Guild Wars 2

Sebrent.3625:

Semil.8279:

Now you’ve made me worried.

If pets are made able to hit more reliably, our dps will increase on mobile targets.

Will ANet see this as a reason to decrease the damage the ranger does to compensate?

Seeing as how a thief can burst down a tank, I doubt it.
Only the non-tanky pets are doing the mean damage and that’s only like 2k to 4k depending on traits, utilities, and your target’s toughness.

i come from wvw when a thief just 2 shot me lol, havent seen anything like it since WoW old days. I mean all classes bring something but with a ranger i shoot and shoot and hit people and the HP doesn’t come down. The class just doesn’t bring anything to the table, i regret the day i spend all my gold, laurels and everything gearing my ranger.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Edit:
I’ve gotten in some trouble before about giving hints and releasing info early… so I’m going to leave that up to the people in charge if they want to do those things :x

Dont worry man! u are so loved here, u are the only one in all arena.net team who cares about us, asking for our problems and putting it directly in the dev’s table.

The one who scolded you, should understand how frustrating is seeing the same problem/issue in the game during months without any answer.
We was 8months with constant ranger’s bugs and issues without any response from arena.net and thats really frustrating, dont know if arena.net takes care of the issue or not, or even if they know the issue, is something really frustrating. I even know friends who left his ranger (and even the game) cause pet’s issues, and now are (like all of us) happy to see (thanks to you) that arena.net really know these issues and is working on them.

Please, let know to the dev team (specially the one who flamed you), that we need info, we need to know which issues they know and in which of them they are working on. I know that they shouldn’t give info till they are 100% sure that they will implement it to avoid cryings, but man, give some minor tips like you did, is something that we really need. We need to know that there is something there working on game’s problems, and wich direction the game is taking…
I have to admit that I was really close to quit GW2 due the constant lacks this game had month over month, patch over patch without any fix or official info about it.

Most of games, post his patch preview few weeks before its release. Arena.net just post patch notes even few hours after the patch download starts…

Im sure that this month patch notes are now +90% sure, so I dont see the problem of talking about it

Once again, thanks for the info Robert, and dont worry about “the trouble you got” you are so great

We don’t only need PVE buffs/fixes. Our kitten pets needs to work better in pvp as well, so no “PVE only” fix please.

NemesiS.6749:

Sebrent.3625:

Semil.8279:

Now you’ve made me worried.

If pets are made able to hit more reliably, our dps will increase on mobile targets.

Will ANet see this as a reason to decrease the damage the ranger does to compensate?

Seeing as how a thief can burst down a tank, I doubt it.
Only the non-tanky pets are doing the mean damage and that’s only like 2k to 4k depending on traits, utilities, and your target’s toughness.

i come from wvw when a thief just 2 shot me lol, havent seen anything like it since WoW old days. I mean all classes bring something but with a ranger i shoot and shoot and hit people and the HP doesn’t come down. The class just doesn’t bring anything to the table, i regret the day i spend all my gold, laurels and everything gearing my ranger.

You are right on the thief. I have some tanky builds that laugh at GROUPS of players. We are talking like 10 players hitting me and taking 10 seconds to take me down. Then a single thief, yes ONE, can nearly down me in 3 seconds. There is definitely something wrong with thief damage somewhere as only some thieves do this much damage.

You are wrong on Rangers though. They need a little love in a few areas, but they are nowhere near as toothless as you say. I can do significant damage to people with any DPS spec and appreciable damage to people even in tank or support spec. I’ve never experienced “shoot and shoot and shoot and HP doesn’t come down” outside of blocks and projectile stoppers.

Robert is already drinking too much, he thinks Ranger have decent DPS in dungeons because he’s seeing the damage numbers twice.

Okuza.5210:

IMHO, rangers not being desired in dungeons is entirely due to the players themselves and not the class at all. The class has a few issues in Arah (all with the pet), but not other dungeons.

What are players doing and why don’t people want them? Well, if I see a ranger using a Long Bow and Bear, I’m ready to punt them from the group. That’s pretty much the lowest contribution (worst dps/etc) setup you can bring. Bear/lbow rangers seem to have other bad habits, too, such as a tendency to knock things back at very inappropriate times, destroying the group’s DPS efforts.

I think rangers could use some changes to make them more interesting to play (they’re basically auto-attack bots now), but absolutely should not be buffed up for PvE. The class is already right up there with warrior as the most over-powered PvE class around. Pets easily solo open world veterans and tank all the non-group champions with ranger help. Just how much stronger does the class need to be?

Well, I strongly disagree with you.
I’ve been playing my ranger for over 700 hours now and the only time I’ve ever used non-bear pets is PvP and open world PvE.
Warrior is FAR stronger than the ranger in basically every situation (esp dungeons).
One of the biggest problems is that warriors have a) much more DPS (ranged DPS is ridiculous compared to LB DPS) b) more health and c) more team support.
I’m not surprised with groups being like “ugh a ranger” when i join the group.
To be honest, I always hope for warriors+guardians+mesmers in groups that I join, because they’re just a beast in dungeons.

Not taking bears in dungeons is the worst thing that you can do. It doesn’t matter if you choose ranged or melee pets, in most fights they just die instantly to any Boss AoE (biggest problems in fractals). Bears might not be the best DPS pets but first they can tank a lot of damage (even from bosses with 20s swap) which benefits the whole group and secondly they deal a consistent amount of damage (it’s even more important to take a bear if you have the +5% damage while pet alive trait).
It happens a lot to me that my team can regenerate while my pet is tanking tons of damage (that’s why I always take signet of stone; 6s invulnerability for me and my pet ist just too good to pass).

So what I’m saying is that in dungeons pets other than bears are not viable at all. Your post doesn’t sound like you ever played ranger for a long time.

Reading through posts, I’m really not sure why people always equate a classes strength directly to damage.

People who say warriors are great at PvE for instance (I’m not disagreeing, I’m making a point); go PvP with them, and you get stuck with what rangers are stuck with in PvE; providing little to no utility to a group, or utility that is more easily covered by a different class that can do more on top of what you would provide.

There’s also this thing called outliers. People who think the ranger class is amazing at everything and doesn’t need to be touched are outliers (even the devs admit the shortcomings of the ranger class, and they created the class). Just like people who think they are the absolute worst at anything rangers try to do, those are outliers as well.

The majority of the community lies somewhere in between the extremes. We think the rangers at good at some areas, but are poor at other areas. It doesn’t matter what any individual thinks regardless though, because we all have different perceptions, so what our opinions are actually used for is to create a statistic to determine overall feedback (if the devs are monitoring as they say they do).

So really, we should try to, when expressing our own opinions, be respectful of other peoples opinions (this includes people misinforming people by using their opinion as fact). People who PvE and have little experience in a PvP environment have no place calling a PvP perspective on the ranger inaccurate.

Myself, I have no place saying anything about dungeons, because I don’t do dungeons, for instance. And I’m not going to sit here and say other people are wrong because I do so well with my ranger in pvp, because that’s a nonsensical, rage inciting statement.

This topic started off so well too.

As Robert said, people’s skepticism is warranted given what’s happened thus far. However, hopefully this could finally be that time that things turn around.

Just because something is the standard so far doesn’t mean it has to continue being the standard … else we’d not be using indoor plumbing :-p

Robyn Yew.6072:

btw if they actually fix our pet and it does what we want, rangers will be op just saying.

This…

Semil.8279:

Now you’ve made me worried.

If pets are made able to hit more reliably, our dps will increase on mobile targets.

Will ANet see this as a reason to decrease the damage the ranger does to compensate?

and this.

LOL, be careful what you wish for. I can’t see the trail of tears on the forum now when pets hit consistently for 200 dmg each or basically every spec gets gutted and neutered into a BM.

They’re going down the wrong route if they think pets hitting consistently is what’s good for this class or this game.

I’ve said this time and again, if you make people play or watch a bot, this game will fail as an esport. That is the antithesis of skill, fairness, or excitement.

Sebrent, aren’t you expecting a little too much from the upcoming patch, heh?

Aridia.3042:

Robyn Yew.6072:

btw if they actually fix our pet and it does what we want, rangers will be op just saying.

This…

Semil.8279:

Now you’ve made me worried.

If pets are made able to hit more reliably, our dps will increase on mobile targets.

Will ANet see this as a reason to decrease the damage the ranger does to compensate?

and this.

LOL, be careful what you wish for. I can’t see the trail of tears on the forum now when pets hit consistently for 200 dmg each or basically every spec gets gutted and neutered into a BM.

They’re going down the wrong route if they think pets hitting consistently is what’s good for this class or this game.

I’ve said this time and again, if you make people play or watch a bot, this game will fail as an esport. That is the antithesis of skill, fairness, or excitement.

First, GW2 will never enter the eSport scene like FPS games, or Starcraft/Starcraft 2, or the newer League of Legends because they have classes that have a skill ceiling. If you can easily be the best at a class, and no one can get better, the eSport players who make hundreds of thousands of dollars now, will not touch it with a ten foot pole. What is a skill celing? Take SC2 marines, and what MarineKingPrime can do with them, as a human, with no more than 4000 actions per minute, then watch what a computer can do with them, with 30,000 actions per minute. There is no ceiling for games that have done well in eSports, but the ceiling for GW2 is so close, the average player can reach it. That’s because they’ve dumbed it down too much.

Secondly, the Ranger, and his pet can hit a no-moving target, and I could still triple their damage with my Thief, and Warrior. Making the pet hit better will change nothing, except weaken unskilled players who already think this class is ok because they lose to the Ranger class.

I swear to God if they don’t fix the kitten activation speed/total cast time issue affecting Longbows, Pistols, Scepters and Staffs (and notably NOT Rifles), I’m going to lose it.

This is likely almost the entire reason these 4 weapons get complained about all over the forums, and it’s a rather ridiculous thing to remain oblivious for months on end.

No one brought up the great effects this would have on a GS tanking ranger like myself.The pet drake doing consistent damage would help me become more of a dps person so I could be on equal grounds with a couple of the better classes.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Semil.8279:

Now Robert is going to quit ANet and change his name, maybe move to Bangladesh or Mongolia.

Being that my namesake is Czech, I think I’d give them a shot first

While I wish we could make pets super awesome ASAP, this patch will be a good step in the right direction. Will it solve all the problems? No, but it’s going to put rangers and their pets in a much better place.
I realize you all may have heard this song and dance before, and it’s okay to be doubtful about the upcoming patch – folks have been burned before, and its just going to take experiencing the changes and playing them to soften that. As a ranger player I am excited about the changes, and I hope once you all get a chance to play what the balance team has worked on, you’ll be happier too

We’ll see Rob. Last time we heard pets ability to hit was supposedly improved… there was absolutely no change. I put the game on the shelf a couple weeks ago, partially because I was sick and tired of the run around this class has gotten. For me, it’s pretty much too little too late, even if your fix is decent. The quickness nerf was the last straw for me… pretty much the only thing that made the class fun was removed.

I’ll log in and check out the changes, but your balance team has done this game no favors in the retention of dedicated rangers.

jkctmc.8754:

First, GW2 will never enter the eSport scene like FPS games, or Starcraft/Starcraft 2, or the newer League of Legends because they have classes that have a skill ceiling. If you can easily be the best at a class, and no one can get better, the eSport players who make hundreds of thousands of dollars now, will not touch it with a ten foot pole. What is a skill celing? Take SC2 marines, and what MarineKingPrime can do with them, as a human, with no more than 4000 actions per minute, then watch what a computer can do with them, with 30,000 actions per minute. There is no ceiling for games that have done well in eSports, but the ceiling for GW2 is so close, the average player can reach it. That’s because they’ve dumbed it down too much.

Secondly, the Ranger, and his pet can hit a no-moving target, and I could still triple their damage with my Thief, and Warrior. Making the pet hit better will change nothing, except weaken unskilled players who already think this class is ok because they lose to the Ranger class.

Agreed. Which is why I don’t understand where they’re going with this game both in terms of design choices and end goal.

I just can’t believe the unwillingness from ANet to allow the devs to speak about updates early. Granted, there shouldn’t be anything mentioned that isn’t definite.

But there has to be a good list going for things that are going to change a week in. In Guild Wars 1, there were a few previews (the SotG could technically handle this, but everything is so vague or ambiguous that sometimes it’s hard to understand what devs mean) the week before, with a write up and a general philosophy, and then the patch notes would contain explanations of reasoning behind changes for everything (or groups of objects) so people would understand exactly what influenced it.

Did the writer quit or something?

Seriously though, while there are a few logical reasons to withhold some information on things not ready yet, if a balance change is geared up and ready to go, I don’t see why hints can’t at least be dropped. This whole silence until patch notes is creating a very distressed and frustrated community (as a whole) which seems like that last thing a company would want to do to its customers.

If things that were ready to go were slowly introduced on the forums beforehand, just like the balancing is being slowly introduced into the game, then people wouldn’t explode all over the forums and eliminate all chances of constructive discussion. It would give people in the community a chance to discuss positives, negatives, and reasoning before the debate drops, to help discover and understand the reasoning behind the updates, which would encourage healthy growth for professions as people theorycraft ideas until they are excited to discover new ways to play in upcoming patches.

But when patches are dropped on people like bombs (quickness change, and I thought they were trying to avoid a kneejerk reaction…hmm), of course there is only going to be like 1% of the community who sees at as positive. People are still upset about it, partially because it destroyed the way they play and they weren’t ready for it, and it created a negative mindset where people shut down instead of wanting to expand and adapt.

If we keep playing Russian Roulette, somebody is bound to get shot…

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’ve gotten in some trouble before about giving hints and releasing info early… so I’m going to leave that up to the people in charge if they want to do those things :x

have we told you how much we like your Robert don’t worry if you get in trouble! We will “take care” of anyone who threatens you… or yells at you. You are part of the ranger gang now and we take care of our own

I can’t get over the amount of people who claim they’ve shelved the game and are doubtful of ever playing it again. If that’s the case, why do they still bother checking these forums for upcoming patches and information? Clearly they’re checking because they will still come back and play in the future. These kinds of posts are meaningless, destructive and give a bad atmosphere to the forums in general.

While I do think split Pve/PVP skills are a step in the right direction and some patches have been detrimental to specific builds in the ranger class, it is no reason to whine around the forums.

Honestly, while I was annoyed with the quickness nerf (both Ranger and Mesmer got it reduced without compensation), I was glad that they are aiming to reduce the crazy burst damage in WvW … though it’s still largely a work-in-progress as seen by the many videos since them of thieves, etc. doing insane burst.

Honestly, I wouldn’t mind if they had to nerf my Mesmer’s shatter burst damage in order to also nerf the thief’s burst.

Zetus.1476:

I can’t get over the amount of people who claim they’ve shelved the game and are doubtful of ever playing it again. If that’s the case, why do they still bother checking these forums for upcoming patches and information? Clearly they’re checking because they will still come back and play in the future. These kinds of posts are meaningless, destructive and give a bad atmosphere to the forums in general.

While I do think split Pve/PVP skills are a step in the right direction and some patches have been detrimental to specific builds in the ranger class, it is no reason to whine around the forums.

This game isn’t just PvE/sPvP, but also WvW.

It’s one thing to be unhappy with the development of something, and another thing to hate something. I’d be far more forgiving if they hadn’t already had another MMO title under their name. At this point in time I will not forgive companies for turning out a buggy game, when they should have already learned from their prior experiences. You can be apologetic all you want for Anet, but fact of the matter is they did not turn out the game they promised. It’s about time development teams deliver what they promise.

I hang around after leveling 6 toons to 80, and fully gearing them out in Exotics hoping things change, and they speed up the process to fix things. But my hope is diminishing. It’s really hard to give up on a lot of time invested in a game.

Sebrent.3625:

@Noss:
I really don’t think more reliable pet damage would require our pets to have to do reduced damage. They are nowhere near the realm of other classes’ dps.

I also disagree about Sic’em.

Sick ’Em - Your pet runs faster and does more damage (40% more). 60s cd and 10s duration.

Assassin’s Signet - Passive: Grants increased power. Active: Deal 15% more damage on your next five attacks. 45s cd and 30s duration (or 5 attacks).

Now the assassin’s increases the thief’s damage by less, but the thief already does quite a bit more damage than our pet does. The signet also has passive bonuses and can be used more often (3 times for every 2 Sick’Em)

It’s not really Sic ’em alone(although I think 40% is pretty kitten strong alone), but when you add it to other damage boosts to pets, like signet of the wild.

Really the last thing I want is everyone to play a tanky beastmaster and just watch it’s pet to shred things in seconds. Kinda like beastmaster hunters in WoW at one time.

Noss.4105:

Sebrent.3625:

@Noss:
I really don’t think more reliable pet damage would require our pets to have to do reduced damage. They are nowhere near the realm of other classes’ dps.

I also disagree about Sic’em.

Sick ’Em - Your pet runs faster and does more damage (40% more). 60s cd and 10s duration.

Assassin’s Signet - Passive: Grants increased power. Active: Deal 15% more damage on your next five attacks. 45s cd and 30s duration (or 5 attacks).

Now the assassin’s increases the thief’s damage by less, but the thief already does quite a bit more damage than our pet does. The signet also has passive bonuses and can be used more often (3 times for every 2 Sick’Em)

It’s not really Sic ’em alone(although I think 40% is pretty kitten strong alone), but when you add it to other damage boosts to pets, like signet of the wild.

Really the last thing I want is everyone to play a tanky beastmaster and just watch it’s pet to shred things in seconds. Kinda like beastmaster hunters in WoW at one time.

Why not. It is very easy to counter for human players and it might make rangers more viable in dungeons.

Dojo.1867:

Why not. It is very easy to counter for human players and it might make rangers more viable in dungeons.

Because pets critting close to 10k while ranger having around 40k ehp feels OP.

Noss.4105:

Dojo.1867:

Why not. It is very easy to counter for human players and it might make rangers more viable in dungeons.

Because pets critting close to 10k while ranger having around 40k ehp feels OP.

(PVP)
I run a tanky build with 30 in BM. I use Jaguar for my damage because it’s initial spike goes up to 10-13k depending on the enemy armor. I can win most 1v1 fights and half of 1v2 fights if the two enemies divide their damage on me and my pet. I can outlast 1v3 for a long time if their aren’t very organized. The biggest annoyance in 1v1 are the guardians with their heal and the thiefs with their escapes.

Me and some guildies were dueling a day ago and I won all the fights (not with ease, sometimes we both went down and I won the downed fight thanks to my pet) until one more guildie joined and easily killed me. His HP was always over half and I was always struggling to get his HP down but he just simply had too much CC and my pet couldn’t reach him to deal damage. He easily won all the matches even though I got his HP low one time. The funny part of this is that he was playing a class that is said to be forgotten and underpowered, the engineer.

Noss.4105:

Dojo.1867:

Why not. It is very easy to counter for human players and it might make rangers more viable in dungeons.

Because pets critting close to 10k while ranger having around 40k ehp feels OP.

10k crits wont occur on any defensively specced class. If you are playing glasscannon and get hit by the pet then it is pretty much your own fault. What I give you is that the Jaguar is really somewaht the only pet that makes some hard to counter attacks connect due to the stealth that doesn’t break when attacking. I have a feeling that wont stay forever though, I am nearly 100% sure they will change that very soon and it wasn’t intended like that. However for all the other pets it is really your own fault if you get hit while running a glasscannon spec.

Dojo.1867:

Noss.4105:

Dojo.1867:

Why not. It is very easy to counter for human players and it might make rangers more viable in dungeons.

Because pets critting close to 10k while ranger having around 40k ehp feels OP.

10k crits wont occur on any defensively specced class. If you are playing glasscannon and get hit by the pet then it is pretty much your own fault. What I give you is that the Jaguar is really somewaht the only pet that makes some hard to counter attacks connect due to the stealth that doesn’t break when attacking. I have a feeling that wont stay forever though, I am nearly 100% sure they will change that very soon and it wasn’t intended like that. However for all the other pets it is really your own fault if you get hit while running a glasscannon spec.

The jaguar breaks normal stealth tho and his stealth skill uses an unique buff.

Dojo.1867:

Noss.4105:

Dojo.1867:

Why not. It is very easy to counter for human players and it might make rangers more viable in dungeons.

Because pets critting close to 10k while ranger having around 40k ehp feels OP.

10k crits wont occur on any defensively specced class. If you are playing glasscannon and get hit by the pet then it is pretty much your own fault. What I give you is that the Jaguar is really somewaht the only pet that makes some hard to counter attacks connect due to the stealth that doesn’t break when attacking. I have a feeling that wont stay forever though, I am nearly 100% sure they will change that very soon and it wasn’t intended like that. However for all the other pets it is really your own fault if you get hit while running a glasscannon spec.

At the moment pets are very easily avoided, yes. But like I said before, if pets will be more reliable in PvP and you cant outrun em so easily, I think the damage would be too high with Sic ’em and Signet of the Wild etc.

Signet of the Wild is on a 2 minute cooldown. Sick’em is on a 1 minute cooldown. THose are very large windows in which that spec is weak … and it can’t run away like a GC Thief who just failed their burst.

Sebrent.3625:

Signet of the Wild is on a 2 minute cooldown. Sick’em is on a 1 minute cooldown. THose are very large windows in which that spec is weak … and it can’t run away like a GC Thief who just failed their burst.

As long as your pet is doing damage, BM spec is pretty far from weak.
Thing is that you could have insane burst in demand, and still have bunker ehp.
Also rangers are pretty good at disengaging too if you got GS.

Rangers are good at disengaging if

• Not fighting an ele, warrior, thief, or other ranger
• Not crippled/chilled/immobilized … these will ruin your lightning reflexes and swoop

Wait wait wait…Rangers disengage when fighting Warrior? I always take them down because it’s funny how they think they can stop me. So me striking them down is saying to the class “KNOW YOUR PLACE!”

Sebrent.3625:

Rangers are good at disengaging if

• Not fighting an ele, warrior, thief, or other ranger
• Not crippled/chilled/immobilized … these will ruin your lightning reflexes and swoop

Not all warriors in WvW are using sword/x + GS, and you really shouldn’t have much trouble with them anyways. About other rangers… It’s like saying ele isn’t good at disengaging because they cant outrun an ele.

You know that conditions affect other professions too, right? Cripple/chill/immobilize are there for range control, and we have access to them too. I use Melandru runes and -condi duration food in WvW myself, and I dont worry about conditions at all. Also means that I don’t have to carry any condi removals.

I do think lightning reflexes should clear immobilize tho, considering the long cooldown on it.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Bailey.6892:

Honestly I don’t understand why it cant be done in one patch. Plenty of time to get it done, the issue has been their since release so plenty of time to have known about it. If things go wrong and it makes an aspect op hot fix it. Really no reason that it should take more than one patch.

And when can we expect this patch and the details?

Mainly because there are other classes who also need balance, and these things need to be planned, built, tested, and analyzed. It’s not just a large workload, but also in a step-by-step process that has game-wide consequences that must be considered during all phases of development. Mix that with all the other classes and their changes, and it’s a pretty big task that has to be ready for the next patch.

Edit:
I’ve gotten in some trouble before about giving hints and releasing info early… so I’m going to leave that up to the people in charge if they want to do those things :x

Pet AI is like culling in that you can’t really have balance until a broken mechanic is corrected. We (Rangers) have been waiting since November for an adjustment to our Pet’s AI so we don’t start at a 20 – 30% disadvantage in a fight. Last night I had my pet attack an ambient hawk in WvW and it took three tries for my pet to actually land a hit. IMO this is down right horrible and should be a #1 priority fix over a balance adjustment to any other classes. I can’t adjust my build in any way to correct the Pet AI problem. I actually could make adjustments to counter culling but this AI problem is impossible to work around. Rangers have to accept that a nerf/buff or a signet description update to another class is as important as our Pet’s ability to land an attack on a moving target?

Correcting an intended game mechanic that is broken or not working is not a normal balance issue IMO. Rangers have been since launch and still are without our companions full effectiveness. Please explain where i’m wrong or that another class is missing a mandatory part of their build/class that accounts for 20 – 30% of their overall DPS?

Why can’t a game breaking problem (Pet AI) for a class be patched at different times then the global game update packages?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Edit:
I’ve gotten in some trouble before about giving hints and releasing info early… so I’m going to leave that up to the people in charge if they want to do those things :x

That sucks. Communication about class balance is good and it’s something that ANet doesn’t do enough of. As long as you don’t phrase things like they’re a promise (like Jon Peters did) and just give us an outline of the goals that devs are working towards, it really helps the community.

Also, you’ve do a great job of keeping us in the loop with stuff. While I still wish there was more communication, I remember what the forums were like before you started getting involved. Thank you.

Noss.4105:

Dojo.1867:

Noss.4105:

Dojo.1867:

Why not. It is very easy to counter for human players and it might make rangers more viable in dungeons.

Because pets critting close to 10k while ranger having around 40k ehp feels OP.

10k crits wont occur on any defensively specced class. If you are playing glasscannon and get hit by the pet then it is pretty much your own fault. What I give you is that the Jaguar is really somewaht the only pet that makes some hard to counter attacks connect due to the stealth that doesn’t break when attacking. I have a feeling that wont stay forever though, I am nearly 100% sure they will change that very soon and it wasn’t intended like that. However for all the other pets it is really your own fault if you get hit while running a glasscannon spec.

At the moment pets are very easily avoided, yes. But like I said before, if pets will be more reliable in PvP and you cant outrun em so easily, I think the damage would be too high with Sic ’em and Signet of the Wild etc.

One immobilize, one cripple, one chill on a pet would negate all of that, and they would be sitting without any damage for a long time. Play smarter, and even f the pets had a better chance of hitting, you would not get hit like this, period.

They shouldn’t keep the Ranger as an underpowered class because people can’t learn in this game.

Watch some of Xsorus videos on either his Ranger, or his Thief, he rarely gets hit by a pet. I can’t remember the last time a pet has hit me more than a couple times, before I’ve downed the Ranger.

The Ranger can not cure his pet, therefore they suffer the full duration of CC.

Dahkeus.8243:

Also, you’ve do a great job of keeping us in the loop with stuff. While I still wish there was more communication, I remember what the forums were like before you started getting involved. Thank you.

Shhhh. We don’t talk about the “Before Times” … the “Dark Ages” ;-)

Hopefully we’ll start to see the light with this next patch. We can be quite deadly, but no moreso at any role than other classes … who then have roles that they are “top dog” at as well.

I think if ArenaNet can get the classes such that in PvE, WvW, and sPvP you commonly hear people ask for each class for specific, non-mutually-exclusive, reasons, that we’ll be set.

It should be such that if a group has a guardian, the thought process is “yay! we get A, B, and C from the Guardian, but dangit we aren’t going to get D, E, F from a Necro nor G, H I from a Ranger”.

Right now, PvE is simply “Looking for heavy armor (guardian/plate)” or no preference is given … except for eles in AC since people love Ice Bow and Fiery Greatsword for killing burrows.

In sPvP it’s Eles and Guardians too.

Heck in WvW Eles and Guardians are wanted as well. But then you get some Mesmer love there. Amusingly, Mesmer is also well-loved in PvE and sPvP.

This is noticeable and an indication of the current class imbalance.

Ranger needs a role.

Let’s be realistic here: GW2 has a trinity. Warrior is offense, Guardian is defense and healing, while Mesmer is support and utility.

What should a Ranger do the others cannot? What is game-changing like a majority of other classes?

They will fix underwater combat.

Arekai.5698:

They will fix underwater combat.

By ‘fix’ do you mean take away what they gave us so we will suck under water as much as we do on land again; or give us a pair of flippers and an Aquaman tshirt?

jkctmc.8754:

One immobilize, one cripple, one chill on a pet would negate all of that, and they would be sitting without any damage for a long time. Play smarter, and even f the pets had a better chance of hitting, you would not get hit like this, period.

They shouldn’t keep the Ranger as an underpowered class because people can’t learn in this game.

Watch some of Xsorus videos on either his Ranger, or his Thief, he rarely gets hit by a pet. I can’t remember the last time a pet has hit me more than a couple times, before I’ve downed the Ranger.

The Ranger can not cure his pet, therefore they suffer the full duration of CC.

I said “At the moment pets are very easily avoided”. Meaning that I know you can avoid a lot of the pet’s damage by kiting it, without cripple. I do it all the time and I rarely lose to rangers on any of my characters.
Rangers and pets also have some tools to cripple/chill targets and help pets do their thing, you know.

If you think pets can’t do any damage in PvP now or after the patch, why do you care about it’s damage?

Robert Hrouda.1327:

Edit:
I’ve gotten in some trouble before about giving hints and releasing info early… so I’m going to leave that up to the people in charge if they want to do those things :x

… Anet is quite possibly the most paranoid MMO developer I’ve run across when it comes to ANY sort of early hints about releases. I mean, compare it to other MMOs where potential changes are released and discussed weeks or months in advance, and balance feedback is actually taken into account..

Maybe I’m just spoiled by CCP’s practices. Pity about their community…

Noss.4105:

Sebrent.3625:

Signet of the Wild is on a 2 minute cooldown. Sick’em is on a 1 minute cooldown. THose are very large windows in which that spec is weak … and it can’t run away like a GC Thief who just failed their burst.

As long as your pet is doing damage, BM spec is pretty far from weak.
Thing is that you could have insane burst in demand, and still have bunker ehp.
Also rangers are pretty good at disengaging too if you got GS.

No, it is weak. What you call good pet damage I call half my guardian’s hybrid spec damage.

The pet does not scale with gear or critdmg, while other classes do.

Signet of the wild and sic em are your only real dps cd’s, and they’re significantly longer cd’s. Signets and shouts in general have horridly long cd’s relative to the cd’s of other classes.

Zenith.7301:

No, it is weak. What you call good pet damage I call half my guardian’s hybrid spec damage.

While I don’t agree or disagree with you, I think it’ll be a useful contribution to this discussion if you provided actual metrics and experimental results to back up your claims.

I can say Rangers do more damage than Guardians. You can say they don’t. Both our statements are pretty worthless because we’re essentially throwing out unproven claims, with the best evidence being “general/individual perception of things” which is shaky evidence, at best.

Again, I don’t agree or disagree, but for the sake of good discussion (which I hope everyone is interested in) more objective analysis is needed.

Ursan.7846:

Zenith.7301:

No, it is weak. What you call good pet damage I call half my guardian’s hybrid spec damage.

While I don’t agree or disagree with you, I think it’ll be a useful contribution to this discussion if you provided actual metrics and experimental results to back up your claims.

I can say Rangers do more damage than Guardians. You can say they don’t. Both our statements are pretty worthless because we’re essentially throwing out unproven claims, with the best evidence being “general/individual perception of things” which is shaky evidence, at best.

Again, I don’t agree or disagree, but for the sake of good discussion (which I hope everyone is interested in) more objective analysis is needed.

My guardian runs PVT armor with ascended berserker accessories and ruby orbs. His autoattack routinely crits for 3-3.5k. I run sigil of bloodlust on offset mace with sigil of battle on focus, and sigil of fire on greatsword.

My ranger’s jaguar autoattack crits on the other hand peak at around 2-2.2k with crit damage trait (obviously his special abilities can go for up to 5k without cooldowns, and up to 8-9k using long cooldowns like signets). He’s the only pet besides bird that crits consistently. The other pets crit much less frequently, and there’s nothing I can do to increase their rate of crit chance other than running the subpar weapon that is horn with the nature magic trait that shares my boons with the pet so the pet can get at least some fury.

My guardian can get 90% crit damage while maintaining 1600 toughness and 2178 power with about 35% crit chance. He can use sharpening stones. He simply will outscale pet output, because pet output is fixed and doesn’t increase with increasing quality of gear, the pet does not benefit from sigils despite being a third of our damage, the pet does not benefit from stats from runes that have conversion ratios or special procs. The pet will rarely run with 25 might stacks outside RaO, while the average player in a guild group will maintain these stacks. The pet’s interaction with combo fields is entirely limited by its random ai, and its uptime will always be vastly reduced so long as it can suffer through chill and cripple fields — it has little condition removals of its own — and the ranger only has 2; one from 30 points in WS (our defensive line) and a signet with random passive condition removal.

Zenith.7301:

snip

Well, again, I’m not agreeing/disagreeing with you. What I meant by “metrics” is running standardized tests with your Guardian’s spec and whatever Noss’s BM is, instead of just tossing around numbers. Doing 3k crits consistently is great, but does that actually translate into higher DPS? (My Ranger SB build consistently crits for 1.2k with Crossfire, for example, but fires twice as fast. Raw numbers don’t tell the whole story.)

By providing test results that show your Guardian spec does more damage than his BM build, you can convincingly prove that your point “BM spec does weak damage” is true beyond a doubt.

Is all I’m saying. I’m all for good discussion, but tossing around theory and personal experience is conducive to it.

EDIT: Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding, but re-reading your post I get the impression you are trying to compare Guardian damage to Ranger pet damage by itself? I don’t think that’s what Noss is saying at all, I think he’s saying BM damage overall. Ignore me if I’m wrong though.

Ursan.7846:

Zenith.7301:

snip

Well, again, I’m not agreeing/disagreeing with you. What I meant by “metrics” is running standardized tests with your Guardian’s spec and whatever Noss’s BM is, instead of just tossing around numbers. Doing 3k crits consistently is great, but does that actually translate into higher DPS? (My Ranger SB build consistently crits for 1.2k with Crossfire, for example, but fires twice as fast. Raw numbers don’t tell the whole story.)

By providing test results that show your Guardian spec does more damage than his BM build, you can convincingly prove that your point “BM spec does weak damage” is true beyond a doubt.

Is all I’m saying. I’m all for good discussion, but tossing around theory and personal experience is conducive to it.

EDIT: Forgive me if I’m misunderstanding, but re-reading your post I get the impression you are trying to compare Guardian damage to Ranger pet damage by itself? I don’t think that’s what Noss is saying at all, I think he’s saying BM damage overall. Ignore me if I’m wrong though.

I meant that when I said the pet is half my hybrid guardian’s damage, not even a berserker geared one, there’s an issue insisting that if the pet had uptime while the ranger was bunker, it’d be overpowered. All we need to look at is attack rates, but my guardian’s greatsword swings are pretty much close to the attack rates of most pets, and it takes a best case scenario on pet traiting and type of pet used to have close to half or two thirds of my hybrid guardian’s output.

The claim that a pet would be able to solo a player is just not true. Bunker rangers kill very slowly by themselves. Pet uptime and lowering signet cooldowns simply would not make the pet overpowered at all, as it’s not achieving the numbers any other class can’t achieve. If pets in combination with the ranger were such overwhelming sustained damage or burst, they wouldn’t be sitting besides necros for last place of class nobody wants for dungeons, where sustained damage is really prized above all.

The lack of scaling alone for pets will always hold them back. Pet’s don’t get 110% crit damage or 1200+ condi damage, and they don’t get the vast amounts of power and condition damage from high might stacks or sigil stacks.

Zenith.7301:

The claim that a pet would be able to solo a player is just not true.

Well yea. It’s a stupid claim. No one’s making that claim though.

However, the combined DPS of a BM Ranger + its pet, and whether it’s “Good”? This point applies to Noss as well, but testing it in some kind of standardized test and posting its results will contribute to good discussion far more than “My BM spec does good damage.” “No, it’s weak.”

Which is my whole entire point.

How many BM bunker rangers do you see in WvW teamfights, PvE dungeons, or spvp?

The whole purpose of BM bunker is 1v1 or 1v2. It has no aoe damage whatsoever (which eliminates it from dungeons and wvw teamfights straight away). It’s an attrition roaming spec.

How can you declare a build completely undesirable in most aspects of the game OP/good?

Zenith.7301:

How many BM bunker rangers do you see in WvW teamfights, PvE dungeons, or spvp?

A ton. Last night, in the 5 tPvP games I played, 4 times I had a ranger on my team. In one of the games, I had 3.

But like, that doesn’t prove anything. Which is my whole point. I’m going to repeat my original point: that relying on personal perception isn’t a great way to have a good discussion or convince anyone. Do you disagree with this? I’m not sure why you continue insisting on trying to convince me of your arguments. I’m not disagreeing with you. Just pointing out ways in which to make your arguments even more convincing, for the sake of good discussion.

I just think a perception can be plentiful and echoed by enough people that it becomes consensus.