Not A Single Topic On Patch

[BumboJumbo.1308]

Let's be real here: no one uses refined toxins anymore when demon queen relic exists.

And shared anguish is something no one chose compared to ambidexterity.

 

[Remus Darkblight.1673]

RIP my poison Soulbeast. Niche at the best of times but now dead. Relied on Refined Toxins to apply consistent poison on sword and made liberal use of Healing Spring for combo healing in 1v1's. At least I now migrated to playing a power untamed variant that isn't really affected by this patch.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

15 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Let's be real here: no one uses refined toxins anymore when demon queen relic exists.

And shared anguish is something no one chose compared to ambidexterity.

 

I used shared anguished a ton since it was nice to get stab instantly in the fight if you knew the stow pet trick and swap for consistent stab. Especially if you're not condition based Ranger and taking wilderness survival. I personally hope they bring back the stab somewhere else since Ranger really lacks the Stab generation other than Soul beast.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

36 minutes ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

I used shared anguished a ton since it was nice to get stab instantly in the fight if you knew the stow pet trick and swap for consistent stab. Especially if you're not condition based Ranger and taking wilderness survival. I personally hope they bring back the stab somewhere else since Ranger really lacks the Stab generation other than Soul beast.

Untamed has 2 sources of stab, 1 from hammer ambush and the second from enhancing impact. Both of which are on a much shorter cooldown than pet swapping.

For druid they have the 5 skill in celestial avatar which can be used every 10 seconds. They also have easy access to stealth and super speed.

And not to mention the new offhand mace skill which gives stab.

 

 

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

42 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Untamed has 2 sources of stab, 1 from hammer ambush and the second from enhancing impact. Both of which are on a much shorter cooldown than pet swapping.

For druid they have the 5 skill in celestial avatar which can be used every 10 seconds. They also have easy access to stealth and super speed.

And not to mention the new offhand mace skill which gives stab.

 

 

untamed, sure you get stab from hammer or from enhancing impact. It really is unfortunate that it really forces you to CC someone to get Stability. It not necessarily bad, it sometimes unreliable especially when people expect the CC by dodging, blocking or invulning it  vs using a utility which can be timed and used. Being forced to use specific weapons does not feel good, and limits on build diversity in the long run of things.

With druid, fine I'll give astral form stab from skill 5 but that is about it other that its elite utility. I personally find unlike majority of other classes which have some form of access to stab from core set, ranger is  the only class that lack stab generation from core spec and utilites. Getting rid of anguish really hurts it in the long run and I would of much preferred  if they moved the stability somewhere else on core.... like on a utility or on another reworked trait that isn't being used.

Other core classes Have some form of way of generating stab whether its warrior being trained to get stab when it uses a movement skill,  a thief using blinding powered, or guardian with its virtue and shouts give stability is a prime example of one.

Here's a list of all the core traits & abilities that give you stability from other classes that can be used on demand or timed.

• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/4/45/Warrior_icon_small.png Brave Stride (Strength) — Movement skills grant stability when used. 
• https://wiki.guildwars2.com/images/4/45/Warrior_icon_small.png Stalwart Strength (Defense) — Gain stability when you disable a foe. Deal increased strike damage while you have stability.
•  Stomp — Physical
•  Balanced Stance — Stance
• Banner of Tactics — Banner
•   Dolyak Signet — Signet
•  "Stand Your Ground!" — Shout
•  Hallowed Ground — Consecration
• Indomitable Courage (Virtues) — The active effect of Virtue skill 3 breaks stun and grants stability to nearby allies. Its passive effect gains a shorter interval.
•  Glaring Resolve (Invocation) — Gain stability and heal yourself when you break stuns.
• Spirit Boon (Invocation) — Invoking a legend grants boons to nearby allies based on the legend that was invoked. (Invoking Dwarf grants stability)
• Inspiring Reinforcement — Legendary Dwarf Stance
• Juggernaut (Firearms) — Gain might and stability while wielding a flamethrower. Might applied to you gains increased duration.
•  Elixir U — Elixir
• Blinding Powder — Deception
•  Consume Plasma — Stolen skill - Stolen from a mesmer
• Shared Anguish (Wilderness Survival) — After you swap pets, you and your pet gain stability    <---- We are loosing this after the next patch
• Transmute Earth — Staff, when attuned to earth
•  Armor of Earth — Cantrip
• Rock Solid (Earth) — Grant stability to nearby allies when attuning to earth. Note: This effect will not trigger when attuning to the same element.
•  Mantra of Concentration — Mantra
  •  Power Break
• Bountiful Disillusionment (Chaos) — Gain stability when you use a Shatter skill. Gain an additional boon to nearby allies based on which Shatter is used.
•  Well of Power — Well

 

Every class has a form of Stability generation, Core Ranger are going to loose the ability on generating stab and have rely on Mace which is horrible. No other class has this problem where they're going to be pigeon holed into a weapon.

Edited February 20 by Oahkahmewolf.6210

[Zyreva.1078]

4 hours ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Let's be real here: no one uses refined toxins anymore when demon queen relic exists.

That doesn't make any sense. You want as much poison uptime as possible when running demon queen and RefinedToxins helps a lot with that, so if anything that relic is an additional reason to use said trait.

[Mell.4873]

This patch seems like a good shuffle around, especially with some traits being underused due to varies reasons.

I think the funniest thing is they think this a nerf to Condition builds but don't realize most condition builds for Ranger are hybrids so buffing power in anyway also buffs condition builds.

Edited February 20 by Mell.4873

[BumboJumbo.1308]

8 hours ago, Zyreva.1078 said:

That doesn't make any sense. You want as much poison uptime as possible when running demon queen and RefinedToxins helps a lot with that, so if anything that relic is an additional reason to use said trait.

You already have tons of poison uptime on ranger and all its elite specs. Demon queen makes poison more reliable to apply. So now it frees up the refined toxins trait that nobody used anymore.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

27 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

You already have tons of poison uptime on ranger and all its elite specs. Demon queen makes poison more reliable to apply. So now it frees up the refined toxins trait that nobody used anymore.

Demon Queen has nothing to do with Refined Toxins though.  All Demon Queen does is make your poison go from 33% to 50% reduction, and you get poison on disable.  The only spec with a lot of usable disables is Druid--so Druid would benefit the most from Demon Queen.  

Refined toxins gave you constant poison application every 5 seconds (outside of sPvP) as long as you are above 75% health.  That makes it better for bursts (like with shortbow 2) as you are getting up to 2 more stacks of poison on each strike every 5 sec (2 if you are soulbeast and merged).  

I also wouldn't say there is a ton of poison uptime unless you are running shortbow and doom sigil (and/or Vaas relic).  Doom in particular helped take shared anguish instead of refined toxins so you got stability on pet swap as well as the poison application on weapon swap.  That was a pretty big lynchpin of condi druid in all competitive modes as it bypasses the 15s ICD of refined toxin in sPVP.

Now refined toxins is gone and it was replaced with pure damage trait, so direct nerf to condi Druid there.  Removing the stab from shared anguish is a double nerf, as CA #5 is pathetic and on a 20s recharge in sPvP.  Now for condi Druid you'd have to take new Empathic Bond major, which is still a net nerf because of what they did to healing spring.  As now standing in the spring for full duration and swapping pets gives you 7 condi clears as opposed to 10 just standing in the spring now. 

This is why the lifesteal on disable has to be good, otherwise I don't even know if power Druid is salvable in competitive.  I surely don't think condi Druid will be able to be played much in competitive after this, as the condi clear nerf and stab loss are just direct nerfs to an already weak spec.  

    

Edited February 21 by Gotejjeken.1267

[BumboJumbo.1308]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Demon Queen has nothing to do with Refined Toxins though.  All Demon Queen does is make your poison go from 33% to 50% reduction, and you get poison on disable.  The only spec with a lot of usable disables is Druid--so Druid would benefit the most from Demon Queen.  

Refined toxins gave you constant poison application every 5 seconds (outside of sPvP) as long as you are above 75% health.  That makes it better for bursts (like with shortbow 2) as you are getting up to 2 more stacks of poison on each strike every 5 sec (2 if you are soulbeast and merged).  

I also wouldn't say there is a ton of poison uptime unless you are running shortbow and doom sigil (and/or Vaas relic).  Doom in particular helped take shared anguish instead of refined toxins so you got stability on pet swap as well as the poison application on weapon swap.  That was a pretty big lynchpin of condi druid in all competitive modes as it bypasses the 15s ICD of refined toxin in sPVP.

Now refined toxins is gone and it was replaced with pure damage trait, so direct nerf to condi Druid there.  Removing the stab from shared anguish is a double nerf, as CA #5 is pathetic and on a 20s recharge in sPvP.  Now for condi Druid you'd have to take new Empathic Bond major, which is still a net nerf because of what they did to healing spring.  As now standing in the spring for full duration and swapping pets gives you 7 condi clears as opposed to 10 just standing in the spring now. 

This is why the lifesteal on disable has to be good, otherwise I don't even know if power Druid is salvable in competitive.  I surely don't think condi Druid will be able to be played much in competitive after this, as the condi clear nerf and stab loss are just direct nerfs to an already weak spec.  

    

Thank you for pointing out that demon queen has nothing to do with refined toxins, I totally didn't know that. 

refined toxins is something nobody uses unless it's for particular builds, this is undeniable. Demon queen frees up the spot since you already have primal cry, poison master, vulture stance + whatever else for soulbeast. And for druid you have a ton of cc and poison master + whatever else.

Either you're playing the build against some sort of an all knowing gw2 spvp player or you're not playing the druid build right if you don't think druid or soulbeast has enough poison uptime.

And to add, no one uses shared anguish unless it's for particular builds.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

14 hours ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Either you're playing the build against some sort of an all knowing gw2 spvp player or you're not playing the druid build right if you don't think druid or soulbeast has enough poison uptime.

And to add, no one uses shared anguish unless it's for particular builds.

It's not the poison uptime, it's the methods in which you get it.  Removing condi traits from WS line is sus to begin with, and now forcing alternate methods like runes and sigils is also bad.

Usually in high sPvP (and many roamers in WvW) can tell if you run Shared Anguish by watching your pet swap.  

No on uses anything unless it's for particular builds--in this case, Shared Anguish is used the most by condi / roamer Druid and thus the biggest nerf to that.  My whole point is I don't understand why they keep nerfing this Druid build every other balance stream and yet calling it 'some weird Druid build' as if they'd never seen it before.  

[BumboJumbo.1308]

5 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

It's not the poison uptime, it's the methods in which you get it.  Removing condi traits from WS line is sus to begin with, and now forcing alternate methods like runes and sigils is also bad.

Usually in high sPvP (and many roamers in WvW) can tell if you run Shared Anguish by watching your pet swap.  

No on uses anything unless it's for particular builds--in this case, Shared Anguish is used the most by condi / roamer Druid and thus the biggest nerf to that.  My whole point is I don't understand why they keep nerfing this Druid build every other balance stream and yet calling it 'some weird Druid build' as if they'd never seen it before.  

Soulbeast and druid already have tons of poison access even without refined toxins. Demon queen allows you to spec further in poison.

No one cares about roaming builds in wvw. For spvp, it might be the case that shared anguish is used.

Condi druid does not use shared anguished in either roaming in pvp/wvw

[Gotejjeken.1267]

3 hours ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

Condi druid does not use shared anguished in either roaming in pvp/wvw

I gotta ask, what kind of condi druids are you running into? 

Also, CA #5 is the only thing that gives stab on Druid and it doesn't care what you are spec'd as.  Might as well say Druid doesn't use Shared Anguish which is...very wrong.  

[BumboJumbo.1308]

1 hour ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

I gotta ask, what kind of condi druids are you running into? 

Also, CA #5 is the only thing that gives stab on Druid and it doesn't care what you are spec'd as.  Might as well say Druid doesn't use Shared Anguish which is...very wrong.  

The ones that don't run shared anguish, which is 99% of them

[Gotejjeken.1267]

4 minutes ago, BumboJumbo.1308 said:

The ones that don't run shared anguish, which is 99% of them

Ah, quick review of  your post history and seems you mainly do zerg play in WvW; all is a lot clearer now.  Carry on.

[BumboJumbo.1308]

2 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Ah, quick review of  your post history and seems you mainly do zerg play in WvW; all is a lot clearer now.  Carry on.

I roam, but ok.

[aymnad.9023]

Small comment about the notes that they just added (I love that the format makes it easy to find what is new)

Game Update Notes: March 19, 2024 - Game Update Notes - Guild Wars 2 Forums

Evasive Purity : Sounds horrible. I think it was made with the idea that being more interesting with a (small) heal would increase its pick rate. The reason it was not picked was not the effect being weak, in fact it was an amazing cleanse! The main reason it was not picked is “Nature Magic”. Nature magic does not bring much to a roamer or a dps build. What is left are support build which want to support so they usually pick something else and try survive with WS + other ways to actively dispell if needed (not always from core ranger).

Mace (PvE) damage nerf makes sense.

Force of Nature (PvE) : it needed to be nerfed but I was thinking 15%. Going down to 10% seems like a lot. I will be waiting for the people using it in raids / benchmarks to tell because so far I only used it in Open World and PvP.

 

Just based on numbers that I see on the tooltip:

Carnivore : 3k siphon on cc in PvE? Damm this sounds broken. Around 600 in Pvp sounds really good too with this small icd

Survival Instinct 10% buff : this is a surprise. Let’s find out if this is too much or not

 

Core power ranger might not be one of the 3 worst power build in PvE anymore. I want to give it a try before anything happens. (Edit : my first few attempts on the golem looked slightly better but I did not improve as much I first expected.)

Edited March 19 by aymnad.9023

[Willem Bever.5329]

Healing Spring: Reduced the duration from 10 seconds to 5 seconds and reduced the pulse interval from 2 seconds to 1 second. Reduced the number of conditions cleansed per pulse from 2 to 1 in WvW and PvP.
dont really understand this change, there are 2 skills that provide something like this on ranger in the 6th slot.
1 of which is bound to a specific spec called traited soulbeast heal and the other one is this as the 2 skills that affect allies and provide cleanses and healing.
2 of things most supports provide in wvw and are in most builds combined for a reason.
druid used to as well, now it will be replaced with scrapper, but in bigger part when wanting to change the wvw meta, there are other issues,
for example you dont need anymore dps then 1 dps player per party to kill anything, the rest can run support builds and stack the different kinds of supports together.
another problem is lack of boonstrips to and the lack of ability to take away barrier

Edited March 19 by Willem Bever.5329

[Sandzibar.5134]

Survival Instinct seems good for making a tanky traitline both more tanky and more dps'y. Dont mind losing the poison.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Oh man are they going hard on ranger cleanse options atm 😂.

CMC hunting those bunker builds like Elmer Fudd--com'ere nature magic you silly wabbiit! *bang*

[AlphaReborn.1567]

On 2/17/2024 at 3:59 AM, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

Dude, I can't wait to see how busted my Daze druid build is with hammer. But this isn't a ideal change overall, there's so many underlying issues with ranger that I pefer getting fix then just aimlessly changing things on a whim.

I'd really kitten wish that the Anet employee would litterally take a 10min-maybe an hour. Disccuss with good group of ranger mains and ask

"what do you think is needs to get buffed, nerfed, fixed and looked over" or  "these are the underlying problems of X y and Z trait/ability/utility, how can we come to a compromise between the player perspective and the balancer perspective"

Give em a list, tell them how we feel about A ability, B utility. What ranger lack in certain spec and elite spec.

I feel like Spec are suppose to have a specific purpose or have a certain goal of design. At the moment I still am baffled with the stab loss and the fact they're adding Damage to Wilderness Survival seems very... odd for a defensive specific spec.

Not only that but, now you have the ability to cleave not just 2 condi from wilderness survival but 2 if you spec into beastmaster. 4 condi per pet swap switch, and then you have cleansing sigil which clears 3?

You can cleave total of 7 condi in one go if you really wanted to.

 

I personally don't like the heal spring nerf and glyph nerf, but I beleive they're doing this because of Zerg vs Zerg senario, due to when you stack enough of these... it pretty much always cleaves all the condi in one go. Now that they nerf that, I have a feeling Zergs are just gonna bring more of that in to deal with condi pressure.

Alas I'm still new for Gvg and Zerg fight, but even playing a bit of support druid I can sorta see why they nerfed it. Just they should have add something in place of that like resolution or Resistance pulsing or something like that imo. 

Can you share what the daze build will look like? Been thinking of making one myself after seeing the patch notes.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

3 hours ago, AlphaReborn.1567 said:

Can you share what the daze build will look like? Been thinking of making one myself after seeing the patch notes.

I'll link a discord for you, been slowly making a Ranger's community Discord for people to get together with like mind idea to theory-craft and eventually train newer players in how to play ranger. My build will be posted there shortly, maybe some time in the next few days, its rather fun its decent as a roamer but it excels well in Spvp.

 

But for short, it uses druid along side with Hammer and x/warhorn. X being it can be any mainhand weapon but I pefer the longsword as it has 2 leap finishers. Pair it up with an electric wyvern or shock chak, you kinda just become a daze machine. 

Life siphon from Carnivore is considered true damage, true damage being damage that ignores toughness which the irony, its the only way to deal with high toughness fighters in some sense. CC applies roughly around 500-700 dmg depending on the amount of power you put in.  Currently sitting at 600 but it essentially add pseudo-damage to your CC skills. This is essentially amazing on weapons like MH mace, Warhorn or Hammer.

Ontop of that you can additional sigils that do that, like draining is a popular one too. It's also an remoreless opening strike build so if you find a good way to generate fury reliability, you hardly need any precision in the stating phases when you come to theory-craft the build. So your armor of options are Crusader/Valkyire/Cavalier and can toss in draogn for the extra oomph in ferocity. As long as the build has  Power and ferocity as the main stat you can essentially take hits and dish hits out.  Weakness to the build is just alot of Stab/blocks can counter it, and intense mobility, so if people try to kite you, you sorta have to rely on a range based pet. Pets also get opening strike, so essentially you can make your turtle therotically hit 10k from heavy shot. Chance of that happen thou is ether max stack of might and other modifiers or you run core ranger NM or WS /SKRM/MKMAN/, you can also bomb really hard with storm spirit this way too, probably hits beyond 20k in theory. 

Sigils I recommend is any of the interrupts, I personally like severance and Draining.
Absorb is another decent one, but stab sucks and makes it sorta kinda useless so the other alternative is nullification but you have to get into a flanking position so imagine cone of 45 degrees looking at you, as long as you hit outside of that cone around a circle, you'll essentially activate the sigil.

 

Edited March 20 by Oahkahmewolf.6210

[AlphaReborn.1567]

5 hours ago, Oahkahmewolf.6210 said:

I'll link a discord for you, been slowly making a Ranger's community Discord for people to get together with like mind idea to theory-craft and eventually train newer players in how to play ranger. My build will be posted there shortly, maybe some time in the next few days, its rather fun its decent as a roamer but it excels well in Spvp.

 

But for short, it uses druid along side with Hammer and x/warhorn. X being it can be any mainhand weapon but I pefer the longsword as it has 2 leap finishers. Pair it up with an electric wyvern or shock chak, you kinda just become a daze machine. 

Life siphon from Carnivore is considered true damage, true damage being damage that ignores toughness which the irony, its the only way to deal with high toughness fighters in some sense. CC applies roughly around 500-700 dmg depending on the amount of power you put in.  Currently sitting at 600 but it essentially add pseudo-damage to your CC skills. This is essentially amazing on weapons like MH mace, Warhorn or Hammer.

Ontop of that you can additional sigils that do that, like draining is a popular one too. It's also an remoreless opening strike build so if you find a good way to generate fury reliability, you hardly need any precision in the stating phases when you come to theory-craft the build. So your armor of options are Crusader/Valkyire/Cavalier and can toss in draogn for the extra oomph in ferocity. As long as the build has  Power and ferocity as the main stat you can essentially take hits and dish hits out.  Weakness to the build is just alot of Stab/blocks can counter it, and intense mobility, so if people try to kite you, you sorta have to rely on a range based pet. Pets also get opening strike, so essentially you can make your turtle therotically hit 10k from heavy shot. Chance of that happen thou is ether max stack of might and other modifiers or you run core ranger NM or WS /SKRM/MKMAN/, you can also bomb really hard with storm spirit this way too, probably hits beyond 20k in theory. 

Sigils I recommend is any of the interrupts, I personally like severance and Draining.
Absorb is another decent one, but stab sucks and makes it sorta kinda useless so the other alternative is nullification but you have to get into a flanking position so imagine cone of 45 degrees looking at you, as long as you hit outside of that cone around a circle, you'll essentially activate the sigil.

 

Hey thanks for this! I’d love an invite if you have one.

I made an attempt at creating a similar build myself a few hours ago. Works pretty well when people want to stay and fight, or small scale group fights. My WvW server isn’t very comp-heavy so even large scale fights end up chaotic clouds that turn into numerous small scale skirmishes, so that works well here too. Mobility when solo can be a bit of an issue, so I’m considering switching to Traveler Runes. Midnight King relic has massive synergy with the build and keeps the opening strike engine running, plus gives you permanent fury. You get about 5 CCs/Dazes per weapon swap not including immobilize, which is great. Lots of procs of sigils/relic/Carnivore. Pretty high melee damage also, with effective crit rate/damage around 75% (averaging in opening strike) and 255% respectively… Which is pretty nuts for a CC build. Good cleanses and heals from the combo fields and finishers.

Check it out here:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?POwEIiNssCmHjhFyOxx7JrdVix3D-DWhYbhoME1wcwHhWdKZKC6VIEuColJgtuNEgA2DvGKcGBA-w

Edit - obviously the WS traits are the new ones. The middle trait combined with opening strikes give you a whopping 40% strike damage increase, which can lead to some enormous crits, particularly on hammer. Carnivore will be delivering a lot of healing to keep these bonuses up too, and routinely deals 3-4K “bonus” damage per CC barrage. Just a lot of really good synergy across the build.

Edited March 20 by AlphaReborn.1567

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

46 minutes ago, AlphaReborn.1567 said:

Hey thanks for this! I’d love an invite if you have one.

Yep thats pretty much a similar build I have going, if you're looking for more movement speed, I honestly reccomend Cavalier runes, they give movement speed at the 6th rune similarly to travelers runes.

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

Disregard the post, I didn't have my morning coffee.

Edited March 20 by Oahkahmewolf.6210
Woops wrong post.