Guild Wars 2

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I personally play Ranger as my main, so I’m fairly aware of how to manage the pet, and do my testing as a ranger primarily. What mechanic do you feel is expressly punishing to a ranger pet?
I’m more than aware of how squishy pets can be in dungeons, but if you could list out all the issues you are speaking of, I can try and address them.

Inquiry for you then (regarding Rangers in dungeons). My first level 80 was a Ranger and I loved the skills and gameplay, A LOT. At first I had a mix between damage and survivability and thought I was doing fine damage-wise; I mean, I survived, I was constantly doing damage, had a intuitive and on-demand rotation that kept max damage up, and contributed to the party in a lot of ways in lieu of support as well, or so I thought.

I began to question how I compared to other players to improve my playstyle and found that my damage was incredibly paltry, that other players (not even spec’d for damage) could down mobs and do more damage in general. So I conversed with a guildie on his damage Ranger spec, came up with my own to maximize damage output and noticed the difference in DPS quite obviously yet I was still far behind other classes and non-DPS builds.

Now this same guildie (who has spent 1500 hours on this main Ranger of his and played every facet of the game) came to the same consensus a long time ago. The fact that Rangers simply do less damage in a damage spec than pretty much any other class (maybe Condition Necro if you argue bleedcaps).

That being said and moving onto the dungeon part, once you get to a point in this game where you have accomplished most everything as far as the main content goes you aim for the vanity (e.g. skins) which are accomplished by repeating content (farming dungeon tokens). Grouping up with people as a Ranger is a risky process, not just because of how the group will tolerate you, but because the composition of a group may require that someone with more skill help carry them to a degree, and that simply cannot be done with a Ranger. Every Ranger build I have experimented with has a ‘better’-version in some other class/build. Rangers were promised attention months ago, and as a result received buffs to their Underwater skills.

As a player of a Ranger in dungeons, do you not agree with this assessment? If not, is there something that we are doing wrong as players that make Rangers more viable? Is this concern still being looked into by the designers? And as a fellow Ranger player, do you ever speak on our behalf?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

Thanks for the response, and I entirely agree. Open world is great for a Ranger, which is why I was so surprised that I was lacking in dungeons as badly as I was (as I hadn’t run dungeons until I hit 80). Looking forward to what will come with pets in dungeons.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Makes sense. I think it’s kind of ridiculous that there are champions (in Frostgorge & Orr) that my pet can solo based solely on my build and passive healing. I understand the problem.

Could we possibly have a way to get agony resistance onto the pet? Unless you intend to introduce agony outside of Fractals, that would have no impact on open world PvE, sPvP, WvW, or anything else. I suggest that the pet inherit the master’s resistance, rather than have inherent resistance of it’s own, so as not to unfairly advantage rangers. Might you consider that?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

…..Every class can do open world. My thief could shadow refuge the skill points in orr.

Don’t cripple the class in the most rewarding and organized group settings just because one class can solo better than others in content that awards green drops at best.

And great DPS? Are we in the same universe? Where?

Are you seriously comparing something like mesmer or thief or warrior damage to ranger? If it’s going to take the same amount of time for you guys to realize that the class is so unwanted everywhere because its numbers and support skills are actually bad, then I don’t think people will stick with the class if it means becoming the gw1 elementalist having to wait more than a year to be made good for hard modes.

What the hell happened to skill splitting? Why just not tweak aggro mechanics so a ranger’s pet can’t just tank and the aggro is actually shared instead of offloaded to a pet?

Why are you abandoning the gw1 models that worked? Skill splitting worked, and yet you choose to take the World of Warcraft route for universal skills that leads one game format to screw over the other as classes get on a rollercoaster where they are great in one format but suck in the other because developers fear changes to the ill format numbers will make the great format status OP.

Why is it so hard to just give Rangers 70% AoE damage reduction for pets in PvE so that the pets are not useless in dungeons and WvW. At least for WvW you could make the ranged pets 1200 range instead of the 900 range they currently are and make their projectiles hit more reliably by increasing their speed.

And for dungeons either remove the cooldown on pet deathaand leave the 15 second switch or make pets have decreased aggro priority for mobs, considering pets can’t dodge and fractals like the Ascalonian at 38-48 I might as well stow the pet because it doesn’t last more than 2 seconds.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I (…)
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
(…)
Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Sorry Robert, but i’m not agree with you at all.

I think the ranger is a boring class. Is my main class, but now i’m leveling another one because ranger hasn’t any viable builds where players could be fun.
Is funny see that your base of damage is your pet? Answer: NO. Maybe this is the why bots uses ranger as class: because the AI of the pet do all the job and you don’t need to do anything!

Just look at the ranger forum: People asks to quit pet and get the benefits of the pet to be better (people wish to play, not to see a pet playing for you), another people asks for synergies (hitting a critical gives might to your pet… erh… mmm… you still being weak), another one asks for more survivaly of pets to don’t spend points on own survival…

I think that main problem is the name of the class. If you put this class named “Beast Master”, giving traits, boons, signets… all people will clap all class
But, you put “ranger”, that is a class that should have range weapons, and should have the choice of hitting a lot of hits in few time (like now with the shortbow) or a slow but big damage hits (like what should do the longbow)

But, really, ranger need a good remap of all thinks (or rename it and do a new class) but is not the idea people have of a “ranger” class

I realize that fixing our pet & utility skills difficult, but it’s sad that even if u are playing a power crit spec ranger LB does roughly the same dmg in max range as the SB point blank. This could be fixed with a simple number tweak, for example increase the dmg over 1000’ by 15%. Would it matter in pvp? No not rlly, ppl can easily evade those arrows from that range. Would it matter in the open world? Yes, but not alot. The majority of the rangers wants the ranger to be a good ranged class. I challenge you Mr Hrouda to try the LB ranger in more difficult dungeons, with a ranged second weapon set. I did play a SB condition build for quite a while and the constant need of flanking and bosses that always rotated themselves to face me made me so angry at times, that I’m still not considering to return to that build. And meleeing with a ranger is not something I would want to do. Even if I wanted to the low GS dmg, or the 1 handed sword rooting would ruin the experience.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Inquiry for you then (regarding Rangers in dungeons). My first level 80 was a Ranger and I loved the skills and gameplay, A LOT. At first I had a mix between damage and survivability and thought I was doing fine damage-wise; I mean, I survived, I was constantly doing damage, had a intuitive and on-demand rotation that kept max damage up, and contributed to the party in a lot of ways in lieu of support as well, or so I thought.

I began to question how I compared to other players to improve my playstyle and found that my damage was incredibly paltry, that other players (not even spec’d for damage) could down mobs and do more damage in general. So I conversed with a guildie on his damage Ranger spec, came up with my own to maximize damage output and noticed the difference in DPS quite obviously yet I was still far behind other classes and non-DPS builds.

Now this same guildie (who has spent 1500 hours on this main Ranger of his and played every facet of the game) came to the same consensus a long time ago. The fact that Rangers simply do less damage in a damage spec than pretty much any other class (maybe Condition Necro if you argue bleedcaps).

That being said and moving onto the dungeon part, once you get to a point in this game where you have accomplished most everything as far as the main content goes you aim for the vanity (e.g. skins) which are accomplished by repeating content (farming dungeon tokens). Grouping up with people as a Ranger is a risky process, not just because of how the group will tolerate you, but because the composition of a group may require that someone with more skill help carry them to a degree, and that simply cannot be done with a Ranger. Every Ranger build I have experimented with has a ‘better’-version in some other class/build. Rangers were promised attention months ago, and as a result received buffs to their Underwater skills.

As a player of a Ranger in dungeons, do you not agree with this assessment? If not, is there something that we are doing wrong as players that make Rangers more viable? Is this concern still being looked into by the designers? And as a fellow Ranger player, do you ever speak on our behalf?

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

I wish Ranger DPS was good.

Every time I bring mine into a dungeon, all I can think if how much more effective I’d be on my Guardian, Mesmer or Warrior.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Inquiry for you then (regarding Rangers in dungeons). My first level 80 was a Ranger and I loved the skills and gameplay, A LOT. ……

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

THANK YOU FOR YOUR RESPONSE!

Finally someone from Anet took the time to respond on a Ranger issue!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Inquiry for you then (regarding Rangers in dungeons). My first level 80 was a Ranger and I loved the skills and gameplay, A LOT. At first I had a mix between damage and survivability and thought I was doing fine damage-wise; I mean, I survived, I was constantly doing damage, had a intuitive and on-demand rotation that kept max damage up, and contributed to the party in a lot of ways in lieu of support as well, or so I thought.

I began to question how I compared to other players to improve my playstyle and found that my damage was incredibly paltry, that other players (not even spec’d for damage) could down mobs and do more damage in general. So I conversed with a guildie on his damage Ranger spec, came up with my own to maximize damage output and noticed the difference in DPS quite obviously yet I was still far behind other classes and non-DPS builds.

Now this same guildie (who has spent 1500 hours on this main Ranger of his and played every facet of the game) came to the same consensus a long time ago. The fact that Rangers simply do less damage in a damage spec than pretty much any other class (maybe Condition Necro if you argue bleedcaps).

That being said and moving onto the dungeon part, once you get to a point in this game where you have accomplished most everything as far as the main content goes you aim for the vanity (e.g. skins) which are accomplished by repeating content (farming dungeon tokens). Grouping up with people as a Ranger is a risky process, not just because of how the group will tolerate you, but because the composition of a group may require that someone with more skill help carry them to a degree, and that simply cannot be done with a Ranger. Every Ranger build I have experimented with has a ‘better’-version in some other class/build. Rangers were promised attention months ago, and as a result received buffs to their Underwater skills.

As a player of a Ranger in dungeons, do you not agree with this assessment? If not, is there something that we are doing wrong as players that make Rangers more viable? Is this concern still being looked into by the designers? And as a fellow Ranger player, do you ever speak on our behalf?

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

So Robert if u worry that by making pets “better” in dungeons you will make Ranger OP in open world, then how about taking some dmg off the pet and give it to the Ranger itself?That way u can make the pets better in surviving all those hazardous dungeons but at the same time pets wont be OP damage wise.Simple solution I believe.
Anyways I’m happy that at last after many months a dev told the Ranger Community that pet issues are getting looked at.
/bow

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

Rangers are powerful in open world because the mob AI isn’t very smart. Only open world mobs simply allow the pets to tank. That’s the only reason pets are strong in open world. This doesn’t happen in basically every other situation in the game. And after reaching level 80, there isn’t much open world done. And getting us to do more open world combat is not the solution. Here are my suggestions:

- Pets should be immune to area effect damage (all pets of all classes), which is rarely used in open world combat anyway. You could let area effect damage daze/stun pets for the duration, but don’t let them take any damage from it. Especially in dungeons is area effect damage an instant-kill on pets (as well as on the player, but we can react instantly).

- Pets should be immune to agony or not even be targetted by it (all pets of all classes).

- Pets should STAY stowed when taking damage, but ONLY if the pet was set to “Avoid Combat” mode.

- Using F1, F2, F3 should make the pet come out of stow and do the ordered command (even if “Avoid Combat” was on).

- Pets should not cause the user to enter combat mode, nor should it cause combat mode on the person being attacked by pets, nor should it cause combat mode on the person who attacks a pet, nor should pets themselves enter combat mode. (again, for all pets in the game for every class). Only direct player versus player or player versus mob damage should result in combat mode (both in giving and receiving). It’s probably not possible with how the game is coded though, considering falling damage causes combat mode too (as well as causing un-stowing).

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

Well, while everyone else is saying ranger isn’t that well off in dungeons, that’s actually where I find the least of my problems at, as a Ranger since release. I love doing dungeons on my ranger. Yes, my pet does kind of fail very hardly in Dungeons, and PvP both which it dies pretty fast. But lately I keep them on passive, and only send them in on certain mobs. I do wish they survived twice as long, or we had the ability to choose to turn pets off and have better stats. But in dungeons I usually switch to the one pet (forget the name, sorry lol.) that gives might with f2 and I keep it beside me. But I am usually leading in dungeons I am in doing nice DPS with amazing survivability rate. I run a SB/GS everywhere I go with Carrion gears (power/CD/vit) and for my traits 30/20/30 and use crits to add more bleeding. It works out very nice. But in PvP I can’t seem to stand a chance against most classes no matter what their build is. As a ranger, I want to use a ranged weapon mainly, not anything else. I do know I can only bleed when I shoot from the sides, or back which sucks. And I don’t hit awfully high, but I hit fast. I can’t decide if the CD or bow damage was buffed how it would turn things out, but I wish they’d try to at least buff our conditions with the shortbow, it’s too easy for classes to get rid of it. Espicially thieves, their heal takes out all my bleeds, poisions, and burns. Also, it heals them for a nice amount, AND makes them stealthed again. I wish we had heals like that, lol. But over-all ranger is a nice class. I just wish you would consider buffing our PvP aspect at least for WvW.

Thank you for taking the time to type all of your response out, though. It’s not just a wall of text, it’s a wall of text showing that you actually care.

@Robert Hrouda.1327:

Did you skim past my post or do you realize that I’m right and have nothing to say? This is the most frustrating game-related issue I have ever faced. SOME feedback would be appreciated.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

[snip]

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

I really have to take exception with your logic there.

First, since when does any profession, properly played, have any problem with world PvE content? A buff that makes a profession more viable in Dungeons would be an important improvement and concerns over whether or not it would then make the Ranger “too powerful” in open world PvE is absolutely pointless.

Second, you’ve shown a perfect willingness to suggest nerfs that will make Dungeons harder, with out any regard to how it impacts a profession’s capabilities in World PvE, WvW or sPvP. It’s ok to make professions less fun and capable through out the entire game, just so they can’t approach Dungeon content in some manner you didn’t account for, but adjustments to weaknesses in the dungeon environment shouldn’t be made out of concern that you might make them “too powerful” in open world PvE?

You must realize how nonsensical that is.

I’m left wondering how many needed profession improvements have been scrapped because of your tunnel vision on dungeon difficulty?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer.

What. Let’s say they do.. it’s single target tho, kk.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

and focus on being supportive and holding aggro

I’m sorry, what? Ranger and support, does that combination even exist? It’s not something you need anyway in PvE. Holding aggro? Uh.. this is GW2, I think he mixed WoW for GW2.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.

See, problem right there. You do not need anything else than DPS in dungeons or PvE in general. Period. This is a consequence of getting rid of the holy trinity. Anyone who is decent enough at their class can roll through most (or all) of the PvE content by wearing berserker’s.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons.

Okay, but other classes still faceroll through mobs a lot easier and buffing pets to be able to take on more mobs would make the class too strong.. in fact, other classes would still have it better; I fail to see how giving them AoE reduction would make them too strong. Except that they wouldn’t be dying as soon as a boss drops it’s eyelash on them, in DEs and WvW as much.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.
As for ranger balance, we have frequent meetings about balance where we discuss that sort of stuff – I go to those meetings on behalf of dungeon content and to lend my experience with ranger knowledge.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions. Rangers have an incredible amount of evasion and damage mitigation if you are very focused and know when to use your skills and heals (prot on dodge roll, vigor on heals) means you can keep prot for when you mess up, and always have evasions ready. There are some very successful dungeon builds, but most of them aren’t DPS focused.
We’re working on ideas for making pets better in dungeons. There’s a list of reasons we can’t just tweak a number and call it good (it wouldn’t actually solve the problem), but it is something we are aware of and working on.
One of the things you have to think about, is how the game is played. If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope. Whatever we do to the ranger, it has to happen in both the open world and dungeons, so it requires more than just number tweaks. You see a lot of bots as rangers for that very reason – they are really strong open world classes, and buffing them for the sake of dungeons doesn’t work out to being a good fix.

Wow this is getting long. I should go to the class balance forums some time, lol. Sorry for the text wall!

I’m sorry but what ? Ranger and Support ? Good DPS ? Dungeon builds without good DPS .. sure, DPS is the only thing that matters in dungeons. Bots use Ranger because of the “strong” pets.. Yeah in Open World this might be true, but nearly no one does “Open World” besides of the Events to get the new loot chests with their 80s. Other than that the pet is so annoying it always stands in the imho worst position, no chance to avoid the income AOE. I’m glad for the responce but it feels like the ranger community is playing a different “ranger” than you are. I ALWAYS have to logg to my Mesmer if my guildis whant to do dungeons or fractals. And random groups only looking for Mesmers and Warriors or Guardians sometimes Eles. Don’t even try to find a random group with your ranger..

Last night I finally got past Kholer, but I had to give up because spending hours trying to figure out how to fight silver mobs is not my idea of fun.

I have a feeling that Anet is upping the ante to keep the player base interested. Here’s hoping their snap decisions do not backfire. I hope they can keep the hardcore gamers happy for some time, because I know a lot of casual gamers like me who are left frustrated by anti-fun dungeons.

As for Mr. Hrouda dodging questions, there’s not much we can do about that. I am starting to think that he is out on the front lines to mitigate damages, hence the non-answers we’re getting.

Oh, come on Rob, we all know you would post from home if you really loved us.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Woah I steered this thread off track quickly with my ranger talk. I’ll see if I can squeeze in some time to go over to the class thread and make a post in there about it, but for now let’s get focused back on our dungeon talk instead.

Hi Robert,

Actually, THANK YOU for your ranger talk! It’s more than the actual ranger forum has gotten since the last developer post…approximately 4 months ago :/ I was going to repost and link to this discussion there, but somebody beat me to it. Please, please, please continue to talk about ranger whenever you may have the time (yes, realizing you do have a job) because most of the ranger community’s hard feelings seem to come even more from being ignored than from problems with the class (real or perceived). It’s great just to know that someone at ANet still remembers we exist and need some changes!

Robert Hrouda.1327:

If we buff rangers just for dungeons, than they are too strong for the open world. Considering I can solo most content in the open world by letting my pet tank, I feel ranger is very powerful outside of dungeons. We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons because that gets too confusing for players and puts us on a slippery slope.

You did that with mobs, mobs in the open world are a lot wimpier than mobs in dungeons. Why the double standard? Why do they change?

pulsecodesgnl.3470:

Thanks for the response, and I entirely agree. Open world is great for a Ranger, which is why I was so surprised that I was lacking in dungeons as badly

To me you can say that about every class. The mobs are what is different, not the classes.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We can’t have rangers that change based on PvP, open world, and dungeons

Someone needs to tell you this Robert: Anet will never, ever achieve balance unless you do a proper PvP/PvE split.
This is undeniable; some skills simply cannot be equally good in both.

So, you could continue applying bandages over bandages and never end up with a final result thus being haunted with profession issues for the years to come… or you could sit down and split all skills properly.
I know it’s a good effort, but to be blunt we paid for a balanced vanilla game, and we expect it at some point.
It can take even 6 months, but it must happen sooner or later.

Ranger is just the tip of the iceberg of that issue, look at Warriors forced to not use many adren skills as it would be a DPS loss, look at D/D Eles being terribly OP in WvW because nerfs only apply to sPvP, look at Engineers.

All classes have issues that are due to the inexistance of PvP/PvE splitting, and until said split happens (which should include WvW unless you want it to keep being an unbalanced zergfest) we will not resolve dungeon issues or PvP issues.

Where I work when there is a problem we find a definitive solution even if it takes effort because then the issue is eliminated.
Some companies ignore or give temporary solutions to issues, and those problems continue to haunt them for their entire existence.
Do what needs to be done

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Just because dungeons are harder for you, and you don’t like it, doesn’t mean you speak for everyone.

Since I cannot know where every sits on that as you say. I then use my considerable dime a dozen game knowledge over decades of game play. The point of entry for standard GW2 dungeons is by far and I mean not even close the highest I’ve seen.

Your first game which was all dungeons was 1/3 the difficulty for entry point, if not less. So I rationalize that way, compare it to everything I’ve played, you sir like very long drawn out fights, buffed mobs, build dungeons where it’s ok to die as long as you can grind through it one way or another. Most people prefer clean runs, so there is some pride on the other end along with loot.

That said, I surrender there are people that can run these well, it’s just not average folk, otherwise every other game is really low balling difficulty. Games on the opposite end are Dragon’s Nest or C9, that is when easy becomes stupid easy.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We do have a PvP, PvE split. That’s normal and something GW players are familiar with. What I was trying to say was that we can’t have a PvP split, a PvE split, and a Dungeon split. That’s just way too much, especially if we start having to do it for other class stuff. It makes balancing much more difficult and time consuming.

I agree with that. The part missing is the rationale that assumes Dungeons aren’t PvE. They are, Dungeons is PvE to. So why is the “E” different in Dungeons?

To be honest, open world PvE is very easy for all classes. I don’t think what the ranger needs is a large buff, but they need a buff. The SB is fine, and the Sword/Torch combo is pretty darned good too. I can’t believe Rob uses a dagger, because the torch is way better if you’re running a condition build, but the cripple is sort of useful. It’s no wonder you don’t experience the problems with the class, though, because you don’t use the weapons that really suffer.

The Ranger still has numerous problems, and in particular against stronger mobs the likes of which you see in dungeons. I’ve enumerated a few key ones to fix first below.

====
- LB auto attack is awful and makes it an absolutely bad weapon to main. You currently have to use 3>2>5 and 4 if needed, then you switch to something that doesn’t suck as a weapon. The LB 1 desperately needs work, and this weapon should honestly be the bread-and-butter of Ranger ranged power dps, but currently isn’t. It either needs to attack about 33% faster or do way more damage per hit.

- Sword 1’s chain locks your character’s movements and doesn’t allow you to break the chain to dodge. This means that auto-attacking with sword puts you at risk of getting faceblasted by any number of positionally varying mob and boss skills in dungeons. This is not a big deal in open world PvE where your pet can facetank most things.

- Greatsword is a bad weapon. Please save this.

- We desperately need AR on pets, but you said you’re actively looking for solutions to that, so yay.
====

That’s about it. The class is fine otherwise in high-end PvE.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Horrorscope.7632:

I agree with that. The part missing is the rationale that assumes Dungeons aren’t PvE. They are, Dungeons is PvE to. So why is the “E” different in Dungeons?

Ah gotcha. Sorry bout that. There are numerical differences in play for the creatures you fight in dungeons, and we build them differently. The “army” of a dungeon (things you fight) are given different skills than what you encounter in the open world. It is numerically different, and mechanically different than our open world.

The thing is there is nothing in the open world to prepare you for the differences. But oh well, I’m just sitting here awaiting for when you offer scaling difficulty or the like for dungeons. I only say what I do because we do struggle mightily with it and just don’t get where you are coming from with them. It’s just so different from what other games have done. I don’t agree, but then I don’t always get my way.

First off, there is plenty of room for improvement, with dungeons and with rangers.

That being said, I have no trouble joining a dungeon group as a ranger, at least within reason. I don’t try to join every group that is looking, and I’m sure I don’t get invited to any group looking when I am, but I rarely spend more than about 5-10 minutes looking for a dungeon group.

I also have for the past month run a tank/support build in dungeons, and have had some of the fastest, most enjoyable runs doing so. It’s performed so well that I am now attempting to solo several exp dungeons.

DPS is not the only option. Just saying.

I personally accept the tradeoff of damage for survivability (Can’t do damage if you’re dead). I tend to run a condition build using shortbow and sword\dagger, and focus on being supportive and holding aggro while keeping a steady output of DPS through conditions.

If you’re in a group with a single other Condition player though then you might as well just go AFK. Conditon damage is fine for solo PvE but it’s horrible for Dungeons (and I say that as someone who loves Condition builds in theory and wishes that they were viable).

Yes some people are upset because we added mechanical difficulty to AC, but there are also many happy people who enjoy that you have to play the game at a deeper level now in AC.

Ah, I see the problem. You should listen to the former group, and not to the latter. The latter are those annoying sort of people that always want to make things hard for the former group. Please the former and everyone can play.

Ohoni.6057:

Ah, I see the problem. You should listen to the former group, and not to the latter. The latter are those annoying sort of people that always want to make things hard for the former group. Please the former and everyone can play.

It would seem like the ‘problem’ here is that you’re demanding one of the devs to cater to your specific interests. Contrary to what you may believe, the latter group do not always want to make things harder for the former. Instead, what they do is enjoy the new content that the developers push out and show their support on the forums.

Keep in mind that it has ALWAYS been said that Explorable Mode dungeons are not for everyone, and require a properly coordinated group. Your Average Random Pug™ is not supposed to be able to cakewalk through this content. Up until now, it was pretty easy for parties to do so. It still is pretty easy for organized parties who know what they’re doing, but at least it’s harder now.

Uh, since it seems like Mr. Hrouda mainly sticks to browsing this thread, to make it easier for you to browse, I wonder if I could humbly ask you to check this out and let us know if any of the listed issues are accurate, known, and being worked on in this thread:

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/dungeons/Consolidated-Issues-with-2-26-Colossus/first#post1573586

It would seem like the ‘problem’ here is that you’re demanding one of the devs to cater to your specific interests.

no, no, more that I expect the game, and the devs who work on it, to cater to the players in general. There will always people who want things to be harder, who want to feel more “leet” than the next player because they can get through content that is too challenging for them, but these people should be ignored. The goal shouldn’t be to make things so hard that only a fraction of the players can manage it without excessive difficulty, it should be to make it accessible to the broadest reasonable swath of the population. Of course there are people who like the new dungeons, there are people that like Dark Souls or Battletoads, but these people should largely be ignored.

Ohoni.6057:

It would seem like the ‘problem’ here is that you’re demanding one of the devs to cater to your specific interests.

no, no, more that I expect the game, and the devs who work on it, to cater to the players in general. There will always people who want things to be harder, who want to feel more “leet” than the next player because they can get through content that is too challenging for them, but these people should be ignored. The goal shouldn’t be to make things so hard that only a fraction of the players can manage it without excessive difficulty, it should be to make it accessible to the broadest reasonable swath of the population. Of course there are people who like the new dungeons, there are people that like Dark Souls or Battletoads, but these people should largely be ignored.

And again, this is your opinion on things.

The entire rest of the game already caters to players in general. I don’t think anyone will argue against the fact that Open World PvE is largely accessible to the majority of players, and Open World PvE comprises the majority of the PvE in this game in terms of amount of content.

Anet ALREADY STATED that Explorable Mode dungeons were meant to challenge organized groups of 5 players. In fact, they’ve actually done the opposite with Story Mode dungeons and toned down the difficulty to make them accessible to most players. Thus, I don’t really see what the problem is.

Zenith.7301:

Don’t cripple the class in the most rewarding and organized group settings just because one class can solo better than others in content that awards green drops at best.

How is the one setting more important to balance than the other?

Ohoni.6057:

If you’re in a group with a single other Condition player though then you might as well just go AFK. Conditon damage is fine for solo PvE but it’s horrible for Dungeons (and I say that as someone who loves Condition builds in theory and wishes that they were viable).

Condition damage is “horrible for dungeons?” Really? Then I must be playing my conditions elementalist “wrong.” I also must not have been nearly as effective as I thought I was in a level 42 fractal run last night either.

Conditions are incredibly good for dungeons. It isn’t all about critical damage. Perhaps they aren’t as effective for some classes in dungeons. I don’t know as I only play a few classes. But saying they’re horrible in dungeons isn’t remotely accurate. With the right builds and play styles they are extremely effective. Not everything is about raw damage in dungeons.

To be on-topic: I have a suggestion about the dungeons difficulty/scaling.
1. First of all, AC is by no way a starter dungeon – keep in mind that new players will have this one available first, with story at 30 and explo at 35. If I were a new player and jumped into AC explo at level 35 I’d honestly stop doing any dungeons for the rest of the game. It’s way too difficult for this level. I’ve seen lvl 80 groups with exotics and so on that handle pretty well in other dungeons but have a tough time in AC.
2. Dungeons should be level scaled as fractals (but without actually having to select a level) – from my point of view they should be doable with a party that’s in/a bit over the recommended level but scaled up if the party is full 80 (as point 3. below explains the idea).
3. The scaling should be done in such a way to avoid having lvl 80 groups constantly farm a low level dungeon just to get the tokens/rares/exotics and precursors (sarcasm intended).

What I would expect (if I would be a new player/casual player):
1. Lvl 30 – AC story, doable with a lvl 30 group
2. Lvl 35 – AC explo, doable with a lvl 35 group that has lvl 35 equipment (as I’ve seen lvl 40’s with lvl 20 equipment for example). This is not the case unfortunately, considering the equipment available at this level.
3. Lvl 40 – CM story, same as above.
And so on with all the dungeons.
[n] – Arah – doable with a lvl 80 group, with exotics, good coordination, etc. etc.

I’ve honestly done Arah [1-3] on my main with ease, each time Lupicus on first try, but AC seems a bugger; and it’s not the bosses (they are easy as hell), but the way to get there is annoying.

This is in regards to difficulty. In terms of rewards: they should be according to the difficulty of the dungeon. Honestly, there’s no real reward for doing Arah except for the tokens. And that’s IF you want to get the skin, otherwise, there’s no point. I already have 1k tokens from Arah which I will never spend since I don’t like the armor skin so why should I go back? I’m always up for Arah because it’s a big challenging and it keeps me going but there is nothing rewarding from it. I’d honestly expect an increase in rares/exotics drops in Arah.

That’s my 2 PvE cents. Or should I say tokens?

I didn’t play all dungeons, so I was concentrated on AC. Bets I in AC which I was impressed it was AC2 (AC path 2). So it was a final boss. It was very interested idea. Other AC path was annoying and missing some contest. AC3 idea is not bad, if you guys it make it work properly. That npc warmaster it doesn’t cast that circle. I read a lot about AC3, that need use CC and remove defiant. I played many games MMO, I was in shock that AC dungeon for high experienced players. You need still work on it, because other player can leave game when they reach level 35 and will try to find party. You need to make this dungeon in two mode: For level 35-40 and for level 80. Otherwise this dungeon is unbalanced for same level players.

Also I am very interested, you are game designer: How much games you played before You call game designer. That you finish degree is doesn’t mean that you can call a game designer. Game designer is more than degree and it’s come through experience of playing. I saw many nice dungeons in other games, that I didn’t see in this game. I can call this dungeon slash and run. You should go through other games and look to system. When you have enough knowledge, you have more new ideas than before. And is plenty plenty new ideas how to make AC more fun, more interesting strategy and better reward system. AC, CoF, TW it wasn’t impressed me when you comparing with other games. Need a lot a lot work to do on dungeon. From my point of view, is just 40% job done in these dungeons.

The problem with most dungeons is the lack of proper mobility. This is what makes balancing them hard i guess. High mobility classes like thief, ranger and mesmer makes for a complete nightmare, as they suddenly “can’t move enough”.

Since a dungeon is basically a “cave of champs and veterans with elite skills”, you could simply go apply a “quick fix” by widening hallways a bit more, but creating some more challenging bottleneck along the way, to make it less easy to just rush through.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.

Eh… did you just compare warriors to mesmers in terms of sustained dps and effort. Mesmers definitely have advantages, but clearly not these and especially not at the same time.

PS: let’s not even talk about condition builds in PvE. Sigh.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Rangers have their highs and lows like every other class. They have really good DPS, but they have to work at it a bit more than other classes like warrior or mesmer. It’s possible just not as easy.

I’m sorry, I’m gonna have to call you out on this one, Robert. It’s well-known that Mesmers are one of the most difficult classes to provide sustained DPS on due to the fact that all their damage relies on conditional statements (IF my clones don’t die, IF my phantasm hits when there are a lot of conditions stacked, etc.)

Rangers, on the other hand, in my experience, provide one of the most STABLE DPS contributions. Maybe not the HIGHEST, but definitely one of the most RELIABLE.

Sorry if this has already been covered.

I think a solution to the dungeon problem would be to give us the ability to “Soul Merge” with our pet. Basically we could merge powers with our pets and they “stow” away and are not visible. When soul merged we’d increase damage by 15%+- (taken from pet). In an advanced scenario I’d love to see the stats of what ever beast we merge with be added to ours. Merge with the brown bear and gain extra vitality, devourer gain toughness, felines gain precision, etc.. according to the stats merged.

Make this an elite skill that lasts for an hour with a 360s cool-down. Make a permit part of the stow feature. Set it so the pet must be at 100% health and in non-combat. I don’t really care but the fact is in certain places (like most dungeons) a pet is more of a crutch then a help. In most PvE scenarios I don’t see this feature being used a lot as it won’t really change the max DPS of ranger but in places where our pet is auto killed I’d rather not be ham-stringed by the pet and be in control of the damage.

—Dallywolf

Prysin.8542:

The problem with most dungeons is the lack of proper mobility. This is what makes balancing them hard i guess. High mobility classes like thief, ranger and mesmer makes for a complete nightmare, as they suddenly “can’t move enough”.

Since a dungeon is basically a “cave of champs and veterans with elite skills”, you could simply go apply a “quick fix” by widening hallways a bit more, but creating some more challenging bottleneck along the way, to make it less easy to just rush through.

Indeed. This has been a criticism I’ve had with dungeons since the open beta events. While it makes sense for them to be restrictive and to provide a challenge, I don’t think the complete lack of space to move is a very fair approach. The entire combat system is designed around the concepts of positioning and movement. Not all of the dungeons are extremely restrictive with movement. Arah often has lots of space to move in hallways, for example. But the cramped hallways in some of the dungeons do make classes that require mobility a lot more difficult to play. It also causes camera problems and you end up fighting the camera in addition to the enemies. I’m mostly used to these issues by now but it’s pretty brutal when first starting out in dungeons. You spend all of your time up to the point where you can do dungeons being taught to move and use your positioning to be effective in combat. Then you step into dungeons for the first time and everything you learned about the combat system is no longer valid.

I’m not really sure what a good solution to this would be. The dungeons should be challenging and require teamwork. I love that aspect of them. At the same time, they seem to contradict the game’s combat mechanics, especially if you’re new to dungeons. Once you’re more experienced it isn’t as big of a deal. But that learning curve is kinda punishing and discouraging.

Speaking of punishing, the new abilities for the cave troll in AC are absolutely ridiculous. You’re in a tight corridor, he can one shot everyone in the hallway, cause AoE knockdown, and cause fear. I like challenges but this fight really isn’t my idea of fun. It seems to largely consist of: try to dodge his shockwave attack but nowhere to go due to limited space, downed, revived, and oh oops, fear followed by knockdown followed by shockwave, defeated. This isn’t how it necessarily always goes but the main issue I have with it is it just seems way too overpowered for a level 35 dungeon. Not only that but the fight is fairly early in the dungeon as well. There are good ways to deal with this for more experienced players (no doubt why this is an optional fight) but I question the troll’s placement in the dungeon with these new abilities.

The entire rest of the game already caters to players in general. I don’t think anyone will argue against the fact that Open World PvE is largely accessible to the majority of players, and Open World PvE comprises the majority of the PvE in this game in terms of amount of content.

Anet ALREADY STATED that Explorable Mode dungeons were meant to challenge organized groups of 5 players. In fact, they’ve actually done the opposite with Story Mode dungeons and toned down the difficulty to make them accessible to most players. Thus, I don’t really see what the problem is.

But Dungeons are a major part of end-game play, they can’t wall them off to only hardcore players. Story Mode dungeons are actually harder and more time consuming in some cases than Exploration mode, but offer drastically lower rewards. If they want to have “hard mode” exploration dungeons in addition to the existing versions then that’s fine, so long as they don’t offer higher levels of reward, but the base experience should not be made excessively difficult.

Condition damage is “horrible for dungeons?” Really? Then I must be playing my conditions elementalist “wrong.” I also must not have been nearly as effective as I thought I was in a level 42 fractal run last night either.

Yes, but that’s ok. The important thing is that you’re having fun, even if you are dragging down the rest of the group. A Condition Ele isn’t nearly as badly hurt by condition capping as a Necro or Thief, but they certainly aren’t as good as a direct damage Ele, and if you end up grouped with any other Condition player then you end up nullifying each other, so that if you have a group in which each player is assumed to be bringing 100 “worth” out of a total 500 for the team, then even if two Condition characters would be 100 each on their own, they would combine to add up to only 130 or so instead of 200, because Condition capping and overlap means that most of their potential damage just isn’t counted.

I do run a Condition-based Thief in dungeons, but I certainly don’t consider myself a DPS character when doing so, I’m definitely a support type, and for that my lack of direct damage is not crippling, but I think it would be shameful if I tried to promote myself as being a damage dealer.

i THINK THEY JUST NEED SIMPLE TWEAKS not any huge changes. Caps lock.. Like using their pet’s F2 skill shouldn’t make them auto attack right after.(using a fern hound for it regen , then using it’s f2 to have it run off after the nearest enemy. same for pigs if i’m using them just for their forage skill. at least while they’re on guard.) I think rangers are amazing in any dungeon as i usually am the last to survive then having to tank and revive the other teamates. also another tweak is for drakes; i use their f2 and half the time they don’t run after the target but, they stop right where they’re at and spray without even facing the enemy whether its right inrange or a mile away(Which is why a never use them any more.sad-face). and last but not least maybe my biggest pet peeve is the bug with pet revives. it’s gotta be 1/2 or more of the time you use skill 3 when downed they just run to you then stand there doing nothing. Same with “search and rescue”.

I don’t think we need any big buffs for rangers but rather a few mechanic tweaks and bug fixes.

@Robert Hrouda

My main gripe is that agony resistance doesn’t carry over to ANY player spawned/controlled minions which in FotM10+ hurts the player a lot, more so for ranger since x % total our of dps is our pet.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We’re aware of and working towards a solution for that problem. Agony Resistance on summoned creatures and pets is something we are trying to do.

That’s a big relief.

One last issue remains though: GW2 dungeons are filled with “oneshot mechanics”, we dodge them but minions can’t and die.
Any plan to make us able to protect them from oneshots?

Suggestions: “Minions gain aegis for 2s when you dodge”.