Canidae Canis.2861

I should have a meme night with this, thanks for the reminder. Have you tried a similar setup on Willbender?

Ranger Spirits are one of the worst, if not the worst, remaining Utility skill mechanics in the game. Not only do we have to micromanage their health and position on the field, but in order to maintain alacrity they have to be activated off-CD unless you're running 4 of them (or untamed with CD reduction). The off-CD spamming completely negates their intended active effects and repositions them, so now you're also fighting alac uptime with proper positioning so they don't die and remain near the party they're supposed to buff. The more mobility required in a fight the more useless they become. We can argue about effectiveness and cast times, but the bottom line for me is: It is an exceedingly frustrating and unfun mechanic. Anet, please - this really needs to be changed. Plenty of good suggestions here and in other threads, and we're essentially getting at the same thing. Turn them into a Facet-like or Spirit Weapon-like utility so that we can finally untie ourselves from constantly bleeding out tree spirits that are only useful in stationary fights.

Yeah, you'll have access to all the gear from PvE, so choosing a proper build/equipment setup is key. Mobility and stealth are King in WvW. Using trailblazer/celestial gear when you're starting out can help you survive long enough to get a feel for the game mode (even if access to those stats make some people very angry). For small group content, best advice is to stay away from the tags. Aim for objectives on the opposite side of the map as the commanders since they will draw the enemy in large numbers. You can also survey team/map chat and ask if any "Havoc" groups need help - that's the term for small groups sneaking around to take large objectives. Good luck out there!

I'll chip in and say that Norn is probably the best race for ranger. Functionally most racial skills don't matter, but there are...interesting...interactions with Become the Bear, might stacking, and soulbeast's ability to gain pet stats and traits. Largely useless in PvE, but hilarious for a bit in WvW 😄

I think PaperRoll on youtube demonstrated that the juvi siege turtle will only attack targets if the pet is facing the enemy. It's a line of sight issue with the ranged attack, so you have to try and line the enemy up with the turtles face 😛 Extremely annoying and I hope it gets fixed.

Perhaps putting alacrity in our core traitline is a signal that they don't intend to give us a spec with group quickness? I'd be OK with that I think. Who knows what the next elite spec holds for us?

Thanks for the thoughtful post, OP. I agree completely – Spirits shouldn't be the druid mechanic, they're a core utility. But the babysitting mechanic of keeping them alive essentially relegates them to the Druid spec. If ANet wants us to have hybrid support/damage specs with alacrity, Spirits need to actually be overhauled into a Spirit Weapon/Facet-like mechanic.

Hi there - I'm only referring to competition amongst the ranger specs, not between all classes. I have no issue if Soulbeast ousts Guardian, Necro, or Engi as the top DPS for a while 🙂 The problem Anet is trying to fix is that Soulbeast by far out-damages all other ranger specs. Of course it should be our best DPS spec, but in terms of contributing DPS the other three specs are buried 6 feet under (Untamed might fare better now with the weapon bonuses). Damage on core Ranger and Druid is just laughably bad. Raising base weapon damage is just one way they can help alleviate that situation. Answer to the first question: it's more complicated than that, but yes. Unless you are going full-blown heal/support, you should be able to dish out moderate to high dps. What is core Ranger's purpose? We can argue now with Spirit alacrity that Core ranger has a support role, but it's already wretched damage would be made worse by taking Nature Magic for Spirits. Soulbeast can do that, and do it better. Druid is literally only useful for heal/support, there isn't really a viable support/dps build there akin to Quickbrand, Alacrigade, etc. Same deal for Untamed. That's the gap we need to fill in our other ranger specs - the support/dps - but we need more base damage to accomplish that. Yes it will take away from our small burst window, but I think in the long run it can work out better for all of our specs. We'll just have to see.

Soulbeast set the bar too high is essentially what I'm getting at. Its ability to produce massive damage spikes in short windows is indeed fun and part of the identity - no argument there. But it just does it too well. You can't bring up the utility or core weapon skills of Ranger without inflating Soulbeast's burst damage even more. Any changes you would make to increase core damage is just multiplied by the Sic'em + OWP combo, resulting in Soulbeast still being on top. In short, they can't make the other Ranger specs more viable unless they bring down the unique abilities that allow Soulbeast burst. The burst combo will still exist, just tamped down a bit to allow better maintenance dps when not bursting.

I agree the boons should pulse from you, or it could stay on the spirits if them regain mobility and follow you around. Conversely I think we really need to get away from the duration of spirits being tied to either healing the spirit or allies, or really any healing at all. It turns the Core utility skills into something only fully utilized by the Druid elite spec. Ideally their functionality would be closer to mantras, facets, or spirit weapons. Something in that vein.

This is the beginning of a fix that has been needed on Ranger for a looooong time. Soulbeast set the bar artificially high with the Sic 'em + OWP + lb2/axe5 combos that allowed for insane burst in small windows, but low-moderate DPS outside of that window. It created the place we've been in since POF - no other ranger spec, Untamed included, can compete with Soulbeast for damage. Toning down that combo and buffing Ranger's weapon damage should help to bring the other specs up - Thanks Anet. I'll mention that I still think Untamed needs a major rework, augmenting weapon damage isn't going to fix them. In addition to continuing to balance Ranger damage via weapon skills, a rework of some of our utilities would be a fantastic next step. Our Signets are largely useless, Traps are underwhelming, and I would still love to see Spirits actually overhauled into utilities that don't require babysitting. As it stands right now Spirits feel more like Druid's unique utilities instead of Glyphs, since they are the only spec that can really keep them alive.

They really need to put Stability back on the Spirit of Nature so that we have an on-demand stability source outside of CA. If they do that and fix the white tiger's F2 aegis ability, we could function pretty well as heal/support. Mind you FB will still do the job better because they have superior coverage of aegis and stability, but with some proficiency I think Druid could keep up with those changes.

Oh wow, I had no idea! This...actually changes a lot.

Yeah, the more we chat about it I think it may be better to have it on activation. Pulse would basically be "oh crap" coverage instead of requiring active input when you know CC is incoming.

The entire purpose of Stability is to ignore CC mechanics, the boon has no other use. I assume since they left the boon in the game they do want people to have this capability. While I agree it shouldn't have perma-stability uptime, 3s every 10s or something akin to other passive traits would be better than nothing. Even with 100% boon duration it's still not complete coverage. Or, since the cooldown on the elite is longer than the utilities just add stability to the elite active. Either way, I think removing a stability source from a class with poor stability access is a big disservice.