Ranger Spear Description

[Vinny.7260]

Quote

Spear-wielding rangers excel at hunting their prey. They whittle their quarry down at range and then they finish them off with a surprise attack at melee range. Ranger’s spear features a new type of autoattack that some of the other spears will utilize as well. When at range, you’ll throw a spear at your target, but when you move closer to your foe, you’ll transition into using a melee chain! This bimodal model will help you always keep up pressure.

Rangers learn from the animals of Janthir to deftly wield their spear. Using Mongoose’s Frenzy, they’ll slash their spear in front of them as if they were a wild animal using their claws. Falcon’s Stoop throws a spear with the velocity of a raptor. Panther’s Prowl will kick up nearby brush, stealthing the ranger and their pet—and that’s when the fun begins.

Ranger spear features a new type of stealth attack. Unlike a thief, stealthing upgrades ranger spear’s 2 through 5 skills into new versions that share a cooldown with their base skill. Mongoose’s Frenzy flips into Wolf’s Onslaught; you swipe your spear as before and then follow up with a jab with the same force as a bite from a wolf’s gnashing fangs. Falcon’s Stoop becomes Owl’s Flight, launching an owl spirit that is wider and unblockable to fly through enemies.

Weaving in and out of melee range, rangers will use their spear to chip away at their prey before they go into stealth to finish the kill. Their unique stealth attacks will allow them to decide how they want to tactically approach any scenario.

 

Source: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/spearheading-a-new-weapon-guardian-ranger-and-necromancer/

 

Sounds like a potentially really strong weapon! Kinda exciting and spooky from a PvP perspective... Considering they already have a relatively strong presence!

 

Any concerns? Speculations?

[Oahkahmewolf.6210]

15 minutes ago, Vinny.7260 said:

Any concerns? Speculations?

Im wondering how strong the stealth is going to be, because if its that strong I feel like it would be a better alternative to bow's stealth.

[Beddo.1907]

Kinda crazy, that even if the weapon sucks, the option to have a stealth stick is pretty tempting.
A lot of the weapons power depends on the non-damage numbers.

[Lazze.9870]

I absolutely hate the idea of making every skill a "stealth attack". I can already see vanilla non-stealth skills being realtively weaker to make up for it. Smokescale is probably a must to play it, but that's nothing new in pvp/wvw. Why are they so hellbent on making all the new ranger weapons have this slow burn until you unleash, go big or, in this case, go stealth?

Dual autos is at least better than another projectile-only auto.

Edited June 6 by Lazze.9870

[frazazel.7501]

Oh, I didn't consider that we might be needing to run smokescale for stealth attacks in instanced PvE content. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

[Levetty.1279]

2 hours ago, Vinny.7260 said:

Any concerns? Speculations?

Yeah, it is another projectile based Ranged weapon making it useless for PvP when that seems to be the mode it was designed for.

 

What Ranger needed was non projectile based ranged AoE.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

31 minutes ago, Levetty.1279 said:

What Ranger needed was non projectile based ranged AoE.

Why? We have traps.  They could make the traps more useful, but it's not like we don't have unblockable ranged AoE options.

I'd also disagree heavily with this being 'useless' in PvP...it sounds utterly, insanely broken.  On paper alone.  

Which worries me for the smokescales stealth field to be honest.  As how you going to have a weapon that stealths, blast mechanics that can stack with that, and a field to do both with? 

They also didn't learn with the flip skills being atrocious idea...*cough* untamed hammer *cough*.   

Finally, unblockable owl spirits to LARP with but we still have to trait piercing on BOTH our bows.  Makes sense.  

EDIT: Watched the vid, what is with the absolutely ginormus telegraphed leap when necro gets yet another port....would be nice to be able to 'spear' our pets and teleport to them somehow, but nope we get a...bunny? leap?

Edited June 6 by Gotejjeken.1267

[Levetty.1279]

Yeah why bother with weapons when we can just use utilities. 🙄

[Dadnir.5038]

3 minutes ago, Levetty.1279 said:

Yeah why bother with weapons when we can just use utilities. 🙄

This sentence feel a bit like an advertissement for engineer's kits thought...

[Beddo.1907]

3 hours ago, frazazel.7501 said:

Oh, I didn't consider that we might be needing to run smokescale for stealth attacks in instanced PvE content. I'm not sure how I feel about that.

I doubt it's worth it in PvE. Slightly more DPS from skills for pet DPS and harder rotation doesn't sound like something that would work.

[Lazze.9870]

3 hours ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Why?

Ranged, non-projectile aoe is the one thing ranger lacks the most in terms of weapon variety and the one thing that sets ranger back the most in terms of large scale wvw, at least (like you said, the alternatives for ranged damage with the bows need traits and unblockables). Traps aren't the kind of ranged you chuck from point A to damage point B.

I wasn't expecting spear to fill that role anyway, though. Pleasantly surprised the auto is both ranged and melee so we're not stuck with another bow/axe like auto 100 % of the time. Unblockable aoe from one of the stealth attacks is also nice in that regard.

I'm not a big fan of flipover skills (I think I would have preferred the hammer to be a good blend rather than full unleash/not unleash) and in this case reliance of stealth, though. We'll see. Absolutely potential to be broken in certain scenarios, but I can also see it being released half-baked.

And yeah, ranger ports is clearly a no-go. Only super telegraphed leaps for us. With an evade if we're lucky.

Edited June 7 by Lazze.9870

[Ehecatl.9172]

I wonder if the Untamed Spear will have two different Ambushes depending on if you're in melee or range. It might be a little too complicated combined with the stealth flip skills, but it'd make sure the Ambush is always useful no matter what range you initiate it at.

[Fenris.8563]

On 6/6/2024 at 1:57 PM, Lazze.9870 said:

I absolutely hate the idea of making every skill a "stealth attack". I can already see vanilla non-stealth skills being realtively weaker to make up for it. Smokescale is probably a must to play it, but that's nothing new in pvp/wvw. Why are they so hellbent on making all the new ranger weapons have this slow burn until you unleash, go big or, in this case, go stealth?

Dual autos is at least better than another projectile-only auto.

Why would smokescale be needed for stealth?  The stealth provided by the spear ability sounds far better (although having another stealth clearly wouldn't hurt).  

If you're thinking that you can ONLY asking those skills BY using a smokescale for stealth, that is clearly incorrect.  The stealth is provided by the spears ability itself.

[Fenris.8563]

22 hours ago, Levetty.1279 said:

Yeah, it is another projectile based Ranged weapon making it useless for PvP when that seems to be the mode it was designed for.

 

What Ranger needed was non projectile based ranged AoE.

This doesn't make any sense.  

What kind of ranged attack for a Ranger would not be projectile based?  We're Rangers, not wizards.  Also, they aren't projectile based.  You can use ranged and/or melee.  It literally tells you that the auto-attack changes to a melee chain at close range.   This just adds versatility by giving a ranged option.  This does not make the spear projectile based. 

 

[BadSanta.6527]

as term of concept its intersting sad its not condi but what can we do 

in terms of animation so far 0/10 comper to necro and gurd 

[AlexndrTheGreat.8310]

44 minutes ago, Fenris.8563 said:

This doesn't make any sense.  

What kind of ranged attack for a Ranger would not be projectile based?  We're Rangers, not wizards.  Also, they aren't projectile based.  You can use ranged and/or melee.  It literally tells you that the auto-attack changes to a melee chain at close range.   This just adds versatility by giving a ranged option.  This does not make the spear projectile based. 

When the other poster said PvP they probably meant more along the lines of WvW, specifically zerging.

Ranger’s has been notoriously bad for large scale WvW fights because we don’t have non-projectile ranged dps capabilities. We don’t have a weapon that’s equivalent to like revenant hammer, elementalist staff, guardian staff, berserker longbow, something that does large AoE damage that cannot be projectile blocked or reflected (which zerg fights are notorious for). We only recently got a second charge of barrage for longbow, but that’s honestly still just a meme / damage padding build than something that’s actually comparable to the above weapons and builds 

Original comment is annoyed that spear is projectile based because Ranger is in desperate need to a non-projectile ranged weapon, it’s one of the glaring missing pieces for our class. The spear being melee like you say does not solve that problem.

[frazazel.7501]

We'll probably have to wait for Trident to get a ranged non-projectile weapon.

[Beddo.1907]

2 hours ago, Fenris.8563 said:

What kind of ranged attack for a Ranger would not be projectile based? 

Staff.

[Beddo.1907]

How about we bully Anet to allow all ranged stuff (or at least AA) on spear to be unblockable/unbreakable pierce? Doesn't seem too farfetched.

Edited June 7 by Beddo.1907

[Gotejjeken.1267]

8 hours ago, Fenris.8563 said:

Why would smokescale be needed for stealth?  The stealth provided by the spear ability sounds far better (although having another stealth clearly wouldn't hurt).  

It's more having the secondary stealth for free.  No need to use the weapons stealth when you can blast the smoke field from smokescale and get a free stealth attack.  

This is why I am also skeptical of even making stealth attacks to begin with, as they will nerf things to accommodate it.  Such as Strider's Strength, smokescale knockdown was taken away to accommodate this, as sword became a very powerful burst when coupled with merged soulbeast smokescale CC.  This of course hurt any other ranger build using the smokescale itself, as they removed the KD in both places.

Even earlier, they nuked Jaguar's damage early on, and even got rid of its special effect 'Stalk' because of how powerful the stealth was and what bursts it was doing to players.  

On 6/6/2024 at 7:47 PM, Lazze.9870 said:

Ranged, non-projectile aoe is the one thing ranger lacks the most in terms of weapon variety and the one thing that sets ranger back the most in terms of large scale wvw, at least (like you said, the alternatives for ranged damage with the bows need traits and unblockables). Traps aren't the kind of ranged you chuck from point A to damage point B.

I don't disagree that ranger lacks non-projectile AoE, but only because they literally removed all forms of it.  Throwable traps, moveable spirits, etc. could have solved this problem a long time ago--and actually did for a time, as at one point we had throwable traps that would let us stealth and did decent damage.  

We may have to wait until Ranger Scepter becomes a thing (if it ever does) to get non-projectile ranged attacks.  Again though, I'd rather they just use what we already have...

[draxynnic.3719]

10 hours ago, Fenris.8563 said:

This doesn't make any sense.  

What kind of ranged attack for a Ranger would not be projectile based?  We're Rangers, not wizards.  Also, they aren't projectile based.  You can use ranged and/or melee.  It literally tells you that the auto-attack changes to a melee chain at close range.   This just adds versatility by giving a ranged option.  This does not make the spear projectile based. 

 

Rangers aren't wizards, but some rangers absolutely are druids, shamans, and other practitioners of nature magic. The precedent has been set there.

The desire for non-projectile range is mostly driven by WvW concerns. WvW tends to have a lot of projectile hate, but closing to melee is also often problematic due to how much incoming damage you can suddenly end up taking from doing so outside of a planned and well-supported push. Ranger tends not to do well in zergfights due to lacking a good option to use during phases of the battle where the two sides are still throwing ranged attacks at each other.

Staff is already a pretty strong precedent, and something that's similar to staff but is balanced more as an offensive weapon would help out in WvW. 

[Dean Calaway.9718]

Expect it to be bad, if it's good, great, if not you were right. Win win.

[Lazze.9870]

On 6/8/2024 at 5:08 AM, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

I don't disagree that ranger lacks non-projectile AoE, but only because they literally removed all forms of it.  Throwable traps, moveable spirits, etc. could have solved this problem a long time ago--and actually did for a time, as at one point we had throwable traps that would let us stealth and did decent damage.  

We may have to wait until Ranger Scepter becomes a thing (if it ever does) to get non-projectile ranged attacks.  Again though, I'd rather they just use what we already have...

Throwable traps wouldn't solve it, and moveable spirits are irrelevant (storm spirit currently is a good damage dealer because it's a targeted click and forget skill)

A weapon with actual range and aoe abilities on it would INSTANTLY solve it. Doesn't have to be like the rev hammer, it just needs more range than Maul... Like for example the necro axe. Any non-projectile, aoe skill with some range would instantly slot into a soulbeast damage build. Frost trap and storm spirit are already fine as is in terms of functionality (frost trap needs a damage buff though).

We have plenty of melee options at this point, and good utility options as well. Being melee locked for most of our damage is the main problem (the range on hammer skills is actually ridiculous, but at least they finally buffed the radius on 5), and giving us throwable traps would be good, but not enough.

Edited June 10 by Lazze.9870

[Lazze.9870]

On 6/7/2024 at 8:06 PM, Fenris.8563 said:

Why would smokescale be needed for stealth?  The stealth provided by the spear ability sounds far better (although having another stealth clearly wouldn't hurt).  

If you're thinking that you can ONLY asking those skills BY using a smokescale for stealth, that is clearly incorrect.  The stealth is provided by the spears ability itself.

Smokescale is needed to maximise stealth which this weapon clearly benefits from.

Like, seriously? What's more likely? That I allude to maximising weapon performance, or that I think smokescale is literally needed for the weapon to function at all?

Think for a moment before you reply to someone.

Edited June 10 by Lazze.9870

[Fenris.8563]

On 6/7/2024 at 4:31 PM, Beddo.1907 said:

Staff.

I meant for Spear specifically lol We're talking about the Spear weapon being used as a projectile. 

Would make no sense for it to be used as a "ranged magic" weapon since that just doesn't make any sense to begin with on top of the fact we have the staff already.