Guild Wars 2

shadowpass.4236:

lol.

i agree with this part and some of that other stuff.

Thank you for explaining how you perceive my views on the ranger class to the public. +1 to you sir.

dkspins.4670:

HHRProphet, you are correct on so many levels. I’ll wait til someone like Guang or Brazil comment to listen to further comments

Thank you, I just hope it will change something.

If they are so busy to release a balance patch every 6-7 months, they are very understaffed. There is no other way to put it.

A new set of hairs or faces every few months does not constitute/make up for the lack of permanent content in the game.

Prysin.8542:

the moment you question yourself is the moment everything you do will go wrong.

This is how fights (small to large) start and continue because no one will back down.

I’m just going to go on a limb and say that your next post will detail that you will not back down and therefore this whole thing is pointless. So if you were, I said it for you.

Prysin.8542:

HHR LostProphet.4801:

Prysin.8542:

Now i could argue that real life experience and intelligence is what set me apart from some of you, but that would be politically incorrect to claim according to forum rules. Therefore i just tell you lot to learn how to play, just like I was told how to L2P back in the days. Seniors teach the juniors, then juniors become seniors and proceed to teach the new generation of juniors.

Atleast you have the confidence to back your opinions up.

the moment you question yourself is the moment everything you do will go wrong.

Realization is the first step towards recovery.

Prysin.8542:

well if you read through my close to 2200 posts you’d realize my “view” has changed a fair bit over time

There was a link to a “reivew” of arenanet as a company. Where several reviews was done by current and former employees. You should read up on it, it explained more then a few things and shed lights on some others.

However discussing such matters is for another time and place entirely.

Oh yes, i just noted, my post history is a “bit short”. Arena Net cuts of posts older then 18 months if not made by current or former “ArenaNet” eployees and or sticky topics/former sticky topics been “unsticky’d”.

My post history is missing about 4 1/2 months worth of posts.

Reivew? “Dunno what that is, but it sound really perverse.”

Oh, ok, well, that makes a ton of sense. Your views have changed since the start of the game. With that being said, I would assume you were actually complaining about rangers before they nerfed them? Got it.

My Opinion on the Live stream on Friday :::

LOL…..WHAT?….. Here are all the problems I had with the Stream :::

• Our Long Range Single Target Damage can be made to work, but, the pet is nearly useless at dealing damage half the time because of how agro and pet AI works in this game. Because of game mechanics, and without the added benefit of extra pet damage at longer ranges, our Long Range Single Target DPS is actually weaker than every other profession except for maybe Guardians and Necromancers, and that is with maximum investment.

• Our Sustainability through melee evasion and dodging is a strength that Anet should never have even thought about mentioning. We have superior evasion….on one whole build with one specific weapon combination. This alleged ‘strength’ isn’t even a strength on about half of our weapon combinations.

• Hitting 3 whole targets in melee (4 if you count the pet, 6 if you count the Drake pets) is not Sustained Melee AoE. And again, that is a strength dependent on 2 of many weapon sets, and 1 pet family, meaning its not realistic to call it a strength at all. They also said that Warriors have good sustained Melee AoE (and Warriors are better at it, though I wouldn’t call warriors hitting 3 targets good AoE either).

• Weaknesses. Reading the list on Dulfy (who does a good job of writing down everything from these streams), the Ranger has Seven Weaknesses, which is more than any other profession listed. To be fair, Just like the Strengths, some of the weaknesses are dependent on certain builds, which means they shouldn’t be listed as weaknesses at all. And to be fair again, the lack of boon rip is a weakness…., for like 5 other professions as well.

• In the Stream itself, Anet said that the pet is supposed to be both a Strength and a Weakness, but never went into any detail for how the pet can be a strength. If our total DPS potential was higher than average because of the pet, then it could be considered a strength, but our DPS potential is actually quite low, even compared to Warriors (a point I will get to in a second). The Extra Utility the pet provided is no different than the utility that other class mechanics provide and cannot be considered a strength.

• Player Feedback is pretty close to the official design…..only for the Long Range damage part. No 2 players posted the same exact set of weaknesses or strengths with that one exception. This means that player feedback was not at all the same as the official design.

Finally, I want to say something about a question I asked for the stream. I asked this ::
Is there any relation between a profession’s base health/armor weight and their DPS potential?
They answered yes to the question, and described a few of the professions and how that fits. The problem is that this means that Warriors should have the lowest DPS potential out of any other profession because of their high armor/health. That is not at all true, since Warriors deal quite a bit of damage compared to professions that should obviously deal more damage, such as Rangers.

See? Even I, one of Anet’s Godly Awesome White Knights, can disagree from time to time too!(sarcasm)

This “Everything is good at design” thing blew my mind…
What the… Yeah, we complain for like 2 years so it’s ok??!

• Sustained damage: None except supporters aim that.
  Zerker meta rising for a good reason…
• Best single-target ranged DPS? Check Mesmer’s GS attacks please
• Sarcifice DMG because of Pet: Even GW1 didn’t used that. We sacrificed at least 1 of 8 skill-slot for those pets [Tame], just to be there and that was a real exchange for that additional dmg it provided. No clue why it is forced here to keep a dead piece of puppy meat near you…
• As said before, saying now and will say forever: Pet shouldn’t be used for DMG as far as not traited. It would work far better with controlled-tracker condition/buff dealer, extension of our focus/range.

I’m ~okay with their base design, our only concern is that it’s just not true, for a very loooong time not.

I will feel that sustain dmg when my arrows can reach the target and my so-called unparalled archer won’t act like a casual weekend-archer. Bring that ROF already!

Here is my biggest problem: Our two biggest strengths Evade and Long range single target dps can not be used together as our evades are on skirmish weapon sets.

A thief can stealth, evade and still use high single target dps.

Maybe if we had a stealth port on long bow rather than just stealth. It would allow us to play to our strength. (in not a fan of either stealthing or porting but it seem logical)

I also want to add that a Mesmer is just as effective long range and close in with the same build and weapon set. Not true for the ranger.

There seem to be major flaws with this balance philosophy.

@Royal

I completely agree with you on your third and fourth bullets.

What does ROF mean?

and… I just thought of a sick idea =D

have the 1 point minor trait in the Beastmastery tree changed to:
__________________________________________________________________

Instinctual Bond
– Gain access to a pet.
– Minus 30% physical damage to all skills.
__________________________________________________________________

If they made this change, they have to increase our damage first to make up for if we don’t take the trait.

So, move all BM related traits (merge a few of them first), into the Beastmastery tree.
This way, if someone did want to run a Beastmaster spec, all they have to do is put 1 point in Beastmastery to achieve it.

Chrispy.5641:

Finally, I want to say something about a question I asked for the stream. I asked this ::
Is there any relation between a profession’s base health/armor weight and their DPS potential?
They answered yes to the question, and described a few of the professions and how that fits. The problem is that this means that Warriors should have the lowest DPS potential out of any other profession because of their high armor/health. That is not at all true, since Warriors deal quite a bit of damage compared to professions that should obviously deal more damage, such as Rangers.

Half the problem is they thought the Warrior was in a perfect spot, I think this was shortly after the unholy heal sig buff, and that they were to then balance the other classes around the warrior as a metric.

Then we hear in the CDI that ranger’s lack of burst is by design and that they think other classes have too much burst and dps without having to give up tank and that they will be balancing around that as a metric.

Basically they just make it up as they go or decide it all based on their personal matches between the staff on the test server because none of their logic seems based on data collected in game or from player feedback.

Chrispy.5641:

Finally, I want to say something about a question I asked for the stream. I asked this ::
Is there any relation between a profession’s base health/armor weight and their DPS potential?
They answered yes to the question, and described a few of the professions and how that fits. The problem is that this means that Warriors should have the lowest DPS potential out of any other profession because of their high armor/health. That is not at all true, since Warriors deal quite a bit of damage compared to professions that should obviously deal more damage, such as Rangers.

See? Even I, one of Anet’s Godly Awesome White Knights, can disagree from time to time too!(sarcasm)

I’m not sure if your assessment hit the mark. I remember them talking about Guardians and Elementalists a lot and them having a lower health pool because of the boons, condition removal and heals they got. It didn’t only get down to damage. Outside of Stances and OH Shield Warriors indeed do not have any ‘natural’ way of mitigating damage (when leaving the main balance offenders like CI and HS aside). They are supposed to stay in melee range and therefore have to soak up a lot of damage. Rangers got 4 weapons with evades (1 AA, 3 skills) and 1 weapon with stealth. They also have a rather easy access to Regeneration and Vigor.

Of course, that’s just the theoretical part. I think that conceptially it is all right. However, practically it is not because the supposed weaknesses of Warriors mentioned in the stream are laughable. For me personally, they are either irrelevant (Adrenaline, Boon removal) or practically not working as intended (Condition removal – which most likely also justifies the health pool to some extent). Which leaves me scared because the devs could think Warriors are ‘all right’.

When it comes to damage Rangers quite obivously fall short because of the pet. I’m sure ANet is aware of that, though. They acknowledged issues in parts of the game content. Here I agree because pets aren’t that bad in small scale situations but only in larger scale ones or versus bosses. The only question is how long it will take them to change something. However, people who do not enjoy using the pet will probably never be happy with the Ranger damagewise.

shadowpass.4236:

@Royal

I completely agree with you on your third and fourth bullets.

What does ROF mean?

and… I just thought of a sick idea =D

have the 1 point minor trait in the Beastmastery tree changed to:
__________________________________________________________________

Instinctual Bond
– Gain access to a pet.
– Minus 30% physical damage to all skills.
__________________________________________________________________

If they made this change, they have to increase our damage first to make up for if we don’t take the trait.

So, move all BM related traits (merge a few of them first), into the Beastmastery tree.
This way, if someone did want to run a Beastmaster spec, all they have to do is put 1 point in Beastmastery to achieve it.

He probably meant Rate Of Fire.

I will say it once again:

Because BM condibunker works, it doesn’t mean that entire profession does.

Yes, I meant Rate of Fire.
How pets would work without being OP?

• No physical damage at all.
• Major-Superior Traits gives its p. damage only
• They only deal conditions as autoattack, building it on target
• Selectable effect for F2 skill, wish F3 to be designated buff as well
• F1 for Return/attack/guard ally
• The damage it takes needs to be reduced with rules like can not lose 10% of it’s HP/sec

Overall, we would have a pet that doesn’t steals our damage, can be used for both slowing down the targets or supporting ourself/teammates, and won’t be dead from the very beginning…

Would it be OP? I don’t think so.
Just as useable as we wish it to be.

Chrispy.5641:

My Opinion on the Live stream on Friday :::

LOL…..WHAT?….. Here are all the problems I had with the Stream :::

• Our Long Range Single Target Damage can be made to work, but, the pet is nearly useless at dealing damage half the time because of how agro and pet AI works in this game. Because of game mechanics, and without the added benefit of extra pet damage at longer ranges, our Long Range Single Target DPS is actually weaker than every other profession except for maybe Guardians and Necromancers, and that is with maximum investment.

• Our Sustainability through melee evasion and dodging is a strength that Anet should never have even thought about mentioning. We have superior evasion….on one whole build with one specific weapon combination. This alleged ‘strength’ isn’t even a strength on about half of our weapon combinations.

• Hitting 3 whole targets in melee (4 if you count the pet, 6 if you count the Drake pets) is not Sustained Melee AoE. And again, that is a strength dependent on 2 of many weapon sets, and 1 pet family, meaning its not realistic to call it a strength at all. They also said that Warriors have good sustained Melee AoE (and Warriors are better at it, though I wouldn’t call warriors hitting 3 targets good AoE either).

• Weaknesses. Reading the list on Dulfy (who does a good job of writing down everything from these streams), the Ranger has Seven Weaknesses, which is more than any other profession listed. To be fair, Just like the Strengths, some of the weaknesses are dependent on certain builds, which means they shouldn’t be listed as weaknesses at all. And to be fair again, the lack of boon rip is a weakness…., for like 5 other professions as well.

• In the Stream itself, Anet said that the pet is supposed to be both a Strength and a Weakness, but never went into any detail for how the pet can be a strength. If our total DPS potential was higher than average because of the pet, then it could be considered a strength, but our DPS potential is actually quite low, even compared to Warriors (a point I will get to in a second). The Extra Utility the pet provided is no different than the utility that other class mechanics provide and cannot be considered a strength.

• Player Feedback is pretty close to the official design…..only for the Long Range damage part. No 2 players posted the same exact set of weaknesses or strengths with that one exception. This means that player feedback was not at all the same as the official design.

Finally, I want to say something about a question I asked for the stream. I asked this ::
Is there any relation between a profession’s base health/armor weight and their DPS potential?
They answered yes to the question, and described a few of the professions and how that fits. The problem is that this means that Warriors should have the lowest DPS potential out of any other profession because of their high armor/health. That is not at all true, since Warriors deal quite a bit of damage compared to professions that should obviously deal more damage, such as Rangers.

See? Even I, one of Anet’s Godly Awesome White Knights, can disagree from time to time too!(sarcasm)

I wholeheartedly agree in every single point with you.

Pets aren’t too bad.
Rangers aren’t too bad.
Longbow isn’t too bad.
Greatsword isn’t too bad.
Axe isn’t too bad.
Sword isn’t too bad.

…The problem is there’s not really much to shine, though. Sword selfroots terribly and kind of forces an unwarranted amount of frustration with management that similar classes (namely thief or mesmer) don’t have to go through to achieve the same results. The greatsword’s cleave has a reasonable cooldown but the autoattack is so atrocious that there’s no point in using it for anything other than some cleaves and then switching back to a sword/longbow.

In the end, I think rangers lack effective weapon skills – the class mechanic itself is decent enough for anyone who will take the time to sit down and look at their traits but it seems like their weapon skills just aren’t worth it especially in high end PvE content. PvP is quite fun with a ranger, though.

Half of this thread is an unnecessary argument, which is a shame because at the moment it is currently the best outlet to discuss ranger specific balance philosophy by the devs.

So first off, a tip for everybody that didn’t actually watch the livestream and just read dulfy’s notes; watch the livestream, please. I did the same thing at first and reacted poorly, because dulfy presented the information in a poor way, and unless it has been corrected, it did not capture what the devs said.

So here is the biggest key thing I heard from the livestream:

• Rangers should be the best single target damage at range in the game, with only mesmers competing with them. The longbow will be seeing improvements in the future to make sure that this goal is met.

That’s huge for me. The longbow is my biggest complaint with the class, and imo one of the worst designed weapons in the game right now.

A big concern of mine: ANet never seemed to specifically address any idea of where the improvements are headed. For an example, a BIG part of what a mesmer can currently do at ranger with their GS is use GS2, and iZerker into a well timed 2x long range shatter whose combo also incorporates the damage from iZerker. That combo alone in a full shatter spec with crits can be a near instant 5k damage. So I mean, unless I can shoot my pet 1200/1500 range at the enemy and have it pin them down and attack them while I attack them, the longbow is going to need to see improvements to either or all of: base damage, damage coefficients, burst capabilities.

Because ANet did not clearly state what the intention of the weapon was, or whether they are sticking behind their imo silly “sustained damage” philosophy, I’m uneasy plunging into the unknown with them, because while their general assessment agrees with mine, I have witnessed first hand how much we have differed over the years when it comes to how things actually get changes and what effect they actually have on the effectiveness of the class.

The thing that I’m the most skeptical about is their stating where the pet basically is at the moment, and when they said “high end content,” I personally include WvW, though I don’t know if they do, which is problematic because I might already disagree with their initial assessment that the pet could only be a weakness in high end PvE areas; when the pet suffers first hand at large scale, multi-80 encounter in WvW, and with enough organization I would consider it to be high end.

Anyhow, I’m skeptical, because I don’t personally see a fix for how ANet could handle the pet mechanic versus the content it suffers in without either breaking something currently, or overhauling the mechanic a bit so that it would be a bit more malleable to the content it faces. I mean, right now it’s a semi-competent (the pathing at times still, oh lord. And some of the AI usage of the pet skills makes me scratch my head still, even if I understand all the situations they use their skills, because some of it can still be nonsensical) extra skill that holds about 25% of our effective output in it’s not control hands.

I’ve played mesmer long enough now to know that even if AI can also be a hindrance on my mesmer, at least I can Shatter the ineptitude (GW1 reference anyone?) and start fresh. I can’t exactly shatter my pet, and pet swapping can be made useful, but certain ranger weapons (LONGBOW) are heavily dependent on traits, and if I ran the traits I wanted to with a pet swap build, I’d be shoehorned into imo an ineffective weapon selection for particular stat setups.

They also didn’t address Skirmishing specifically, which is a poor excuse for a traitline as far as the effects of the traits in the line go. It’s basically a second BM traitline, and has barely any traits that actually support the stats it gives in any way (most classes precision line give them effects that play off of stacking precision).

So I mean, I’m just skeptical. Yes, I agree with all of their initial, nonspecific assessment. And I do agree that not one build or one class should be able to do everything. But I’m just extremely skeptical of how well any sort of improvements we need will ACTUALLY be handled, because we are at the point where we don’t need any additional things, we need revamps, reworks, and overhauls. Maybe not to the extremity that those words suggest for some of the things, but still.

@jcbroe: Yeah, we derailed a bit, but I think we’re fine now. The red lines have been drawed..

So going through the livestream step by step:

1) Rangers excel at ranged single target damage, on par with the mesmer:
I thought mesmers are the illusionists. So why are they on par with us, the “unparalleled archers”, in terms of long range damage?
Furthermore, eles can deal even more damage at range, and that even as AoE.

2) Sustainability through melee evasion:
Yes rangers have many melee evasions. However the melee part is not what suffers the most.

3) The ability to skirmish:
Longbow says hello.

4) Melee AoE (57:40):
They talk about something related to the GS. I have no clue what they meant with melee AoE.

5) Axe is an AoE hybrid weakness:
Yeah, probably the reason why it’s so bad in PvE.

6) Weakness: no boonrip:
Nothing new.

7) Rangers currently lack of stunbreakers:
I’m curious what they plan to do.
The next thing they say is that as ranger you should evade those stuns instead of breaking them.
That’s flawed since we only excel at melee evasion. So this is a nono with ranged weapons.

7) Rangers are pet reliant:
The greatest reason why the ranger is bad at the moment. They say the pet has utility. Other classes get utility through their mechanic without losing DPS.
They say we have many pet options. Nope, we haven’t. Half of the pets are useless.

8) They look at the usefulness of the pet:
Better do that!

9) The pet does have some issues:
The pet does have some more issues.

10) Weakness: Grouputility:
Spirits still die. Other than that, I can’t complain too much. And Search and Rescue is way to unreliable.

11) Good mobility, not as good as other classes at disengaging:
They clearly speaking about the warrior here.

12) More sustaineble evasion as the thief:
Hmmm, I doubt that but ok.

HHR LostProphet.4801:

12) More sustaineble evasion as the thief:
Hmmm, I doubt that but ok.

Yes we have more sustainable evades then thief, however thief does not need to use theirs as often, so in practical terms, thieves “wins”

I wonder if that’s why they nerfed engis as well. It’s like the continuation of the internet’s stigma on pet classes entirely. I hate to break it to them but in PVE pets aren’t all that powerful seriously. They’ve yet to improve their defense so they all die quickly from AOE attacks from Champs/bosses and then you’re left without their added DPS.

As an Engi main I gotta wonder sometimes if they actually play these classes because it’s really obvious to those of us who’ve played many many MMOs for years that these tried and true mechanics are missing in this game.

The list of things that are wrong with the pets aren’t just limited to the AI, they are weak, they are stupid, and their F2 skills don’t really do anything spectactular or to warrant choosing one pet over another.

When I played other titles my pets all had a particular role. It’s true to this day even in the oldest games (tho some did lose their way like WoW hunters in MoP) but they retained their basic usefulness.

Another thing i find annoying is Rangers/Engis/Necros pets all have a delay system on their attacks. This is a terrible design idea because 1: none of the mobs have this delay in PVE and 2: when you’re fighting a boss for example you need certain skills to be instant. Heals should never be delayed in PVE for example.

I made myself read this entire thread. I realize now that I don’t main Ranger anymore and this thread pretty clearly shows why. I leveled 3 other professions over the last 3 months and they are just so much more fun to play.
I played Ranger for 16 months and loved the concept of pet and ranged combat. “The Concept”, not what it became. I believe the Devs are totally stumped over Ranger and urge you to at least try another profession before committing any significant effort into this one.
I do wonder how anyone can claim the profession is fine, knowing how misleading and damaging that can be to other players and to the Devs. I guess if being the best of the worst is a goal…..
Funny, I haven’t even looked at the other 3 professions forums. Haven’t needed to.

Maybe not the correct place for this question, but here goes. Can any or he designers please inform us, the community how much uptime is the pet balances around?

I would think that it would be set to be a base to create the skill floor/ceiling. That could be problematic as the factors effecting uptime of pets vary between content and mods of play.

tigirius.9014:

As an Engi main I gotta wonder sometimes if they actually play these classes because it’s really obvious to those of us who’ve played many many MMOs for years that these tried and true mechanics are missing in this game.

Actually, Groucho mains Engi. From what I hear, he’s pretty good at it, too. Hence, why it is that Engis got so many nerfs in the past.

Anyway, I don’t have a ranger. The most experience I have with a ranger is when I made one for really low levels to see the tooltips and hints that popped up when a new player started the game. I didn’t keep it for long.

That said, as a PVE/WvW player, I’ve always been hesitant to make a Ranger. This is largely because the class just seems… unappealing. I’ll list the reasons why:

#1: In WvW I’ve never seen one perform well. I’ve seen every other class, but I’ve never seen rangers do anything that made me take notice. I mean, one time while attacking a keep, a ranger sent his pet after me and hid behind a wall. But that was it…

#2: Their skills seem awkward to use. I’ve watched sPVP videos, and it looks like the ranger whips around out of their own control for the most part. I’ve fought a few melee rangers in sPVP, and it seemed like most of their advantage over me was from happenstance rather than skill.

#3: I have a hard time saying what rangers “do”. I mean… they’re archers? They have spotter/frost spirit? They have a good water field, and an enemy dependent fire field. So the PVE build would be Healing Spring, Frost Spirit, Flame Trap… stuff? The CDI doesn’t help, since the whole “high single target damage at range” doesn’t sound that appealing.

An additional questions which pets damage output is the reduction of player number the high damage, the lowers, an average? Does points in beast mastery come into the design?

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

The CDI doesn’t help, since the whole “high single target damage at range” doesn’t sound that appealing.

It isn’t. To get high damage on the bow you need heavy trait and stat investment on a weapon with appalling survivability. That means all the opponent has to do is close the gap and they will melt you. This wouldn’t be an issue if we had vastly reduced weapon swap time so we could switch to sword, kite, and then go back to bow to resume dps.

Melee will always hit harder and unless they completely retool the bow to allow us to maintain the ranged element of ranged attacks that actually give them an advantage, it will always be mostly good for potshots from a vantage point. It’s really never going to be a weapon you rely on as your main combat tool.

Anet didn’t build a game with room for the “archer class” that people want. Trying to shoehorn the Ranger into one isn’t going to make anyone happy.

Could aways merge the effects of skirmishing 1 and 3 as a ’new’1 trait and, give a weapon swap cool down reduction as the 3 trait

I’ve seen Karl’s face when he talked about the weakness of Rangers…
He clearly knew it is a ~mess~, but also, had to try say it as smooth as possible.

They seem really aware of our problems, but when will they fix them?…

I agree, would be nice to know what they have planned if anything and timetable.
In the meantime, outside of occasional hotjoins, Ive stopped playing the ranger in pvp;
other proffs just do it better