Guild Wars 2

I really hope news of this November 15th update will fix our profession. I’ve been running dungeons pretty heavily in anticipation for improvements (and because I want gold) and find myself either with a downed pet or a pet who spends more time at my side than doing what its suppose to do.

I was in a story mode Citadel of Flame. On the second to last boss, it was a chore to make sure my ranged pets stayed out of the HUGE area of effect around the boss – much less keeping myself out of it. A couple of times that whole “walking 50 miles ahead of me” issue got them caught in the AoE and a few ticks knocked them out of commission, leaving me with kittened damage. When they were ordered to attack, they’d maybe get a few shots off before I’d have to micromanage them again because the circle moved a couple of feet and threatened to kill him – again!

Its no fun micromanaging a brick that will turn to dust with the slightest breeze.

*puts up "Do Not Feed the Troll" sign*

As I said in the other thread, I believe this patch is going to focus heavily on Pets and Utilities. A few weapons might get buffed (Longbow), but I doubt it will be by much.

The Pet issues should and probably will be the highest priority. Pets are not the "2nd player" everyone calls them, they are a mob strapped to our character. And like mobs, they came with all the hideous issues, but without any benefits. Rather than just buff pets to compensate for their stupidity, A-Net will *hopefully* be adding QoL/AI enhancement changes to make the current pets usable.

@DoomBunny, You mentioned mobs and I’ve noticed that the NPCs in the game act very much like my pet. In fact, I’ve used their attack-and-move and pathing issues to move through zones quickly, without entering combat.

This got me to thinking the other day that the pet issues are further reaching and not just a Ranger issue. Look at the NPCs we have to escort throughout the world. The Destiny’s Edge “heroes” spend more time “tanking the floor” than contributing to the fight. In fact, I often wonder if the world is better off without them and why we even bothered to bring them back together when a pick-up-group of adventurers can do the job better – but I digress.

deepwinter.9015:

@DoomBunny, You mentioned mobs and I’ve noticed that the NPCs in the game act very much like my pet. In fact, I’ve used their attack-and-move and pathing issues to move through zones quickly, without entering combat.

Surprise, surprise, pets use the same AI as mobs. So, all those dumb-as-a-brick mobs you’ve kited in a circle are at the same AI level as your pet. The only difference is pets actually have and use skills (which they aren’t too bad at).

DoomBunny.2903:

Surprise, surprise, pets use the same AI as mobs. So, all those dumb-as-a-brick mobs you’ve kited in a circle are at the same AI level as your pet. The only difference is pets actually have and use skills (which they aren’t too bad at).

I’m more referring to their stopping to attack and how they move to the point where I was standing when I first got aggro and then chase. Its no surprise that they use the same A.I. as the rest of the game, but I’m concerned its a much bigger issue to fix.

That’s a general waypoint issue, Pets and NPCs share that.
It looks like the waypoints just don’t get updated frequently enough.
Also I think the Pet placement shouldn’t be handled by waypoints at all. thats just not reliable enough.

DoomBunny.2903:

deepwinter.9015:

@DoomBunny, You mentioned mobs and I’ve noticed that the NPCs in the game act very much like my pet. In fact, I’ve used their attack-and-move and pathing issues to move through zones quickly, without entering combat.

Surprise, surprise, pets use the same AI as mobs. So, all those dumb-as-a-brick mobs you’ve kited in a circle are at the same AI level as your pet. The only difference is pets actually have and use skills (which they aren’t too bad at).

Indeed. I don’t expect the pet AI to improve, but I bet we get something to improve their hit rate. At this point, I’d be thrilled if they would just respond when I hit a button.

As it is now, I’ve become used to automatically hitting F2 the moment I engage or swap just so my pet does what I ask before the fight has ended. That and I never really bother to call my pet back anymore – I just swap them a lot since it’s far more reliable.

I sure would like to be able to apply a blind on demand rather than apply a blind..you know…whenever it’s convenient for my raven to get to it.

RummyTheMad.7290:

I sure would like to be able to apply a blind on demand rather than apply a blind..you know…whenever it’s convenient for my raven to get to it.

Yo Ranger, I really like you and Imma cast that F2, but my other abilities is the best abilities of all time. OF ALL TIME!

<me, spamming F2 until it breaks>

Sdric.8526 if you can do 2.5k Crits with that +25% damage from vulnerability, and add another 20 stacks of might, I guess you could hit 3.3-3.5k But I cannot imagine 4k critical hits… Unless he is doing it on a Warrior that has Frenzy enabled…?

What ever the case, I imagine it is extremely rare and unlikely to happen very often, if at all. I run around in full Zerker gear in every slot and during arah we often have 25 stacks of Vul on the mob and I have yet to hit 4k damage on ranger… I have over 600 hours across my Ranger and Guardian.

As much as I agree hitting for 4k doesn’t sound real, I’d suggest to wait before calling someone liar.

In berserker gear and not even maxed crit dmg tree, with only 10 vuln on target and with no buffs I did crit for 3,3k. And that is on PvP, full exotic PvE stats are higher (at least crit dmg).
In other words: 4k IS possieble, but not like someone is running around and hitting like that every day lol

And I’d also suggest to rethink how “useless” LB is. Yes, it (and whole ranger) need a buff. No, it isn’t totally broken. I’m playing ranger since headstart, mostly with LB and I love it. Totally no problems with soloing, feels good enough in dungs, not to mention WvW. I’m not playing sPvP, so idk about it.

Everybody say how much hours they have, so I’d say too: 473h… like if it matters lol

I noticed your pet was chilling next to you, Terkov. I realize you’re just trying to prove a point about the Ranger’s damage, but consider the fact if your pet was involved in the fight.

If you managed to get a 4k+ hit and your pet managed the same you both still only did 8k+ total.

Meanwhile, the Warrior, Thief, Mesmer, Elementalist and Engineer are popping 12k++ left and right. (The Necro don’t care about your big numbers; Necro got DoTs and more pets than you) Even with your powers combined your damage is subpar. No Captain Planet for you!

@Terkov, just gonna leave this tidbit of info here for you guys…. the Medium dummy and the Light dummy have the wrong armors on… IE the medium dummy is in light armor and vice versa, so if you were to hit the medium dummy instead that number would be higher…

@Deepwinter, i have yet to see a warrior, mesmer, ele, or eng hit anyone for over 4k… please provide me a screeny of these numbers…

PS: I haven’t seen a thief hit -me- over 8k in some time now that the backstab build was nerfed TO THE GROUND…

1 hundred blades does more damage than you will do with your pet in like what, 10 seconds?
Mesmers with phantasms up and thiefs also laugh about all do many times the damage ranger does.
Hell a freaking ele aoe does almost as much damage as ranger autoattack. Another thing, to hit for 2k+ with LB you have to stay back, so what do you do after your vulnerability runs out or if someone just runs up to you? You’re kittened big time because you have to swap to shortbow which does like 500-800dmg to normal geared (exo) people. A single guardian heal can heal your 10 shortbow auto attacks while throwing out more boons in a second than you have useful skills.

@Arekai, oh yes, because you know because you can do more damage with your big CD’s means you’re a big boy on the campus because you can show that ranger whose auto attacking what for!!

That’s like saying “Well thieves are broken because my pet can crit you for 8k with one attack!!” and then finding out later that i had to pop RaO, sig of wild, sig of the hunt, and sic em for all of that to happen.

That was a pic of him using his auto attack, i can hit people for 3-4k (depending on how lucky i am with crits 4-5k depending on my luck with spirit of frost procs should i be using him) with only 2k attack (that’s rounding up) with rapid fire, no additional crit damage or crit chance as well, i’m pretty sure that build above can rival what ever your warrior can pump out with 1 blades, which is SUPER easy to avoid mind you, with a hunters shot and a rapid fire, and you can’t avoid that nor out run it.

I have full berserker gear, i maxed crit dmg. I tried all possable equipment, builds, runes and gems. Over 3.5k nearly impossible. And it was at 12 might stacks and 25 vulner on target. In pve/spve even 3k is very rare event. I think thou light golem just have minimum thougness. That’s why such solid number. 4k? NO WAY.

Another issue I find is in the Clock tower, sure I can dodge roll treb shots when I see then coming, but what about my pet? He just takes it in the face?, and even with 15 in BM for faster swaps, he will die! only possible solution is to stow him =.=

I have no idea why my post looks like that, but the feeling remains the same and probably is equal to the next 15 replies coming.

Thanks for the update Jon…I’ll be looking forward to the updates.

Love my ranger, but always happy about some positive changes

I dont get it.That means that we gonna see some fixes before patch mid Nov?

So everyone was expecting a fix Nov 1, but it’s in two weeks? Great, at least I’ll have time to go back to real life.

Thanks for the update. I’m confused about one thing though: I thought you already had some significant ranger changes in the works as of last week. Now it sounds like you’re just now adding a handful of fixes that will be ready by the 15th. Which is it?

Before GW2 comes out officially i wanted to play a Ranger.I was watching videos in youtube and dreaming of the day that i will hold my Sword and Longobow and make my patch through the game.I dreamed of the day that i will support my friends carrying with me my beloved spirits.Or playing a strong pet build.
Everyday and after seeing comments like Jon Peters makes me dont want to play my Ranger.I say to myself “hold on,after a few days fixes will come and you will able to play the Ranger that you dreamed”.
But for now i just playing my necro.I know hes not totally fixed too but i saw some fixes in the previous patch so i geuss is a step closer
The only thing i saw in the previous patch and in the next one was promises..I have to wait more i geuss.

JonPeters.5630:

Wow this escalated quickly

Still thinking of you rangers… Next balance patch is mid Nov, but I’ve got at least a handful of fixes in testing already!

Excitement for today’s patch dies.
Oh well, only a few more weeks until we finally see some positive changes.

So glad Arenanet isn’t like 343 lol, at least we have confirmation there will be fixes to rangers coming. Also love that Anet won’t delete every post that says something negative or disagrees with what they did. I think I’ve been banned at least 8 times now on Halo Waypoint for criticizing their decisions lol

I wonder, how hard it is to at least revert back to before the SB nerf, or up the SB dmg by abit to help rangers for the next 2 long long long weeks before the next “major” patch. Especially since they can do it so well and fast for halloween patches.

Which I am betting will have triple the changes and buffs for warriors. And double the changes to other professions. And then a few small changes to Rangers, which totally ignore most if not all our major issues.

JonPeters.5630:

Wow this escalated quickly

Still thinking of you rangers… Next balance patch is mid Nov, but I’ve got at least a handful of fixes in testing already!

Woohoo! While a few others may be disappointed, I had feeling it was going to have to be in the big Nov 15th update. I have done a bit of game testing, so I know how long it takes to push out a patch like that. The fact you guys are throwing in the changes despite the work with Halloween and “November Island” makes me smile.

Any chance we can get a hint as to what’s changing? Not exact changes, but at least an idea of what is being done.

@ Doombunny

I think Anet has mentioned many times that the bug fixing department and the new design department are 2 different teams and work separately. Thus why can’t they do both?

Also I might not work in game testing, but I work in programming. Especially with version-ing and module based programming, I cannot see why they cannot revert ranger SB changes (thus giving us back a viable build, till the big patch).

I’m waiting on my broken arm to heal so I can play again. At least I know I’m not missing anything for a couple weeks lol.

Thanks for the update Jon. I don’t mind waiting for the patch as long as the changes are actually substantial.

We are all kind of holding on for a big quality of life improvement. We want to see our favorite class be just as viable as the other classes out there. It’s pretty difficult playing with my warrior buddy who brags about his ridiculous damage in both pve and pvp, meanwhile I, even fully decked out in exotics, can only pull off like 1/15 of his damage.

Everyone seems a little flustered that we have to wait, but honestly we just want to be put in a good spot. Fixing us the right way even after a bit of time will be so much better than quickly throwing a band-aid on our problems.

Can’t wait for that patch, hoping to see good things ~

Excellent. This gives me time enough to finish leveling my engineer to 80, but when dragon timers pop I’ll use my ranger then, since it’s the only level 80 character I have at the current moment.

@Marcus 343 studios has no track record Halo 4 is their first game and its getting rave reviews so far… So I dont understand your hate for them.

@Doom Pushing out bug fixes and patches along with content is not hard at all, look @ RIFT for example they would have huge content updates along with bug fixes and character changes all the time… What GW2 needs is a PTS so they can make changes ASAP and then we the ppl can test them and see how they work… real time feedback works wonders and would speed things up alot.

JonPeters.5630:

Wow this escalated quickly

Still thinking of you rangers… Next balance patch is mid Nov, but I’ve got at least a handful of fixes in testing already!

Don’t worry about the balancing, some bugfixes would be fine already…

I think its beyond the point of bug fixes Aeri, lately in PVP no matter what spec I play i get destroyed, as ppl get better and learn the mechanics of the game more it just keeps driving in how utterly useless Rangers are…

Sucks that I rolled this class, cause im the one character type person when it comes to MMOS I have no desire to make alts

SlimJim.3087:

Sucks that I rolled this class, cause im the one character type person when it comes to MMOS I have no desire to make alts

Oh I’m the same, mostly. I usually make one character and stick with it for a very long period. When I played guild wars 1 from beta to the 6 year mark, I only had one character – an female ele. The nearer the end I wanted a little change so I made a ritualist before moving over to here.

But with this game I like it so much, that I could bring myself to make an alt that I’ll play a lot, but just one though so that I’ll keep having fun experiences (rather than no playing at all!) I would love to see the ranger class in the state it was supposed to be in, but as it is— I find it sad and not much fun to play anymore. Well, until it’s where it should be I’ll be working on an asura engineer and hoping for the best for the ranger.

I can’t believe this – look at the dev channel and reds are openly talking about the roles& updates for other classes. Once again, us rangers are left in the dark. We don’t even know what the devs think our class is “for”: Thiefs, Eles and Mesmers are for escapes/mobility, Necros are for attrition, Warriors for damage – so what do we do?

@ Aotd

Please link url of the discussion. I want to go ask, what about ranger?

Fate.8673:

I have no idea why my post looks like that, but the feeling remains the same and probably is equal to the next 15 replies coming.

I liked your comment better that way actually. Got the point across better.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/necromancer/PHEW/first#post612396

Here.

Worst thing about that Aotd is its in the Necro forums, and while necro needs a few bug fixes its no where near as broken as the useless ranger… yet for some reason there seems to be constructive dev feedback as to whats happening with necro.

Wish we could get that here, instead of the old run around, you know the old “patch is coming wait longer”…

Edit: Woo Jon shows up to save the day lol, nice to know hes listening!! I posted this just before his came up lol

Hello there, thanks for the reply, it is good that you are testing but could we get some sort of information about what are your plans? it wont hurt anyone to know the upcoming changes, even partially or with an “it may change”. maybe create a locked tread when some moderator could tell us what’s in your mind, i am drowning on a sea of dilemmas, will the pet work properly? will my damage be up to other class? will i be forced to play condition? can i remove my pet and decide to play alone with an increased damage? shall i farm for a +healing set? and so on.
Please consider to keep us informed on what is your idea. It will be awesome

Wild Horse, 80 ranger LB/SB lover, pet hater.

Any Chance there will be fixes for turning pets off completely until we decide they are needed? also any chance the renaming them will actually stick?

I’m fine with Pets and all but sometimes you really just need them to go away for a while so they don’t cause issues….

I just wanna know if at any point in the furute i could hit like my pet (46800 w/ 25 stks of might, 25 Stks of Masters bond, 30 BM points, +30% crit dmg, stalk active, and Sig of Hunt used).

No, I won’t echo SB buffs. It’s quite possibly the most boring weapon of all time. Auto attack + poison spam until QZ is up. So kitten boring.

Buff Longbow and Greatsword. -_-

So will we have a revamp of the profession?

Revamp?
Hell no.
Anet thinks ranger is in a average condition right now, only some bugfixes are coming, this does for example not involve the 30% (50% with QZ) attack rate nerf of sb.

I think the post at the start of the thread outlines the intentions pretty clearly. For the coming patch I think it’s reasonable to expect bug fixes and bringing some lackluster utilities up to par to improve build diversity. You might be setting yourself up for disappointment if you’re hoping for too much more than that.

Honestly I’m just tired of tickling enemies. I want to do damage. I don’t want to see massive numbers like a warrior or thief but seriously. I wish they would lower the damage pets can do (since they are so freakin unreliable anyway) and give us back the dps that is supposed to come from the pets.

It’s so hard playing with my friends who are equally geared, but so much more effective.

While it will never happen because it would be done too well and then get over nerfed to compensate, I would love to see the signets replaced with powerful passives that get weakened if our pet is dead. The kitten thing dies so easily in PvP and dungeons that it would balance out the big buffs where it actually matters.