Ok guys, just wanted to clarify a few things.
Permastow is not impossible. I never meant to give that impression, so I apologize if I did. However, as far as priorities go for the Ranger, it is not high on the list. Why? Because it would require an entire re-balance of Ranger, but if we re-balanced, then the players that do play with the pet would be OP. See the dilemma there?
Thank goodness. I am confused about something though, why would perma stow make pets op? I figured that something like a damage boost would only occur while the pet was stowed. I don’t think that the skills themselves would need to be changed, just a %stat boost that would give the approximate damage that the pet gave.
The reason why I latched onto the aspect idea was because it was an option that seemed we could maybe work around. Rather than having to rebalance the whole class, we’d just have to balance the aspects to be similar to what the pet does damage-wise. That seemed a little more viable.
I thought that aspects was basically the equivalent of perma-stowing with a stat boost, an F2 skill by family and glowing particles to show which aspect you were in. I don’t really understand how this is dramatically different from perma stowing with a damage boost while stowed.
Perma stow wouldn’t make pets OP. In rebalancing for permastow, it would make those that still want to play with the pet op. THAT IS, unless we design something that gives the player a boost to balance it out.
The aspects I think were a little different. They talked about having specific bonuses based on the pet that the player was using. That is different from just giving a damage boost, which could end up being difficult to balance.
I think what he meant was that if you gave the ranger an appropriate stat boost only while the pet was stowed, then there would be no need to rebalance in the first place.
Perhaps, but what people were suggesting was a rebalance of the class to make up for the current state of pet AI. In essence, that would mean tweaking the numbers of all Ranger traits and skills to account for the lack of pet. However, that would not be fair to the players that still want to play pets, as we would essentially be talking about completely removing the pet at that point.
What we won’t do is remove the pet from the class completely.
Does that make sense or is it still confusing?
Perfectly clear to me as I’d personally hate to have to give up my pet. I made a Ranger because I loved playing a Hunter in WoW and my pet should be a working part of it; not some throwaway gimmick or being forced to stow it because the ‘no-pet’ buff would be too good and would make it a requirement.
Also, have you guys ever considered removing the ‘Pet Swap’ and instead building the Ranger around having just a single pet? That way Pet Swap could become something like a Revive Pet channel effect in case the pet goes down.
I always found Pet Swap a rather awkward mechanic and I’d much prefer having to choose a single pet as my lifelong companion with the ability to revive it on occassion instead of pulling pets out of my quiver like I’m some kind of magician.
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Also, have you guys ever considered removing the ‘Pet Swap’ and instead building the Ranger around having just a single pet? That way Pet Swap could become something like a Revive Pet channel effect in case the pet goes down.
I always found Pet Swap a rather awkward mechanic and I’d much prefer having to choose a single pet as my lifelong companion with the ability to revive it on occassion instead of pulling pets out of my quiver like I’m some kind of magician.
Early on you could only own 3 pets, only have one active at a time, couldn’t change pets in combat, you could level your active pet up to unlock more than its auto-attack, and then you could handpick which skills you wanted to put in those other pet skill slots with several pet skills that no longer exist.
They changed all that.
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Also, have you guys ever considered removing the ‘Pet Swap’ and instead building the Ranger around having just a single pet? That way Pet Swap could become something like a Revive Pet channel effect in case the pet goes down.
I always found Pet Swap a rather awkward mechanic and I’d much prefer having to choose a single pet as my lifelong companion with the ability to revive it on occassion instead of pulling pets out of my quiver like I’m some kind of magician.
Early on you could only own 3 pets, only have one active at a time, couldn’t change pets in combat, you could level your active pet up to unlock more than its auto-attack, and then you could handpick which skills you wanted to put in those other pet skill slots with several pet skills that no longer exist.
They changed all that.
That’s a shame. Well, not the part about only owning 3 pets but the other things like only having one active pet, levelling (training) it and choosing its abilities sounds a lot more interesting. Sounds a bit like how pets behaved/evolved in GW1.
That’s a shame. Well, not the part about only owning 3 pets but the other things like only having one active pet, levelling (training) it and choosing its abilities sounds a lot more interesting. Sounds a bit like how pets behaved/evolved in GW1.
Yeah building your own pet sounded neat. You can see the old pet customization in action here (In German)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVvK7vqx-Vo&hd=1#t=0m17s
In addition to the skills the drakes have now, there was a passive regen skill, a shake that removed conditions, an evasion skill that made the drake back out of combat, and a roar that weakened enemies.
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Let’s make it clear then
Every class has 100% base player damage by itself, and their unique bar gives more dmg or special things.
While I didn’t read the original 70:30 post it quite obviously derived from a dev who said that Rangers are expected to bring some damage through their pet. But this also applies to other classes who have damaging class mechanics because the class mechanics are most likely not exlcuded when balancing their damage. Everything else does not make any sense at all. This means that the class mechanic has to be included for all Mesmers, all Warriors, at least power Necromancers, most Engineers and even situationally for Thieves. Comparing Ranger 70:30 to Warrior to 100:15(F1) is just inaccurate.
Okay, let’s make it clear then. As an average, classes have ~75% dmg of possible fully.
Then when they trait on it, they’ll have maximum of “100%”, + the F skills give additional dmg or features. It should matter what you trait on. If you go for damage, then go, other hands there are survivality, support, and beastmaster for us.
But as you see, most of us prefer Pets to don’t deal dmg that counts while Untraited for it.
I personally would not mind if the pet was gone but I don’t think it would fit the original class design. However, I’m not sure if it is true that most want the pet to be gone or to deal no damage. I know many people who love their pet. Therefore, you probably should not talk about ‘most of us’ when it just represents your point of view.
There is no mutch reason for pets to be gone, devs will decide it anyway.
What matters here is their worth. IF you trait up on Beast Master, then its logical to use your pet for competitive damage output in side of yours. IF NOT, then just a base dmg line, and still useable buffs/debuffs.
However, permastow should give you some buff to compensate your lack of “extended arm”, which pets meant to be.
@ No CDs: Balancing Thieves are out of this topic, but this isn’t a real issue. Or at least it shouldn’t be. Problem is on AN’s side, they put up “one shot kill” skills as balance and wonder why they seem unbalanced.
If one shot skills were the issue you would not see anyone spamming skills on one target. The main problem with Initiative is that it encourages solely using your most effective skill. That is why people spam PW etc. I don’t want to see something like that because it emphasizes brainless button mashing. It might also be very difficult to balance because Rangers could also use evade spam this way. No fun for anyone besides the troll using it.
The problem isn’t with the non-cd methood. That itself is a very nice next-gen design!
The reason thieves spam skills are because it does kitten mutch damage and they autoaim targets.
For a melee weapon thats just pure idiotism IMO. BUT:
Imagine when we would be able to stop LRS AA and use our weapon skills without CD.
As mentioned in my new redesign, you can shoot 2x Rapid Fire or 2x Barrage before you get “exhausted”. Does that OP? Not. If that dual rapid fire would make ~18k dmg in ~5 seconds, that would be JUST EQUAL to most of other classes. This is why I’m suggesting it hard, because my design would give ~everything we need without being OP.
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Hey, I’m kinda newb/noob to the profession, and generally only play mine for variety and in my off time, however a lot of the problem with it as far as I’m aware is lack of sustain in terms of healing and staying alive. If you look at other examples like Thief and Guardian, the latter has a low base health pool, but makes up for this with high protection, regen, healing and dodging rates, as well as anti-burst skills and high stability uptime, their survivability is also buffed by their heavy armour. Thief is medium armour and similarly has a low base health pool, most of their survivability is based on stealth and movement, as well as a generally high DPS output on most builds due to the safety brought to them by stealth, enabling them to ‘kill before being killed’.
With Ranger I think there’s not enough of these factors to keep them alive; I have a very low stability uptime and hence can be CC’d and caught, destroyed if I don’t position well. The only stability utility skill I can use has a 1.5 sec cast time, requires a master trait and lasts for a very short amount of time. Similarly one of the only anti-bursts requires exactly the same. Movement is mostly on sword or Greatsword; the former of which is unwieldy to a point due to the twisting necessary to get it in the right direction, and GS has a relatively long cooldown between leaps. Traits to shorten these require going 20 deep on two different other trait lines, so assuming you want reduced CD on your longbow, on your GS, and some stability, you have to use all of your trait points. Compare this with Guardian which gets reduced CD on all 2h weapons for 20 points and easy access to stability untraited, as well as easy GS movement, it comes up short. The trait lines on ranger definitely need to be gone over; we have a higher base health than the other two, but not the huge movement and stealth of the Thief, nor the anti-burst, damage negation, healing and Heavy armour capabilities of the Guardian. I also feel Longbow could use an overall damage buff, as it’s insufficient at effectively harrying or damaging a foe before they close with you; at which point you’re screwed however idk about it.
I won’t mention my bear(s)
Hope these help at all, just observations from a casual ranger; I also apologise if I’ve repeated anyone.
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That’s a shame. Well, not the part about only owning 3 pets but the other things like only having one active pet, levelling (training) it and choosing its abilities sounds a lot more interesting. Sounds a bit like how pets behaved/evolved in GW1.
Yeah building your own pet sounded neat. You can see the old pet customization in action here (In German)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nVvK7vqx-Vo&hd=1#t=0m17sIn addition to the skills the drakes have now, there was a passive regen skill, a shake that removed conditions, an evasion skill that made the drake back out of combat, and a roar that weakened enemies.
I WANT THAT!!
ANet, remove the Pet Swap in favor or a single pet and give us back skill customization for it so we can choose which skills our pets should use during a fight! And include passive ‘aura’ skills too! That way people that don’t like their pet can keep it on passive and have it radiate their passive abilities instead! Win-Win for everyone!
Let’s make it clear then
Every class has 100% base player damage by itself, and their unique bar gives more dmg or special things.
While I didn’t read the original 70:30 post it quite obviously derived from a dev who said that Rangers are expected to bring some damage through their pet. But this also applies to other classes who have damaging class mechanics because the class mechanics are most likely not exlcuded when balancing their damage. Everything else does not make any sense at all. This means that the class mechanic has to be included for all Mesmers, all Warriors, at least power Necromancers, most Engineers and even situationally for Thieves. Comparing Ranger 70:30 to Warrior to 100:15(F1) is just inaccurate.
Okay, let’s make it clear then. As an average, classes have ~75% dmg of possible fully.
Then when they trait on it, they’ll have maximum of “100%”, + the F skills give additional dmg or features. It should matter what you trait on. If you go for damage, then go, other hands there are survivality, support, and beastmaster for us.
I am not sure if I understood you right, but all classes, with the exception of ranger’s from what I have understood from the dev’s, all classes start with 100% damage. I have not read any post’s or heard any statements from dev’s stating that mesmer’s damage is reduced because they expect clones to fill a portion of that damage. Or necro’s damage is reduced because they expect minions to fill a portion of that damage. So far the Dev’s have only mentioned ranger’s as having to give up 30% of their damage to pets. A level 80 warrior with no traits has 100% control of their damage and they have 100% of their damage. When traited, any bonus’s, 10% through this trait for using XYZ weapons, 5% this other trait, 15% for the adrenaline full trait, ect.. This is all added to the 100%, so the example I’m using above, he will have 130% damage which is a 30% buff to damage thanks to traits. That’s a given, that’s what traits are for and why some traits are for some weapons and not others.
Ranger’s on the other hand start at 70% damage instead of 100% damage with 0 traits. So you add the Bow percentage, or your traiting that way or you add the GS percentage when traiting that way and any other percentage from traits and you’ll see that you, the ranger part, does not come up to 100%. Now you have pet’s, which are suppose to be responsible for 30%, trait on them and their damage percentage is suppose to go up as well. On paper it should balance out to what warriors are doing. However, since our pets can’t hit moving targets and since are pets can’t scale walls and since our pets die in 2 seconds in zerg’s and since our pets are practically USELESS, we lose out of those 30+%. So while all other classes are doing >100+% damage, we are at <100+%.
So to recap, From the dev’s mouths as we know for sure right now, Ranger’s are the only ones that start <100% damage because of pets. Now, if a dev wants to come on here and say anything about Necro’s having the same thing or mesmer’s to clear the air on this matter that would be great. But until we hear otherwise, we only have confirmation of ranger’s having this handicap.
Speaking of which, why is it that necro’s with all of their minions don’t have balancing issues when they can spec to not use minions and not lose DPS? What’s the difference between them and us if they also have pets and theirs is optional?
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Let’s make it clear then
Every class has 100% base player damage by itself, and their unique bar gives more dmg or special things.
While I didn’t read the original 70:30 post it quite obviously derived from a dev who said that Rangers are expected to bring some damage through their pet. But this also applies to other classes who have damaging class mechanics because the class mechanics are most likely not exlcuded when balancing their damage. Everything else does not make any sense at all. This means that the class mechanic has to be included for all Mesmers, all Warriors, at least power Necromancers, most Engineers and even situationally for Thieves. Comparing Ranger 70:30 to Warrior to 100:15(F1) is just inaccurate.
Okay, let’s make it clear then. As an average, classes have ~75% dmg of possible fully.
Then when they trait on it, they’ll have maximum of “100%”, + the F skills give additional dmg or features. It should matter what you trait on. If you go for damage, then go, other hands there are survivality, support, and beastmaster for us.I am not sure if I understood you right, but all classes, with the exception of ranger’s from what I have understood from the dev’s, all classes start with 100% damage. I have not read any post’s or heard any statements from dev’s stating that mesmer’s damage is reduced because they expect clones to fill a portion of that damage. Or necro’s damage is reduced because they expect minions to fill a portion of that damage. So far the Dev’s have only mentioned ranger’s as having to give up 30% of their damage to pets. A level 80 warrior with no traits has 100% control of their damage and they have 100% of their damage. When traited, any bonus’s, 10% through this trait for using XYZ weapons, 5% this other trait, 15% for the adrenaline full trait, ect.. This is all added to the 100%, so the example I’m using above, he will have 130% damage which is a 30% buff to damage thanks to traits. That’s a given, that’s what traits are for and why some traits are for some weapons and not others.
Ranger’s on the other hand start at 70% damage instead of 100% damage with 0 traits. So you add the Bow percentage, or your traiting that way or you add the GS percentage when traiting that way and any other percentage from traits and you’ll see that you, the ranger part, does not come up to 100%. Now you have pet’s, which are suppose to be responsible for 30%, trait on them and their damage percentage is suppose to go up as well. On paper it should balance out to what warriors are doing. However, since our pets can’t hit moving targets and since are pets can’t scale walls and since our pets die in 2 seconds in zerg’s and since our pets are practically USELESS, we lose out of those 30+%. So while all other classes are doing >100+% damage, we are at <100+%.
So to recap, From the dev’s mouths as we know for sure right now, Ranger’s are the only ones that start <100% damage because of pets. Now, if a dev wants to come on here and say anything about Necro’s having the same thing or mesmer’s to clear the air on this matter that would be great. But until we hear otherwise, we only have confirmation of ranger’s having this handicap.
Speaking of which, why is it that necro’s with all of their minions don’t have balancing issues when they can spec to not use minions and not lose DPS? What’s the difference between them and us if they also have pets and theirs is optional?
I’d argue that Engineers also have problems with damage if they don’t slot in a specific utility skill while traiting heavily for it, or traiting heavily for profession mechanic combo.
I’d also argue that Mesmers have problems with damage if they don’t make use of their profession mechanic, which also involves AI, for extra burst damage.