I felt that this, being primarily a pvp topic, deserved to be posted and discussed here. So:
I’m going to be referencing today’s state of the game discussion, which can be viewed here: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2guru/b/410812694
Particularly, at about 53:38, when the discussion for about a minute, shifts towards BM rangers.
What is mentioned is bringing down how hard the pets hit. Now, given that I can see why this change is being implemented, the thing that is concerning is this:
Why is that the only change mentioned?
Yes, the discussion did take a focus primarily towards necros and warriors, and the suggestion of using traits to improve build versatility seemed positive and good.
Why isn’t this the same thing being discussed about the ranger?
Is there not enough community representation(I think so, but still)?
Seriously, you cannot take a class with only 2 viable pvp specs and then nerf one of them with no further improvements. Improvements that were acknowledged back around November as necessary, but never saw any further discussion or implementation.
So, ultimately, it needs to be asked: Is there going to be any other improvements for the ranger class?
The question isn’t ranger specific, as many other classes do deserve to have the same questions asked, and the state of the games never really give all of the classes the representation they deserve.
Examples of specific questions:
-Is there any plan to increase the sources of cleansing so that rangers aren’t so reliable on Empathic Bond in every build if they want any sort of decent cleanse ability?
-Is there any plan to remove or rework any traits that have poor or sub par functionality? Examples: Beastmaster’s Might, Remorseless, Companions Might, Evasive Purity, Stability Training, Intimidation Training, Instinctual Bond
I’m sure there’s more but that’s a quick list.
-Is there any plan to return the damage being taken away from the pets to the players? While I personally 100% agree the pets are too strong, there are more setups than just BM bunker, and pets count as part of rangers power output, so it should be returned to the player. Then there is still counterplay because the ranger has to play well to do damage, but can still get outplayed.
-Is there any plan to differentiate the damage between the longbow from the shortbow? At the moment, the longbow has a worse damage output anywhere within 1000 range. It has poor sustain capability, and doesn’t really do anything that the shortbow doesn’t do better. Seeing as how the longbow seems to be the power weapon, and the shortbow a condition weapon, the burst/sustain on the longbow should be significant enough to make it the clear choice for a power build.
I’m sure there is more that can be asked, but there don’t seem to be many top tier, or many vocal ranger players that take part in pvp, and while every class can ask the same questions, I can only speak for playing the ranger.
The question more importantly needs to be asked. Do we want Esports or do we want the casual players? Because at top level play BM ranger is not as strong and trap ranger is horrible because no one stands in the traps. That means, ranger has one viable build at top level play. However, because of the ease of the s/d evade spam + jaguar F2 with perma regen combo bad players can easily outlast and kill anyone which causes nerfs, such as this, to be warranted. So, do we want competitive play or do we want 0 builds that are considered OP at noob level but that are not good at top level play?
I think that blarb was just to appease the people, I doubt they really are doing anything notable.
Their talk rarely matches actions.
(you should know that by now, you’ve seen all the ranger talk before the actual patches…)
Their stance they occasionally bring up ‘against wack-a-moling’, at this point, just seems to be an excuse not to do much to the game.
They wack-a-mol balance harder than any other game I’ve seen.
Never seen a tweak for the sake of better gameplay yet*
Only hits at strong specs, as they keep inevitably cropping up after the last nerfs…
The question more importantly needs to be asked. Do we want Esports
That’s like a five year old picking up a rocket and asking himself whether he wants to go to be an astronaut or not.
Dreamers will say yes, realists can see, quite obviously that the odds are terribly against it.
GW2 does not have what it takes to be an esport.
At best it can be at the level of a work based softball league.
Don’t get me wrong…
The base of the game is fine.
The population behind it is strong and fanatic.
But behind the scenes… when it comes to actually implementing all the great ideas Anet speaks of… whoever is in charge of bringing them towards reality…. is utterly terrible at it.
The game has come to be riddled with so many flaws… so many badly enacted map/combat/weapon/elites/amulet-runes/leaderboard/spectating/exc. setups that only a massive internal change, to people who can efficiently and logically work through so many changes, will make the game become Esports quality.
*-the quickness nerf was the only one, and they half baked that patch so hard it turned a good change into actually making the game worse…
SoTG rant.
What I don’t get is this insistence on the kittenies observer mode I have ever seen…
kittening static cameras… wut???
And they want something that shoddy to bring a game to be an esport?!?!?!
And they love just chucking stuff in and seeing how it falls…
kittenING WORST MMO MENTALITY EVER.
The new map… they don’t even kittening know if they want it to be competitive or not, whether it can be or not… THAT IS THEIR JOB AS FLAMING DEVS!!!
Letting a game repeatedly fail because they have no foresight…
Makes me want to punch something…
(edited by garethh.3518)
They better fix the other kitten thats wrong with the class b4 they start nerfing stuff. Pets are 50% of our damage and we have around 30% control over them.Also this better be a split between pve and pvp as pets are kitten in dungeons/wvw.
The question more importantly needs to be asked. Do we want Esports or do we want the casual players? Because at top level play BM ranger is not as strong and trap ranger is horrible because no one stands in the traps. That means, ranger has one viable build at top level play. However, because of the ease of the s/d evade spam + jaguar F2 with perma regen combo bad players can easily outlast and kill anyone which causes nerfs, such as this, to be warranted. So, do we want competitive play or do we want 0 builds that are considered OP at noob level but that are not good at top level play?
This brings up the true essence of the core problem; what do the devs define as skilled or top tiered leveled play?
I think that blarb was just to appease the people, I doubt they really are doing anything notable.
Their talk rarely matches actions.
(you should know that by now, you’ve seen all the ranger talk before the actual patches…)
Their stance against wack-a-moling, at this point, just seems to be an excuse not to do much to the game.They wack-a-mol balance harder than any other game I’ve seen.
Never seen a tweak for the sake of better gameplay yet*
Only hits on strong specs as they keep inevitably cropping up after the last nerfs…The question more importantly needs to be asked. Do we want Esports
That’s like a five year old picking up a rocket and asking himself whether he wants to go to be an astronaut or not.
Dreamers will say yes, realists can see, quite obviously that the odds are terribly against it.GW2 does not have what it takes to be an esport.
At best it can be at the level of a work based softball league.Don’t get me wrong…
The base of the game is fine.
The population behind it is strong and fanatic.
But behind the scenes… when it comes to actually implementing all the great ideas Anet speaks of… whoever is charge of bringing them towards reality…. is utterly terrible at it.*-the quickness nerf was the only one, and they half baked that patch so hard it left an entire class in the gutter for… 3? months now…. actually making the game worse…
True, and the most notable thing that has happened was a huge nerf (the Empathic Bond nerf).
Esports, while having a nice ring to it, seems to be an unrealistic goal when the game gets left stagnant for so long that community participation deteriorates.
I’m going to quote myself to add to the discussion:
I’m sorry, my comments seem condescending &/or flippant. I really do understand your concern. You’ve spent a lot of time on your Ranger, and you want to be able to be effective. Nerfs are always scary because companies tend to over-nerf.
That said, I encourage you to take what you heard with a grain of salt. I could equally read into it by saying, since they didn’t mention that they weren’t substantially buffing the Ranger to compensate for the reduction in pet dmg that they must be because it’s only logical that they would.
We simply don’t know, and we won’t know until they tell us. Patience.
No it’s fine, and I get it, and my OP was rantish, but I guess my main thing is this (and this incorporates all of the rest of the responses to this thread):
In a State of the Game situation, the players are representing a part of the community, and the devs are representing the voices and philosophies of their company.
It is poor on the devs part to state only negatives, without mentioning at the very least that they are aware of the other issues that plague the class. Just as it is poor for the players participating to not ask any follow up questions about classes when only negatives are mentioned, simply because it represents that they either have no idea on the state of the class, or they just don’t care about the class, so that the community that plays the class isn’t equally represented.
@Bas, I am well aware of the state of the metagame, and I fully understand the focus being towards necros and warriors. However, that doesn’t warrant giving the devs the window to announce a nerf with its respective reasoning, and then not following up with how they feel the state of that class will be after the nerf, especially when they seem to try to preach increasing versatility, and then only announce nerf.
While I am disappointed with the stagnant feel that has fallen over the ranger (and the game in lots of aspects), that isn’t what I was trying to voice, though that certainly plays a part in it.
What I am trying to voice is that I am very discontented by the lack of representation the ranger community has when communicating with the devs, which allows them to come off as unaware or uncaring towards the class simply because there is nobody to draw focus towards it that understands the issues that rangers have.
Isn’t anybody else tired of watching the devs or the top tier players that host the state of the games gloss over and/or laugh every time the ranger is brought up, with no serious effort put into analysis or deeper explanation?
Well, I mean, ideally, sure. SoTGs would be a mix of buffs/nerfs aims and aspirations, along with good discussion about why and the effects.
All the streams and casts so far seem extremely shallow, never reasons about changes, sure reasons for what needs to be changed… but never talk about the tweaks themselves… it just ends up with a mention of a general concept people find annoying before a dev says ‘we are addressing it’…
It means every streams does nothing a patch notes like list can’t…
(edited by garethh.3518)
Exactly. While conceptually it is good, in reality, the thing that is going to affect gameplay the most, class balance, is never addressed with the level of detail that it should be.
I don’t have the statistics in front of me, but I would be willing to bet that a super majority of people watching the SoTGs are watching to see what is coming for their class and how/if it will change their build and playstyle.
It is probably the most important topic on a broad scale, and yet it is glossed over sloppily each time, and the sample size picked from the playerbase to participate in the SoTGs is so small with such a repetition of players that it now serves as a biased sampling of the games community. This time around the ONLY redeeming quality is that they took in lists of other players questions from the community for questions/suggestions, and while the focus was of course going to be more towards warriors/necros, they should still take the time to gather concerns from the top tier playerbase of all the professions, and not just the ones that are the loudest on the forums.
They better fix the other kitten thats wrong with the class b4 they start nerfing stuff. Pets are 50% of our damage and we have around 30% control over them.Also this better be a split between pve and pvp as pets are kitten in dungeons/wvw.
I think an issue was a miscommunication in beta. Originally most of the ranger’s damage came from the ranger, the pet was like an extra weapon. But pets were pretty fragile and had trouble hitting things. Now pets are too strong, but rangers don’t really do much damage themselves unless they run conditions. I don’t really feel the players wanted a strong pet offensively, just one that wasn’t always going to die in AoE and could reliably hit targets. If they reduced damage from pets, and buffed ranger damage I feel they would have many more viable builds. Axe, greatsword, and the longbow all took big hits.
They better fix the other kitten thats wrong with the class b4 they start nerfing stuff. Pets are 50% of our damage and we have around 30% control over them.Also this better be a split between pve and pvp as pets are kitten in dungeons/wvw.
I think an issue was a miscommunication in beta. Originally most of the ranger’s damage came from the ranger, the pet was like an extra weapon. But pets were pretty fragile and had trouble hitting things. Now pets are too strong, but rangers don’t really do much damage themselves unless they run conditions. I don’t really feel the players wanted a strong pet offensively, just one that wasn’t always going to die in AoE and could reliably hit targets. If they reduced damage from pets, and buffed ranger damage I feel they would have many more viable builds. Axe, greatsword, and the longbow all took big hits.
+1 for accuracy.
I don’t understand how hard it is to put together the concepts of having the damage come from the player while not having the pet mechanic be useless.
Seems like everybody but the people in charge of making the changes are on the same page.
I think an issue was a miscommunication in beta
Ehh, there’s a good chance that it was unintentional.
The jag auto crit in stealth could have been a bug.
It never made it onto any tooltip and every other feline F2 is bad in comparison… and there are allot of bugs in this game.
They could have just let this bug pass since it wasn’t OP, and fixed their overnerfs of the class… basically it fallows suite with the majority of GW2’s balancing…
A stream of terrible concepts made it into GW2 (and stayed!) because the devs were too kittening lazy/passionate about their design to actually fix things or realize what good PvP was made of…
(sorry if I sound pretty cynical, SoTG and looking back on all the issues in this game does it to me >.<)
Anyways… yeah its a bad situation, dunno how likely it is to change unless your willing to get nerfed to the ground like warriors for a 3~ months and counting…
(edited by garethh.3518)
I think an issue was a miscommunication in beta
Nope, odds say, just like everything Anet did, it was unintentional.
Jaguars auto-critting in stealth probly was a bug.
It never made it into any tooltip and every other feline F2 is bad in comparison…That just let pets be able to be extreme sources of dmg… and since it wasn’t too OP… Anet let it be…
Basically its the story of all of GW2 balancing…
A stream of terrible concepts made it into GW2, and stayed!, because they were too kittening lazy/passionate about their design to actually fix things or realize what good PvP was…
I still don’t understand how it went from guild wars 1 to this…
yes this was so sad sotg for us rangers-.-
that cant be true how they talked about ranger, specially zoose…
its the wrong ppls who speak for the community in this sotg, most time i see mesmers and eles there… streaming make this ppls not to gods knowing all!
that cant be good when all we can hear about ranger at sotg is
“lets speak about ranger, oooop”
i mean, wtf…
this class is so broken and have no working builds atm, only beastmaster work and trapper is to weak…
and then nerf the only working build, nice!
nerfing pet dmg will nerf also trapper to be more weak…
ranger rly need a big trait and some weapon changes!
but i think the guy who designed the ranger is not any more working at anet, it feels like this…
the most patch notes at ranger always so bad joke…
The SoTG is for players to get a better understanding of the state of the game…
If you think it is top tier players telling Anet how to balance… you’re sorely mistaken…
The tragedy though is that… it still does a mediocre job at that.
Anyways, when talking about the game itself, balancing in general has been slow, shallow and half baked for every class. On the plus side, being mostly ignored is a much better option than being a warrior…
(edited by garethh.3518)
It’s extremely frustrating to see such blatant disregard for equal representation of professions when it comes to skill balance conversations with the devs.
Respect where respect is due, but Zoose and Phantaram aren’t the only players in this game, and them as well as previous guests on the SoTGs have never done a good job of pressing for more information about classes or topics that they, for all purposes, must have bias against in order to show them such disregard.
And I’m sorry but most people are watching the SoTGs for upcoming balance changes. The information provided about spectator mode changes and custom arenas and this and that could have been accomplished with a typed Q and A, as the majority of players aren’t going to show interest in watching or investing in custom arenas in a game that they don’t feel is balanced.
It’s extremely frustrating to see such blatant disregard for equal representation of professions when it comes to skill balance conversations with the devs.
I honestly don’t mind a lack of equal representation, as long as what is discussed is pertinent to and explicit about where the game is headed…
(which also seems to be a problem of yours)
Because lets face it… not every class needs the same amount of attention… and even then, not every patch should be focusing on every class equally…
I’m not defending the SoTG, I think they do a pretty mediocre job at getting passed the shallow sort of ‘we know about these problems and are magically going to fix them…. eventually’ but I don’t honestly mind gaps in representation. If changes are focused on a specific class or two, I would rather have a person that plays those classes in the SoTG, than a ranger.
Anyways….
An ideal cast would focus on goals->specifics about how they are looking to achieve it-> the effects you think it will have, positive and negative.
The ‘top tier’ players joining the cast can throw in their two cents about the biggest issues they’ve seen, how they see the dev suggestions effecting the gameplay (after knowing about the changes for a day~ and talking it over with a few other players); with occasional asides about whether they like it or not and why…
(edited by garethh.3518)
It’s extremely frustrating to see such blatant disregard for equal representation of professions when it comes to skill balance conversations with the devs.
I honestly don’t mind a lack of equal representation, as long as what is discussed is pertinent to and explicit about where the game is headed…
Because lets face it… not every class needs the same amount of attention… and even then, not every patch should be focusing on every class equally…
I’m not defending the SoTG, I think they do a pretty mediocre job at getting passed the shallow sort of ‘we know about these problems and are magically going to fix them…. eventually’
An ideal cast would focus on goals->specifics about how they are looking to achieve it-> the effects you think it will have, positive and negative.
The ‘top tier’ players joining the cast can throw in their two cents about the biggest issues they’ve seen, how they see the dev suggestions effecting the gameplay; with occasional asides about whether they like it or not and why…
Well it’s more of specific examples I’m holding in my head.
Like for instance, just an example more than a specific:
Devs: “Okay, rangers, we’re increasing damage.”
Guests: “Okay.”
Devs: “Moving on….”
Absolutely not every class needs an equal amount of time spent on discussion. But it is a balance discussion, so for the classes that aren’t receiving a focus or aren’t being touched, just a simple statement like: “at this time we aren’t going to be making changes. We feel the class is in a good place right now, and we would like to let the metagame evolve with the changes we do make in the next patch, in order to see what happens before we decide on what to do with this class.”
And it definitely should have NEVER gone the way it did with this most recent SoTG: “Oh yeah, BM rangers”
Devs: “We’re nerfing their pet damage”
SoTG: (paraphrased) “That’s fine, that’s exactly what that class needs. No need to discuss any further, the ranger is out of our hair and no longer relevant, continue talking about the classes we care about.”
Devs: “Moving on”
And it definitely should have NEVER gone the way it did with this most recent SoTG: “Oh yeah, BM rangers”
Devs: “We’re nerfing their pet damage”
SoTG: (paraphrased) “That’s fine, that’s exactly what that class needs. No need to discuss any further, the ranger is out of our hair and no longer relevant, continue talking about the classes we care about.”
Devs: “Moving on”
That is a massive show on how unprofessional the cast is…
How unprepared and biased…
I mean, if it was a small tweak, like a mild alteration to a few pets dmgs (as in the 10~% life buffs) in an episode with other larger focuses…
I wouldn’t care…
But I mean since it is consistently, in next to every SoTG, self profession serving bias about changes… ones I’m assuming they find out about mid-episode… with no specifics…
it is just an extremely badly made cast.
(edited by garethh.3518)
And it definitely should have NEVER gone the way it did with this most recent SoTG: “Oh yeah, BM rangers”
Devs: “We’re nerfing their pet damage”
SoTG: (paraphrased) “That’s fine, that’s exactly what that class needs. No need to discuss any further, the ranger is out of our hair and no longer relevant, continue talking about the classes we care about.”
Devs: “Moving on”That is a massive show on how unprofessional the cast is…
How unprepared and biased…I mean, if it was a small tweak, like a mild alteration to a few pets dmgs (as in the 10~% life buffs) in a cast with other larger focuses… I wouldn’t care… but I mean since complete profession bias is throughout all of the SoTGs… it’s just a badly casted show.
Granted I paraphrased a lot of that, their actual response was more so something like: “that’s a good change. the ranger build is too strong right now and that’s exactly what it needs.”
No additional follow up or anything. Sorry, I realized I may have added in a little more of what I felt their response said than what was actually said haha.
But yes I agree, it isn’t just this SoTG anyhow, and I’m to the point where I think if the SoTG continues on as it has been, that it is a complete waste of the community’s time as it will never represent a majority of what the playerbase wants discussed, and the chosen players bias is much too strong to serve as a good basis for a balance discussion.
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