Guild Wars 2

“We can’t fix pets and we won’t increase your dps to compensate..”

“We refuse to remove pets as a large part of your dps.”

Those lead to no improvements, yet you complain that rangers continue to push the pet issue?

Sanduskel.1850:

“We can’t fix pets and we won’t increase your dps to compensate..”

“We refuse to remove pets as a large part of your dps.”

Those lead to no improvements, yet you complain that rangers continue to push the pet issue?

The reason for what seems baffling to a player is that as a developer, you generally don’t fix symptoms. So right now, they cannot fix pet-pathing. They don’t have anyone who’s far enough into the engine to re-code that entire part.

However, as a host of issues (Because please, do you really think that this is about ranger pets? Really? They’re part of it, but this affects everything, Mesmers, Ele, Necro, Ranger, Guardian, Engineer, all of PvE ,everything is struggling due to the pathing issues.) are dependent on the matter, you still want to rewrite it.

And hence you push the issue back. “Will be fixed with pathing changes”.

“They don’t have anyone who’s far enough into the engine to re-code that entire part.”

This part worries me because it kind of trivialises the CDI’s to some extent. What good is asking to improve the game (which could involve the core structure) if you can’t physically improve (core) parts of the game.

nethykins.7986:

This part worries me because it kind of trivialises the CDI’s to some extent. What good is asking to improve the game (which could involve the core structure) if you can’t physically improve (core) parts of the game.

Yeah, same.
I suspect they bought the engine. It’s a common problem in game development, because most studios don’t make their own engine. If you bought it or the people who coded it left, the tools are awesome but once you got something the tools cannot do, you got some big problems to solve.

If you can’t fix the core issue with the pet, then you work around it. It isn’t acceptable to have kept Ranger’s waiting 1.5 years just like it won’t be acceptable to keep them waiting for another 6 months.

I’m certainly not advocating removing the pet, but there are things that could have been done long ago to get the pets into working order.

Blanket 75% reduction in damage from AE in WvW only for example. That would at least allow pets to work in a zerg and allow the Ranger to make use of their utility.

Pressing F2 could spawn a spirit animal and the effect goes off around that animal instead of waiting in queue on the active pet. This would have resolved the functionality issue.

These are simple little QoL tweaks that could have been made long ago to at least get the class up to where it was capable of being. The class would still be awful and borderline useless in WvW, but at least the core mechanics of the class would be functional.

But they haven’t. They’ve done nothing. People in this thread need to realize that Rangers haven’t been waiting since the CDI thread for change. They’ve been waiting since release 1.5 years ago. And the worst part? Fixing the pet isn’t going to elevate Rangers out of 8th place in WvW.

Atherakhia.4086:

If you can’t fix the core issue with the pet, then you work around it. It isn’t acceptable to have kept Ranger’s waiting 1.5 years just like it won’t be acceptable to keep them waiting for another 6 months.

And you’re arguing as if the pet flat out doesn’t work.
I know it’s a really popular way to talk about any issue your class has (and I mean every class with this), but it’s also making people look extremely childish and frankly makes the entire feedback unusable. The pet works. Period. It works.

It doesn’t work as well as it could, yes. Most importantly, it’s mechanical issues coupled with a lack of fine-tune control means it sometimes cannot even apply it’s primary resource, damage.

But it’s not as if the pet just doesn’t work. So really, the issue simply isn’t critical.

(edit)
The AE thing is a good example: Think about just how many abilities don’t work in zerg fights due to the format. And now why is that pet of rangers – one of many pets, mind you – oh so special? Why should it get changed and the other abilities should not?
But, if you change all – and that’s really a whole lot – then you might as well rethink area damage and group damage models as a whole. Aaaand that’s probably what is on the to-do list.

Carighan.6758:

Atherakhia.4086:

If you can’t fix the core issue with the pet, then you work around it. It isn’t acceptable to have kept Ranger’s waiting 1.5 years just like it won’t be acceptable to keep them waiting for another 6 months.

And you’re arguing as if the pet flat out doesn’t work.

Sadly, pets do not work well enough. What irks me the most is the refusal to give more control over the pet or even simple things like keybind for active/passive and stowing. There is no logical arguement you or any Dev can give as to why we don’t have keybinds for that. We have controls we can use but only by mouse.. WTF? That’s just… we-todd-ed in the worst way. And the reason that came out of the SoTG was that too much control would scare new players away from the class? REALLY!? THAT IS YOUR ANSWER!? Have you played a Elementalist or Engi? I have! They have tons of Fs!

Oh well… I’m a firm believer than until some persons leave or are fired from Anet the Ranger will stay a handicapped class.

Carighan.6758:

Atherakhia.4086:

If you can’t fix the core issue with the pet, then you work around it. It isn’t acceptable to have kept Ranger’s waiting 1.5 years just like it won’t be acceptable to keep them waiting for another 6 months.

And you’re arguing as if the pet flat out doesn’t work.
I know it’s a really popular way to talk about any issue your class has (and I mean every class with this), but it’s also making people look extremely childish and frankly makes the entire feedback unusable. The pet works. Period. It works.

It doesn’t work as well as it could, yes. Most importantly, it’s mechanical issues coupled with a lack of fine-tune control means it sometimes cannot even apply it’s primary resource, damage.

But it’s not as if the pet just doesn’t work. So really, the issue simply isn’t critical.

(edit)
The AE thing is a good example: Think about just how many abilities don’t work in zerg fights due to the format. And now why is that pet of rangers – one of many pets, mind you – oh so special? Why should it get changed and the other abilities should not?
But, if you change all – and that’s really a whole lot – then you might as well rethink area damage and group damage models as a whole. Aaaand that’s probably what is on the to-do list.

Lets answer your last part first.

The thing that sets the Ranger apart from the other minions you mentioned is that the Ranger’s damage is balanced around the assumption the pet is alive and active 100% of the time. The 30% figure is often thrown around for this.. the Ranger does 70% of the damage a Warrior does because the pet does the remaining 30% (Which isn’t accurate to begin with as the Warrior is capable of much higher damage).

No other class is like this. Their pets aren’t permanent and are treated as DPS increases and they aren’t handicapped for their use or not (with the Mesmer being an exception).

Now that all said, you’re absolutely right. All minions should have the AE damage reduction because none of them are useful in WvW (again, mesmers may need to be the exception).

Now as far as your other points, please keep in mind that this is the defining class mechanic for the Ranger. While it’s cute to say it doesn’t work well, there’s no excuse for ANY skill to remain unfunctional for 2 years. ESPECIALLY when it’s a mechanic your entire class is designed around and you’re actually handicapped by it not being there.

I’d wager if any other class hit their F# key and it only went off 30% of the time, they’d be here just as loudly as the Rangers are. I’m not sure any other class would consider that ‘working’ by your measure. Even if it worked 70% of the time… I think you’d be alone in calling that ‘working’.

Atherakhia.4086:

The thing that sets the Ranger apart from the other minions you mentioned is that the Ranger’s damage is balanced around the assumption the pet is alive and active 100% of the time. The 30% figure is often thrown around for this.. the Ranger does 70% of the damage a Warrior does because the pet does the remaining 30% (Which isn’t accurate to begin with as the Warrior is capable of much higher damage).

buzzer

Mesmer.
Definitely damage-balanced around the pets. The pets showing the exact same constant pathing/contact issues as the ranger pet. They’re often ignored because on a whole we’re not badly off – in sPvP or Roaming, as inconsequential as that is – but the issue is the very same.

True, the other classes, Ele, Necro, Guardian and so on, they can opt to not use their pets, but Mesmers and Rangers don’t have the luxury. But from 1,5 years a Mesmer with tons of WvW and my GF with her Ranger, no, pets actually work alright-ish.

Yes, their pathing is so broken that it causes issues down the line, but not to a degree where the class is unusable as a result.

Same with the F1 key btw, I’d be happy if it went of 70% of the time in WvW. 0% is a much better number as soon as even one grenadier Engineer is in the enemy team. :P

But again, still, far from broken.

I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be changed, just that even fully affected by the issue I very much understand why it’s not high priority.

Carighan.6758:

Atherakhia.4086:

The thing that sets the Ranger apart from the other minions you mentioned is that the Ranger’s damage is balanced around the assumption the pet is alive and active 100% of the time. The 30% figure is often thrown around for this.. the Ranger does 70% of the damage a Warrior does because the pet does the remaining 30% (Which isn’t accurate to begin with as the Warrior is capable of much higher damage).

buzzer

Mesmer.
Definitely damage-balanced around the pets. The pets showing the exact same constant pathing/contact issues as the ranger pet. They’re often ignored because on a whole we’re not badly off – in sPvP or Roaming, as inconsequential as that is – but the issue is the very same.

True, the other classes, Ele, Necro, Guardian and so on, they can opt to not use their pets, but Mesmers and Rangers don’t have the luxury. But from 1,5 years a Mesmer with tons of WvW and my GF with her Ranger, no, pets actually work alright-ish.

Yes, their pathing is so broken that it causes issues down the line, but not to a degree where the class is unusable as a result.

Same with the F1 key btw, I’d be happy if it went of 70% of the time in WvW. 0% is a much better number as soon as even one grenadier Engineer is in the enemy team. :P

But again, still, far from broken.

I’m not arguing that it shouldn’t be changed, just that even fully affected by the issue I very much understand why it’s not high priority.

Shame you stopped reading where you did as 2 sentences later I clearly said the Mesmer is the exception to this.

However, your mesmer issue is closer to that 70% working mark. The Ranger is closer to that 30% working mark. And like I said, while these may have been lower priority to begin with, EVERYTHING should have been high enough priority to have fixed within the first 6 months of the game. Especially when overall class balance is concerned.

And this is why ANet is getting all the hostility they rightfully deserve imo. They’ve squandered their time and resources for 1.5 years now. If you quit the game a year ago and came back today you’d have almost nothing new to show for it because no LS content is permanent. What do you have; a new, poorly designed fractal, 2 poorly designed world bosses, WXP that only throws balance even more out of whack, and a PvP map that is universally despised by everyone who plays it? And on top of that class balance that is (arguably) worse now than it has ever been and the same stale meta that you quit the game for in the first place.

Carighan.6758:

And you’re arguing as if the pet flat out doesn’t work. […]The pet works. Period. It works.

In most PvE situations (including attacking NPCs in WvW), the pet works well enough. In normal WvW and boss encounters that spam AoE attacks, the pet is so worthless that I think it’s fair to say it doesn’t work.

Carighan.6758:

And now why is that pet of rangers – one of many pets, mind you – oh so special? Why should it get changed and the other abilities should not?

Because as many have explained, the pets and illusions that other classes throw out are meant to die, don’t necessarily make up a large part of the class’s damage, and/or are optional. Mesmers even have “destroy all my pets on purpose to hurt my enemy” buttons. As others have explained, the 30% damage penalty assumes 100% pet uptime, something the mechanics don’t provide.

The single easiest fix I can think of for pets that would help is to remove the swap cooldown penalty for pet death and allow the ranger to always swap pets at 20 seconds and have the pet that’s brought in always be fully healed. That would greatly reduce the penalty for pet death. Yes, it would mean that Ranger could more recklessly or carelessly let their pets die. Why is that such a bad thing? What other class needs worry as much about keeping part of their class from dying to not lose 30% of its damage? Better yet, make the swap cooldown 10-15 seconds instead of 20 seconds, whether the current pet is dead or alive.

Carighan.6758:

Mesmer.
Definitely damage-balanced around the pets. The pets showing the exact same constant pathing/contact issues as the ranger pet. They’re often ignored because on a whole we’re not badly off – in sPvP or Roaming, as inconsequential as that is – but the issue is the very same.

Actually, it’s not that easy to ignore the Mesmer’s pets because they look just like the core character and draw fire and that’s how they are intended to work. Nobody is going to confuse a snow leopard or jungle spider for my Ranger and shoot it by mistake. Mesmer pets are pretty effective at drawing damage away from the Mesmer, something that almost never happens with Ranger pets against other players.

Also bear in mind that the Mesmer has buttons specifically designed to kill their own pets. If they are intended to have 100% uptime, why is that? Have you ever had problems popping out new ones when the old ones die?

Atherakhia.4086:

What do you have; a new, poorly designed fractal, 2 poorly designed world bosses, WXP that only throws balance even more out of whack, and a PvP map that is universally despised by everyone who plays it? And on top of that class balance that is (arguably) worse now than it has ever been and the same stale meta that you quit the game for in the first place.

My biggest concerns is actually not that ANet hasn’t been fixing these problems fast enough. It’s that several of the changes they have made have made things worse and show a profound lack of understanding about handicapping and balance.

Making it easier for winners and experienced players to win through bonuses is exactly the wrong way to balance a game. It’s as if Football were to give the Superbowl champion first pick in next year’s draft, giving a chess master extra pieces when playing against an inferior opponent, or expecting the worse golfer to do better than the best golfer to win. In the real world, handicapping works in exactly the opposite way. The worst-rated team from the previous season is given the advantage of first pick for new players, chess can be handicapped by removing pieces from the better player at the start of the game, and golf handicapping requires the better golfer to do better to win.

From the USGA website on golf handicapping:

“The USGA Handicap System™ enables golfers of all skill levels to compete on an equitable basis.”

Shouldn’t the goal of balance in GW2 be to allow players of all skill levels to compete on an equitable basis or at least not punish the lower-skilled or less-experienced player?

Atherakhia.4086:

Shame you stopped reading where you did as 2 sentences later I clearly said the Mesmer is the exception to this.

Argh, I’m sorry.

/fail

Seems like there have been more posts by Allie in the last 2 hours than there were in the Ranger CDI thread over 3 weeks :/

Carighan.6758:

Sanduskel.1850:

“We can’t fix pets and we won’t increase your dps to compensate..”

“We refuse to remove pets as a large part of your dps.”

Those lead to no improvements, yet you complain that rangers continue to push the pet issue?

The reason for what seems baffling to a player is that as a developer, you generally don’t fix symptoms. So right now, they cannot fix pet-pathing. They don’t have anyone who’s far enough into the engine to re-code that entire part.

However, as a host of issues (Because please, do you really think that this is about ranger pets? Really? They’re part of it, but this affects everything, Mesmers, Ele, Necro, Ranger, Guardian, Engineer, all of PvE ,everything is struggling due to the pathing issues.) are dependent on the matter, you still want to rewrite it.

And hence you push the issue back. “Will be fixed with pathing changes”.

That’s their problem, not the players.’ Sorry but rangers have waited 2 years.

Nothing says a broken class more than a community screaming at the devs.

My biggest fear is that the ranger CDI being voted the most important CDI to have resulted in it being first and thus going through the least effective CDI. I don’t think the CDI was executed well given how little contribution anyone from the balance team had in it.

In many ways I think the class in most need of CDI attention should have gone second or third once they knew how to best conduct a class balance CDI. As it is now, I think rangers drew the short straw by going first.

seemed like a CDI destined to be combative (most negatively broken class due to a class mechanic that we all know they are reluctant to change/fix).

that said, if somehow, ranger gets passive buffs based on stowing pets….i’d consider the whole thing a win.

personally, i wish more was said about traps……..potentially aawesome playstyle………just give use fields on all of them.

Mad Pig.2890:

Nothing says a broken class more than a community screaming at the devs.

No actually, that says it’s ~fine. I’m serious, check other MMO forums. The best indicator of balance is that your community is mad.

Carighan.6758:

Mad Pig.2890:

Nothing says a broken class more than a community screaming at the devs.

No actually, that says it’s ~fine. I’m serious, check other MMO forums. The best indicator of balance is that your community is mad.

When the game company polls the audience which class is in most need of assistance, and a single class wins by a 2:1 margin, that means you dun [censored] up. When you consider 2 classes had more votes than every other class combined, that means you’re in trouble.

Nothing fine about this.

Carighan.6758:

Mad Pig.2890:

Nothing says a broken class more than a community screaming at the devs.

No actually, that says it’s ~fine. I’m serious, check other MMO forums. The best indicator of balance is that your community is mad.

The pet isn’t fine. It’s like a car where you have removed the tyres so it can drive on rails…
Works, but nowhere perfect. During the development they thought they could hold the pet accountable for dealing damage, which it can’t. Period. Why give the pet damage the ranger was supposed to deal, if the ranger is better in dealing damage?

So does the pet deal damage at all? Yes. Can it be helpful in certain situations, such as as tank? Yes again.
But can it deal competitve damage? Not even close. And the really sad part about this is that the pet could be far more helpful if it hadn’t to deal damage.
It could provide far more utility or unique buffs/debuffs. Yet all this potential is lost because the primary goal of the pet is to deal damage. Which it can’t do effectively. Period.

Atherakhia.4086:

When the game company polls the forums which class is in most need of assistance, and a single class wins by a 2:1 margin, that means you dun [censored] up. When you consider 2 classes had more votes than every other class combined, that means you’re in trouble.

FTFY.
They polled maybe 20%. And that’s a very very generous guess, and assuming everyone who visits the forums posted. Realistically? 2%-3% or lower.

Carighan.6758:

Atherakhia.4086:

When the game company polls the forums which class is in most need of assistance, and a single class wins by a 2:1 margin, that means you dun [censored] up. When you consider 2 classes had more votes than every other class combined, that means you’re in trouble.

FTFY.
They polled maybe 20%. And that’s a very very generous guess, and assuming everyone who visits the forums posted. Realistically? 2%-3% or lower.

Do you have an alternate measure you’d like to use?

Or do we just go with your gutt that the plight of the Ranger is just a grand conspiracy?

“The plight of the ranger”.

You know, from my perspective of having a Mesmer, an Engineer, a Necro, an Elementalist and my GF being quite happy with her Ranger, I know a few dozen things I’d fix much sooner. Especially because there’s enough game-wide issues left to fill the next year, and most of those affect class balance on all sides (so actual class balance is kinda meaningless until they’re dealt with).

But no, you can’t measure it well. Even an ingame poll wouldn’t work well.

Just… not possible.
But then I don’t see where Rangers are that bad off. They might be the weakest for many situations, but not by a substantial margin (this was something the PvE crowd in WoW had serious issues with understanding, too: either you define all but the first spot as rubbish, or you have to accept that being last is absolutely no problem depending on difference).

RPGs aren’t going to be balanced. EVER. Maybe it’s because I’m old (I’ve been playing MMOs for… kitten , 16 years now), but I really don’t ever go into a MMORPG – or RPG – thinking I’ll see balanced combat. At all.

Why would I? Many of the underlying game systems don’t support the idea of “balanced” combat.

A way around this is to offer everyone a handful of really overpowered skills. For many players currently crying about Immobilize, Rangers have this with their access to that debuff, so I guess from ANet’s perspective they’re just not that far behind.

I think the anger players show in regards to this just robs us of all credibility.

So yeah, the “plight of the ranger” is real. Only it isn’t a plight. And not ranger-exclusive.

Carighan.6758:

“The plight of the ranger”.

You know, from my perspective of having a Mesmer, an Engineer, a Necro, an Elementalist and my GF being quite happy with her Ranger, I know a few dozen things I’d fix much sooner. Especially because there’s enough game-wide issues left to fill the next year, and most of those affect class balance on all sides (so actual class balance is kinda meaningless until they’re dealt with).

So does your GF play WvW? Or PvP? Or does she do dungeons with zerker groups? I bet no. I was happy with my ranger too, until I tried to be effective in one of the named scenarios. The ranger is not completely unusable. But he’s unusable under a competitive aspect. And there’s simply no point of playing a ranger other than the fun you have with it. Because the ranger sucks on a competitive level.

But what does “unusable under a competitive aspect” mean?
Again to compare raid DPS in WoW, if you’re #26 of 26 DPS Specs, this doesn’t at all imply that you’re bad. Still, competitively thinking no one would bring you. But at the same time if you’re say, only 1% behind the top end, why would a dev bother to waste time on the issue.

On a different scale, this is how I see GW2 balance issues right now. Every class has plenty of them. But until we’ve solved bigger issues affecting all classes, none of these issues are large enough to warrant individual attention.

From the given post about traits, it seems that the devs are jumping into the game-wide issues, so hey, might soon see some proper movement. But right now I don’t see any individual classes’ problems be that big. And I say that as someone who would love to play a condition mesmer in PvE, conceptually. Which makes a pet-only ranger seem a very viable source of DPS, btw. :P

Carighan.6758:

But what does “unusable under a competitive aspect” mean?
Again to compare raid DPS in WoW, if you’re #26 of 26 DPS Specs, this doesn’t at all imply that you’re bad. Still, competitively thinking no one would bring you. But at the same time if you’re say, only 1% behind the top end, why would a dev bother to waste time on the issue.

On a different scale, this is how I see GW2 balance issues right now. Every class has plenty of them. But until we’ve solved bigger issues affecting all classes, none of these issues are large enough to warrant individual attention.

From the given post about traits, it seems that the devs are jumping into the game-wide issues, so hey, might soon see some proper movement. But right now I don’t see any individual classes’ problems be that big. And I say that as someone who would love to play a condition mesmer in PvE, conceptually. Which makes a pet-only ranger seem a very viable source of DPS, btw. :P

You can look up the Ranger CDI if you want. Me and a lot of others have often enough, with a lot of examples, stated, that the current pet is a hindrance. The reason why condition builds are pretty solid on the ranger is the fact that the condition damage gets not diminished by the pet. However the direct damage does. And it’s not 1% you lose, it’s 30%. And I still can’t understand the decision to cut the rangers’ damage in order to give the pet some damage. And it’s competitive everytime when the ranger gets compared to other classes. Do I want to put a ranger into my 5-man group or a 3rd ele? You’d probably pick the ele.

Carighan.6758:

But what does “unusable under a competitive aspect” mean?
Again to compare raid DPS in WoW, if you’re #26 of 26 DPS Specs, this doesn’t at all imply that you’re bad. Still, competitively thinking no one would bring you. But at the same time if you’re say, only 1% behind the top end, why would a dev bother to waste time on the issue.

On a different scale, this is how I see GW2 balance issues right now. Every class has plenty of them. But until we’ve solved bigger issues affecting all classes, none of these issues are large enough to warrant individual attention.

From the given post about traits, it seems that the devs are jumping into the game-wide issues, so hey, might soon see some proper movement. But right now I don’t see any individual classes’ problems be that big. And I say that as someone who would love to play a condition mesmer in PvE, conceptually. Which makes a pet-only ranger seem a very viable source of DPS, btw. :P

Being 26th with a relatively small margin between classes is fine. Being 26th with a noticeable gap is quite severe.

Take Warlocks in WoW at release for example. There were 2 builds… nuker SM/Ruin (or DM/Ruin) builds and an Affliction bot for Curse of Elements/Shadows.

If that nuker Warlock got 40th place, he’d be kicked from the raid and probably made to stand naked in Orgrimmar. The Affliction Warlock on the other hand wasn’t expected to do anything because of the debuff limit, no ruin, and no ability to sacrifice your demon.

Now why does any of this matter? The point you are trying to make is someone always has to be last place. But it’s not as simple as that. Why are they last place? And are they last by a considerable margin?

Since you’re an outsider with no direct experience with the class, it’s hard for you to form an informed opinion on this class. But the issues raised in the CDI thread, especially when it comes to power builds for the class, are very real.

Now just because you’re running with the theory of ‘well so long as they have one viable spec, the class is fine and we should move onto something else’ is certainly a valid way to look at overall game balance. It’s not something people who actually play that class are willing to accept.

Using the scenario above… in WvW, the Ranger is not like the SM/Ruin Warlock who may get last place as a direct result of their poor play. They’re more akin to the Affliction Warlock who is in last place because they simply don’t fit into the game the way it is currently designed.

And what’s shocking is that Allie actually said the exact same thing. The worrying thing is Allie (and we presume ANet) is taking your approach to balance. Instead of bringing the Ranger class up to a point where it can compete in the game they’ve made. They are instead going to leave the Ranger alone and change everything else in an attempt to bring the game to it.

In my opinion, that’s a terrible way to balance a game. Power creep aside, the time it would take to ever get the Ranger to the point it was competetive would be so long they’d be better off going with the ‘well at least they can do something, so who cares’ approach which you seem to prefer and that they’ve been using for 1.5 years.

I agree with you, Ath.
There’s a difference between not feeling as though you have a place among other players, and not feeling as though you have a place in the game itself.

For example; Our profession mechanic being largely unscalable in a game that regularly features realm warfare and episodic large scale PvE content,feels pretty dissonant no matter what the Meta is doing.

However, I think it may be a bit hasty to assume Burst being looked at across the board is solely a Ranger consideration. In PvE at least, we know they’ve been looking at the DPS/berserker meta since a post a few months ago. Kind of makes me wonder if it wouldn’t be more of a ‘two birds with one stone’ situation.

Chris Whiteside is a rare entity. That’s the problem. And Chris is focused more on pve, so that’s where all the ‘superior good skilled’ collaborative force of energy is being attended. Thus basically CDI effectiveness is limited to Chris whitesides attendance.

Allie is a good, smart and polite coordinator. No hate at all for her. However, having played all profession over 300 hours, I can state with 100% confidance, that most core issues of a profession only come up after a lot of playtime in different circomstances. And imo it’s only THAT experience (shared and discussed), that can move the ranger forward. With Chris knowing the pve aspect very good, he can just hop in the thread, answer, and even post his own ideas, to flourish new healthy discussions. And (no offence Allie) that was the problem with this CDI. Ranger problem is incredible complex (perhaps the most complex so far). And to solve it we need guidance, wisdom and knowledge to push the enveloppe to improve it. I feel that if Allie had just that bit more experience with the details (and not just the global vision) of the ranger issues, she could have hopped in, more often, making discussion more flourishing.

Also before it looks like i’m focusing only on one person: the dev balance teams is also responsible. Of all the gw2 employees, while very motivated in strict sense, they are the least social to the community (player base). At the same time, profession issues are deeper entangled with the player base then almost any other problem. It’s is my opinion that for profession vision/balance, the outcome is only as good as how much knowledge is added together. This means more players (and if added bonus with more playtime), coming together to advice how to solute balance problems is always better then the opposite. However the balance team never ever even remotely gave us the impression that WE the player base have any control, let alone imput or advice over the course of profession balance. Balance team doesn’t help by rarely showing true profession knowledge (like have they played ranger in wvw against organized guilds? doenst feel like it, or they would instantly already have admitted they are working on that issue, or even posted in CDI about it, ackknowledging it, and supporting some idea’s to be discussed about it), or barely posting anything. Perhaps they were at fault for allowing Allie so few time to post in the thread, i feel like she was shackled a bit in her freedom there. Shackles that don’t exist on Chris Whiteside.

That imo is the prob with CDI.

This is by no means an offence to Anet. All of you did great things (as did playerbase), but you also made mistakes (as does playerbase). Perhaps it’s time to both admit our mistakes, learn from it and move forward. Also please remove any limitations regarding Community Coordinators, posting in the CDI to help flourish new idea’s. I know marketing has it’s rules, and puts fear in every Anet eployee’s heart, but marketing also had let do numerous epic fail decision of some companies. Don’t fall victim to that.

For instance a camera manufacterer, had a big factury error. They never admitted it. Now court law forced them to fix the units, pay a fine for the lies, and the company lost a huge chunk in sales cause reputation damage. This all came from ‘the marketing decision’ to keep their mistake silent. I hope you understand where i’m going with this. Covering up mistakes, is a step backwards. It always is.

So if this was a club, I’d make it rain dollars all over Carighan’s posts. I keep seeing your name pop up, and every time I no longer feel like I have to post just to counter the rampant and often unchecked angst.

However, this:

Carighan.6758:

Mad Pig.2890:

Nothing says a broken class more than a community screaming at the devs.

No actually, that says it’s ~fine. I’m serious, check other MMO forums. The best indicator of balance is that your community is mad.

is wildly true. The complaints I see for classes that I see out there doing really well often just blow my mind, and alternatively, the complaints people have about my class of choice (Necro) also make my laugh audibly because it’s in direct opposition to what people are complaining about on the Necro forums.

Necro forums: Condis are basically nerfed into the ground, basically useless, so many nerfs, gg ANet.

Everyone else in the Universe: Necro Condi spam is way OP, how can this be considered OK, nerf Necro Condi spam, Condis are broken.

It’s like two opposing universes are slapping against each other and allowing communication from one to the other.

I’m not really a strong proponent of saying “Player X says Class Y is UP, Player Z says Class Y is OP, Class Y must be Totally Balanced” (that’s actually why I stopped playing War of the Vikings), but when it comes to a large-scale social game with extraordinary diversity like GW2? I’m not sure how much better it gets.

Also, I’m surprised ANet won’t listen to the possibility of reducing the damage ratio of the Pet to something like 90% Ranger/10% Pet and make the pet mostly a Utility. The key is that you can have so many options as a Ranger that you can provide amazingly good Utility for your group and fill any gaps. Need AoE poison? Need to survive a huge nuke? Need to Chill/Cripple/Etc.? Need to Immobilize? Versatility is the name of the game.

But oh well.

Atherakhia.4086:

Now just because you’re running with the theory of ‘well so long as they have one viable spec, the class is fine and we should move onto something else’ is certainly a valid way to look at overall game balance. *It’s not something people who actually play that class are willing to accept. *

I think the rest of your post has merit, Atherakhia, but I wanted to pull this out really quick.

Regarding the bolded portion, maybe people who play a class in an MMO should be willing to accept that. Maybe part of the problem with MMOs is that everyone is demanding everything be viable such that you can’t have more semblance of true competitive balance in the game.

As a Necro, I accept that I’m going to have shortcomings when roaming in WvW because I choose to roam Power with Dagger+Focus/Staff. I accept it isn’t the Condi build that I think excels more, but I’m OK with that. I’ve made it work well enough to gain a lot of enjoyment out of it.

Back when I mained Warrior for about 8 months, I rolled around Hammer/GS when everyone said Hammer was an awful weapon (can you even believe that people used to think that?). I don’t know that Warriors even had a “main” build back then because everyone seemed to think they were mostly garbage, but I made my chosen playstyle work at least for the most part. Some classes, like Mesmers, were intensely difficult to fight, but that was part of the deal.

Acceptance that there is going to be an “ideal” should be Step 1 in the Coping With An MMO program. Step 2 should be “Feel free to experiment and play how you want, but don’t forget #1 exists”.

There’s a Ranger build that’s tremendously difficult to kill that I literally never see, and I don’t understand it in the slightest.

Dear OP,

At least the ranger CDI thread didn’t get derailed by a single person who posted a page-worth of the same comment across all 18* pages. At least ranger’s CDI got more red posts than Thief’s. At least Arenanet Staff didn’t attempt to bullkitten the rangers by calling a 1/3 decrease to your profession’s main combat mechanic’s effectiveness a “MASSSIVE buff”.

Compared to thieve’s Dec. 10th CDI, Ranger was a MASSSIVE success.

Love,

Thief Forums

Cogbyrn.7283:

Atherakhia.4086:

Now just because you’re running with the theory of ‘well so long as they have one viable spec, the class is fine and we should move onto something else’ is certainly a valid way to look at overall game balance. It’s not something people who actually play that class are willing to accept.

I think the rest of your post has merit, Atherakhia, but I wanted to pull this out really quick.

Regarding the bolded portion, maybe people who play a class in an MMO should be willing to accept that. Maybe part of the problem with MMOs is that everyone is demanding everything be viable such that you can’t have more semblance of true competitive balance in the game.

As a Necro, I accept that I’m going to have shortcomings when roaming in WvW because I choose to roam Power with Dagger+Focus/Staff. I accept it isn’t the Condi build that I think excels more, but I’m OK with that. I’ve made it work well enough to gain a lot of enjoyment out of it.

Back when I mained Warrior for about 8 months, I rolled around Hammer/GS when everyone said Hammer was an awful weapon (can you even believe that people used to think that?). I don’t know that Warriors even had a “main” build back then because everyone seemed to think they were mostly garbage, but I made my chosen playstyle work at least for the most part. Some classes, like Mesmers, were intensely difficult to fight, but that was part of the deal.

Acceptance that there is going to be an “ideal” should be Step 1 in the Coping With An MMO program. Step 2 should be “Feel free to experiment and play how you want, but don’t forget #1 exists”.

There’s a Ranger build that’s tremendously difficult to kill that I literally never see, and I don’t understand it in the slightest.

What you simply don’t understand is that the best builds the ranger has are workarounds. They exclude the main purpose of the pet, dealing damage, to be successful. They are tanky and sustained. No build in PvP will go for raw damage simply because the damage isn’t worth investing in. The only thing you can do in PvP is outsustaining your enemy. The only builds viable in PvE are centered around the sword since the sword AA is the only skill who deals acceptable damage. So there are some builds out there who are used, but not because they’re so good but because the other skills, including the pet, are so tremendoulsy bad.