did crazy spike damage with deep wound and Heal As One gave your pet life steal or something. It was pretty awesome having a vampiric pet

Dante, I don’t know about pve meta…but spirit spammers were everywhere haha.

Kromica.2831:

skittlebob.4850:

Kromica.2831:

Apathy.6430:

Arnath.2319:

So sadly i have a horrible feeling we will be very bored till late January, maybe even the very last week of January, and this “2 huge patches” was a lie.

Then play a different game in the mean time.

Not like you gotta play off your subscription.

Sadly there are no other mmos worth playing now or anytime soon.

Why limit yourself to mmos? There are so great stories to be discovered single player

I personally can’t justify spending $40-$60 on the 12-20 hours that most sp games are these days, better things to buy.

Yea, the new releases are crazy pricey, and I usually wait for reviews or a few weeks for the prices to go down. But you don’t have to go for those, I mean there’s plenty of amazing games that are pretty cheap now to pick up and definitely worth the time investment. Or just take a break from GW2 and wait for the Jan update.

Kromica.2831:

Apathy.6430:

Arnath.2319:

So sadly i have a horrible feeling we will be very bored till late January, maybe even the very last week of January, and this “2 huge patches” was a lie.

Then play a different game in the mean time.

Not like you gotta play off your subscription.

Sadly there are no other mmos worth playing now or anytime soon.

Why limit yourself to mmos? There are so great stories to be discovered single player

Playing since beta here too. It has glaring flaws, it has amazing charms. Although I really didn’t like ascended items, I enjoyed the kitten out of the fotm dungeons, so I decided why the heck not, those pink items will just be something to look forward to. I don’t play too much every day, but I log on and do some dailies and then run my daily fotm’s. Might chat with guildies, do some WvW, then log off. It’s a nice and casual playstyle for me, and I already luckily looted 4 ascended items.

I agree, the game is still young. Give it time. GW1 went through some gigantic changes. Remember the dervish overhaul :P. But I’m also along for the ride, because this game was founded on good ideas, and I have faith that Anet will expand on these ideas through patches and expansions.

I miss the builds in GW1 where you would incorporate your entire build around that one elite, and the elite cd variety ranged from short to long. It was fun naming your builds around that specific elite

What would be interesting for the future, would be to expand on the skills that each weapon give, ultimately allowing you to unlock more weapon skills with the same weapon, so you would have to make choices about which skills to put on the weapons section skill bar. Eventually, it would be pretty sweet to introduce elite weapon skills(ways of acquisition can be debated), and then expand outwards, to elite healing skills, and elite utility skills. —Keeping of course, the 1 max limit on elite skills, so you would really have to choose between all these elites.

I think it would give much more variety than the current elites that the professions have, and greatly diversify the possible builds to more than just traits/armor/etc…

I also agree that the cd of these elite skills can be played around with, to have a larger variety – obviously doing any tweaking as needed to maintain balance.

Rangers can be pretty strong in 1v1 or small skirmishes within the w3 setting. I’m not sure about spvp because I’ve never tried a ranger with it, but in w3, my drakehound literally chases people down and kills them while healing and tanking through any damage. I am using 30 BM with max cleric gear and jewels. My own damage is obviously abysmal, but it’s funny to see a 25 stacked Master’s Bond canine go batkitten insane and heal through almost everything. More of a niche built, but very entertaining and has good usage in WvW and to some extent in general PvE.

Though of course, in big zergs, your best bet is to keep your pet near and take manual control over when he wants to attack or stay. But in small skirmishes/1v1, my canines can give pretty nice pressure, and dish out some nice burst and CC.

I’ve had a couple hearty chuckles from troubled people who I found isolated from afar and sent my pet out to engage them while I stood in place and watched in amusement. An unfortunate mesmer was actually chased to death because of some glitch or something, my pet locked on him through all his clones for some strange reason. I was watching from an outpost and the crazy pet just did not give up the chase lol.

But as a whole, the ranger suffers a lot of problems that will hopefully be fixed in the coming months!

I agree that there are ways to work around the pet regarding traps and obstaces, and I understand that all classes which can create some sort of AI have the Jade Maw problem. I get it. My issue is with the philosophy of the ranger and pet, and how it doesn’t stack up too well in-game.

Sure, necro minions suffer the AI problem, and yes mesmers as well. (And several other classes). However, their choice of going the “way of the pets” is only one out of a few. Necromancers don’t have to rely on builds that require pets. Mesmers don’t have to rely on builds that require constant up time of their illusions/phantasms. But seeing as how Anet balances the ranger with the pet in mind, I wish there was more quality of life and ease when dealing with pets. That’s all I’m asking for. Pets are are a major mechanic of the ranger, just like death shroud and shatter for other professions. Our unique mechanic that requires an AI to be with us at all times should be more distinguished from the other AIs in this game.

That’s all I really want. For our pets to stand out more like a true intelligent companion of the ranger. I don’t even care for the stow option, that’s just one way of going about it.

Hopefully though, big changes are coming in the Jan/Feb/Mar patches. Hopefully sooner than later

This would be so funny. I already love watching thieves try to solo my drakehound with 25 stacks of master’s bond and wasting so much effort just to get them to half life, then suddenly I pop troll and let the thief watch in horror as my pet gains 1.5k/s regen and does the knock down skill which bursts for like 5k. Of course with me in the background shooting with a shortbow :P.

Rangers are really nice WvW wise in 1v1 encounters and very small skirmishes. They are not so great in zergs, although having a canine with 25 masters bond makes it an armored mech if you have a heal build. But detecting stealth would just be brutal! Then we could be of use in zergs! All the thieves that stealth into frontline to gank cannot escape as easily!

Stow? You mean put the pet on peace mode right? That actually works sorta alright with the grawl, praying that the pet does not wander too far from you as you move through the boulders.

But it is so terrible with the unknown fractal. You have very little wiggling room for mistakes during the obstacle course, and if your pet happens to be near you when he gets hit, you both go down. It’s very frustrating. I wish you could really “stow” and make your pet disappear for that area.

You want examples Kasama? Try Fractals. Try Jade Maw. Try your awesome bear “tank” as he gets 1 shot over and over because you don’t have a choice to stow your pet or let your pet pick up a shard to defend itself. A trick I found is to instantly swap pets when your current pet is being targeted by the Jade Maw, however, if the Jade Maw decides to target your pet again after your swap and during your 15 – 20 second cooldown, then you can just say bye bye to your pet.

Try the lightning obstacle course in the unknown fractal where your stupid pet walks all over the place and gets hit by the electricity causing an AoE of death to you and any unfortunate teammates trying to get through.

Try the grawl fractal where your pet decides to walk randomly into a moving boulder and gets insta downed.

IMHO, I don’t care for a stow pet option, but I do want Anet to quickly fix these issues, if they care at all about their ranger philosophy.

I’m excited at where they can take these ideas, since the game is still so kitten young. Throwing aside all the ascended arguments and skill bugs and all that headache, I like that they started with all these dynamic and meta events in the game. I look forward to how these events evolve over time through patches, new idea, etc.

I agree about the auto abilities. I hate that birds literally take 5 seconds just to start on a target because of the stupid swiftness buff.

I didn’t realize. So technically, you could get 240+ in a day if you had a main and an alt doing the dungeons with time spaced out?

Correct me if I’m wrong, but I thought that DR was account bound. So you couldn’t get the same amount of tokens with alts if you’ve already done them on another character.

An example would be Citadel of Flame explorable path 2, the ritual chamber. I know that good groups can actually dps each mob down before more more spawn, but the majority of groups I’ve been with have resorted to taking turns kiting until death and running back from the waypoint.

Do you guys think that there could be other ways of designing these encounters?

Sadly it is at the moment. Ranged pets will do a little better but still die when focused or AOE’d.

The pet’s problems begin to shine in 10+ fractals. No amount of healing, 30 BM, traits will save your pet from problems such as boss AOE, Jade Maw insta down, and random 1 hits from bosses where you can’t even anticipate when to F3 your pet back. Coupled with the ridiculously long swap cooldown if your pet has been downed, and you get a crippled ranger that can’t deal kitten. If anyone, lower the kitten cooldown to 10 seconds.

One of the worst changes they made is to how pets resurrect. In dungeons, both of your pet swaps are easily used up from crazy AoE damage. They need to reduce the damage pets take in AoE, and either reduce the cooldown on swaps, or change the mechanics of how you resurrect your pets.

Also, I feel like as a ranger, pets need to be more personalized and unique. I know you can tell them to attack or stay, but that’s not enough to separate them from other in game minions. They should have some kind skill tree or at least something unique to make them a “ranger” pet.

Our guild is growing fast with many people playing each day. Lots of new comers as well from the holidays. It’s been great!

Maybe have the pets damage similar to that one canine pet who can summon a helper but has its own attack halved.

I feel like we should be given a choice of wanting to be “less” versatile. What I mean is, if there was a mechanic that let us choose to only have one pet with no swaps, but receive some extra bonuses on that pet for not being able to swap. I want to feel more connected to my pet, and constant swapping kind of ruins it.

It would be cool if we could assign our F2 pet skills by choosing a skill out of the current pet’s arsenal. I would love to put the swiftness buff on F2 for the black raven and put that super strong F2 on auto.

Of course it would be nice to shorten up/make instant those pet skills so their not always rooted in one place while using skills.

rejuvenation is on a 20 second internal cooldown.
omnom ghost and blood sigil stack – but might be nerfed in the next patch.
ive noticed compassion training increasing natural healing

But for normal “auto attack” damage, it would still be felines and birds right?

I am annoyed with birds in that they love casting the swiftness buff every time before attacking. I wished the casting animation was wayy shorter.

Play whatever you like. Big patches coming in Jan and Feb anyways.

Crabbit, What do you mean by Cleric jewels + Zho’s? I couldn’t find any cleric jewels on the auction house.

Also, are pets suppose to proc sigils on crit? Or is this a bug?

Yea I was thinking of RaO too. How about the traits?

Hey guys, I have a few questions about pet damage and traits affecting pets. First, the traits that give 30% more critical damage to pets and the trait that gives pets 30% more speed, do these actually work?

Finally, I’ve seen videos of ranger pets critting for 4k, but I cant seem to get that amount even with 30 BM and using a bird. How do you maximize pet damage?

It’s really amazing that your pumping out all these contents like Halloween and Lost shore. But it would be so much better if you focused on fixing the massive amounts of bugs that plague every class and work on skill change/balances.

I didn’t realize how bad some of the classes were until I participated in the Karka battles. Classes who rely on condition damage were completely screwed over from the stack limit. A lot of the glaring flaws were revealed in this lost shores event..

I hope that the next giant patch is not a content update, but will be a giant patch comprised only of bug fixes and balancing. Thanks for your hard work.

I use Beastmaster build with two birds, black and white. With the bird’s swooping attack plus 30 in BM, aong with natural healing and signet of the wild…. my little birdies rain destruction down on literally all mobs.

Now if they can give the pets some sort of compensation for AI…maybe the ability to dodge…BM wil be AWESOME

Can’t be bothered to read something that might give me brain damage.
Although it’s funny to see how your so eager to defend this bug, since your the one who’s telling everyone how you don’t even use gs.

It’s clearly a bug that’s doing too much damage. But why are you even here as this doesn’t apply to you.

Also dude…commas….use them.

Cry more Wobels. Arenanet will fix this quickly as they usually do with these kinds of bugs.

I am very confused.

I have a question regarding superior sigil of leeching. If you took the trait that gives you only 5 second cool down on weap swap, does that mean you could technically keep healing every 5 seconds if you had two weapons with the sigils of leech?

Awesome!
How much +healing do you use?