Guild Wars 2

ANet seems to be incapable of making something, which does not need hours, days, weeks of grind. Grind is not fun. Grind is boring. Especially if it is just for some skills. This is a huge turnoff looking at the elite specs.

Why not “Enemies receive +10% more damage, when standing the Corrosive Poison Cloud”? Could imagine that it could be a denial of area for PvP/WvW and a nice group buff (really needed) for PvE.

Greatsword:

Overall a really weak weapon.

1. The AA needs to have a flat damage increase, and the chill duration needs to be higher.
2. is just annoying. The animation takes way too long for way too few damage. Either make it like heart seeker (increased damage, depending on the health of the enemy with tiers <50% and <25%) or give it a flat damage increase.
3. is fine for what it does. A bigger angle would be nice, but at the moment it is ok.
4. is fine, too
5. is too buggy. If they fix it, it might be better.
   In general for a slow hitting weapon I want to see large numbers. It is just absurd that dagger is superior in damage to spamming GS#2. The chills are not long enough for ‘Chilling Force’ to be really useful.

Reaper Shroud

1. After seeing the calculation the AA needs also a damage buff.
2. is a weak and unhandy gap closer. I can’t imagine how people will use it in PvP
3. is fine
4. Animation is too long
5. Hits like a truck, but god kitten it again this slow animations…

Shouts:

“Your soul is mine!” – base heal is too weak
“Rise!” – too long CD, effect is too weak (who cares about chicken minions?), no reason to put this on a bar, even as a MM
“Suffer!” – Chill needs longer duration (even something like 4-5 seconds would not be OP), and 2 conditions transferred
“Nothing can save you!” – did not test this one
“You’re all weaklings! – longer stability

In general the shouts feel just too weak. They might be effective against five enemies, but they are WAY too weak against numbers equal/lower than three.
And we need a damage modifier in the traits.

I cannot understand what is the big problem to actually give necro some useful tools?

I guess they will still tweak the numbers.
I could imagine from PvE perspective that GS will be used against trash, and D/WH against bosses/single targets.
To be really viable Nec will still need a lot more damage or some kind of useful group support (or a lot more damage). Vampiric Presence is going in the right direction, but it is still too weak to make Nec really a group wide damage boost.

The issue starts with how ANet designed the classes. Every class for itself is a one man army.
You have heal? Check
You have damage? Check
You have CC? Check
All of this in one class. If people remember back, GW1 was exactly the opposite. Beside of highly specialised farm and SC builds, you needed heroes, henchies or other people to heal you, to do the damage, to do the CC. You were not able to put everything in one bar and succeed solo’ing the world. ANet did a 180° turn in this game design and decided everyone should have everything on its bar.
What exactly is now killing other roles than pur damage (or let us call it berserker stats) in PvE?
Condition centric -> It works on its own, a lot of solo dungeon runner showed that conditions, if you are alone (!!!) can actually reach the same dps than direct damage builds. The problem in groups: You are not alone. You will compete with others about your condition stacks and in the end your dps is a lot less. Another problem is, that direct damage is directly there, condition damage needs some time to do its effect. If you have 4 other players bursting down stuff so fast, your conditions will not have the time to tick. Another HUGE problem with conditions are the objects. How often you need to kill something considered an object? Conditions suck badly at this.
Trying to boost up your “support” via stats -> Healing Power scales purely in most cases, the provided healing will not be enough to save the people who will not dodge the 1HKOs. Blinds, reflects, aegis, cc is the way to go. Is any of this depended of what stats your wear? Nope. Boon duration is a really useful stat, but comes from runes, traits, so why take another stat combination over it?
PVT, Knights, Celestial gives your a bigger error margin (you will not die directly, if you miss a dodge), but the losses on the damage side are huge. So most people will argue: “learn to dodge, and kill faster!!!” or “go zerk, or go home!” Are they right about it? Honestly yes…

And my two cents to this awful stack and skip discussion:
People stack because they want to melee, because melee is biggest damage. Another point is that buffs have a limited range, so the nearer everybody sticks together, the better. Los is just a nice method to put ranged and melee enemies on one place to burst them down. People skip, because trash does not drop anything useful and is just a pain in the kitten . Why bother with trash?

J Eberle.9312:

I wholeheartedly agree with the OP. This toxic stacking environment is ruining my immersion. I go into a dungeon and I expect to be able to play my class as it was intended. Why should I, as a RANGER be forced to stand in melee range with my LONGbow? It’s called *long*bow for a reason, it’s because it’s meant to be used at long range. I can understand that my bear pet needs to melee, but that doesn’t mean I have to. Seriously sick of the elitism that is rife in dungeon parties these days, the community has really gone downhill.

Back at release I never had trouble getting into groups but now it’s just stupid. They don’t care about me at all, and I’ve had enough. When they’re all on the ground complaining about not enough dps, I’m the last one standing and I alone am ressing them. I have been standing outside of the stack every time and playing as the game was intended and what thanks do I get? A swift kick. Now I understand that there’s a ‘meta’ now, so yes, I have adapted.

I now use a whiptail devourer for the pet because everybody dislikes bears so much. I have really gone the distance to satisfy people here while still staying true to what my class is supposed to be. I even used Search and rescue to res people when their stack dies. I have done nothing but play for the sake of other people since day 1 but nobody care, they are all incredibly selfish. Enough is enough, Arena Net has to make the changes because I’m done making changes to my game play for the sake of other people.

Are you serious?

Prysin.8542:

The main problem you lot face, is that you think this profession is meant to be everything it isn’t. A lot of you whine the DPS, compares it to the warrior. Well HELLOOOO the warrior is the DPS profession in this game. Then the others complain about us not having as good group utility as a guardian, well FACE IT, the guardian was designed to be a great teamplayer.. Then there is all the whining about thieves, well thieves are obviously designed to either screw you over or die trying. That’s actually what they do. Either they kill you, or they run away/die trying.

I think you are right about a lot of thinks, but Ranger dps can be f***ing huge (Sword – not sure about it, but beside LH one of the biggest sustain dps out in the game), and the support out of Spotter and Frost Spirit are big. Even in PvP Ranger is one of the strongest 1 vs 1 classes out there.
The main problem is behind the screen. No idea why, but this class attracts some of the worst players i’ve PUGed with (in the sense of not listening, not being able to understand simple mechanics like dodge, not being any help for the group). I really feel sorry for the actual good rangers out there.

Yaki.9563:

The real question is why do they have healing gear when they don’t want people healing and it’s so useless?

Delete all non-zerker gear imo.

Clerics and other healing power stats are quiet strong in bunker setups for PvP. But they are just awful in PvE. The biggest support a guardian has is (PvE pov):

- protection
- stability
- reflexion
- blinding
- vun-stacking
- aegis
- condition remove
- might stacking

None of it scales with HP. The only thing you can think of, is to take the +40% boon duration rune set, because you can spam a lot of useful boons.

Zorby.8236:

While yes this is true, this isn’t really the fault of players wanting to stay ranged, it’s a design flaw. If party support was actually group support and not just support to whoever happens to stand next to you this wouldn’t be an issue.

I don’t like the game design in this point either (especially the point “dmg >>> rest” in PvE). But for the moment it’s that way.
And yes, if you know all this, it’s your decision (therefore also your fault) to stay range and do less damage, party support. Like playing in GW1 a Wammo with mending. You can do it, you can decide to do it, but in the worst case you are the reason why your group fails. “Yeah, but i wanted to play a Paladin like class” Just be aware of it.

Zorby.8236:

Also saying range flat sucks because of the lower dps is disregarding other factors.

In PvE?
Personally i think longbow is quiet strong in WvW i have no real idea about sPvP/tPvP, but i think for the moment there’s this working spirit ranger build out there, where they use shortbow. So yes range has a meaning there. But nearly none in PvE (ok, in openworld events to stay range, go autoattack and make you a coffee).

1. Why staying range sucks in PvE – a mathematical approach

1.1 Gear, Dmg. Ratio, Eff. HP

To explain some stuff i need to define (if unknown) what is damage ratio (dmg rat) and effective HP (eff HP)

Damage is calculated by the following:

damage done = weapon damage * power * (skill specific coefficient / targets armor)

We see that one important point is power. But how do we get critchance and critical dmg in this?

With the following:

adjusted power = power * ((critchance*(1,5 + critdmg))+1-critchance)

So if looking at what the gear does to your damage, you can look how big the adjusted power is in comparison to having no gear (base power with no gear 916). This is what the damage ratio tells you…

damage ratio = ((power + 916) * ((critchance*(1,5 + critdmg))+1-critchance)) / 916

To make it easy: the higher the damage ratio is, the higher all of your skills gonna hit.

The effective health points is a way to try to express how armor interacts with your life pool. It’s quiet easy to calculate with

effective health points = health points * toughness

Now lets look at the ranger with a base health of 15082 HP and 1064 armor. A full berzerker armor + 2H weapon without runes/orbs and traits gives you extra to your base attributes:

1002 Power
698 Pre
61 Crit

This transfers for a ranger to:

2,96 dmg rat
29862 eff HP

We want a bit more defense and change rings, chest, head, and leg armor to knight stats. The rest stays zerker.

You get:

903 Power
698 Pre
347 Tough
45 Crit

->
2,69 dmg rat
35069 eff HP

Full knight

898 Power
1009 Pre
1081 Tough

2,14 dmg rat
41943 eff HP

You are loosing about 30% dmg just from zerker to knight, but you gain about 40% eff HP. So this was the basic explanations of how i quantify damage.

1.2 Range sucks for the obvious reason

To make a long story short: there’s a simple rule in GW2

range DPS < melee DPS

I think every melee weapon in this game has a bigger average DPS, a lot of them can cleave (good against trash mobs). So only for this reason you should go melee, because in PvE

dmg >>>>> rest (has to do with the terrible design of the dungeons, but this is a other chapter)

1.3 Range sucks for the not so obvious reasons

To use the longbow effective you need to be at max range. So lets say you have a 20+x/20+x/x/x/x build and a knight/zerk mix-gear (just did this for example, it’s to show trends). You are able to maintain permanent fury on yourself and 1 stack of might. Lets look at the adjusted power:

Attributes:

1138 Pow
898 Pre
347 Tough
65 Crit

=>

3,96 eff dmg
35096 (just for info, is irrelevant, because it won’t change in further calculations)

Lets say you wouldn’t stay at max range (because you use a melee weapon) and near a guardian with empowering might. Lets say he’s able to give you 4 another stacks of might. What does this change?

1278 Pow
898 Pre
347 Tough
65 Crit

=>

4,23 eff dmg (+ 7%)

7% more damage just because of standing near a guardian? Not bad… But lets look what would happen if you are in range of a banner of discipline and a warrior with empower allies?

1533 Pow
1048 Pre
347 Tough
80 Crit

=>

5,24 eff dmg (+ 33%)

So just because of the decision to not stack with your fellow group members you are losing in this example 33% (!!!) damage. It’s just an example but the trend will be always the same. You gonna loose a lot of potential damage, and your group is also loosing damage because they don’t get “spotter”. What would happen with a Mesmer and time warp? Another banner? Some other boon stacking professions (ele?)?

1.4 Conclusion

Reasons that speak against range combat:

- less DPS because of the way the GW2 mechanic works
- you are throwing away a lot of potential damage because you don’t get the boons, buffs from your group, because you’re 1200-1500 units away from them
- you are also throwing away potential damage potential of your group, because they can’t benefit from “spotter”, spirits.

P.S.: Sorry for bad english and/or calculation mistakes… Tired, just want to show trends.

Quarktastic.1027:

I use a longbow in dungeons. I also never use a one handed sword.

Before answering, some questions:

Do you have greatsword?
Do you use berzerker stats?
What pets do you use?

Molch.2078:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Bjq1vcnhpQ

Please listen to this guy. If you want to run a build you like, then do whatever you want. But if you care about efficiency – thats the way to go.

!!!
Especially when you go dungeons, fotm. Don’t be a “I have a bear and play LB”-burden. It’s a pain for the whole group.

Renny.6571:

Inc massive QQ from casuals who gets skins 2-3 weeks after hardcore players.

Yep, see this coming too…
Don’t get why people aren’t accepting the simple rule: “If i spend half the time in something, it’s going to take me twice the time to accomplish it.”

IC nerf will have a HUGE impact on a lot of builds. Hopefully the first leaked patch-notes are the truth ones, or they gonna also change the CDs of all illusion-related skills.
But we’ll see within the next 1-2 hours how all the metas gonna change (or not).

Durzlla.6295:

Now rangers (community) do suck in dungeons from my experience, they’ll either 1) let pet die in every kittening encounter 2) have pet sit on passive on every kittening encounter 3) try to stand up on some ledge where mobs will ignore them, this making us have to deal with mechanics as if we’re a man down, and just go “Lawlz I do bow dmgz GUYZ!!”

This!
Nothing more horrific than a ranger, standing in 1500 range with LB, thinking “pewpewpew” and doing no damage, with a bear, doing no damage. This Videos shows the Problem:

“We got a bear, alright”

Dear ANet,

you made it quiet easy for me. I just deinstalled GW2. Have fun with one another WoW-Clon, i’m quiet sure, it will work just as fine as the other dozen clones.

Greetings