Guild Wars 2

for rangers. When are you going to fix our class mechanic so that 30-40% of our damage isn’t dead all the time or uselessly sitting on passive near us, only to die to aoes as we run around in the dungeon?

Pets suck in aoe situations and you can’t fix that without making pets immune to aoe damage. They don’t dodge and they don’t move out of circles. They. Are. Stupid. and so is this current punitive dungeon design.

30 in beast mastery keeps the pet alive for a whole second longer. Joy.

Fix the pets or remove the ranger class from the kitten game. Christ!
/angry

I feel your pain. Even as a “good” profession, I couldn’t do it. It’s probably 3 times worse on rangers.

They should just make it so the pet is invuln/phased for 2 seconds every time the ranger dodges.

Then put a trait/minor trait in beastmastery to make the pet attacks feed endurance to the ranger far up.

Oh yeah and THANK YOU for having the WHOLE party kicked out of the dungeon when the leader drops/leaves making getting the exploration achievements even MORE of a hassle then they already are! Great Job Anet!

Knote.2904:

They should just make it so the pet is invuln/phased for 2 seconds every time the ranger dodges.

Then put a trait/minor trait in beastmastery to make the pet attacks feed endurance to the ranger far up.

That would be something but even with the 2 second protection on dodge trait the pet dies so fast it’s not funny. These dungeons are a constant move out of red circles fest which the pet can not do at all, ever. So ArenaNet needs to fix the broken class mechanic or stop designing crap like this that is punitive to ANY pet class.

To make that trait worthwhile the pet would need like 10 seconds of immunity or more and the ranger would have to dodge constantly.

Also forcing someone to go into a tree to fix a poorly done class mechanic is not an answer.

I play ranger, and only ranger. I had no problems with my pet for this entire dungeon outside of the Clockheart. And I dedicated myself to pulling the holograms for that, so I wasn’t going to use my pet for it anyway (maybe a moa or a bear would have been useful in that situation for the buffs?).

Really, just learn to use F3 and F4 properly.

Serbaayuu.3051:

I play ranger, and only ranger. I had no problems with my pet for this entire dungeon outside of the Clockheart. And I dedicated myself to pulling the holograms for that, so I wasn’t going to use my pet for it anyway (maybe a moa or a bear would have been useful in that situation for the buffs?).

Really, just learn to use F3 and F4 properly.

Funny all I hear outside are rangers complaining about their pets dying. Electric floors kill them in the areas that had them. The bosses kill them very fast for any boss that focuses on the pet for more then a few moments. f3 and 4 aren’t going to do crap in those situations or when your pet paths through a thrown gear and dies.

Pet. A.I. Is. Stupid. Add in a small bit of lag and good luck getting those retreat/swap commands off in time.

Imaginos.3756:

Serbaayuu.3051:

I play ranger, and only ranger. I had no problems with my pet for this entire dungeon outside of the Clockheart. And I dedicated myself to pulling the holograms for that, so I wasn’t going to use my pet for it anyway (maybe a moa or a bear would have been useful in that situation for the buffs?).

Really, just learn to use F3 and F4 properly.

Funny all I hear outside are rangers complaining about their pets dying. Electric floors kill them in the areas that had them. The bosses kill them very fast for any boss that focuses on the pet for more then a few moments. f3 and 4 aren’t going to do crap in those situations or when your pet paths through a thrown gear and dies.

Pet. A.I. Is. Stupid. Add in a small bit of lag and good luck getting those retreat/swap commands off in time.

Ah, true, the electric floors wreak havoc on them, but the two places where those exist don’t even require any DPS. The holograms in the Clockheart’s room die in 2-3 hits from anything and the security room doesn’t even have foes in it.

And you only hear complaining because the people who are actually happy with the scenario don’t say anything. That’s why these forums hardly have any positivity in them, you know.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

Serbaayuu.3051:

I play ranger, and only ranger. I had no problems with my pet for this entire dungeon outside of the Clockheart. And I dedicated myself to pulling the holograms for that, so I wasn’t going to use my pet for it anyway (maybe a moa or a bear would have been useful in that situation for the buffs?).

Really, just learn to use F3 and F4 properly.

Funny all I hear outside are rangers complaining about their pets dying. Electric floors kill them in the areas that had them. The bosses kill them very fast for any boss that focuses on the pet for more then a few moments. f3 and 4 aren’t going to do crap in those situations or when your pet paths through a thrown gear and dies.

Pet. A.I. Is. Stupid. Add in a small bit of lag and good luck getting those retreat/swap commands off in time.

Ah, true, the electric floors wreak havoc on them, but the two places where those exist don’t even require any DPS. The holograms in the Clockheart’s room die in 2-3 hits from anything and the security room doesn’t even have foes in it.

And you only hear complaining because the people who are actually happy with the scenario don’t say anything. That’s why these forums hardly have any positivity in them, you know.

This dungeon is full of AoE damage, just like the last few have been and pets suck in every single one of these situations, just like they suck for Tequatl, who also has a ton of aoe damage.

Trash mobs have at least 2 forms of aoe that the pet won’t move out of, though the pets rarely die in them unless they get hit by some overlapping grenadiers. The electric puzzle floor does have a mob at the end even if it isn’t a tough one. Pet will be dead for that and the mob does die easily. Whirly dude has aoes and the whirl attack that turns pets into smears and of course the last boss with the solid electric floors and the pre event that frees the boss. Also the pre event that’s similar earlier on. Lots of AoEs that pets can NOT avoid in any way, shape or form, even on passive as you have to be in combat to destroy these foes.

I loathe any mechanic that’s going to reduce my damage by 30-40% because said mechanic is DEAD most of the time in these dungeons.

The same thing goes for requiring multiple forms of stability on a single character. Rangers lose out there too. We get 1 form of stability on a very long recharge and it’s our elite. Same goes for Necros, they get 2 forms and they’re both elites, so only 1 at a time.

When dungeons are designed with specific counter mechanics in mind that players must equip then every player better kitten well have access to 2 or 3 of them to be on even footing with all other players. There’s not supposed to be any holy trinity in this game but guardians and warriors are sure wanted/needed far more then kitten rangers and thats just wrong. Bad game design and it needs to be fixed.

Imaginos.3756:

just like they suck for Tequatl,

Rangers thrive on the turret/turret defense. You shouldn’t be smacking the dragon’s face. Not everybody is going to be a member of the DPS zerg.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

just like they suck for Tequatl,

Rangers thrive on the turret/turret defense. You shouldn’t be smacking the dragon’s face. Not everybody is going to be a member of the DPS zerg.

Oh? So we’re regulated to turret kitten like necros or ‘finger duty’ because we’re not a real dps class huh? That is bad design.

Imaginos.3756:

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

just like they suck for Tequatl,

Rangers thrive on the turret/turret defense. You shouldn’t be smacking the dragon’s face. Not everybody is going to be a member of the DPS zerg.

Oh? So we’re regulated to turret kitten like necros or ‘finger duty’ because we’re not a real dps class huh? That is bad design.

How? Not everybody can be good at everything. Get over it.

Imaginos.3756:

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

just like they suck for Tequatl,

Rangers thrive on the turret/turret defense. You shouldn’t be smacking the dragon’s face. Not everybody is going to be a member of the DPS zerg.

Oh? So we’re regulated to turret kitten like necros or ‘finger duty’ because we’re not a real dps class huh? That is bad design.

Being able to excel in everything is bad design.
Every class has its downsides.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

just like they suck for Tequatl,

Rangers thrive on the turret/turret defense. You shouldn’t be smacking the dragon’s face. Not everybody is going to be a member of the DPS zerg.

Oh? So we’re regulated to turret kitten like necros or ‘finger duty’ because we’re not a real dps class huh? That is bad design.

How? Not everybody can be the Warrior class. Get over it.

We hear you.

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

just like they suck for Tequatl,

Rangers thrive on the turret/turret defense. You shouldn’t be smacking the dragon’s face. Not everybody is going to be a member of the DPS zerg.

Oh? So we’re regulated to turret kitten like necros or ‘finger duty’ because we’re not a real dps class huh? That is bad design.

How? Not everybody can be good at everything. Get over it.

Um, that was Anet’s goal here.

Every class should be able to DPS in this game… lol.

Knote.2904:

They should just make it so the pet is invuln/phased for 2 seconds every time the ranger dodges.

Then put a trait/minor trait in beastmastery to make the pet attacks feed endurance to the ranger far up.

AoE reduction period. WoW gave ALL pets 90% AoE damage reduction and it worked pefectly, no problems, no exploits and solved the pet issue. The pet taking AoE damage serves no purpose. A pet tanking a mob serves a purpose thereforth should be killable by normal means.

Serbaayuu.3051:

I play ranger, and only ranger. I had no problems with my pet for this entire dungeon outside of the Clockheart. And I dedicated myself to pulling the holograms for that, so I wasn’t going to use my pet for it anyway (maybe a moa or a bear would have been useful in that situation for the buffs?).

Really, just learn to use F3 and F4 properly.

I play Ranger better than most people, but I can instantly tell you’re exaggerating here…
And yeah I F3/F4 constantly, just to maximize DPS/Buffs (Not b/c the pet is almost dead).

Next time, record a Video for us. It’s a lot more believable.

ilr.9675:

Serbaayuu.3051:

I play ranger, and only ranger. I had no problems with my pet for this entire dungeon outside of the Clockheart. And I dedicated myself to pulling the holograms for that, so I wasn’t going to use my pet for it anyway (maybe a moa or a bear would have been useful in that situation for the buffs?).

Really, just learn to use F3 and F4 properly.

I play Ranger better than most people, but I can instantly tell you’re exaggerating here…
And yeah I F3/F4 constantly, just to maximize DPS/Buffs (Not b/c the pet is almost dead).

Next time, record a Video for us. It’s a lot more believable.

No I’m not exaggerating here at all. I never claimed to be the greatest ranger player and I’m sure there are far more who are better and yet my pet spent half the time dead in the dungeon in every major encounter and then my second pet died and was on cooldown for most of those too. After swapping to beast master and trying again I ran into the exact same issue, though the pets survived a tad bit longer of course.

Every design so far has been punitive to pet classes due to terrible pet AI. ArenaNet may not want to say this out loud but they have already started to make changes to pets that Ancient Games had to in order to make pets viable. The prime example is not aggroing mobs when running around. Everquest had to do that for Magicians due to pets training whole dugeon levels on people due to bad pathing and finally Anet did the same thing. Can’t fix the AI then you fix the problem another way.

As mentioned above WoW ended up doing the same thing for their pet classes and fixed the AoE issue. Once Anet pulls their heads out of the sands and stops chanting “we can’t hear you everyones fine” they’ll end up having to make a similar change.

If you’re going to have pet classes in a game then you need to make sure these issues are not issues or don’t have pet classes in your game.

As to the “can’t be better at everything” people. Are you serious? This whole game is DPS and everyone is supposed to be able to DPS. You don’t defeat foes by telling them bed time stories. Rangers bring far less utility to these events then other classes so DPS is what we do and a large portion of our DPS is in the pet.

Most pets die cause there owner use the wrong one for the situation at hand and they don’t know when to stow it away i used devour/reef drake and the jungle spider pets though this whole dungeon they had very few deaths also if you don’t want it falling dead on the electric floor stow it away i also stowed it away during the ooze run part cause i was the runner longbow is a very good weapon here vul stacks sword warhorn or axe warhorn for healing spring and other types of blast finishers and frost spirit and spirit of renewal for party support are very good here. I don’t know how any one else plays there ranger but it was obvious going into this dungeon that Ranged was the better choice over melee for this particular dungeon and bringing a melee pet other then a drake to deal with trash mob will make it end up dead on the floor most of the time. Any way that’s just my input feel free to disagree

Change vocation and take a warrior instead, it’s just better than any class now and will be superior to guardian in the next update trolololo. I also laugh a lot when i see ‘’ONLY ZERK WARRIORS NO RANGERS!’’ in LFG system, it’s just really stupid, even though i use Guardians and Ele that got nerfed so much, i hate to see some classes getting way too much buffed and others getting useless because of that and that’s what happening right now with rangers in PVE and other classes in PVP.

Imaginos.3756:

Serbaayuu.3051:

Imaginos.3756:

just like they suck for Tequatl,

Rangers thrive on the turret/turret defense. You shouldn’t be smacking the dragon’s face. Not everybody is going to be a member of the DPS zerg.

Oh? So we’re regulated to turret kitten like necros or ‘finger duty’ because we’re not a real dps class huh? That is bad design.

Even thieves were kind of relegated to finger and turret defense in Tequatl. We have DPS, but not really the stability/shielding/buffs that made us super useful in the DPS zerg unlike Warriors, Guardians, and Elementalists.

I feel sorry for Rangers though. Maybe they could get some traits that let their pets take less damage from AOE sources?

I believe they are increasing all pet/minion health (this was either in the preview notes for Oct 15 or the leaked ones) by something like 70%.

So instead of being one-shotted, now they’ll be two-shotted.

Imaginos.3756:

quote pyramid

hide spoiler

ilr.9675:

Serbaayuu.3051:

I play ranger, and only ranger. I had no problems with my pet for this entire dungeon outside of the Clockheart. And I dedicated myself to pulling the holograms for that, so I wasn’t going to use my pet for it anyway (maybe a moa or a bear would have been useful in that situation for the buffs?).

Really, just learn to use F3 and F4 properly.

I play Ranger better than most people, but I can instantly tell you’re exaggerating here…
And yeah I F3/F4 constantly, just to maximize DPS/Buffs (Not b/c the pet is almost dead).

Next time, record a Video for us. It’s a lot more believable.

No I’m not exaggerating here at all. I never claimed to be the greatest ranger player and I’m sure there are far more who are better and yet my pet spent half the time dead in the dungeon in every major encounter and then my second pet died and was on cooldown for most of those too. After swapping to beast master and trying again I ran into the exact same issue, though the pets survived a tad bit longer of course.

Every design so far has been punitive to pet classes due to terrible pet AI. ArenaNet may not want to say this out loud but they have already started to make changes to pets that Ancient Games had to in order to make pets viable. The prime example is not aggroing mobs when running around. Everquest had to do that for Magicians due to pets training whole dugeon levels on people due to bad pathing and finally Anet did the same thing. Can’t fix the AI then you fix the problem another way.

As mentioned above WoW ended up doing the same thing for their pet classes and fixed the AoE issue. Once Anet pulls their heads out of the sands and stops chanting “we can’t hear you everyones fine” they’ll end up having to make a similar change.

If you’re going to have pet classes in a game then you need to make sure these issues are not issues or don’t have pet classes in your game.

As to the “can’t be better at everything” people. Are you serious? This whole game is DPS and everyone is supposed to be able to DPS. You don’t defeat foes by telling them bed time stories. Rangers bring far less utility to these events then other classes so DPS is what we do and a large portion of our DPS is in the pet.

I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you might have replied to the wrong person/discussion here o_0

Infact a lot of people seem to take issue with what Serbaayuu keeps saying.
So I’d say the burden of proof is really on him…. not us.

(it’s been well established at this point that the “Pet’s AI” has ZERO self-preservation functionality and asking one class to work 5x harder than any other class to retain its “Class mechanic” is a battle that’s already been fought but lost by us Micromanagement players ….. nomatter how perfect our Micro-skills might be)

Yes this is bad for ranger pets. Almost every tactic in the dungeon involved floor damage, explosion damage, damaging pools, burning paths, and so on. Having said all that, I found my pets staggeringly good at tanking the tree boss.

Marquie Thomas.1873:

Most pets die cause there owner use the wrong one for the situation at hand and they don’t know when to stow it away i used devour/reef drake and the jungle spider pets though this whole dungeon they had very few deaths also if you don’t want it falling dead on the electric floor stow it away i also stowed it away during the ooze run part cause i was the runner longbow is a very good weapon here vul stacks sword warhorn or axe warhorn for healing spring and other types of blast finishers and frost spirit and spirit of renewal for party support are very good here. I don’t know how any one else plays there ranger but it was obvious going into this dungeon that Ranged was the better choice over melee for this particular dungeon and bringing a melee pet other then a drake to deal with trash mob will make it end up dead on the floor most of the time. Any way that’s just my input feel free to disagree

Stowing works until you take any damage then the pet is right back out. I use a ranged pet (devourer too) and a Drake also for melee… the one that breathes confusion. I like to range more then melee myself and I hate the sword autoattacks so tend to use greatsword when melee is needed.

Amineo.8951:

Change vocation and take a warrior instead, it’s just better than any class now and will be superior to guardian in the next update trolololo. I also laugh a lot when i see ‘’ONLY ZERK WARRIORS NO RANGERS!’’ in LFG system, it’s just really stupid, even though i use Guardians and Ele that got nerfed so much, i hate to see some classes getting way too much buffed and others getting useless because of that and that’s what happening right now with rangers in PVE and other classes in PVP.

I have a warrior, I actually have 1 of every class, though the engie and elementalist are still not 80. However I want to play my ranger more then the others.

Even thieves were kind of relegated to finger and turret defense in Tequatl. We have DPS, but not really the stability/shielding/buffs that made us super useful in the DPS zerg unlike Warriors, Guardians, and Elementalists.

I feel sorry for Rangers though. Maybe they could get some traits that let their pets take less damage from AOE sources?

Forcing a class to go X into any tree to fix the shortcomings of that class is not an answer. The core mechanic needs to be overhauled otherwise there is no build diversity which ArenaNet keeps claiming they want. However I do agree something should be done

I agree with what you’re saying, but I think you might have replied to the wrong person/discussion here o_0

Infact a lot of people seem to take issue with what Serbaayuu keeps saying.
So I’d say the burden of proof is really on him…. not us.

(it’s been well established at this point that the “Pet’s AI” has ZERO self-preservation functionality and asking one class to work 5x harder than any other class to retain its “Class mechanic” is a battle that’s already been fought but lost by us Micromanagement players ….. nomatter how perfect our Micro-skills might be)

*Sorry! *

It was late when I replied and thought you were saying that I was exaggerating what I was saying. I don’t do that because otherwise the feedback you’re giving the developers is moot.

I totally agree with you!

I have to be perfectly honest. Pet is really stupid mechanic but you really don’t have to rely on it.

So far I only play ranger and main it. I can’t go without 30 points in my marksmanship. Beside why do people keep saying ranger 30% damage comes from the pet.

If you take into account of the same gear as any other class. Ranger is dealing the same damage as any other class. If your pet is alive, it should be dealing 30% extra damage for you. If your comparing damage to warrior class then you will definitely lose since warrior is primary class that is supposed to deal tons of damage. Otherwise you can just call it wuss.

Jacks.5367:

I have to be perfectly honest. Pet is really stupid mechanic but you really don’t have to rely on it.

So far I only play ranger and main it. I can’t go without 30 points in my marksmanship. Beside why do people keep saying ranger 30% damage comes from the pet.

If you take into account of the same gear as any other class. Ranger is dealing the same damage as any other class. If your pet is alive, it should be dealing 30% extra damage for you. If your comparing damage to warrior class then you will definitely lose since warrior is primary class that is supposed to deal tons of damage. Otherwise you can just call it wuss.

People say that 30-40% ranger damage comes from pets because that’s what the ArenaNet developers have said. Just imagine if you could do away with the pet entirely for a +30% damage boost.

I think this topic needs more bullet points
… first the things they could have done a lot worse to make us hate it even more:

• Atleast there wasn’t a broken boss mechanic (like with Lupi) where it generates MORE AOE’s/Missiles or Adds based on the player*+pet* count around it.
• Not really any insta-kill traps, and definitely none in heavy combat areas.
• With the exception of the Foreman, there wasn’t any huge-HP sponge Bosses that just COATS every last inch in front of them with DOT’s leaving your pet nowhere safe to stand
• no forcefield blender-of-doom with boxes that the pet can’t even path up onto.
• point blank shot can be a life-saver for getting reluctant holos in range of Clocky.

.

Now for the things that really bothered me or just seemed Buggy:

• Pets bring nothing in the way of utility to the Lava/Ooze escort minigame … well the EB wolf sort of helps, but its fear is balanced around PvP so it doesn’t last NEARLY long enough … basically any ranger who ISN’T running Offhand Axe with Offhand training, is completely useless and dragging their whole team down in this section.

• During our zerk fest to drain Slick’s unnecessarily high HP bar, ASAP, I noticed the fume stacks were piling and no one had Oooze attractant over their heads. I look over and it’s humping my stupid spider. This just shouldn’t happen EVER. It’s everything that’s wrong with the Jade Maw encounter and Simin’s stupid Spark parade too.
• Melee pets die way too fast against Slick b/c he just spams PbAoE’s that quickly melt whatever non-player entity gets near him … and having to run spiders instead makes it really hard put out consistent damage and STAY stacked together with the rest of the party. ….constantly babysitting our pet and spamming F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 F3 F1 is NOT FUN nor is it actually a fair challenge.

• Same kind of issue with Holo pirates when we’re all stacked around the gens playing that minigame. They’ll randomly aggro on a ranged pet instead of getting back near the Gen like good little Bombs. None of the pets have a Pull either (Where’s our gawddarned Canyon Spider?? THEY HAVE A PULL…. what’s with all these other craptacular spiders they gave us instead?)

• That second room with lik 8 generators and the entire sections of the floor *(up to 75% of it sometimes) being electrified most of the time. And it’s not just “Oh I need to move off this or I’ll die…” … No it’s like, even with 24K health, I’m dead in like 5 ticks of damage from it and there NO TELEGRAPH OR WARNING as to which sections will light up next. … and I had perma-swiftness & double lunge disengages. I couldn’t even imagine how bad this would be for a pure zerk Ranger attemping to spiritway / shortbow or run anything else with limited escape options.
• Both pets were dying CONSTANTLY at this point by the way b/c this floor just does way too much damage and so I reached the point where I lost too much DPS and even killing the Holos fast enough once I got to a gen, wasn’t happening quite fast enough to get the whole thing done in one go.
• Right after that … instead of giving us all time to rally and refresh our health, CUTSCENE … followed by Clockheart spawning right on top of us. Half the team was already downed and now they’re insta-dead and so is my pet that was licking my wounds.

• Clockheart’s Ultimate: Our shared anguish trait …. IT DOES NOTHZINK!! … okay Anet, we get it, you like spamming us with knockbacks in your “Elite” content, and for some reason only seem to want to give 2 classes any kind of answer to stun-lock inducing knockback spam. We get it…. now please stop it. Being the soccer ball between a bunch of elite Gravelings, Lupi rolling his barf-bubble twice in a row even when we’re only melee’ing him … and now this Seismic wave thing that’s like 60ft in diameter and even our wasp lunge doesn’t get us out of its range.
• Atleast 2 times …. the stupid double/triple knockback launched me so far I ended up on the electrified floor 75ft behind me. ONE of those times, I somehow ended up on one of the little platforms where my Pet couldn’t path to me to lick wounds yet I was still taking damage from the floor somehow …. what the heck? Did an intern set up the trigger-zones on this stuff?
• Melee pets died instantly just trying to get a few hits on this Boss … but ranged pets who had his aggro, also got insta-dead b/c they force his scripted range attack that also does Lupi-tier double bolt damage. There’s really no winning with this guy unless you’re a Warrior or distortion Mesmer …. us sword rangers just get locked into our animations and can’t dodge when we really need to … and the pets of course can’t dodge at all.

Bonus round b/c I ran out of space above:

• Who’s in Charge achievement’s a real pain for rangers b/c there’s nothing our pets can do in that fight in that tiny little alley off to the east of the Foreman. It’s no fun for us rangers either b/c his Spin-to-Win applies cripple but we’re incredibly lacking in the instant and/or mobile condition removal department. Not to mention the phsyics are pretty messed on that spin to win and his velocity and tracking will actually SPEED UP if we lunge to avoid it.

I’ve pretty much given up on Rangers ever being improved from their current state. I’m not saying Anet is incompetent, I just don’t believe they really know what to do with this class. They seem hellbent on keeping the pet which really is the albatross around the neck of the class.

These days I put my Ranger on the shelf and currently play one of the “Holy Trinity” classes so I actually feel like I’m contributing to the party.

ilr.9675:

okay Anet, we get it, you like spamming us with knockbacks in your “Elite” content, and for some reason only seem to want to give 2 classes any kind of answer to stun-lock inducing knockback spam. We get it…. now please stop it.

Yep, knockback in this game is ridiculously over-used.

a) Ranger damage is far from 40% lower than the rest, compare base damage of skills to necro or mesmer skills.
b) 3 words: Devourer and Wolf – both of these guys are very very useful
c) Pet swap and “Guard” exist, just as a thief swaps to scorp wire, a mesmer to focus offhand and GS for other set and Necro to Spectral Grasp, you too should adapt your utility skills.
d) For those with trouble on FM, use the pull mechanic to stairs and make sure to have Sword main hand, Hswpring and Lighting reflexes and dodge trough him with em if you cannot normally dodge. Stick to the 600 range sword 2 evades you back from him since in the 900 is the firestorm aoe knockback effect.
Again devourers are very good here but spiders tend to be even better since they can immob him prior to spin (especially Black Widow/Jungle Spider that can do it even with F2) at least half of the time.
Second weapon should obviously be longbow for evade and interrupt.

hmm,.. weird, i’m a ranger and i’ve had no problems at all with my pet dieing. it only really dies when my group is against clockheart.