Guild Wars 2

Anet, I understand that you think you’re listening to the players’ feedback with your Living World releases when you are making this really challenging content: Aetherblade Retreat, Candidate Trials, and now the Gauntlet. And, yes, challenging is great, but that’s not what you’re accomplishing here. What you are doing is awarding achievement points to ONLY players who have multiple level 80 characters and/or players who run berserker builds while excluding everybody else.

If there’s any feedback for you to listen to, please hear this. I have read many posts on many GW2 forums about the Gauntlet, and I believe I speak for many other players when I ask you to please make sure your content is completable by ALL professions and non-berserker builds.

Now allow me to orient this topic towards my specific complaint/feedback. I play a level 80 Ranger and it is my only level 80 character. I do not play a berserker build; instead, I focus on condition damage. With the timer inside the Gauntlet, condition damage just doesn’t cut it, especially against Liadri, let alone trying to get the gambit achievements or the 8 orb achievement.

Also, when I am in the Gauntlet, in almost any battle, but especially against Liadri, I lose my pet way too quickly. The Ranger simply does not do enough damage by itself without the pet. Anet, you just can’t create content that completely disables the entire profession mechanic of one profession! Rangers are at an EXTREME disadvantage in the Gauntlet. Yes, I have seen all the posts and videos of the Rangers beating Liadri, but they are all berserker builds. I should not have to go spend a fortune on new gear to play ANY game content. Nor should I have to rush to level another character up to 80 because you forgot or ignored the disadvantages you placed on one profession. By no means am I an inexperienced or unskilled ranger, yet I feel that this content is impossible for me to complete— I do not feel as though my skill is being challenged at all, but my profession and my gear.

To sum everything up, the challenge of the content should NOT be based upon profession or gear, but upon the skill of the player. I recall when you were developing this game that that was one of your primary objectives. Well, unfortunately, despite all the other great things you do, you failed at that objective with the Gauntlet.

I beat liadri in 7 tries with my ranger. The pet had no impact on my performance. I disagree that rangers are at a disadvantage because the pet isn’t needed versus liadri. All you need is good positioning, timing, and the ability to utilize the ranger to the most. Are you using lightening reflexes to destroy orbs and break stun? Are you stutter stepping? Have you watched a video of a successful ranger run? Are you using greatsword for phase 1 and shortbow for phase 2?

Musha.4025:

Yes, I have seen all the posts and videos of the Rangers beating Liadri, but they are all berserker builds.

Let me guess, you’re berserker, too?

“Beating liadri as a condi ranger-short guide”

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Beating-Liadri-as-condi-Ranger-short-guide/first#post2621810

Wait whut? Only zerkers? Look through the forums most people have used condition setups for the hard fight (liadri) and there are a few that did it in knights gear and even green gear. Yes its hard but that comes mostly from the weird camera.

I myself beat her with a condition setup on my thief (hint: my ranger is loads better at applying conditions than he is. hint 2: i had to buy the gear for him and used mostly greens).

Just try a condition build with some endurance regeneration and practice (and use food buffs) or accept that this particular content is not for you.

@Musha.4025:

I don’t play zerker builds, and have beat all of the achievements. Most of it on a Knights geared sword/focus n scepter/focus guardian or a Knights geared sword/shield n rifle warrior. Liadri 8 orbs was done with a p/d condition thief (most (75%+) of that was auto attacks), so I have no clue what you are talking about when you say your condition ranger can’t beat her normally (with or without your pet). Sorry.

I have already gone through 50+ tickets on this; I am well practiced. I have tried various different builds and food buffs. I appreciate you trying to offer advice and assistance, especially the build that Chopps has directed me to, which I will try out to be sure, but my point in this post was not to get help defeating Liadri, but to draw the attention of the game developers to the fact that they are catering their content to a specific play style and/or profession.
Liadri is only a small part of the problem. Even after I am able to defeat her, without the right profession and build, I will still not be able to get the other achievements.

Cleared the entire gauntlet on my ranger with little to no trouble to be honest. Liadri was the only boss that gave me a hard time, but who doesn’t have a hard time on her? You need to pick and choose very carefully skills and pets for the gauntlet, some builds like zerker can breeze through it but others cannot. The wolf can be very helpful for example on fights such as Subject 7, and Strugar and Chomper for the AoE fear.

Pets are useless in Liardri yes, that is not something I will argue, but the ranger class can be a very very mobile class that allows for very useful kite/dodge tactics if you trait yourself accordingly. The Gauntlet is designed to push you as a player to figure out the ins and outs of your class and maximize your efficiency in a wide range of scenarios. The sole fight I would argue is stacked against rangers is Liadri, but that is not even impossible just difficult. The rest of the gauntlet is not.

For mere mortals the pet is useless (myself included). However, a pro ranger could likely use nature’s voice and “guard” to both counter the cripple and position the pet to keep it safe. Someone will do it, someday, I strongly feel. It is one of the ultimate challenges with this fight, surely—how to keep the pet both alive and effective. Clearly, the easiest path is to ignore the pet.

You know, you recently received like a million W3 Tokens from all the achievement chests. Go buy yourself a full set of berserker gear and weapons from the W3 vendor.

I feel like the condi/berserk sections of OPs argument are not well written. The phrasing makes it sound like he’s saying condi builds across classes are having a far more difficult time which isn’t really true. Many people used condi builds specifically for their first kills(there were numerous people with multiple level 80s that after failing a bunch finally got liandri by switching to a condi necro). I think the main source of perceived inferiority of condi builds is their lack of presence in speed farming builds(ie subject 7 and dunwell farming). Since the topic is suppose to be about Ranger’s the argument should focus on the specifics of why OP feels condi ranger is inferior to power Ranger.

Personally the only problem I see is the Shortbow’s auto attack and it’s positional requirement. In the gauntlet the foes are programmed to ignore pets so, with some exceptions like when chomper is going for meat, the enemies are always instantly facing the player.

The issue of the pet I think is the biggest flaw that the gauntlet demonstrates. Upfront I want to say that just because we can still do the gauntlet without our pets does not make things ok. By having opponents ignore our pets it takes away strategies involving tanky pets. If pets could tank it would be fine as you could focus on using your positioning to position your pet(since recall and attack are your only ways of moving your pet). This means that damage is what they want you to use your pets for. Without the ability to move our pet to specific positions and to stay we have very limited ability to keep pets out of harms way while allowing them to actually attack since we don’t have the luxury of using our position to control our pets position via recall/attack since we must focus on avoiding the boss ourselves. This means they either get one shot or they must spend most of the time not attacking which greatly nerfs the Ranger’s damage. It’s like doing the gauntlet with Squeamish active.

The biggest design decision IMHO is the decision they made to make the gauntlet bosses ignore pets. If Anet feels that having pets hold aggro is such a poor design then why have corporeal pets to begin with? Make them non-corporeal, rebalance the auto-attack damage from the pet over to the ranger(pet does little AA damage, ranger does more), change the F1-4 skills to be pet ability skills since there is no reason for pet control abilities, and a single longer pet swap cd. If they really want pet survival to be a part of the Ranger class than give Ranger’s better control over the pet and allow Ranger’s to use pet tanks as well.

Every class can do the gauntlet but not every spec in the class can. One may have a preferred play style or build but you the play need to realize that it may not work for all things. It not the class or anet that failed you. It’s the player that refuses to at minimum to became proficient in the builds available; that failed the class.

As fakitten ts go my pet was alive a dealing damage on each of my boss kills including Liadri. As a ranger it’s easier to have you pet hold agro if you use the long bow. Hunters shot stealth’s you and if your pet deal damage to mob while your stealth mobs normally aggros onto your pet.

Musha.4025:

I…..
but to draw the attention of the game developers to the fact that they are catering their content to a specific play style and/or profession.
……

This is just incorrect. They presented a specific part of THIS content (Queen’s Gauntlet) to being highly challenging (in an often very cheap and specific way). As listed here, ALL the content is beatable by a variety of classes, builds and gear but does require a highly mobile play style. Certainly pets are useless here, but how many tickets did you use before figuring that out? Rangers can easily be built to minimize the effects of “pet-down” situations. Also, these situations are quit common in other areas of GW2 content, so it should not be a surprise.

The broken pet mechanic in terms of fighting Bosses (or any hard hitting content), is what you want to bring to ANet’s attention (they are quite aware of it, I’m sure).

Pet being downed is actually a problem in the Gauntlet?

I’m not sure I see how that’s a problem at all. I did 90% of the arena fights with my Ranger (all except Strucker who I couldn’t do enough damage to, and Liandri who I’m not even going to bother with) and my pet rarely got attacked at all, much less downed. Mind you, I run a tanky Beastmastery build where my pet is pretty much built to survive, but even still most of the time my pet wasn’t even taking damage at all.

The arena AI seems to ignore pets most of the time and go after the player and only the player. And most of the “must-dodge instakills” are single target or aimed specifically at you, so I never really found my pet getting hit by those “accidentally” either.

I can see how it’d be a problem with Liandri with her AoE everywhere, but other than that my pet was actually free and clear to attack with little risk most of the time. I actually found myself wishing my pet would take aggro to take some of the pressure off me, but it never really did.

Unless different builds cause the AI to react to pets differently, and my particular build was just what was keeping my pet from drawing attention. But my personal damage output isn’t that high and my pet has a lot of toughness, so I’d think if anything my build should put more agro on the pet.