Gotejjeken.1267

Actually...I think we agree for once. I had to for once visit the wiki history page, and it seems prior to this Oct patch Seed of Life used to remove 3 conditions and then you could get an extra by blasting the seed with Lunar Impact. Think the reason I never noticed is because of the full clear on entering avatar, Lunar Impact was more of a quick heal / daze and out, I rarely blasted the seed as it was so slow. Anyway, now it removes 2 conditions and no light field left behind. I mean sure it's faster so as to be useable now, but that is a direct nerf to cleanse.

Right, so seems you can't blast the light field anymore with lunar impact, as it disappears too fast. Think it shakes out anyway in competitive modes since seed of life removes 2 condis now.

They do need to revise cosmic ray, it's the last skill for Druid that's just borderline unusable at this point. Think they haven't as increasing radius would make it too similar to lunar impact and its spammable because it's in the 'auto attack' / 1 spot. Guess they could increase the radius and then rework lunar impact into a well or something since you really can't blast the light field from seed of life anymore (is there even a light field despite the tooltip now?). The downside is you'd lose the daze on lunar impact...but you could add a short daze either at the beginning of the well active, or at the beginning of using rejuvenating tides to address that. I don't think removing the target requirement from solar beam works though since before it healed allies it was a pure damage skill. That is, you still need to be able to hit enemy with it to recharge CA.

I wouldn't really trust this forum for the best advice, a lot of accounts on here complain for little to no reason. That said, you can try Druid for a full ranged / support option. You'd be tanky enough to get through boss mechanics while still providing a role in support over trying full DPS. Something like Shortbow/Staff support. I'm sure there are good builds out there for it on Metabattle / Snowcrows / whatever; I mainly run a trailblazer immob variant in sPvP and WvW, but you can definitley alter it to be more healer oriented to fit static group PvE stuff. EDIT: There's this on Snowcrow: Heal Alacrity Druid Build | Ranger Builds | Snow Crows They use Axe/Wh instead of shortbow, but that would be fine since Axe works at near melee range or up to 900, it's very flexible. EDIT2: It doesn't really specify pets on that, but think you'd be fine with Jacranda and something else (Iboga or Canine for more damage, or just Smokescale / E. Wyvern / Rock Gazelle for CC).

Is Astral Wisp the only case of where an enemy can actively prevent support from doing its job? It'd be like if you went to throw a bubble up and enemy comes in middle and puts on invuln or block and bubble doesn't deploy... Essentially, unless they add stacks to bubbles where they can be destroyed, I don't see how making Wisp unblockable would be out of line with the current game.

What constitutes higher tiers? As almost to P1 and I've never been troubled by counter-Untameds. There's literally no disengage from it, and you know what's coming, so just wait it out and counter-burst. Comparing Herald or really any Rev spec (besides Core I guess) to Untamed is laughable though.

I think you've been around long enough to know that if something isn't mentioned in a balance patch then Anet deems it currently without issue. Especially when doing things like adding more mobility to an already mobile class in Soulbeast--don't think they believe one teleport is OP when there's no disengage portion from it.

Vindi is still extremely strong no matter what wintraders have to say about it

That's great, but as a counter-example, you don't use Fervent Force in competitive. Better to run Ferocious Symbiosis to get the speed / damage bonus then to try and wait for CDs, as most ranger skills are low value / non-burst. The ones that are burst, like Maul, often have their own shortcut anyway (Hilt Bash reducing Maul CD with no investment). Also, when a spec has no changes, it's usually because Anet thinks it's in a good place. A full rework would also be very costly and not really necessary since most competent players think the class is fine, or even OP in ways that are not FF (Unnatural Traversal => Maul comes to mind as a common complaint).

Would add it to Corrupting Vines as do not want the blind trait messed with, it's too important for sPvP and smallscale. Basically, instead of Unleashed Ambush skills removing boons, it would be CC skills remove boons. To compete with scourge it could be 2 boons per CC as we have plenty of pets with multiple CC skills as well as the ones on Ranger weapons.

This logic would literally also apply to Untamed and you have myriad complaints about the complexity. If you think managing three different timers and four different animal states (two merge, two unmerge) didn't add complexity from a single merge / unmerge timer and two animal states then not sure what else to discuss. It's also why I hope this change sticks as it'll be too high ceiling and the vast majority of the playerbase will have zero idea how to use it and keep playing Sic Em' sniper.

I don't see a full rework coming. There's nothing that warrants it, and we have precedent with other specs that are really hard to play effectively like Weaver. Possibly an alteration of Hammer, but even that's a stretch as few use MH Dagger on Soulbeast for instance, and that spec has been out since 2017. They also just now revised Staff functionality and Druid has been around since 2015. The most some can hope for is a LI build for Untamed, maybe similar to the one they took away from Soulbeast by ironically making it more complex.

Can tell CmC is at the helm with this one 😂. Untamed you have two pets for nine skills (3 each pet for ranger unleash, then 3 total for pet unleash for 9). You also have a single swap timer for pet. Soulbeast you have two pets for eight skills (1 each pet unmerged, then 3 each pet merged). What makes it far more complex is you have a merge timer, and the pet swap timers are independent between merging and unmerging. This is also assuming you set no pet skills to auto--if you do Untamed becomes even less complex as you almost never want to set the F2 to auto and that's the only one you have on Soulbeast. Additionally, in terms of traits, you now have both on-swap and on-merge traits to worry about for Soulbeast, while only on-swap traits for Untamed. Like, if you use Smokescale and a Hyena with just Axe/Wh you could: Start on Hyena and engage with axe to get some might, merge to trigger Fresh Reinforcement, Prelude Lash => Axe 5, Brutal Charge (for KD), Crippling Leap (additional damage or to kite out), Merge Swap, Smoke Assault (evade or to kite back in), Takedown (for KD), Winter Bite, Unmerge, Smoke Cloud, WH Blast for Stealth..... I personally love it, and hope it sticks only due to the sheer amount of 'piano playing' you need now to be a high level Soulbeast. Above is just a basic sequence too...you have way more options if you also utilize the other weapon 🙃.

Don't think you actually want your merge skill to trigger like pet swap, because it's more beneficial to get something like Zephyr when you are merged and swap or unmerged and swap, and use merge just to get stat bonuses / rez pet / get certain merge traits working like Fresh Reinforcement.

Untamed is a high skill ceiling spec, yes.

Sure, I suggest Dragon Hunter.

Oh, I did read it and did find some humor at the extravagance of the suggestion. Who knows, maybe buffing the damage output on the smoke field or the multiple non-attack skills will totally fix not having an auto-attack.

I agree. If people are having trouble using pets with anything but core ranger, it is a L2P issue--have no issues roaming with them in WvW, and up to top of Gold 3 Solo Q in sPvP with Untamed and having zero issues. I mention core as its the hardest to keep pets alive on as your only real means is pet swap, whereas even Druid you can stealth pretty readily with CS. Anyway, pets literally have teleports right now if using Untamed and if not, you can use pet swap or unmerge to get them to your position--if struggling, these are all L2P issues. Saying ranger as a class is 'not good' is objectively false though. Ranger has builds with some of the highest PvE benchmarks, has a spec literally tailored to sPvP, and can do 90% of WvW without any issues. The only real lacking is smashing 50v50v50 into eachother, takes a bit of thought to be useful there as Ranger is definitely not a full on zerg class.

...They did? I mean if you call nerfing Druidic Clarity from 13 to 3 among other controversial changes to things like the elite then sure, they buffed it. What they really did was massively, massively buff Soulbeast with the pet swap, but that doesn't fit the narrative here. You can play Druid just fine with pets anyway and would be a huge disservice if you do your template bug because you are giving up a ton of CC opportunities. They also as I mentioned easily stealth with Celestial Shadow and blasting smoke field from Smokescale, so you will have no problems roaming. What you will have problems with is getting rid of them entirely, especially in WvW. Ranger is not a zerg class, and should not be part of any zerg comp. It is a havoc roamer (10 people or less), and as such you need the pet to create opportunities for you (even as Soulbeast). I'm sure as you play more WvW you'll find this out--and if you ever step into sPvP you will definitely find this out.

Yes, this needs fixed immediately.

If you don't want a pet then run Soulbeast. You can even swap pets while merged now and get all the benefits. Pet will stealth with you on most applications, such as smoke field blast, exiting celestial avatar when traited with celestial shadow, etc. The actual bug in anets eyes would be the template thing, I'm not sure if posting that here is a great idea because then anet may fix it and you won't have your workaround....just my thoughts.

Ah ok. Previous season carry over makes sense because I ended at high silver due to multi-classing for Ascension.

Interesting bug I never thought of with the template thing. I'd suggest either playing as soulbeast or learning to live with your pet in WvW though if you want to stay alive very long.

Just put the pet on passive. Rest is a nerf, removing autos is removing pressure and creating tons of needless downtime as the pet either runs or teles back to you after every command. Which is objectively awful in certain scenarios like smokescale field, in a lot of circumstances you need it where it is to cause the KD so you can actually utilize the field. Additionally, the only reason you'd want Iboga, Jac, and Turtle at range is because of this change specifically. Otherwise Iboga and Jacranda have melee autos and Turtle you want by you nearly all the time because of the bubble. Ranged pets, by and large are utterly useless.

Just as a note, gotta quote me if you want me to see it (forum will notify on quote or react). Anyway, just curious as to what problems you feel ranger has in competitive? Surely if it's the pet itself most of that can be solved with making it have a breakbar, being unable to die, or just reducing the death timer from 60s to the normal swap CD timer of 20s or so? If it's 'ranger as a whole', how do you explain the current flexibility of soulbeast being able to swap in or out of merge as mediocre or less than what other classes get? There are others, but that is the one I think you'll find most often now as counter argument unless anet goes and reverts it again (all depends on sPvP whether any of us like it or not). Maybe I'm just too long in the game and have gotten too used to how ranger functions, but since they've added untamed and soulbeast I find pets far less irritating to deal with than prior. Sure they still don't listen and have pathing issues and can get stuck in AoE forcing a swap, but every class has to have some sort of downside I guess.