Guild Wars 2

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” and attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

Everything you said sounds about right….IF it works. I think we’re still a long ways off before we see that kind of balance in this game.

Chrispy.5641:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” and attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

Everything you said sounds about right….IF it works. I think we’re still a long ways off before we see that kind of balance in this game.

That’s probably very true. But ANet has to start laying down the groundwork somewhere because that type of balance would be much too “kneejerk” to drop on the game all at once, since it would change a very large number of skills and builds, and even playstyles, across pretty much every class.

But if it’s what we’re working towards, I think that it’s definitely something that deserves support, even if most people won’t have the patience to see the transition through all the way to the very end.

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

I do not believe ANet is following that philosophy, because if they where, they wouldn’t be nerfing us continuously as they have been. They would be leaving us alone and nerfing everyone around us instead. But if you look at their prior patch history, ranger’s continue to get nerfed on their damage and survivability.

Chrispy.5641:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” and attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

Everything you said sounds about right….IF it works. I think we’re still a long ways off before we see that kind of balance in this game.

QFT.

This “vision” for the Ranger is awesome, and fully encapsulates the “skirmisher” concept.

But it’s going to take a complete rework of every class (and several basic game mechanics) before it becomes viable. So I worry that if the Devs balance or change the Ranger presently around this future goal, the Ranger will continue to be sub-par until the rest of the classes and game is fixed.

And I’m not sure I like that philosophy.

Because the Devs have adopted a glacial pace of updates/bug fixes/balance, it’s not wise to re-work a profession around a possible future reality. Instead, the class needs to be re-worked in light of the present reality.

OK, I’ve been joking some over in another thread to blow off some steam, but I do have a few things/opinions about ranger pets. I love my ranger. I love him enough to have named him after his GW1 “ancestor” and when I started playing this game with him I really wanted some of that old feel with the pet/beastmaster.

Here are jut a few ideas I’ve kicked around. I have NO idea how much time and energy any of this will take to implement, but I think its something to give some thought to.

First: Juvie to Dire progression. I think if you are a beastmaster that takes the time to exclusively run a pet or two, that those pets should level over time on their own to the point of becoming Dire pets. This would allow them to have longer “leashes” and come closer to some of their original damage potential that had been nerfed some time back. This both helps reward rangers that stay dedicated to certain pets and play styles, while also limiting their efficiency with pets that they don’t have a bond with. It also helps offset the AI issue which we all know can’t get tweaked anytime soon.

Furthermore I think that if you go full beastmaster that there be a trait at the GM level that if you choose it changes your utility skills to those of your pet attacks so you can more readily control and command your pet to perform certain attacks as if they were your utility skills, lending more to the ranger being an actual beastmaster. The key of course is that the pet needs to actually perform the skills when its enacted, etc.

Lastly, please, pet naming. I know it sounds goofy, but as a ranger I really want this. I want the name to be saved. Even if it has to reference some config or text file on my hard drive every time i load up, I want the ability for my pet’s name to be saved.

Akisame.9508:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

I do not believe ANet is following that philosophy, because if they where, they wouldn’t be nerfing us continuously as they have been. They would be leaving us alone and nerfing everyone around us instead. But if you look at their prior patch history, ranger’s continue to get nerfed on their damage and survivability.

I haven’t ever seen anything that was nerfed unnecessarily, and for the most part, this a perception that is shared by people who play every other single class.

So if every class is getting nerfed every patch, since that would be the overall perspective you would find if you took the opinions of every profession and combined them together, it seems like overall, ANet is slowly pushing the game in a different direction by changing things they don’t like for every class.

Also, they are only human, they can make mistakes too. They can over-nerf and over-buff things but when there is an actual goal, or baseline in mind that they are balancing towards, those are the things that will get corrected and ironed out along the way.

Am I personally happy with the ranger class and some of the changes that have occurred? Absolutely not at all. But I am happy to know that there is an idea in mind for the class, and that these changes aren’t just shots in the dark trying to hit a target.

And, just in general, not directed at any particular person, I don’t think that is fair to make demands and then be unhappy when things don’t happen immediately. Not only does developing and balancing a game take time and the efforts of multiple development teams when the changes call for it, but there is also bureaucratic red tape and procedures that have to be met, along with a fair amount of QA, and then having to make the decision of whether or not it is a healthy time to introduce something into the game, or whether it would be too much of a kneejerk change that would end up hurting more than fixing at that time.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Have pets re-spawn and synchronize efficiently with their masters

Goal of Proposal
To make pets viable

Proposal Functionality

My suggestions:

• Have the pet respawn after XX seconds if it’s HP bar reaches zero
• Add a trait to reduce the respawn timer
• Pets told to avoid combat support their masters give a buff or an effect to them (or have a hotkey option to trigger a buff or an effect). E.g. The owl removes 1 condition per X seconds or on trigger
• Pets go invulnerable during their masters dodge, thus allowing them to “dodge” too
• Pets adopt their masters stats. Pets would still retain weighting towards their main stats to keep their individuality, however a PVT ranger’s pet would last longer than a zerker Ranger’s pet, who in turn would deal more damage per second

Associated Risks
Balance issues and time needed for updating and testing each pet.

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

I have some problems with this…

For starters, if you use a move that doesn’t increase your DPS it isn’t a burst skill. To deal burst literally means to increase your DPS for a short period of time. Setting up the burst is what takes skill, and you set it up by finding an openning to deliver your burst.

That’s the problem… to create an openning for birst, the easiest thing to do is use another burst skill. This way they avoid the first one, but have nothing left to avoid the second. You can also shut down the target, which is why CC is so valuable.

Even if DPS is a problem and ANet cut all damage across the board down to what a Ranger is capable of, burst and AE is still all that’s going to matter. It just won’t be as effective as it is today. It won’t magically make burstless, single target sustained damage more valuable.

Now as for ‘whiffing’ an attack… there’s nothing about sustained damage to ‘whiff’. It’s predictable damage that the opponent can plan for ahead of time because it’s unchanging. When sustained damage ‘whiffs’ it’s because the opponent decided to use a heal or a dodge skill, but unlike in the case of burst, they use these skills on their own terms whereas with burst you’re using these skills on the bursting player’s terms.

And with all of this, we’re still not taking into consideration that the time frame for a fight is finite. The class simply isn’t given the tools to prolong a fight to the point their damage would ever catch up. Even if you doubled the cooldown on every other skill in the game, single target sustained damage would never amount to anything. It just doesn’t apply enough pressure for anyone to take notice.

And thus why no one has taken notice of this class in WvW.

Permastow is ok, but not for gaining +DMG. This option should offer something else.
Maybe a little speedbuff or some +endurance regen, that wouldn’t make many of us to ignore pets, even if they’re fixed in that patch.

Anyway I’m up with remodelling, reanimating & retexturing the pets. Most of them also look dumb…
Okay, it’s not a realistic skyrim modfest, but still… real animals shouldn’t look as candy as overall GW2 does.

For the Traits: All I know is that they need to support their meaning. Its my view:

1. Marksmanship: Precision & Condition Damage
2. Skirmishing: Power & Critical Damage (in hope Ferocity won’t kitten us up)
3. Wilderness Survival: Thoughness & Healing Power
4. Nature Magic: Vitality & Boon Duration
5. Beast Mastery: Pet Attrib & Condition Duration

This is how it makes sense for me. Let me explain:

1. Marksmanship focuses ranged weapons, needs prec & CC buffs.
2. Skirmishing focuses melee, but also supports else. Its martial art.
3. Wilderness Survival for staying alive.
4. Nature Magic is our synergy with the wilds.
5. Beast Mastery explains pet buff & their controlled effects to buff.

Many of you may disagree with me here but at least it seems straight for me, we would be able to specialise & balance on these trees.

I think what I really want to know is; is this description of a sustain-based skirmishing survivor meant to be what we’re bringing to the table in a group play situation, or is that just a self enclosed description of how the combat plays out on a tactical button-pressing level apart from the impact its having on our teammates?

I think the sustainable survivor model is very successful….when used as a means to accomplish other goals and playing into a larger niche in combat, and not as the ends itself.

For example, I never minded sustain damage on my FPS Assault or my MOBA Tank, because I was never using for it’s own sake. I was exerting a bit of damage to get somebody off my point or to get them to retreat down the lane. It was always playing into a larger scare tactic of my very human opponent by using damage as pressure to control their movement. It was Slow and Steady, because it was supposed to be a Threat; and what good is a threat if people don’t have time to react to it?

I never played a sustainable survivor, that existed solely for the sake of sustaining and surviving. That sort of monotony just isn’t interesting all by itself.

Suggested Proposal Format:

Specific Game Mode
PvE (Please note PvE should always be balanced separately from WvW and PvP)

Proposal Overview
The goal is define rangers as true class since so may skills were diverted to warriors and thiefs.

Goal of Proposal
To make the ranger a class that can contribute to a party or have some success in solo play in the “persistent” PvE environment.

Proposal Functionality
The ranger is truely in worst shape as the class has no “defined” role that truely separates the class and makes it playable in PvE in any way. In order to make it functional:

*skills 1-4 need to unlinked from weapons where they can or have another skill tree to build onto for example skill 3 could have an option for “poison arrow”
*skill 5 needs “buffing” to make class more durable since you are decreasing “vigor” across all classes
*skills 6-9 need major reworking as the skill tree is redundant and does not allow rangers to become experts in anything:

1.Archers: why not add more archery skills in the skill lines for slots 6-9, such as “poison arrow, etc from the library of GW1 skills” for this class (short bow – personal PoV – does the class an injustice). In part this appears due to fact that GW1 skills were reassigned to the warrior.
2.Trappers: more traps and allow them to stack, ie, vipers plus dust…and do away with poorly used spirits (not viable in boss battle where traps would be) or make “spirits” more robust and effective like “brambles” from GW.
3.Tamers: the shouts for the most part take the place of real skills on the tree and control of pets is very poor. They need to be more like they were in GW1. Only playable one is search and rescue.
4.Duelest (;ong sword and great sword): add “short sword/dagger” off hand and again add skill in slots 1-4 that can be changed “counter-thrust” and traits in 6-9 that support this style of play.
5.Elites that fit not just the race (ie Norn Ursan warrior should not overlap Norn ranger)

Associated Risks
None, except that PvE rangers (and all PvE classes as a general rule) need to be balanced SEPARETELY from WvW and PvP. The class is currently defined and relies entirely on the “pet” so you could almost drop the character and play solely the pet and have the same result.

jcbroe.4329:

I haven’t ever seen anything that was nerfed unnecessarily, and for the most part, this a perception that is shared by people who play every other single class.

Pet damage for non beastmaster builds?
Shortbow range?
Shortbow “animation fix” mega nerf?

Aioros.4862:

jcbroe.4329:

I haven’t ever seen anything that was nerfed unnecessarily, and for the most part, this a perception that is shared by people who play every other single class.

Pet damage for non beastmaster builds?
Shortbow range?
Shortbow “animation fix” mega nerf?

Key word is bolded, when SB had same range as longbow there was literally 0 reason to use the longbow, pet damage was nerfed because you could go bunker with literally 0 drawback, and SB animation fix was to make the weapon not ungodly OP, after that “mega nerf” it continued to be, and still is, one of our best weapons.

jcbroe.4329:

I haven’t ever seen anything that was nerfed unnecessarily, and for the most part, this a perception that is shared by people who play every other single class.

So if every class is getting nerfed every patch, since that would be the overall perspective you would find if you took the opinions of every profession and combined them together, it seems like overall, ANet is slowly pushing the game in a different direction by changing things they don’t like for every class.

Also, they are only human, they can make mistakes too. They can over-nerf and over-buff things but when there is an actual goal, or baseline in mind that they are balancing towards, those are the things that will get corrected and ironed out along the way.

Am I personally happy with the ranger class and some of the changes that have occurred? Absolutely not at all. But I am happy to know that there is an idea in mind for the class, and that these changes aren’t just shots in the dark trying to hit a target.

And, just in general, not directed at any particular person, I don’t think that is fair to make demands and then be unhappy when things don’t happen immediately. Not only does developing and balancing a game take time and the efforts of multiple development teams when the changes call for it, but there is also bureaucratic red tape and procedures that have to be met, along with a fair amount of QA, and then having to make the decision of whether or not it is a healthy time to introduce something into the game, or whether it would be too much of a kneejerk change that would end up hurting more than fixing at that time.

Pets where nerfed several times last year, even their damage was nerfed by 50%. I’m not unhappy because things aren’t happening immediately, I’m unhappy because it’s been a year and a half and we’re still on the same exact problems since day 1 with NOTHING being done in that year and a half span. I think after a year and a half, if they can’t get the stupid pet working then it’s about time to remove that stupid thing! What’s it going to take, another two years before they get the pet working? Sorry, I’m not sticking around that long waiting for a change that should have happened last year! And I know many people are in the same boat.

I’m not attacking you so please don’t think that. But honestly think to yourself, it’s been a year and a half and we are still, to this day, regurgitating the same problems and fixes since DAY 1! Has anything been fixed in that time? NO, all we got was an answer saying that they know pets are broken but they can’t fix it without screwing other things up so they are not going to touch pets. This tells me that whether we like it or not, we will always have a broken mechanic. Them coming on here and saying that they will NOT remove pets, means that they don’t care that we have a broken mechanic. As long as this broken mechanic stays with us, we will always be broken! I am a paying customer, I paid for this product and it’s not up to par as the description claims and all they can do is say sorry, I won’t fix it! kitten them! They have this stick shoved so far up their kitten about ranger’s being a pet class that they can’t see that they are hurting the ranger class by being so single track minded! The pets don’t work, you won’t fix the pet, so remove the kitten thing already. up our damage to what it should be if the pets actually worked and we’re done! If they still want us to be a pet class then leave the pets in as a utility for buffs and KD’s and Fear’s and crap like that. I’ve never seen a company that care’s so little about it’s customers!

I’m not taking this out on you Jcbroe, and I’m sorry if it sounds like that. I’m normally interested in reading what you write overall, I’m just so tired of this crap already. we’ve been ignored for over a year and when I hear a dev speak here, I feel more and more assured that they honestly don’t plan to fix us…or don’t know how to fix us, so we’re gonna end up more screwed then we are right now. I would honestly love to know how many of them actually play a ranger as their main, I’m dieing to know the answer to this question, because it can’t be many…if any at all.

I strongly believe anet wants to fix this class… they just physically can not. They don’t have the resources to do so… they have to allocate their resources as ncscoft says to do so (everything will be focused on living story + gem store lol. I’m particularly sick and tired of this LS nonsense when soo many things in this game require more attention and are way more important, but that’s for another day….)

This balance patch will determine wether or not I personally keep playing ranger…. i want too but if they can’t make any drastic changes, I see no reason to keep playing ranger. Every class can literally do everything better than ranger. There is not a kitten thing unique about rangers at all, and thats after 1.5 years…. complete and utter disappointment is an understatement right now

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Change Path of Scars (axe offhand 4) to fly like a normal projectile.

Goal of Proposal
Give rangers a usable pull, allowing them to yank people off walls.

Proposal Functionality
Currently path of scars does some kind of weird terrain tracking instead of flying like a normal projectile, almost like mesmer staff auto attack except more unpredictable. Thus it’s basically impossible to use it over differences in terrain, and completely impossible to use it to pull people off walls (gives out of range error). Giving this ability to rangers would give them a desirable tool in WvW.

Associated Risks
Having more wall pulls could be frustrating in WvW. However this would still be a projectile and thus still require LoS, so it would be usable less often than the normal wall pulls from mesmers and guardians.

Durzlla.6295:

Aioros.4862:

jcbroe.4329:

I haven’t ever seen anything that was nerfed unnecessarily, and for the most part, this a perception that is shared by people who play every other single class.

Pet damage for non beastmaster builds?
Shortbow range?
Shortbow “animation fix” mega nerf?

Key word is bolded, when SB had same range as longbow there was literally 0 reason to use the longbow, pet damage was nerfed because you could go bunker with literally 0 drawback, and SB animation fix was to make the weapon not ungodly OP, after that “mega nerf” it continued to be, and still is, one of our best weapons.

I said non beastmaster builds, the only bunker build at the time. power builds are not bunker builds and suffered the same % damage reduction to pet damage.

I don’t remember anything in bows ever being ungodly OP, and Shortbow damage is pitiful. They could also make the longbow more appealing by making it not suck, instead of making both weapons suck.

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

I have some problems with this…

For starters, if you use a move that doesn’t increase your DPS it isn’t a burst skill. To deal burst literally means to increase your DPS for a short period of time. Setting up the burst is what takes skill, and you set it up by finding an openning to deliver your burst.

That’s the problem… to create an openning for birst, the easiest thing to do is use another burst skill. This way they avoid the first one, but have nothing left to avoid the second. You can also shut down the target, which is why CC is so valuable.

Even if DPS is a problem and ANet cut all damage across the board down to what a Ranger is capable of, burst and AE is still all that’s going to matter. It just won’t be as effective as it is today. It won’t magically make burstless, single target sustained damage more valuable.

Now as for ‘whiffing’ an attack… there’s nothing about sustained damage to ‘whiff’. It’s predictable damage that the opponent can plan for ahead of time because it’s unchanging. When sustained damage ‘whiffs’ it’s because the opponent decided to use a heal or a dodge skill, but unlike in the case of burst, they use these skills on their own terms whereas with burst you’re using these skills on the bursting player’s terms.

And with all of this, we’re still not taking into consideration that the time frame for a fight is finite. The class simply isn’t given the tools to prolong a fight to the point their damage would ever catch up. Even if you doubled the cooldown on every other skill in the game, single target sustained damage would never amount to anything. It just doesn’t apply enough pressure for anyone to take notice.

And thus why no one has taken notice of this class in WvW.

Burst/Spike damage and DPS are very different things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_per_second

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spike_damage

For instance, when a thief sets up and uses backstab, more than likely, they would have achieved the same damage output by just autoattacking for sustained DPS during the time frame it takes to stealth, position, and then actually land backstab, not to mention that backstab is a much more avoidable skill than sustained, zero cooldown autoattacks.

Again, burst skills are large damage values that are done in a given instant that do not increase DPS, due to burst skills having positional requirements, setup requirements, activation times, channel times, and aftercasts. During this instant, burst is going to do more damage, but over a time interval (DPS is calculated over time, and is not a calculation of instantaneous damage), the damage outputs are going to end up equal (let’s take a dagger/pistol thief, and assume that setting up a backstab combo takes 5 seconds. The combo will do 5k damage at the 5th second plus the damage of the pistol shot, where as autoattacking will be doing approximately 1k damage per second
for 5 seconds).

Allie explicitly stated that any offenders that break this philosophy are going to be rebalanced to reflect it, and that currently, the game is not a good position where the classes are balanced to reflect this, which results in the perception that everybody should have the option to build for “spam to win.”

Akisame.9508:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

I do not believe ANet is following that philosophy, because if they where, they wouldn’t be nerfing us continuously as they have been. They would be leaving us alone and nerfing everyone around us instead. But if you look at their prior patch history, ranger’s continue to get nerfed on their damage and survivability.

YUP.

The problem is that we are the easy profession to iron out when something rises above because everything else is so lackluster. The changes that need to be made are core changes that literally effect every class, and thus we’ll never see.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease.

We need to stop the wait and see approach as that leaves people in frustration for way too long and adopt a smaller, more frequent balancing cycle. You want a lower dps future with rangers being equal? Let’s start now.

I played Warhammer Online from the begining and can say with expereince that leaving too much dps in with certain classes and adopting a wait and see policy was the single most devastating thing that happened. We need to see more tweaks more often, and with a singular purpose.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I didn’t say Rangers are in the right spot. I just meant that we have to be very careful of the power creep.

We know what you mean but that is very hard for us to see that because the ranger power builds are some of the worst power builds in the game in terms of damage output.This is mostly because the pet damage is just not where it should be for these builds and most of the time the pet is not contributing when we play power builds. They ether die fast from aoe, have minimal damage, or remain on passive. Considering mesmer phantoms and necro minions share stats with the caster we find we are at an unacceptable level for damage output when we run power/zerker builds.

Miflett.3472:

We need to stop the wait and see approach as that leaves people in frustration for way too long and adopt a smaller, more frequent balancing cycle. You want a lower dps future with rangers being equal? Let’s start now.

This is exactly what I mean. Balancing in large chunks just leaves too much room for errors that won’t get properly addressed until the next big patch arrives months later. You look at MOBAs like Dota 2 and LoL and you see that they roll out multiple balancing updates a month, sometimes even on a weekly basis. This way there’s less that needs to be focused upon at once and it is much easier to build upon previous rebalancing to make a better game.

The sporadic updates every few months needs to stop. Balancing needs to come first and foremost, and additional content like living story needs to be secondary. People don’t care how much any new content has to offer when they feel handicapped by problems that are beyond their control.

Black Box.9312:

The sporadic updates every few months needs to stop. Balancing needs to come first and foremost, and additional content like living story needs to be secondary. People don’t care how much any new content has to offer when they feel handicapped by problems that are beyond their control.

That’s because League of Legends is a moba with only PvP game modes. Balancing is pretty much a straight shot.

GW2 is an MMO, where the majority of players are going to be playing a lot of PvE and playing just a little bit of PvP and WvW. It’s all about priorities, and we don’t rank very high on them. Sad truth.

Aegael.6938:

Black Box.9312:

The sporadic updates every few months needs to stop. Balancing needs to come first and foremost, and additional content like living story needs to be secondary. People don’t care how much any new content has to offer when they feel handicapped by problems that are beyond their control.

That’s because League of Legends is a moba with only PvP game modes. Balancing is pretty much a straight shot.

GW2 is an MMO, where the majority of players are going to be playing a lot of PvE and playing just a little bit of PvP and WvW. It’s all about priorities, and we don’t rank very high on them. Sad truth.

This would make sense if they based their balancing philosophy around PvE, or better yet, split the balancing between game modes. The problem is that they don’t. Their balancing revolves almost exclusively around 5v5 tournament PvP, and with the constant talk about how much Anet wants this game to get an ‘esports’ scene, it’s a wonder why they seem to give such an impression of laziness toward such a crucial part of any highly competitive game.

Allie Murdock.8152:

(resilient) through burst….

Not being rude but you guys really missed the mark. Also please expand on this more. Provide an example of this “burst” we’re supposed to survive?

jcbroe.4329:

Burst/Spike damage and DPS are very different things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_per_second

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spike_damage

For instance, when a thief sets up and uses backstab, more than likely, they would have achieved the same damage output by just autoattacking for sustained DPS during the time frame it takes to stealth, position, and then actually land backstab, not to mention that backstab is a much more avoidable skill than sustained, zero cooldown autoattacks.

Again, burst skills are large damage values that are done in a given instant that do not increase DPS, due to burst skills having positional requirements, setup requirements, activation times, channel times, and aftercasts. During this instant, burst is going to do more damage, but over a time interval (DPS is calculated over time, and is not a calculation of instantaneous damage), the damage outputs are going to end up equal (let’s take a dagger/pistol thief, and assume that setting up a backstab combo takes 5 seconds. The combo will do 5k damage at the 5th second plus the damage of the pistol shot, where as autoattacking will be doing approximately 1k damage per second
for 5 seconds).

Allie explicitly stated that any offenders that break this philosophy are going to be rebalanced to reflect it, and that currently, the game is not a good position where the classes are balanced to reflect this, which results in the perception that everybody should have the option to build for “spam to win.”

I have no idea what’s going on… I think we’re just arguing over semantics here.

The 2 scenarios you mention have the same DPS. The backstab scenario is better though because no one is doing just backstab. They frontload the backstab and follow it up with their auto-attack combo twice, then C&D and backstab again. So this does basically 5k damage + 10k damage + 2k damage over 4 seconds. This is much better than the Ranger’s alternative of auto attack + rapid fire and repeat. And you know what else? The thief scenario is actually FUN! Not just because I see results when I push buttons… but because I push buttons! The Ranger scenario I turn on auto and …

Now of course the Thief scenario above is exactly what’s wrong with this game in ANet’s eyes. That kind of damage is out of control (and is very real). But it’s the kind of damage a Ranger should do (minus the obligatory 30% our dead pet accounts for).

Does it add to the problem? Of course it does… but it at least puts the Ranger on the same playing field as the other classes and ANet could then hit all of the classes the same way. Something as simple as dividing the power formula in half for example.

I’d much rather see the Ranger class brought up to the other class’ level now than wallow in the mud for another 2 years waiting for ANet to being all the other classes down and STILL be in the same situation because even at half the damage, burst and AE will still be all that matters.

Durzlla.6295:

Aioros.4862:

jcbroe.4329:

I haven’t ever seen anything that was nerfed unnecessarily, and for the most part, this a perception that is shared by people who play every other single class.

Pet damage for non beastmaster builds?
Shortbow range?
Shortbow “animation fix” mega nerf?

Key word is bolded, when SB had same range as longbow there was literally 0 reason to use the longbow, pet damage was nerfed because you could go bunker with literally 0 drawback, and SB animation fix was to make the weapon not ungodly OP, after that “mega nerf” it continued to be, and still is, one of our best weapons.

Balance is not about balancing a class with itself, but with the whole game. They wanted to make longbow more desired, so instead of adding to it, to bring it to a point equal to similar possibilities of other classes, they chose to nerf a weapon that was on par with other classes possibilities….

I do understand that it is hard to find a good balance for all game modes, but balancing everything on one game mode that is not representative of what most people do is far from the solution.

If the SB would have been really overpowered – which I don’t think it was – they wouldn’t have nerfed it to balance out with longbow, they would have nerfed it to balance with general professions’ abilities. (Pretty much everybody say they nerfed it to make longbow more wanted… I don’t remember reading that they nerfed it because it was, in itself, overpowered).
Since that nerf, they did boost longbow somewhat, guess the SB nerf was not enough to get people to use LB…

Not sure if it makes sense; English is not my main language.

TL;DR
Balance should not be only within one profession, but have to take into account all that one profession is doing (CC, Damage, healing, damage reduction) compared with all that other professions are doing.

Give is the ability to control 2 or 3 pets at the same time.

Atherakhia.4086:

I have no idea what’s going on… I think we’re just arguing over semantics here.

The 2 scenarios you mention have the same DPS. The backstab scenario is better though because no one is doing just backstab. They frontload the backstab and follow it up with their auto-attack combo twice, then C&D and backstab again. So this does basically 5k damage + 10k damage + 2k damage over 4 seconds. This is much better than the Ranger’s alternative of auto attack + rapid fire and repeat.

actually I think a thief is a bad example because while he’s done his 15-17k damage in 4 seconds, by the time you turned around, targeted, and started your own counterattack, he’s already invisible and lining up for another 15k attack since there are no cooldowns for him. so your dps is drastically lower then the thief because he goes invis and you can’t attack him while invis. All you can do here is pull out your GS and swing like a blind mad man

Paulie.6215:

Give is the ability to control 2 or 3 pets at the same time.

We can’t even control ONE well, but you want 2 or 3 ?!!
Even ONE pet would be nice in case if its very useable and highly & fast controlable.

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

Burst/Spike damage and DPS are very different things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_per_second

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spike_damage

For instance, when a thief sets up and uses backstab, more than likely, they would have achieved the same damage output by just autoattacking for sustained DPS during the time frame it takes to stealth, position, and then actually land backstab, not to mention that backstab is a much more avoidable skill than sustained, zero cooldown autoattacks.

Again, burst skills are large damage values that are done in a given instant that do not increase DPS, due to burst skills having positional requirements, setup requirements, activation times, channel times, and aftercasts. During this instant, burst is going to do more damage, but over a time interval (DPS is calculated over time, and is not a calculation of instantaneous damage), the damage outputs are going to end up equal (let’s take a dagger/pistol thief, and assume that setting up a backstab combo takes 5 seconds. The combo will do 5k damage at the 5th second plus the damage of the pistol shot, where as autoattacking will be doing approximately 1k damage per second
for 5 seconds).

Allie explicitly stated that any offenders that break this philosophy are going to be rebalanced to reflect it, and that currently, the game is not a good position where the classes are balanced to reflect this, which results in the perception that everybody should have the option to build for “spam to win.”

I have no idea what’s going on… I think we’re just arguing over semantics here.

The 2 scenarios you mention have the same DPS. The backstab scenario is better though because no one is doing just backstab. They frontload the backstab and follow it up with their auto-attack combo twice, then C&D and backstab again. So this does basically 5k damage + 10k damage + 2k damage over 4 seconds. This is much better than the Ranger’s alternative of auto attack + rapid fire and repeat.

Now of course the Thief scenario above is exactly what’s wrong with this game in ANet’s eyes. That kind of damage is out of control (and is very real). But it’s the kind of damage a Ranger should do (minus the obligatory 30% our dead pet accounts for).

Does it add to the problem? Of course it does… but it at least puts the Ranger on the same playing field as the other classes and ANet could then hit all of the classes the same way. Something as simple as dividing the power formula in half for example.

I’d much rather see the Ranger class brought up to the other class’ level now than wallow in the mud for another 2 years waiting for ANet to being all the other classes down and STILL be in the same situation because even at half the damage, burst and AE will still be all that matters.

From an enjoyment value I 100% agree with you, I really do. But I’m also split because as a programmer I totally understand ANet’s side of it as well, and how they would rather get the game where they want it to go without sidetracking progress because they believe the end result is worth the wait.

It’s a tough call, it really is. Do they appeal to the current playerbase and balance for enjoyment value, or do they persist with their vision of the perfect quality game hoping that when it hits the mark they hope it hits that enough players are patient enough to continue playing, as ANet can start trying to draw more players again from that point?

All I can say is that I wouldn’t want to be the one making those calls, and if I was one of the developers, I can’t imagine having to sacrifice my ideals and the things that drive me and that I take pride in as a programmer to please a playerbase. Just like as a player, I don’t understand why the goal isn’t to go out of the way to make as many current players as happy as possible with the game so that the playerbase doesn’t shrink and we can continue getting enjoyment out of the game.

Such a tough spot to be in lol.

jcbroe.4329:

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

snip

snip

…

For instance, when a thief sets up and uses backstab, more than likely, they would have achieved the same damage output by just autoattacking for sustained DPS during the time frame it takes to stealth, position, and then actually land backstab, not to mention that backstab is a much more avoidable skill than sustained, zero cooldown autoattacks.

Again, burst skills are large damage values that are done in a given instant that do not increase DPS, due to burst skills having positional requirements, setup requirements, activation times, channel times, and aftercasts. During this instant, burst is going to do more damage, but over a time interval (DPS is calculated over time, and is not a calculation of instantaneous damage), the damage outputs are going to end up equal (let’s take a dagger/pistol thief, and assume that setting up a backstab combo takes 5 seconds. The combo will do 5k damage at the 5th second plus the damage of the pistol shot, where as autoattacking will be doing approximately 1k damage per second
for 5 seconds).

But, while thief is getting ready for it’s backstab, we cannot reliably attack it…
So burst end up being better, because it’s low-risk/high reward in your example, while being unstealthed is higher risk for the same reward…

And the example of thief is not so much a good one… take Warrior bursts and warrior damage over time, and tell me how it equals up… or mesmer’s… or all other professions that have great burst.

Burst give too much advantages compared with sustained. It would be OK if sustained was somewhat higher in the same timeframe as a full burst rotation, it would balance the risk/reward, but it is not in the current meta given how fast bursts can be chained…

They might think about changing the burst meta – it will not change the fact that the game designs is encouraging bursts specs… and that the new content makes it even more important to have bursts abilities… I do not understand why they would add content that demands bursts if their point is to somewhat phase out bursts…

Another area where sustain damage is an issue is WvW tower defense. Holding still for a barrage will get you melted. Getting close enough to throw traps will get you pulled. You are lucky if you can get your Devourer up on the ledge to attack enemies. Against a reasonable number of enemies all this would be much less of an issue, but zergs are the name of the game.

Black Box.9312:

Miflett.3472:

We need to stop the wait and see approach as that leaves people in frustration for way too long and adopt a smaller, more frequent balancing cycle. You want a lower dps future with rangers being equal? Let’s start now.

This is exactly what I mean. Balancing in large chunks just leaves too much room for errors that won’t get properly addressed until the next big patch arrives months later. You look at MOBAs like Dota 2 and LoL and you see that they roll out multiple balancing updates a month, sometimes even on a weekly basis. This way there’s less that needs to be focused upon at once and it is much easier to build upon previous rebalancing to make a better game.

The sporadic updates every few months needs to stop. Balancing needs to come first and foremost, and additional content like living story needs to be secondary. People don’t care how much any new content has to offer when they feel handicapped by problems that are beyond their control.

A MOBA GAME IS DESIGNED AROUND ARENA PVP, NOT PVE. BOTH LOL AND DOTA2 HAS ONLY ONE OR TWO MAPS, THEREFORE, THEY DO NOT NEED TO BALANCE THE CHARACTERS FOR ANYTHING ELSE THEN PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER. A MOBA IS AT HEART THE PINNACLE OF GAME BALANCING. ONE WRONG STEP AND THE GAME ITSELF BREAKS.

GW2 is an MMO-RPG. It is a fantasy game, a online story telling game, with frequent STORY content being updated. It is NOT supposed to be a pureblood PvP game. No MMO is. The PvP section of GW2, GW1, Daoc, TESO, SWTOR, WoW, AoC, Rift, Aion, Runescape or any other popular MMO is NOT the main aspect of the game, it is the icing on the cake. It is what makes people keep interested inbetween the story updates.

We cannot do content updates with the same rate and “intensity” as a MOBA, simply because then PvE itself will be neglected. Once you neglect PvE and massive portion of the games player will simply stop playing after a while. Not because they cannot do PvP/WvW, but because a big number of people do not enjoy conflicts between players. They enjoy making their chars look sexy, or roleplay. However in MMO’s, you are free to do so without being plagued by the PvP’ers, this is why you see massive PvE populations while the PvP populations are mostly the ones who cling to the game to the bitter end, and the main reason for that is due to us humans being extremely competitive.

Everything seems to be pointed towards tweaking some skills and abilities to “fix” rangers. Its like throwing sand in the wind. A profession doesn’t get 90% voted as the most needing help, is a class often refused into various PvE groups, is outright banned in some wuv guilds, etc, just because it needs some tweaks.

The class needs a ground up rework. And a recognition that the Pet is 80% of the problem. Anything less means all this CDI effort will result in rangers being a slightly more tolerated, but still generally unwanted member of a group in most activities versus any other class.

misterdevious.6482:

Another area where sustain damage is an issue is WvW tower defense. Holding still for a barrage will get you melted. Getting close enough to throw traps will get you pulled. You are lucky if you can get your Devourer up on the ledge to attack enemies. Against a reasonable number of enemies all this would be much less of an issue, but zergs are the name of the game.

You only get pulled if you don’t use stability. Not using stability even outside of 1v1 or frontline zerging is a error on the players side.

Also, why not build an AC? it is infinately better then what you can do with a bow, and that IS intentional.

Joiry.2504:

Everything seems to be pointed towards tweaking some skills and abilities to “fix” rangers. Its like throwing sand in the wind. A profession doesn’t get 90% voted as the most needing help, is a class often refused into various PvE groups, is outright banned in some wuv guilds, etc, just because it needs some tweaks.

The class needs a ground up rework. And a recognition that the Pet is 80% of the problem. Anything less means all this CDI effort will result in rangers being a slightly more tolerated, but still generally unwanted member of a group in most activities versus any other class.

I thought about it quite a bit but I can’t find better words to put it this in… more vulgar, yes, but not better.

Prysin.8542:

Black Box.9312:

Miflett.3472:

We need to stop the wait and see approach as that leaves people in frustration for way too long and adopt a smaller, more frequent balancing cycle. You want a lower dps future with rangers being equal? Let’s start now.

This is exactly what I mean. Balancing in large chunks just leaves too much room for errors that won’t get properly addressed until the next big patch arrives months later. You look at MOBAs like Dota 2 and LoL and you see that they roll out multiple balancing updates a month, sometimes even on a weekly basis. This way there’s less that needs to be focused upon at once and it is much easier to build upon previous rebalancing to make a better game.

The sporadic updates every few months needs to stop. Balancing needs to come first and foremost, and additional content like living story needs to be secondary. People don’t care how much any new content has to offer when they feel handicapped by problems that are beyond their control.

A MOBA GAME IS DESIGNED AROUND ARENA PVP, NOT PVE. BOTH LOL AND DOTA2 HAS ONLY ONE OR TWO MAPS, THEREFORE, THEY DO NOT NEED TO BALANCE THE CHARACTERS FOR ANYTHING ELSE THEN PLAYER VERSUS PLAYER. A MOBA IS AT HEART THE PINNACLE OF GAME BALANCING. ONE WRONG STEP AND THE GAME ITSELF BREAKS.

GW2 is an MMO-RPG. It is a fantasy game, a online story telling game, with frequent STORY content being updated. It is NOT supposed to be a pureblood PvP game. No MMO is. The PvP section of GW2, GW1, Daoc, TESO, SWTOR, WoW, AoC, Rift, Aion, Runescape or any other popular MMO is NOT the main aspect of the game, it is the icing on the cake. It is what makes people keep interested inbetween the story updates.

We cannot do content updates with the same rate and “intensity” as a MOBA, simply because then PvE itself will be neglected. Once you neglect PvE and massive portion of the games player will simply stop playing after a while. Not because they cannot do PvP/WvW, but because a big number of people do not enjoy conflicts between players. They enjoy making their chars look sexy, or roleplay. However in MMO’s, you are free to do so without being plagued by the PvP’ers, this is why you see massive PvE populations while the PvP populations are mostly the ones who cling to the game to the bitter end, and the main reason for that is due to us humans being extremely competitive.

For this, I direct you to the post I made in response to the person who had already made this point. I’m not gonna bother reposting it, because it’s on this page not that far up.

Prysin.8542:

misterdevious.6482:

Another area where sustain damage is an issue is WvW tower defense. Holding still for a barrage will get you melted. Getting close enough to throw traps will get you pulled. You are lucky if you can get your Devourer up on the ledge to attack enemies. Against a reasonable number of enemies all this would be much less of an issue, but zergs are the name of the game.

You only get pulled if you don’t use stability. Not using stability even outside of 1v1 or frontline zerging is a error on the players side.

Also, why not build an AC? it is infinately better then what you can do with a bow, and that IS intentional.

Because I’m usually using a cannon or the oil. A tanky ranger with full oil mastery and empathic bond pet guarding safely inside can stay on that thing very well.

Anyone can use siege. When a wall is involved, that means people can run up, deal damage, and then go to safety. Burst takes people down, sustain just forces them to back up.

PvP Modes: The comical notion that with no better or varied tools than punching-each-other-in-the-face, the Player-Base will create endlessly engaging content for each other, thereby reducing the Developers’ need to do so…

And I say that as someone who liked PvP in SW:TOR… though over there we had a PvP-specific gear progression to chase after across months of heavy play and 4 different modes at launch.

Does anyone know when this CDI ends because I feel like we haven’t accomplished anything in the past 10 pages.

Perhaps we should move away from the burst and damage discussion while we wait for Allie to check in and discuss some of the other issues plagueing this class?

I think now would be a good time to discuss the issues with our utility skills and why many of them don’t seem worth taking until we’ve first invested well over 20 or 30 points in various trees.

Signets for example; their activated portions have no impact on the Ranger as a whole with only a few exceptions unless we first get Signet of the Beastmaster in the Marksmanship line. We have similar issues with Spike trap not being useful without 30points in Skirmishing. Spirits not being useful unless they’re mobile. Guard not having any functional use without Nature’s Voice.

That’s nearly half of our utility skills.

Is the active for Signet of Stone so powerful that you feel it requires a 30pt trait?

Why does Guard have a cast time and provide nothing of value?

Would we really be that overpowered if Spike Trap immobilized?

On another note, Ranger is one of the best class at maning Environemental/Siege weapons and bundles (conjured weapons mostly) because the pet can still do things while they’re using them and those weapons are designed (damage coefficients) without taking pets/minions into accounts.

Black Box.9312:

For this, I direct you to the post I made in response to the person who had already made this point. I’m not gonna bother reposting it, because it’s on this page not that far up.

and i will counter your “brilliant” counter with a simple fact;
The wast wast wast majority of all players in GW2 resides in the section most commonly known as “Player versus Enviroment”. These are the folks that buy perma harvest tools, gems, skins, fun items, swap gems for gold. These are the folks paying for YOUR game. Because whatever me and you invest in this game, our part does not even come close to what PvE players provide.

HOWEVER, GW2 was designed to take the casual player into consideration. This is why PvE balance is fairly lax. The PvP aspect of the game was intended to be a esport, however it seems they have gone back on this endeavor for now. Yet, PvP is supposed to be a “Fair combat mode”. Therefore the game is, as unfortunate as it is, balanced with PvP in mind. This is because PvP is similar to WvW, just smaller and more fast paced, yet there is extreme differences.

The unfortunate bit about the game being balanced from a PvP perspective, or rather 5 man “performance” group, perspective, is that certain skills which should have been split, is not. The reason is that they are fine in PvP, irrelevant or completely useless in PvE and a pain in the kitten to the players in WvW, but WvW is neglected either way.

So while spirits are OP in PvP, they are at the very same time barely viable in PvE and somewhat functioning but very self limiting in WvW. So if their nerfed for the sake of PvP, they will be broken in WvW and PvE.

Same with healing signet for warriors. While it is OP in most game modes, it is easy to counter in PvP, and not very hard to counter in WvW, but completely brokenly OP in PvE. So once again, rebalancing for one mode will make the others suffer.

The reason skills are not split is simple; each time a skill it split, it will take up more physical disk space on OUR end, require more code work on the devs end. Balance complaints will be more and more confusing as players usually cry over PvP/WvW matters and if these two are split from PvE but the fact not properly being made clear, then players Q-Q about horribly OP mechanics which is not horribly OP in PvE too.
Why? because this is what forum warriors do. They Q-Q when they can, if they can.

So because the game itself is not sustained by PvP in any way at all, it is unfair and quite unreasonable that 5 man group performance in PvP is the deciding factor, however, it is what it is.

Again, this is a MMO with a PvP “addition”. It is NOT a PvP game with a PvE addition.

FWIW, I do not want permastow because of combat mechanics. I want it because I get sick of my pet

• running around in places where I don’t want it to go [VISUALLY],
• getting in my way when I do jumping puzzles and oooops I fell down and poof it’s back and I have to push a button again and ooops I fell again

and I suppose this might be considered a fight mechanic, but persisting in a fight when I aggro something – it goes and fights the mob while I try to run through a zone. Darn it, pet, just leave it alone and let’s get through this zone and pretend there are no baddies.

But like many others… since the pet is barely better than a dungeon NPC, I probably wouldn’t miss it if they were removed entirely.

Or, replaced like this:

Proposal Overview
Pets don’t have to always be NPCs. When brainstorming ways to allow the pet mechanic to handle situation where clumsy NPCs die horribly and hold the Ranger back, consider the ways you can design things that look like pets and sound like pets, but aren’t necessarily standard NPCs.

Which hearkens back to my earlier comments about making pets more user-controlled. If I have a pet, I don’t want a dungeon NPC escort in the form of an animal, I want a puppet.

Does anyone know when this CDI ends because I feel like we haven’t accomplished anything in the past 10 pages.

It looks like a bust to me at this point. The developer presence in this CDI versus the others that are going on is just really lacking. They can take from that what they will, this isn’t a “shots fired” comment, I’m just stating facts.

Atherakhia.4086:

Perhaps we should move away from the burst and damage discussion while we wait for Allie to check in and discuss some of the other issues plagueing this class?

I think now would be a good time to discuss the issues with our utility skills and why many of them don’t seem worth taking until we’ve first invested well over 20 or 30 points in various trees.

Signets for example; their activated portions have no impact on the Ranger as a whole with only a few exceptions unless we first get Signet of the Beastmaster in the Marksmanship line. We have similar issues with Spike trap not being useful without 30points in Skirmishing. Spirits not being useful unless they’re mobile. Guard not having any functional use without Nature’s Voice.

I would rather them not mess up signets. Untraited Signet of the Hunt and Signet of the Wild provide a passive baseline of mobility and survivability for WvW. Many people use them for that.

I would rather them not mess up Guard either as I use it often. As I posted earlier in this thread, Guard 1. Gives protection and stealth to the pet which is very useful in keeping it alive in wvw fights… 2. Allows the pet to automatically attack targets in the area without the target having to interact with you first which means less time waiting and more time hitting… 3. Prevents the pet from leaving the specified area, which can be used strategically. While you man the ac on the second floor, your pet can be guarding down in the garrison circle.

Spirits. Frost spirit benefits the most from the 70% chance because it has no cooldown. Most of the others can trigger reliably during the 6s buff with only 35% chance. The elite spirit benefits the most from mobility, being able to drag it where healing and reviving is needed. The rest don’t need to move unless the fight is moving; just use the actives when the enemies get close. When the spirits die, they continue to pulse their buff 3 more times giving up to 15s of buffs post-death during the 20s cooldown. If you place a spirit someplace and the battle moves instantly, you wasted the spirit. If you place a spirit someplace and it melts instantly, you still buffed the area.

Prysin.8542:

and i will counter your “brilliant” counter with a simple fact;
The wast wast wast majority of all players in GW2 resides in the section most commonly known as “Player versus Enviroment”. These are the folks that buy perma harvest tools, gems, skins, fun items, swap gems for gold. These are the folks paying for YOUR game. Because whatever me and you invest in this game, our part does not even come close to what PvE players provide.

HOWEVER, GW2 was designed to take the casual player into consideration. This is why PvE balance is fairly lax. The PvP aspect of the game was intended to be a esport, however it seems they have gone back on this endeavor for now. Yet, PvP is supposed to be a “Fair combat mode”. Therefore the game is, as unfortunate as it is, balanced with PvP in mind. This is because PvP is similar to WvW, just smaller and more fast paced, yet there is extreme differences.

The unfortunate bit about the game being balanced from a PvP perspective, or rather 5 man “performance” group, perspective, is that certain skills which should have been split, is not. The reason is that they are fine in PvP, irrelevant or completely useless in PvE and a pain in the kitten to the players in WvW, but WvW is neglected either way.

So while spirits are OP in PvP, they are at the very same time barely viable in PvE and somewhat functioning but very self limiting in WvW. So if their nerfed for the sake of PvP, they will be broken in WvW and PvE.

Same with healing signet for warriors. While it is OP in most game modes, it is easy to counter in PvP, and not very hard to counter in WvW, but completely brokenly OP in PvE. So once again, rebalancing for one mode will make the others suffer.

The reason skills are not split is simple; each time a skill it split, it will take up more physical disk space on OUR end, require more code work on the devs end. Balance complaints will be more and more confusing as players usually cry over PvP/WvW matters and if these two are split from PvE but the fact not properly being made clear, then players Q-Q about horribly OP mechanics which is not horribly OP in PvE too.
Why? because this is what forum warriors do. They Q-Q when they can, if they can.

So because the game itself is not sustained by PvP in any way at all, it is unfair and quite unreasonable that 5 man group performance in PvP is the deciding factor, however, it is what it is.

Again, this is a MMO with a PvP “addition”. It is NOT a PvP game with a PvE addition.

Prysin, excellent post. +1

I resent the fact that ANet views Ranger as “the pet class”.

jcbroe.4329:

Does anyone know when this CDI ends because I feel like we haven’t accomplished anything in the past 10 pages.

It looks like a bust to me at this point. The developer presence in this CDI versus the others that are going on is just really lacking. They can take from that what they will, this isn’t a “shots fired” comment, I’m just stating facts.

i feel the biggest issue so far is not the lack of comments, after all this thread is getting a lot of posts very fast. I feel the issue is that the representative, or rather the devs at large, seems to have lost their enthusiasm now that the players are saying what they want. At the voting thread, we were presented with a rather optimistic post, but the responses we get here now is more akin to “Cant be kitten d to fix this or that because this or that may or may not possibly lead to a power creep”…. well rangers, as is, are as a matter of fact pretty much at the bottom of the power scale, especially so in power builds, so a minor power creep wouldnt hurt, they just need to look at where they can introduce a creep and where they cant. So far, i think all rangers agree that direct damage need a increase, and conditions are fine.

Flytrap.8075:

I resent the fact that ANet views Ranger as “the pet class”.

it would be entirely unproblematic if they were willing to make the pets work, at whatever the cost.

Prysin.8542:

jcbroe.4329:

Does anyone know when this CDI ends because I feel like we haven’t accomplished anything in the past 10 pages.

It looks like a bust to me at this point. The developer presence in this CDI versus the others that are going on is just really lacking. They can take from that what they will, this isn’t a “shots fired” comment, I’m just stating facts.

i feel the biggest issue so far is not the lack of comments, after all this thread is getting a lot of posts very fast. I feel the issue is that the representative, or rather the devs at large, seems to have lost their enthusiasm now that the players are saying what they want. At the voting thread, we were presented with a rather optimistic post, but the responses we get here now is more akin to “Cant be kitten d to fix this or that because this or that may or may not possibly lead to a power creep”…. well rangers, as is, are as a matter of fact pretty much at the bottom of the power scale, especially so in power builds, so a minor power creep wouldnt hurt, they just need to look at where they can introduce a creep and where they cant. So far, i think all rangers agree that direct damage need a increase, and conditions are fine.

In Anet’s defense, they have talked about power creep, and about wanting to avoid power creep for atleast a year now.