Gotejjeken.1267

Really have to start putting the intended game mode in these topic titles. As Druid may be performing in PvE, but is way underperforming in competitive.

I love how Level 9 bot's on Melee is the game that will forever be brought up when fighting hard AI 😂

Sometimes different wepaon skins give different sounds--I've noticed that on Warhorn and Longbow, and of course Shortbow if you want the most annoying sound ever to grace an MMO in Dreamer. Not sure if Staff has one that changes Solar Beam. I never use Solar Beam, but also don't really support with my Druid. I can imagine it getting annoying though if you are constantly using it to try to heal someone.

I quoted both these in parts as I agree with them but put together. That is, from my perspective Untamed definitely relies heavily on superspeed for mobility and also needs to be very glassy--which is hard because they designed it as zerg/bruiser, but was done so terribly and to put it bluntly, yeah kinda sucks all around. Can it be a roamer? Probably. Still working that one out myself, but have tabled it to after patching up my immob Druid now that it has a thing for Anne Rice, but I digress. Untamed is one place where I see Staff working very well. it would be condi and sort of replicate old immob Druid complete with Shortbow / Staff, but may lean more cele than Trailblazer/Dire that my Druid has. The downsides to this are the shortbow unleash which is kitten, and lacking the pure kiting sustain that celestial shadow / CA form in general gives. But upsides are full pet control, the pet boon rip and condis, and the inherient sustain Untamed has. At current, I still run my prior to patch Untamed which is just LB/GS and uses Signet of Hunt / every super speed and quickness trait I can find. Is super glassy and doesn't work nearly as well as my Soulbeast which is identical--as the Soulbeast can hit harder, crit cap, and hide the pet--but it's as close to viable Untamed roamer as I can see. Think general build lines for this kind of Untamed are Marks/BM/Untamed--I don't use WS or NM here because Untamed has high HP already and the elite is pure defense.

Basically, sums up your entire 'argument' here. I also forgot about the win-trader paranoia--that's probably best left for the sPvP forum though 😂. But please, for everyone's sake stop capping--I'm not actually even sure why you are trolling at this point. Playing Sw/Axe + Staff Druid on your Twitch and coming in here acting like melee ranger isn't viable. Then later Axe/Torch + Staff condi (and for some reason dueling a slb on a node with Glyph of Stars instead of supporting)--I dunno man, that play seems mid-gold at best; something about throwing stones in glass houses with all your 'veteran Ranger main' talk. But regardless, as veterans, we have the responsibility to be honest--Rifle or P/P ranger would be a very wrong direction for the class. To sum it up: There's reasons Ranger has more melee (or near melee) weapons than straight up max-distance 1200-1500 ranged ones...lol.

From the lack of counter-examples here, I think you mean literally correct instead of lamenly. Anyway, you like the sPvP forum--apparently you missed earlier in the year when Boyce was running Hammer/GS all melee Untamed in sPvP? And outside of that ran LB/GS teleburst untamed which---had melee burst with GS? That's all possible because none of the traits outside the listed ones need range to function--because most of them revolve around self-boons to be tankier in melee. Even the literal ranged ones like SB and Axe half function in near melee via poison volley and split blade. In fact, with all the projectile denial atm, all melee is actually a very viable option, so you don't get reflected to death. Literally you know this from the pages upon pages of cata / ele salt going on right now. Leaved the ranged fighting to thieves. They have way, way more disengage to pull it off (i.e. stealth access) and literal entire class mechanics around ranged like DE's marked. Which actually come to think of it, all of Ranger's class mechanics favor melee range as well (Druid CA form for healing / boon share and 3/5 of the CA form skills being melee range, Soulbeast merge skills putting you in melee like smoke assault, and literally all of Untamed being designed as bruiser). Hell, CmC's favorite pet in Drake is also melee with Tail Swipe combos...

Rifle mech did late last year / earlier this year--but that's not exactly a good thing.

Marksmanship - 2 traits out of 12 (Farsighted and Lead the Wind) Skirmishing - 1 trait out of 12 (Light on Your Feet) Wilderness Survival - 0 out of 12 Nature Magic - Either 0 out of 12 or 1 if you count Warhorn as 'ranged' (Windborne Notes) Beastmastery - 1 out of 12 (Honed Axes) Druid - 0 out of 12 (used to be 1 when we had Primal Echoes because of Staff CDs) Soulbeast - 0 out of 12 (considering the main spec weapon is a dagger) Untamed - 0 out of 12 (considering the main spec weapon is a hammer) We'll count Warhorn as ranged and say 5 traits out of...96. Which is ~5.2%. Even with the weapons we have more melee than ranged--Axe, LB, SB, and Staff are ranged while GS, Hammer, Dagger (both MH and OH), and Sword are melee. Warhorn counts as both but is most useful in or near melee range, same with OH axe and Torch. When we get maces in a month or two it will tip the scales fully in melee favor. This is why 'Ranger = Ranged' makes zero sense. Also why I pointed OP to the thief forum as P/P thief and DE in general are the exact style they seem to be after.

If you do this, no one would ever repair anything. As why would you repair a structure you just destroyed, and why would you repair a structure that was just destroyed when you can waltz right in to the lord? The balance here is defending team loses a structure that took hours to upgrade, and attacking team gains a structure that's easy to lose if not guarded. With the cata/ram spam walls and gates really play no role here--which is a fixable problem if they'd tone down siege power. Just having multiple walls / gates missing is not, because as mentioned there is no incentive to ever fix them. tldr; this change = all structures become camps. Just walless nodes to fight over--almost like a very watered down massive scale PvP.

Why not just add an extra pip for the server with the most players on at any given time? Feel like ties would be impossible then as there's no way to stop a random person from entering WvW to do whatever. A guild or whatever would have to go out of their way to flood with bot accounts to keep activity level manipulated--and I think anet should have the tools for banning that.

Think you may be lost..Thief forum is here: Thief - Guild Wars 2 Forums

You're fighting a losing battle here: Ranger - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) None of that suggests 'rifle' or 'gun'. It's not just 'ranger doesn't mean ranged'--it's an entire lore thing, but at this point I'm questioning reading comprehension. Especially this: You still have a pet with Soulbeast whether merged or not, so unsure how that contradicts either the forum description or the wiki.

It's in the forum description tho... Ranger: Explorers and allies of nature accompanied by their loyal pets. What part of smashing things with a mace or blowing it away with guns screams 'ally of nature' to you? Also, isn't randomly arguing for a weapon you 'don't even want' a bit more deranged than just admitting the 'anti-rifle' people are right?

Maybe--for me, rifle would make more sense than pistol if we are going that route. Would have to be some kind of celestial or nature powered variant--'gun staff' comes to mind if we are going after long range condition weapon. Still, we have shortbow to fill that niche but with reduced range to what I think we're talking about here. I'd rather they move shortbow back to 1200 range and give us a shield to make some power option with our offhands--as right now the only one is OH axe as dagger/torch are condi and warhorn can really go either way as its just pure control. As for maces, no idea--the only one with offhand mace is warrior and in general even the wiki still says it is used by 'soldier' classes (which to this point it is, bar engineer--but that one can at least be spun to work). Off-hand Mace will have to be control (blind, stun, daze, aegis) to work at all. It would then compete with warhorn as the melee control option. Main hand...just makes no sense. Mostly because it actively flies in the face of ranger being mobile worse than hammer does. Guess they can give it a leap as they love to default to...

Firstly, Longbow has one AoE skill lol. Secondly, hard no to worse rifle warrior--because in that giant paragraph that's exactly what you laid out. EDIT: I had to dive in that wall of text to find it, but it was here: Also, I don't know what 'sole CC options are' but you might want to look into lb #4, gs #4/5, sb #5, warhorn #5....literally all hard-CC options are on core ranger weapons and soon core can use hammer for the rest of them. Ranger ideally should get shield, and as a second option scepter. Both for lore and gameplay purposes--both rifle and pistol are horribly spammy, which we really shouldn't be promoting.

Thematically it does, same way as Engineer--both use technology to fight. This is seen in-game with both Asura and Charr; they use ranged technology in different ways. I bring it up as while you can place any race with any class, the story ultimately paints Asura as Engineers and Charr as warriors. Ranger however has little to do with firearms unless you are a park ranger or Walker Texas ranger--neither which exist in GW2. Now, as it relates to mace--I'm unsure what's worse, Conan the Barbarian mace 'Ranger' or just breaking all immersion and giving rangers guns. As all are among the last weapons I'd expect to see on a Ranger.

Yeah, that's the entire problem. We asked for invuln totems that pulse boons for a set period of time, not random pseudo-wells that have 'slam' and 'shake' effects that are way more confusing than they are helpful. Also, now that they don't pulse alac, everyone is going to want you to run Druid if you are using spirits for the alac / heals. To the OPs point, I see no path where quickness untamed also uses spirits to support when you can just get quickness elsewhere and have an alac Druid with you.

I would ask this be brought to competitive too, but it seems more efficient if alac generation was just to allies near CA form. Similar to: Orders from Above - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Just pulse 1-2 sec of alac to nearby ally every second you are in CA form. That way you aren't wasting heals and/or having to have the dexterity of a South Korean Starcraft Team to upkeep it.

Anet removed it as face-tanking with perma-boons is the new direction. Soon dodging won't be necessary, just keeping up your boons. Well, if you aren't a Ranger that is. For some reason, anet keeps balancing Druid and Untamed for MLG levels of play without much actual benefit.

For extra fun, Invigorating Bond is also bugged on some pets outside of beast mode. I couldn't get it to work for Fern Hound or Turtle, so I thought it was something to do with those having an effect on F2, but it seems to work with Tiger despite that giving Aegis. You aren't wrong though, the term 'beast' has been bugged since inception. They also made it worse when they reclassified our shout skills as 'command' skills with no upside or synergy in the least. For four years now.

Just for a point of reference here, OP mentions dual longbow which is a decidedly meme build (often called the 'arrow cart' because it is primarily used in the safety of structures).

You may not be concerned as a casual PvP player, but anet is. For example, Teleburst Untamed was directly nerfed due to edge case uses in plat and tournaments, because quite frankly the average player was never pulling that off consistently.

I'm mostly talking about competitive here but we have to keep in mind that Blood moon gives double bleeds in PvE. It may also be benching 42k because of how Jacranda root is currently working. Also, Eclipse has way higher dmg/durations in PvE than it does competitive. Which raises the other question of if they probably just balanced DPS druid around PvE and left competitive out to dry, since they seem hell bent on pushing support Druid there. For now as long as Jacranda root works the way it does I can work around it. If they 'fix' that then condi druid will be a pretty lost cause in high level competitive play (I used to play immob Druid in plat and do a lot, lot of WvW roaming). At that point it is proabably wise to draw the line on how much more support this game will get from me.

So, you are saying it is bugged then, and still uses some Ancient Seeds code when it comes to Jacranda / Entangle pulsing extra bleeds. Also, what hybrid weapons? Axe is hybrid, but no CC on that without taking OH axe or WH--both kinda power oriented. Guessing you mean Shortbow, but Quick Draw confuses me over LoYF. Regardless, how are you stacking bleeds using Blood Moon without the pulse? I can get 10 bleeds off sharpening stone + condi clear, but have to burn CA form and waste Lunar Impact for 3 bleeds? You really think that is 'pretty good'?

Which...still doesn't answer if it is bugged. When you say 'pulses root' do you mean the actual root object that is created by Jacranda / Entangle? Or do you mean 'root' as in immob? Because for example, this pulses immob and you only get one on application: Muddy Terrain - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) But Jacranda page 'root' links to the immob page AND a separate 'root object' page: Jacaranda's Embrace - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Immobile - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Jacaranda's Embrace (object) - Guild Wars 2 Wiki (GW2W) Which makes me think it either should work with ALL pulsing immobs and is bugged or is ONLY working with 'root' object immobs and is bugged, likely because it still has some Ancient Seeds code in there somewhere (which also used to create a physical root object). As-is, the pulse on physical root application from Jacranda / Entangle is the only thing keeping it somewhat useable in competitive. If its bleed only on application then it definitely needs to be bumped up by a LOT, considering outside of the pulsing bleeds it is a vastly inferior sharpening stone.