Gotejjeken.1267

If you want the next e-spec to be pet focused, I'm going to go out on a limb and say you haven't been here long. Ranger's have been getting wrecked in terms of pet viability since at least late 2012-early 2013. Even in PvE we had dev's back in the day saying that pets could solo entire Dungeons and nerfing them there as well. That's my biggest question though, where do pets fit if they aren't going to be focused upon and we already have SB? For Druid/core they are super handicaps in competitive play if you don't take BM (i.e. are a condi-Druid). You can't even make pets short-term use things / invulnerable and/or only provide buffs--in other words just have them replace spirits--as dev's also thought THOSE were too OP and removed their ability to move. We all know it though, Ranger needs a sustain spec. Need something to help large scale, but I myself don't ever see that happening as it not only violates Anet's unwritten 'lore rules', it would open the door for thieves to also get a sustain spec. If that happens, well the two professions just keep one-upping each other for eternity...

Yeah, let's not act as if Ranger is useful in zerg play, because it isn't. Well, frontline useful--you can still hang around the fringes and take people out that way or repair stuff and field incoming stragglers. But that's not really zerg play, it's being near a zerg--being in the middle of one a Ranger is entirely useless as every weapon we have is single target outside of axe, staff, gs, and one skill on LB. We also have next to zero sharing ability; SB stances are about as good as it gets and they're outclassed by literally everything. So at most you are going to be the receiver of boons which you can't do too much with as usually SB runs glassy to actually do damage. So if you aren't careful you will be a rallybot.

Going to guess you main thief? As can counter those: Stealthing for map travel is not fair, as you are literally invisibleStealthing for build use can turn unfair very quickly as reveal options are limited and gimmicky at bestStealth travel doesn't have enough tradeoffs, and the fact you have build choice puts you above a lot of other classes already who are stuck at only one buildMy solution would be to reduce/remove the passive marking, and make active reveal way more prevalent. No one would want this as it means thieves couldn't leave spawn as every class would be able to reveal you at any time, on demand. To a point you can already do this with traps, but those aren't very effective in a fight unless you already outnumber--so my 'active reveal' would come in the form of more utility skills being able to reveal.

Camps are literally the worst with this, because if the terrain is even slightly uneven you're in for a bad time. So, every camp aside from like N and NEC on Alpine. The wall thing is also beyond stupid. Can't hit with anything except barrage up there, when should be able to hit with normal arrows from LB (or even SB really). Then you see other classes with AoE nukes just taking all the siege out--it's wonderfully deflating. I do think it is an engine bug that they either lack time to fix or can't fix; either that or it's just janky terrain (mostly in alpine) and they don't want to commit resources to reshaping / fixing it. I know for a fact pet pathing is an 'unfixable problem' as they based our pet's off PvE enemies...and yeah. The best we got there was the SB elite spec, great. What's even more aggravating is BM helps with the pathing a lot, but not all builds can fit it in, and someone over in Anet land still thinks pets are OP so they won't build that in naturally. Which is why I will always laugh at the 'trade off' thing; for any spec that isn't SB the pet is a liability with literally no tradeoff for having to manage it. But somehow, the SB needed the tradeoff of being locked to one pet BECAUSE it can bypass the pet being a liability via merging. Yeah that...that makes perfect sense, doesn't it?

For those who think WvW isn't toxic, clearly you have Team chat off... As far as general play goes, the only thing that gets me are players who clearly lack skill, travel in groups, manage to score the kill via assist, and still stand on you. It's one thing if you take someone out and are somewhat competent, even if you 2v1 them or something. But always the person that is just objectively terrible that's going to be an a-hat. Also, I loathe duels in WvW--it makes things too confusing. I see players fighting, and jump in--get yelled at that I interrupted a duel. If I see players fighting and ride by--I get yelled at for not helping my server out. The worst is, trying to determine what to do and getting ganked in the process; as it's pretty hard to type 'duel?' and wait for a response while in multi-enemy territory (because everyone duels to the south for some reason).

I've been around forever and have noticed that more ascended rings have dropped for me than in the past. I salvage them for mats, but they do drop. If you want actual selection I'd say save up skirmish tickets (for weapons/armor) and/or laurels (trinkets), fastest way I've found.

I'm not sure if any of these fully answers the question though. We have people like north camp because it's easy mode to defend, and people like north camp because of some unwritten rules in days past. The only real true purpose is the north towers, and those only matter if the enemy cares about trebbing garrison, which I don't see too often (usually they go water gate). Roamers have even more of an impact on north camp then as you don't have to take the camp, just hit the yaks--as they have to go way farther from north camp to garrison then from e/w camps. In fact e/w camps both supply two keeps to north camps one keep. Truly winning would be defending your south camps. Then you spawn camp the enemy / hinder them from roaming in the first place, get the e/w keeps upgraded far faster and not have to worry about north camp at all because no one can get out of the south. If wp's are an issue, both e/w keeps can have those if they would actually get upgraded in the first place. What's really baffling is n camp can be T3 and garri / north towers all T3 and people will still defend n camp over anything to the south. I think that, and wvw in general, has more to do with players concerned with skill and not wanting to be downed over any tactical reasoning.

The sensible thing would be to put skill 2 back but invert like it is now (so monarch leap => hornet sting) and put serpent's strike back on skill 3. That way you have a primary leap for engage / disengage and then an on demand evade in skill 3. Then still have hornet sting recharge monarch's leap if it hits , so you could potentially jump in => out => out for more distance. If that's not possible, then just make it three charges, same effect. Sword would still need a pretty major damage boost and some other utility (boon transfer, or possibly like 1 stack of stability on hornet sting) to be useful in competitive modes. The other problem is the offhands are so bad for today's game, S/D no longer is all that useful for kiting when you have GS or Staff being able to kite and be far more defensive (GS barrier / staff 4/5). Warhorn lost its place when they changed shouts to commands, axe is clunky and has a root problem, and torch...I don't think torch has been used since 2012/2013.

Whatever person or system that thought up this ET/DH link is on something for sure. Both servers are dead, but guessing ET must be slightly less dead than DH to be the host. I'm assuming this is an automated gaffe, as DH was a host server and 'very high' and ET was a link to BG so of course would also be 'very high'. Now ET will transfer to CD and DH will stop playing for 2 months...

Absolutely no. Druid is the worst of ranger specs. Being either useless or hardcarried by a broken mechanic, that requires counterbuilding with little to no way to actually outplay even trash druids without reliable way to get out of the roots, shouldn't be model for anything. I'd rather fight soulbeasts or thieves all day long (even tho both can be quite cancerous in their own ways). Have you actually played it? I can tell you a decent boon beast is far, far worse than a druid any day. You outplay 'trash' druids by having stab uptime, literally any CC skill, or outranging them, all of which are pretty easy to do. I've played one of the builds that you would hate for many hours and can tell you it's only really effective in group settings (non-zerg). Complaints about rooting are very similar to the complaints about thieves bursting from stealth, both require counterplay. Druid roots have major counterplay as unless you are +1'ing, almost all classes have ways to instantly break out of the roots or never be rooted to begin with. Roots aren't even druid specific, it's one trait on a 10 second ICD lol. SB can actually do immob better being selfish, can have sustain all day, only lacking in condi removal unless you run runes of cleansing. Anyway, Thieves on the other hand are built so that counterplay will 'kill the class' (see above responses). That's just bad design all the way around, as you either have an unkillable +1ing machine and 'have to deal with it' or you 'break the entire class beyond repair'. Outplay druid by bringing stab up time & out range it lol only a few classes have enough stab up time to keep up with druids root access, lastly u say out range it yet druid can out range most classes so..... Just so you know, stab is useless against immobilize. If you need a further explanation, immob is a CONDITION. Here, hope this helps! https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stabilityhttps://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Immobile So, you actually need another boon to render IMMOBILISE useless, it is called RESISTANCE https://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Resistance Hope that helped!Was talking about ancient seeds which is primary way to get into immob being useless if you can't get CC'd in the first place (i.e. stab uptime). But thanks for the articles.

The term ranger has nothing to do with literal combat range--it's being a keeper or maintainer of an area. Thus 'park ranger', or Walker 'Texas Ranger'. This misinformation I've seen a lot on here, unfortunately. Thematically--which is the driving force of the class choices in the game--firearms are directly opposite of what rangers would use. They represent gunpowder, etc. all the things that are counter-nature. All other classes that use them have a reason--engineers (obviously), warriors (armed men), thieves (assassins). Hammer would be fine since ranger's already have access to greatsword; better for me would be scepter / rework of spirits, since ranger's are creatures of nature and druids are pretty 'magical' already. The problem really, is the pet. If you do hammer then you say ranger can survive better, so the pet becomes a larger focus (and people will cry). If you do scepter, you can probably skirt around this by having spirits replace the pet in some manner, but then ranger's might dislike this. If you do spirits you kind of encroach on druid anyway, because spirits imply support and druid is literal support (or was in competitive modes).

That's anything though, isn't it? If you don't specifically build for conditions you can get burned to death or condi spammed to death (condi herald says hi), with little skill involved. If you don't build for stunbreaks, have fun against a build with a lot of stuns as you can die in seconds. At least immob spam HAS counterplay though; something that is lacking for thieves, clearly, by this topic existing. My original point is even though people complain about thief, I personally don't think it is 'broken' and think it could benefit from the same treatment druid got (healing reduction, evade reduction, etc.), as both ranger and thief are medium armor and can build into toughness for surviving. Thief has stealth, ranger has boons--we have boonrip to counter that--, we need more reveal to counter stealth. If it means upping thief HP to balance then so be it, though maurader thieves can get quite a bit of HP anyway. Another option is to nerf blind / smoke field, but I don't think anyone wants that.

Absolutely no. Druid is the worst of ranger specs. Being either useless or hardcarried by a broken mechanic, that requires counterbuilding with little to no way to actually outplay even trash druids without reliable way to get out of the roots, shouldn't be model for anything. I'd rather fight soulbeasts or thieves all day long (even tho both can be quite cancerous in their own ways). Have you actually played it? I can tell you a decent boon beast is far, far worse than a druid any day. You outplay 'trash' druids by having stab uptime, literally any CC skill, or outranging them, all of which are pretty easy to do. I've played one of the builds that you would hate for many hours and can tell you it's only really effective in group settings (non-zerg). Complaints about rooting are very similar to the complaints about thieves bursting from stealth, both require counterplay. Druid roots have major counterplay as unless you are +1'ing, almost all classes have ways to instantly break out of the roots or never be rooted to begin with. Roots aren't even druid specific, it's one trait on a 10 second ICD lol. SB can actually do immob better being selfish, can have sustain all day, only lacking in condi removal unless you run runes of cleansing. Anyway, Thieves on the other hand are built so that counterplay will 'kill the class' (see above responses). That's just bad design all the way around, as you either have an unkillable +1ing machine and 'have to deal with it' or you 'break the entire class beyond repair'.

Think there just needs to be some more reveal ability added to most classes and a way to reliably CC evades. The latter will be super tricky as it'd effect all classes, but the dodge / teleport spam is getting a little ridiculous from a few classes now. Since most of these discussions devolve into thief vs. ranger (as far as balance goes), have a few suggestions from that standpoint... As a suggestion, I think Druid for instance is actually in a good place, one that could be used as a model for thief. You can be tanky and you have quite a bit of immob ability, but don't have the power to really kill anything with a decent cleanse. In that way, it plays similar role to thief, where you exist to harrass and +1, and can win most 1v1's against inexperienced players, but get doubled up or have anyone with access to CC spam of their own and you are up a creek. Druid to me is more thoughtful in general though, as there is no real instant escape button--you have celestial shadow but must give up other good utilities (verdant etching) to get it. What I'm saying is, I think the thief has too many escape buttons and therefore does not encourage thoughtful play. It currently is like Soulbeast, where a lot of the times a SB can stack protection and stability and power through most things at 1500 range--if you get close they switch to GS and run. In a group you'll never catch them, and it's such a braindead unbalanced way to play. Thief is same, has both stealth, stunbreaks, cc mitagations, etc. with no real tradeoff other than the super low HP / armor if they happen to fall asleep for a bit.

Druid is the healing spec for ranger. Condi druid works really well in WvW, I'd imagine it would work in PvE too and you get crazy amounts of healing. With SLB, yeah you can take a supportive pet but you won't (and shouldn't) be healing like a Guardian.

Axe reachs 4k autos in a tanky build and Winter’s bite deals as much damage as the maul ins a AoE at 900 range with chilled and weakness. Split blade can delete glass builds if you hit with the 5 blades. It is a overtunned, it needs the might removed from the autos and the Winter’s bite an slower projectile and more visible. That single weapon alone carries tanky ranger builds. lol 4 k auto ? tanky build ? comon man that fake news Its 4k auto with 25 vuln stacks on target and 25 might and sic em active whilst merged with a dps pet... maybe on a good day. when the stars align. I dont know what their definition of tanky is - apparently it just means taking the WS traitline, but still in zerk gear with scholar runes. LUL. good grief the level of disingenuous deception at play on this forum is almost criminal. This right now in the pvp lobby. With no vulns just the might i build from using the autos and the heal. Only with autos i can maintain easy 12 stacks of might. One heal to copy boons and i'm capped already. And i said sPvP is better more balanced, this in WvW would get easy almost 4K . This build, I am pretty sure you can tweak it so you could squeezy a bit more without losing the self-sustain. Exchanging SoS for the SoW would be a possibility (no invuln in exchange for an immob)http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POgAcelZw0YdMPGKeaX6P7RkG-z5IeG9rAKZCohB Winter's bite does roughly double the damage so 5K in a tanky build at 900 range 5 foes AoE . In WvW i've seen up to 10K to 5 targets AoE + chilled + weakness. In my opinion the reason is the constant and easy might the axe gives. Remove that and give some bleeds and the weapon should be fine. An slower Winter's bite would be positive as it is big attack with multiple effects. Can we get...and actual video against live targets for these claims instead of target golems? I really want to see a MH axe ranger doing anything (especially in WvW). A 'tanky' build to me would almost have 3k toughness as well--and around 1k power or so. Now you add in what real players use--boon rip, perma protection, stealth, outranging you, and ports---yeah I need to see this '4k auto' domination in action. I can tell you as someone who plays a very tanky build in WvW (and uses the 'obnoxious' ancient seeds), axe would be one of my last choices as you lose ALL kiting ability with it. The bounce does nothing either--they already reduced this from 3 to 2 targets--because people you know, spread out.

Realistically, if you are Diamond rank you've played a LOT of WvW. Meaning had a lot of rewards / are reaching the theoretical limit for what the mode can provide you. For the rest of us, I would say no to more passive rewards. As it stands, WvW might as well be PvP but with more objectives to congregate around. No one defends anything or puts upgrades on anything (aside from the same old upgrades keeps get like EWP). Why not add more rewards for escorting yaks, defending / upgrading objectives? You know, further actually playing the mode? As it stands now you get a big fight somewhere, usually a keep. After the fight the keep is either flipped or if defense was successful everyone following the tag drains it and leaves. No one sticks around to repair or recapture surrounding camps to build it back up again because the reward for taking it is so much higher than keeping it. Even in desert borderlands the shrines are practically useless to hold, and those were added as more ways to defend. People don't fight over north camp because it feeds two towers and the central keep, the fight over it because it's the closest to home spawn. If it ever reaches T2/T3 it's because it's also the farthest from enemy spawn not because defenders are deterring taking it. I'm not asking for more passive stat advantages for defenders (as that concept is dumb), rather asking for more rewards for doing something else other than blobbing down stray players or k-training in EB.

A whole month...woah. Why do people bring up stealth on SB? I don't think I've ever seen another ranger use smokescales field for stealth, and hunter's shot is super unreliable vs anything with a brain. I would like to see more stability for non-SB so would be in favor of something else granting it instead of only dolyak stance. Yes, I know SotP exists...it just isn't very good (and is an elite). I don't think we should be nerfing dolyak though as the half baked stealth access on most specs does not cover the huge risk of being CC'd. Unfairly so as ranger does not have a teleport either.

I mean it does help to always run in groups, now doesn't it? I think I've seen a solo mag roamer twice in the past week, while see plenty of DH and CD roamers. Even if you scale it up I always see mag groups outnumber any other server except CD during sporadic points of the evening where it runs over everything. So yeah, no idea why k/d even exists for WvW, it's not a skill game mode it's a numbers one...

This whole thread is just about creating counterplay to the immobilize, not removing it or altering it. No one and I mean NO ONE complained about Entangle until recently--you can be CC'd out of it super easily and prior to the stability nerfs people would walk or teleport out of it. You might as well delete druid entirely because bads simply cannot handle this spec. Healing was too OP (despite being the goal of the spec) so it got nerfed, staff mobility was too OP got nerfed, and now ancient seeds is a problem because stability is now stackable instead of unlimited for a duration. This forum is literally what gutted druid to begin with, now we have suggestions to give it 'damage' or 'support' back. How about...immobilize IS support, you're all dying to it, aren't you?

Not just pets, anet nerfs anything moving for a ranger...cough spirits unbound cough. Which I think is the problem the expansion will face, and why we may be at the end of GW2 as a whole. Ranger has always seemingly been top 3 most played classes despite having viability issues and getting hit with nerfs most patches. The problem is there is nowhere else to go with it. Can't run core as pets aren't allowed to do damage, but are still allowed to die and be a liability. Druid, WAS a support spec at one point--but they never did integrate spirits with it, because that would be logical. Soulbeast, is a mess. It's a 'fix' to pets dying all the time, which they wouldn't do if they were faster and...well, useful outside a F2 utility. They made Soulbeast MORE of a mess by eliminating pet swap in battle because 'the spec wasn't giving anything up'. When the spec wouldn't have to exist if they would quit nerfing pets (or make them immortal at least). So what possibly could a new spec even entail? See bunny thumper thrown around everywhere--yeah chance of that happening when we get pet Aataxe's (i.e. never). There's no hope of an actual tank ranger with a pet that can stand in there and take damage. They might as well have given druid a hammer instead of a staff if they wanted that. How I think they'll handle it is the worst way--give ranger access to firearms. We'll get teleports that will be nerfed, and essentially be a deadeye with a pet, still single target, still awful. But it is easiest for them as it already exists in the game, and keeps that 'unparalleled range' crap people like to use in the 'ranger should have a gun because RANGEr' debates....

I must say, these topics always make me laugh. It's like, we get you hate druid (and ancient seeds in particular), but these 'fixes'....wow. For instance, you ever tried getting into a smokescale field in the middle of battle? I'm guessing 'no' if you think that's a reliable stealth mechanism...which also requires you to sacrifice a pet slot and one of your leaps (which are defensive manuvers btw, so once used you're up a creek). But that's not the funny part, the funny part is the fix...get rid of F2 for druid. Based on ONE F2 skill, and the literal only smoke field given by a pet. You have a deadeye avatar do you not...stealth is your game. Which is actually why I think you hate druid as we counter thief pretty well. Also this 'Beastmastery traitline brings too much for the Soulbeast in any gamemode'; yeah, the traitline that is made to synergize with the pet mechanic, which as SB is...surprise, you. Trust me, if they revoked all the nerfs to pets over the years you'd write a novel. Anyone that has been around long enough to remember when jaguars could hit huge numbers from their stealth F2 without any leashing range will know what I'm talking about. You don't want pets to be able to hit you, or druid in particular is going to become your worst nightmare as it can still petswap--so when you aren't immobilized, the pet is latched onto you. I mean, I'd love it. I'd love if they'd restore the pet stats without me having to take beastmastery, as atm my build is gimped without taking it. Since that's a straight up buff, they're never going to do it.

Go Soulbeast, glass as you're capable of (i.e. marauder gear is fine, but berserker everything else). I find LB / Axe / Axe better for open world than GS is, axe is a mob weapon so it just works better in general and find I don't get reflected all that often to suffer being only range. Traitlines you'll want WS/BM/X...I use Skirmishing for the last one due to vicious quarry giving a ton of ferocity when you have honed axes in BM selected (and WS gives super fury uptime). Can solo plenty of champs this way, especially if you use a pet with prelude lash as you'll have many ways to take a breakbar down. Shouldn't have too many problems with open world either. As for group play, just going to lay it out now...ranger is not a group profession. Ranger seriously lacks in the sustain department and can share hardly anything (SB stances are half baked); so if you do decide to do WvW or PvP you're going to need to get used to fringe supporting / roaming. Ranger is pretty excellent in havoc though, so if you WvW and run with groups of 5-8 you can provide a lot especially if you lean into immobilize. EDIT: Realized I came at the group thing with a competitive perspective--for PvE groups / raids I believe condi ranger is acutally pretty helpful with spotter and such...I don't do PvE group content so your mileage will vary.

Ideally you'd be able to access your bank from your inventory, then combine shared slots with extra bank tabs. I guess they'd lose money that way, even if you had to pay for the convenience of accessing your bank from your inventory.

You play WvW for the mats and easy access to legendary armor after a set amount of time (skirmish tickets, etc.). In fact if you farm all your legendary armor and trinkets in WvW, what do you need gold for aside from possibly a precursor or other expensive skin? Any other thing you are better off just buying gems.