Guild Wars 2

JonPeters.5630:

As I stated, this change is a lot about low hanging fruit. The problem with ranger is things that are good we don’t want to overpower and the things that are not as good are difficult to change. For example:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.
• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.
• Both marksmanship and skirmish lines lack traits to enable power rangers.

Despite those problems rangers have some great builds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. The core problem is diversity but it just so happens that rangers are not setup in a way that makes it easy to improve that diversity problem.

Too much typing for the bus, I’ll try and discuss more when I’m in.

Jon

P.S. I tried some stuff on MH sword but it was a marginal improvement at best. I’ll ping some programmers today about one other way we might handle it, but don’t hold your breath.

This is the post I’ve been waiting to read for a very long time. Thank you so much. It’s nice to know that despite the patches coming and going resolving very minor things that the larger issues aren’t falling on deaf ears.

As you mentioned, there isn’t any quick fix for this class. The traits themselves just don’t make much sense where most of them are, others are incredibly weak by themselves and need to be merged, but you can’t just do that because you’d need to introduce whole new traits to replace them.

We realize the developers are limited in what they can tell the players, but this class is in a rough spot and could really use a 6month plan or a very high-level discussion on the direction things are going. Especially with power Rangers where it feels like the class just doesn’t have anything that would ever allow a power build to work.

The elephant in the room not being discussed here is how with the release of ascended items we are losing out on scali.g because pets at 80 were designed with exotic stats in mind. Now as warriors and every non minion class improves at full, we only improve at a fraction of that amoint since pets don’t sce with gear upgrades.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Weakness, Might, Protection or Retalation instead of Vigor?
I thought you wanted to limit the Vigor spam.

Thanks for the answers… now that I know that the pet will not be fixed (can not be fixed) anytime soon I can stop lurking the ranger forums…

Btw… the whole petsystem with swapping the pets once one is down is so far away from a beastmaster “the pet is my companion” idea – you really should fire the guy who invented it.

I think it would be okay for some kind of necromancer or summoner who gives a kitten about his servant… but for a petclass who should “care” about his “companion” I really dont get it…
But then the “companions” dont even remember their names so it goes both ways I guess…

Well… our “special” mechanic wont be fixed anytime soon guys… time to really switch to Warrior or Guardian I guess….

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

C) Both.

The GS still needs a bit of a boost to its auto that isn’t defense based to be picked over a sword.

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

This is really disappointing, couldn’t the skill be faked and come from the ranger instead as long as the pet is checked to be alive? Atleast until its figured out.

JonPeters.5630:

As I stated, this change is a lot about low hanging fruit. The problem with ranger is things that are good we don’t want to overpower and the things that are not as good are difficult to change. For example:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.
• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.
• Both marksmanship and skirmish lines lack traits to enable power rangers.

Despite those problems rangers have some great builds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. The core problem is diversity but it just so happens that rangers are not setup in a way that makes it easy to improve that diversity problem.

Too much typing for the bus, I’ll try and discuss more when I’m in.

Jon

P.S. I tried some stuff on MH sword but it was a marginal improvement at best. I’ll ping some programmers today about one other way we might handle it, but don’t hold your breath.

I’ve been thinking about what you said on improving power builds and I think that some talent swapping may be a good low-hanging-fruit technique of giving a bit of a boost to these types of builds. One of the best ways this may be accomplished may be to give some good melee traits to the power trait lines.

Here’s an idea I had:

Move Two-Handed Training (IX in Nature Mastery) to Skirmishing
Move Martial Mastery (X in Wilderness Survival) to Skirmishing

This empowers Skirmishing as your strait damage tree.

Move Trapper’s Expertise (VIII in Skirmishing) to Wilderness Survival
Move Trap Potency (XI in Skirmishing) to Wilderness Survival

This empowers Wilderness Survival as your condition tree by putting the trap talents in the line that increases condition damage.

To balance this out, move one of the defensive talents from Wilderness Survival to Nature Magic. Good candidates would probably be Empathetic Bond or Hide in Plain Sight.

Problems/cosiderations with a change like this: This removes the grandmaster trap trait from Skirmishing, but only adds in two master traits. You would have to either move a master trait to a grandmaster trait as is, move a master trait to a grandmaster trait and add an additional benefit to it, or remove a trait and add a new grandmaster trait.

If adding in a grandmaster trait was ever considered, I think it would be pretty cool to have a talent that did something like this:
“Gain X (insert trait here) when wielding a sword/greatsword if you have a bow as a secondary weapon. Gain X (insert trait here) when wielding a bow if you have a sword/greatsword secondary weapon”

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

both would be a defensive addition. we dont lack defence, offense is our weakness. i would like both to be honest and dont think that the skills would become more powerfull then the 2hand sword skills of a warrior. but like mentioned before. both adds wouldnt make the weapon more viable in a offensive view.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

The removal of evade from the auto-attack chain would only create a weaker weapon without some significant changes, not just a boon, condition, or whirl finisher. One thing I can think of that it really needs, and that players have been asking for since release, is more damage.

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

But you do realize that Rangers are handicapped for their pets right? We know our damage is reduced because we assume the pet is up. Many of us assume the reason the class has such poor burst and AE is because the pets are supposed to provide it in some fashion. I’m not sure it’s fair to leave Rangers broken for another year while we wait for the core mechanic of the class to be made useful, do you?

Despite many players wanting you to wave the white flag and get rid of the pet, most of us realize that isn’t an option. What can be done for Rangers in the short term to offset the fact that pets are so unreliable or outright useless like they are in WvW. If the F2 abilities can’t be made to work should the pet just be a new ‘condition’ that is effectively a DOT that can be killed?

Even with those GS additions I wouldn’t pick it over sword. With a sword you do more damage and have some cool evades and leaps. Add a warhorn and you can support the party and your pet, a torch and you add a fire field and damage and with dagger you get some good melee and ranged, defense/offensive skills

Greatsword could use damage increase, it’s kinda bleh compared to everyone elses. The fury trait is cool but it’s not like rangers have a problem with fury.

The vigor will not make up for the survivability loss of removing the evade. If yo nerf survival, you need to significantly bring up offense so we can kill before being burst down.

Also, swoop doesn’t need an evade. The problem of the greatsword is uptime on targets with swiftness or when you are snared. So give swoop either a swiftness proc or a 1 second root or a 6 second cripple.

The primary ranged weapons are not a mix of aoe and single target. They are 99% single target with a single long cd, low impact AoE. You can’t honestly call poison spread aoe with its miserable damage, and the same goes for barrage with a long cd and low damage compared to warrior longbow or ele staff.

And let’s be honest. What’s holding AI down on the priority list is spvpers burning hatred for AI. That’s fine and dandy, if you hadn’t been set on releasing a class whose design and mechanic is balanced around AI!

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

Thank you for the answer

Question : why not give the pet +30% attack speed and decrease the damage for the time being ? that would decrease the times the pet/spirit will delay a specific command.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Why not ? it would be a good idea for improving surival inside zerg fights ( since most of vigor boons are on a non power trait lines )

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

I like the idea of evade on swoop, but I’m not sure how I feel about vigor on auto-attack.

The synergy between the player and pet with the 1h sword (granting might to pet on autoattack is really cool, though. Maybe continue this theme with the greatsword?

How about protection of short duration to player and pet or protection to player, swiftness to pet?

Some sort of swiftness to pet somewhere on the GS, in general, may not be a bad idea. With Swoop, the player can easily close gaps, but doesn’t help the pet.

What the hemlock is this? This can’t be right! Lies, slander, deceit and heresy! We’re Rangers! We’re of the underdog trinity, we’re not supposed to get buffs! We’re supposed to have maybe two paths to walk in the world and neither are supposed to be fun!

…It may not be a perfect buff, but I’m… Strangely satisfied with this.

That’s… Never happened before.

I need to sit down.

JonPeters.5630:

meikodesign.6471:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Weakness, Might, Protection or Retalation instead of Vigor?
I thought you wanted to limit the Vigor spam.

We do want to but we also want this to be a weapon with some evasion capability on it, otherwise we would not have made the auto-attack on it evade in the first place.

Leave the evade on autoattack thank you very much. Feel free to boost the weapon as you please, but don’t remove the evade.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

I like both these ideas, ok. But it still seems a bit tacked on.

As much as I don’t like using one hand sword, I do like how interesting the chain attack is on it. The cripple, pet gaining might, is very interesting.

Something similar with the GS would be awesome. Swoop giving evade, and GS auto 3 giving a cripple/vigor/random condition with a damage increase….or something similar. And Maul finally being a blast finisher.

To be honest, I use Axe/Axe + LB for 95% of my time in PvE and WvE, and only use GS in some fractals, due to the low damage output on it.

Suggestions:

1) Swap Master’s Bond with Instinctual Bond.
Reason: In current mechanics, the more you invest in a Beastmastery traitline, the more you need swap pet on every cool-down time. That 5 saved points on Beastmastery will help keep it to spend for 20 or 25 points traits in the other branches, for many builds it’s good choice. It’s good to WvW and PvP too, making for 5 points strong non-swapping pet, without going deep into Beastmastery traitline.
Yet it would be good to become not lost stats from pet swap, only lost from pet death. (Or make lost 5/25 charges on every pet swapping, not lost all charges)

2) Instinctual Bond must be activated on 25% health threshold, not on downed state.
New Instinctual Bond swapped with Vigorous Training.
Reason: With this change it well synchronized with new Enlargement. Adept trait requiring downed state not good choice in many ways.
Adept tier Vigorous Training is very good for support build like 0-0-30-30-10.

3) All effects Healer’s Celerity combine with Circle of Life to create Healing tree, instead of giving swiftness (20 seconds cool-down) and going to Nature Magic traitline.
In Wilderness Survival Healer’s Celerity transforms to Survival Hunter, giving on downed state 10 second of swiftness to allies.
Reason: Thieves have annoying Merciful Ambush, Guardians Resolute Healer, Rangers must be have something useful too. For Healer’s Celerity change, it bring back nerfed water-field source in some way. For Survival Hunter it’s going to nice utility too. For example it’s good choice in everything, adding speed source to allies (On WvW/PvP/Fractals it make people run away faster from thing what kill you, or run close faster to revive you)

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Tklees.9052:

coming from warhammer where the two pet classes, Squig herder (ranged) and White Lion (melee) had a tactic that increased their damage by 25% when they ran without a pet it would be nice to see something like this. Both classes also had tactics that revolved around the pet, one such as the “vengeance” you mentioned for the pet dying, ones for crit damage increase while using a pet etc. We are the pet class but I would just like to have the options I have seen in other games with the pet class. You want us to have “build diversity” this is a good way to create it. Give us the option to gain benefits from the use of a pet, CC, boons, etc, or the option to solo and have a base damage increase and a lack of CC and extra boons. You will see rangers in PvP who run the pets for the CC and ones in PvE who store them for the base damage.

This, this, this.

Also an ex-Warhammer player here…..Squig Herder to be exact, I am so with you on this.

It does not change the core base of the class, and does not take ANYTHING away from the class, it does OP the class.

I remember playing my Squiggie, and sometimes the pet was more useful than raw dps. Example: fighting a small group clumped together and needing the AoE from the Gas Squig. Example: Fighting off a solo Witch Hunter (Thief basically) and wanting the Squig for the knock down. Also, sometimes the pet was pointless, like in PvE on a boss fight that would go down in a second to AoE (sound familiar?). Then the raw dps increase would come into play. OR….when in large RvR (WvW) your pet dies, and instead of losing utility AND dps, you just lost utility, but maintain dps due to this trait.

Its fair, makes sense, and would not break anything including builds.

PS: The pets in WH also hit moving targets….that really helped.

JonPeters.5630:

Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks.

There’s a workaround (kind of) when it comes to pets F2. F3 then F2 usually makes the skill go off faster and more reliably.
Maybe you could add F3 to F2, so to speak, since F3 seems to cancel whatever the pet is doing more or less instantly.

Another thing about pets, when you swap them and instantly press F2, most pets will miss the F2 attack, especially when they’re boosted with quickness. Please improve pet responsiveness when they’re just swapped in so that they actually hit their F2. This is especially noticable with all drakes and pets that have some form of leap attack on their F2.

Rework porcine pets so that their forage skill works like thiefs steal – replace F2 with whatever the pig dug up!

ChillyChinaman.6057:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Instant skills can be used, well, instantly by the AI or Player even mid attack or whatever. Guardians have this on their meditation skills.

An instant F2 trait would be cool but it’s sorta like a pick this to make your pets work trait and I doubt it’ll happen. Although it’d be funny to see some of these animations work as an instant skill.

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

There are two big problems caused by this delay for Rangers:
______________________________________________________________

• F4 (swap) directly followed by F2(pet special skill) will result in the F2 to not have a target and fire blindly. This completely wastes all F2 skills that need a target.

For example:
Lightning_Breath on River Drake
Rending Pounce on Lynx
Try it for yourself and see. There are more than just these two.
______________________________________________________________

• Rangers have some on-swap pet traits that lose valuable time by this delay

Zephyr Speed
Mighty Swap
Especially Zephyr Speed suffers from it. It loses 1-2 seconds of quickness on the pet eventhough it only has 3 seconds total and still needs to path to the target.
This is really unacceptable from a gameplay point of view. These on-swap traits should, at the very least, activate after the delay.

Any thoughts on converting the reveal debuff on Sic Em into a shout? It could have between 400-600 range and either need to be cast before thief goes into stealth like the current version or could startle a thief out of stealth if they are inside that range.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Why do you want to change the Greatsword?
Does the evade have to go and you need to come up with an acceptable solution for it?

Pets
Well, that is disappointing to hear.
But it is the realities of programming.

As a bandaid;
Have you thought of putting a hidden F3 inside of F2 instead of a hidden F1?
Right now when you press F2, the pet will automagically path towards a target because there’s a hidden F1 ‘attack my target’ function in there. But if you replaced it with a hidden F3 function that turned on and off again very swiftly, it would likely function as a self-interrupt to allow the F2 to go through, because that’s basically what you can do right now with F3.

Honestly, I don’t even think I’d miss it. Truthfully ever since I got near the skill ceiling of the mechanic, I want my pet to do things exactly where I want them to and not having this hidden F1 function muck things up. Such as automagically turning a well placed breath attack the wrong direction, or going to follow a moving target and never catching up when I could’ve timed the F2 to be an interception if they’d just stayed in place.

If you really want to have your cake and eat it too, make it a new Stance. I think ‘Guard’ and ‘Avoid Combat’ are great Stances for newer players, but all that effort to newbie-proof the control scheme really hurts the skill ceiling for older ones.

Greatsword
I could go for that. Swoop does seem like it would improved with an evade, and vigor does feel like a better replacement to an evade because you can choose when to use it without any particular timing. I’m not too much of a fan of weapons you need to turn off autoattack to use well, obviously.

But honestly, it’s as Cletus says, it’s the lack of damage on the autoattack that keeps me from using the weapon. If you feel as though the amount of vigor we would get would not completely offset the evade we’re losing in defensive terms, could additional offense help make up the difference?

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Ideas for the Greatsword:

Evade on Swoop: This would be huge. An “on command” evade that also does damage? Amazing. I really like this idea since you no longer forfeit dps to dodge. You now get to evade + do some decent damage. This even provides other incentives such as going into Wilderness Survival for the Martial Mastery Trait in order to lower the cooldown. Not to mention what it also does for the Sword.

However, as nice as this idea is it still doesn’t solve the feel of the greatsword. The greatsword doesn’t feel…well “great.”

Ideas for 3rd attack on Greatsword:
• Lower the cast time on the third attack from ¾ to ½. This provides a slight increase in DPS and the extra time is no longer as necessary since it isn’t providing evade.
• Keep cast time the same but increase the amount of damage done 3rd attack. Force the player to make a judgment call during combat. Do I wait for the third attack or do I use Maul now? Make waiting for that final attack worth it since the evade would be gone.
• Have the third attack provide a buff. Not super thrilled by this to be honest. Vigor? Not as useful. You already have block + evade on swoop. Not enticing. However, if it provided the party with vigor for 2s or whatever, that would be a STRONG draw to the sword. Yet this interferes with vigor on heal trait.

Personally I think with evade on swoop + a tad more DPS on the auto attack would help this weapon a lot. MAKE Martial Mastery enticing so those cooldowns are lower.

These are just some ideas. I am sure there are issues and problems involved here that I don’t see but I hope this is helpful and maybe spurs even better ideas.

JonPeters.5630:

As I stated, this change is a lot about low hanging fruit. The problem with ranger is things that are good we don’t want to overpower and the things that are not as good are difficult to change. For example:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.
• both primary ranged weapons are a mix of single target and AoE.
• Both marksmanship and skirmish lines lack traits to enable power rangers.

Despite those problems rangers have some great builds in PvE, PvP, and WvW. The core problem is diversity but it just so happens that rangers are not setup in a way that makes it easy to improve that diversity problem.

…

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

Admitting and openly discussing the issues with ranger is a HUGE step. Those of us from pre-order days have been posting (screaming our lungs out) pages about these and other known issues. But until today, it felt like the official response (or the lack of it) was that everything is OK and you have to deal with it. Now, we can all at least agree on the issues and hopefully there will be improvements in the not so far future.

I understand there are coding challenges associated with eg. pet and spirit AI, which, as quoted, makes it very difficult to change. However I don’t understand why things like:

• Skirmish and Wilderness line could probably swap half of their traits.
• Beastmastery has basically one generic trait per tier and just needs to be more generalized.

or more specific

• Intimidation Training:
  Activated (F2) abilities for canines and spiders cause cripple.
  Wolf with fear (F2) and Drakehound with immobilized (F2) does NOT synergies at all with Intimidation Training.

are not on your priority to-do list?
These are, imo, gamebreaking flaws and should be taken care of.

Evasion on swoop would be synergistic to assist in get-aways, and add purpose to the skill when already at melee range. I like it.

Another idea for swoop I like is a knockdown at the end of it.

I’ve only started using GS again so I’m not sure of the implications. One thing I find lacking on GS is cripples, landing maul is very unreliable without using #5 first.

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

If you add an evade on swoop then I’d expect it to receive the same treatment as RTL. Else most rangers will keep weilding their greatswords only to get away from a fight, but with much higher effectiveness.

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Does this mean that we could, once for all, get rid of the delayed F2 / unresponsive F2 by NOT having a pet animation?

I don’t mind having a pet without a F2 animation as long as it can be instant! Please drop the animations and make it like underwater :-))

Zenith.7301:

The primary ranged weapons are not a mix of aoe and single target. They are 99% single target with a single long cd, low impact AoE. You can’t honestly call poison spread aoe with its miserable damage, and the same goes for barrage with a long cd and low damage compared to warrior longbow or ele staff.

Nailed it. This needs to be addressed, ranger ranged AOE is pretty terrible and shortbow poison spread requires you to be literally in melee range to even be considered an AOE. Barrage for the longbow is on such a long cooldown, even when you spec for the cooldown reduction (which btw is another issue) Our only other AOE is traps, but if you spec for traps you pretty much ruin your ranged attacks. This is one of my major issues with the rangers outside of how they’ve pretty much ignored pet issues.

Kilger.5490:

I’ve only started using GS again so I’m not sure of the implications. One thing I find lacking on GS is cripples, landing maul is very unreliable without using #5 first.

You have crippling throw, from counter attack, that can be used while moving now and has 600 range and 5s duration.

I actually like my evade on the GS auto-attack chain. Not sure whether I’d want to give it up. How about this …

• keep the auto-attack in it’s current state
• add 2 seconds of stability to Swoop (cast time is 1,75 seconds , so a 1 sec stability might be too short)

Regarding suggestions that mention a DPS increase for the GS. Not sure whether that’s a good idea. As soon as GS DPS is equal or above Sword DPS the latter runs a risk of becoming a dead weapon, since its damage boost is really the only thing that makes you put up with the #1 root.

Not convinced by evade on Swoop. First, at what cost would it come? Increased cooldown? I’d rather keep swoop as is.

Then, the times when Swoop fails me in a defensive context, it’s not because it didn’t evade, it’s because it didn’t get me far enough because of a cripple or immobilize. In those cases, evade wouldn’t help. Sure, 1s of no damage, but after that, i’m still in the same spot of fiery death i was precisely trying to swoop out of.

If you want to improve the defensive side of swoop, make it break cripple/immobilize (or convert them into swiftness, haha), or apply 1-3s of stability.

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

Are you guys considering making f2’s instant? It would help immensely until you figure out the ai. Reason: f2 skills have two cast timers currently. The first is the pet walking over to the target. This is what players need to react to. Why do we need a second cast timer?

I know this may be a nightmare for you guys but you have to understand that our CORE mechanic is unreliable and frequently ineffective at best. Useless outside of pve at worst

JonPeters.5630:

meikodesign.6471:

JonPeters.5630:

Even though we wouldn’t do it now another shot at Greatsword to discuss

A) 1 chain NDA by giving Vigor.
B) Add evade to swoop…

Discuss?

Weakness, Might, Protection or Retalation instead of Vigor?
I thought you wanted to limit the Vigor spam.

We do want to but we also want this to be a weapon with some evasion capability on it, otherwise we would not have made the auto-attack on it evade in the first place.

Okay so option C) No changes
:)

ChillyChinaman.6057:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Can someone put this in layman’s terms?

Due to poor programming concepts pets have to actually contact the server and effectively ask for permission to run their F2 ability if any animations are involved in the ability. They then have to wait for the server to respond before they actually pull off the maneuver.

Girion.5483:

I actually like my evade on the GS auto-attack chain. Not sure whether I’d want to give it up. How about this …

• keep the auto-attack in it’s current state
• add 2 seconds of stability to Swoop (cast time is 1,75 seconds , so a 1 sec stability might be too short)

Regarding suggestions that mention a DPS increase for the GS. Not sure whether that’s a good idea. As soon as GS DPS is equal or above Sword DPS the latter runs a risk of becoming a dead weapon, since its damage boost is really the only thing that makes you put up with the #1 root.

Sword being one handed, better dps and depending on your off hand bringing better party, offensive and defensive support put it way over great sword. GS def needs a dps increase or animation speed speed up if the evade is removed.

Evade on swoop is a fantastic idea but it’s small beans… Our core mechanic is broken and half of our utilities are too situational

The last thing I want in pve, where you stack and melee the boss while stacking boons, is to send myself flying 600 yards away from the boss and waste preciois DPS walking back. I’ll just use my dodge.

The gap closer as an evasion skill makes no sense. How about after using counterattacked and it is triggered, you gain a short evade or distortion period?

Maul and hilt bash need more help than swoop, to be honest.
Maul you inadvertently nerfed by changing the bleed for a mere 5 vulnerability stacks that need significant group incoming damage to make up for the damage loss personally of the bleeds.

Maul itself is rather difficult to land due to the heavy telegraphing and animation delay of the skill. Pretty much a large portion of GS damage due to its weak autoattack hinges on a maul that is easy to dodge.Hilt bash has a delay charge up before lunging so hitting moving targets with swiftness is difficult.

JonPeters.5630:

cafard.8953:

Not convinced by evade on Swoop. First, at what cost would it come? Increased cooldown? I’d rather keep swoop as is.

Then, the times when Swoop fails me in a defensive context, it’s not because it didn’t evade, it’s because it didn’t get me far enough because of a cripple or immobilize. In those cases, evade wouldn’t help. Sure, 1s of no damage, but after that, i’m still in the same spot of fiery death.

If you want to improve the defensive side of swoop, make it break cripple/immobilize (or convert them into swiftness, haha), or apply 1-3s of stability.

It would come at no cost to Swoop, it would come at the cost of updating the chain. Also the added benefit that you aren’t taking into account as this skill could now be part of your rotation and used when you see a big attack incoming to avoid it.

Good point.

JonPeters.5630:

awe extender.1908:

JonPeters.5630:

Sytherek.7689:

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

As a former AAA PC game developer, I am mystified by the above.

My frost drake’s underwater F2 is instant, but the dry land F2 has a several-second delay — that makes no sense whatsoever. Underwater, I press F2, and the button works immediately; on dry land, clicking F2 does nothing initially, for 2-3 seconds.

Why the difference?

Since you asked so nicely. The underwater skill is an instant skill which doesn’t not require the AI to change it’s think state, as it can fire off during other actions. The land skill plumbs into our animation system which requires the drake to change it think state and execute a new order to the animation system. Both AI think state and animation can’t be running 100% of the time on every creature on the server for obvious reasons (it would create massive CPU usage and generate tons of skill lag) Animations are masked by client side blending, but the AI stuff has no way to be masked. We can make special cases for Ranger Pet F2, but doing so requires time and testing.

Does this mean that we could, once for all, get rid of the delayed F2 / unresponsive F2 by NOT having a pet animation?

I don’t mind having a pet without a F2 animation as long as it can be instant! Please drop the animations and make it like underwater :-))

No because in order for the creatures to attack they are going to use animations. For example I’m not going to spit fire breath out of a drake without it using its fire spitting animation.

Alright I respect that. I wouldn’t change the aesthetics of the game either (I must admit I enjoy the pets’ animations, hence being a ranger).

However, is there an option to make the hitboxes bigger or making them mini-AOE?

It’s funny you mention Drake fire breath. Imo, it is one of the most difficult attacks to land. Either the pet runs by foe or the foe moves slightly to the side due to F2 not being instant, which makes the pet completely miss the target. BUT if the fire, or any other attack, had a bigger (360 degree) hitbox, it would compensate for the late action.

Another point to make on ranger skills for future developer refining ( hopefully). Traps are a viable playstyle but are not commonly used due to several factors
1 -why are trap traits in the precision tree?, would they not be better placed in the condition damage trait line?
The common problem is ranger skills have no synergy to the skills they are supposed to reflect, oakheart salve for example in the conditions line… ? Why?
It just seems all over the place, would this not be better placed in the vitality line for instance ?

I digress slightly… traps also are an issue as they are not influenced in any way from traiting, apart from a 30 point skill to improve the duration of conditions . Traps should reflect the level of conditions traited into the line, just now it makes no difference to actual collective condition or duration damage on stats.
I have to say traps are far from useless in a theoretical playstyle, but unless condition damage on them are influenced by stats, then traps will always remain as a less used option ( simply because they don’t do enough damage ).