Guild Wars 2

Problem as I see it though is that whenever we have suggested something, it has either been ignored or implemented in a way that defeated the purpose of the suggestion (suggested HS as a trap in order to benefit from throwing traps for instance, and see what happened)

That said, it looks very odd to me to have one developer in charge of a class and then have another suddenly step in and make changes. Kind of looks like a ‘’too many cooks’’-situation.
Honestly I think the way forward would be to have a road map for ranger (one made through dialogue with the community) and have a clear view of who does what. If one dev is in charge of a class then interference from other devs looks unprofessional to say the least.

So to answer the questions, I don’t think there’s much Gaile can do as she’s not responsible for the changes either way and honestly (no offense to Gaile), I think it would be better for the devs to talk directly to the community about changes instead of having a middle-(wo)man between the community and dev.

What Roy could do would be to actually discuss with the ranger community on the forums rather than use twitter or other media like that. Also either he’s partially in charge of ranger, in which case he should be listening to the ranger community and helping with a road map for ranger, or he is not in charge of ranger in which case he should not be an active player in this.

I think you should check your computer with this issue. I have 2 laptops, 1 that’s 9+ years and 1 that’s about 1 year old. When I run lab on my new computer, the dogs are visible and act predictably at all times (bugs with the computer sometimes lead to me using my old computer instead though).
On my old computer (it was a high end gaming computer back in its day, so still running decently) I observe exactly what you mention here. So I suspect it is something to do with the computer graphic card (as my old computer actually works better with my internet than my new one. Less dc’s and lag spikes). I should note at this though, that my old computer doesn’t visibly lag elsewhere in game, so looking for lag doesn’t seem like it would be a good indicator.

So perhaps try to run it on another computer and see if you still have this problem. For me, the deciding factor is which computer I use. Everything else, internet and server, should be the same.
That said, the behavior of the dogs is a lot more erratic when I’m using my old computer, but presumably your computer would run better than an 9+ year laptop.

I’d go for “we heal as one” heal on ranger. If I have that skill equipped I’ll play without sound. It’s literally a skill that after you’ve heard it 10 times, you’d rather kill your char than use the heal with sound on game.

Would love a mute option for my own char.

I’d love if I could see % damage done to a boss by my character. That would be a nice indicator of dps and whether or not a build should be improved.
But I can’t find any way in which this could be done that would not be abused, so it may be better without. Even if you could only see your own damage % then teams might start asking each person after a fight what their % was.

Reason why I mention it as % rather than damage is that it is easier to relate to. If I do x dps, that wouldn’t tell me much without anything to compare to and having team mates dps to compare to could be troublesome. Having % would tell me how my dps was with something to relate it to without pointing out the ‘low’ dps team mate.

Also some issues as pointed out by one of the OP are the combo mechanics, various buffs and the like. There are skills that increase overall team damage but bringing them decreases your personal dps, so how would these be counted in the calculation?

So basically. It would be good for improving on a char, but there’s no way a mechanic like this would not be abused. So better that it isn’t there.

When you send your pet to attack something while you’re pick up nodes and you watch the pet miss the opponent by a mile and slowly backtrack to the correct attack range.

When you are in a group and use stalker roar only to watch the group running off while the pet is still casting.

When you try to get your pet to revive you but he finds a hidden rock on the landscape that is so interesting that he can’t possibly come to you.

When you run down a hill and your pet dies from falling damage from walking down.

When you play a new ranger and watch the pet dying because you can’t control it before hitting … is it lvl 5 now?

When you’re stacking while using sword and lose target, jumping to the other side of the room/down nearest cliff …

Definitely don’t remove rewards for hotjoin.

I used to do mainly unranked/ranked (always solo). What pushed me into hotjoin was the daily wins requirement. When it was win x times on any prof, sure I’d go ranked. But with prof-limited dailies, it requires playing alts (only have 1 char for pvp, don’t like the others).
In ranked/unranked, I would always cap points and try to help the team, but if I’m forced to play alts for rewards, I’m a hindrance to my team. And the requirement to win the match for reward only makes it worse. Requiring a match win means that on my main 1-2 matches, I’ll have daily done. On my alts, it tended to be 5-10 matches before I got that single win for daily. In hotjoin, you can do a match and make sure you get the reward first time.

That said, the day you’re required to play a match with a certain prof for daily, I’ll be back to ranked/unranked.
But requiring a win means that I’m going to free myself from the frustration and just play a hotjoin with match decided (one of the custom, where winning team is decided before start).

I’m not a natural pvp’er. I can play pvp and have fun and I’ll always try to win. But the moment I’m required to win for a reward, I’ll either look for a way to play the system or just walk off. It’s just too stressful otherwise.

I can’t see why hotjoin like what I do in custom arenas would bother anyone though. The others in the arena also joined for the same reason. None of us would be any good to have in unranked/ranked. So why not just let ppl play the way they feel comfortable playing?

Just a couple of ideas and possible changes I’d like to see in game.

First with the sword, skill 2 and 3 both have evades but it feels like the timing on the evades are different. I find if I need a fast evade, skill 3 works while skill 2 takes too long to execute (I can’t actually time it, but can anyone else confirm this?).
I think sword would be easier to use if both skills evaded with the same timing (even if it would take a while to get used to). Of course it could be argued that it takes more skill if you need to consider which evade is most likely to be timed correctly, but I feel that the benefit from correct sword use is somewhat limited compared with how difficult it can be (yay, I didn’t die or suicide with sword this fight).

Which brings about the next point. The sword auto attack contains 2 skills that are essentially leaps. This makes dodging harder with the sword. While I would like to be able to evade whenever I wanted, I can also get used to sword leaps. The thing that leaves me wondering is that the skills are not able to count as leap finishers. It would seem logical to me to either have leaps, preventing dodging but granting finishers or not have leaps, allowing dodging but no finishers.
The current situation doesn’t look overly appealing. Getting the full disadvantage of a leap skill without the advantage of a finisher. (I do realize that 2 finishers on auto-attack could be overpowered, but if one was made not to count as a leap and the other got finisher, it might be ok).

With pets I’d first of all like to see condition removal skills remove conditions rather than giving them to the pets.

A couple of new pets I’d love to see. Chihuahua pet: barks constantly, never attacks and doesn’t take damage. Gives a buff to allies’ damage and f2 puts torment stacks on opponents in hearing range. (ok half-joking, but could be useful for areas where having a targetable pet is disadvantageous and would solve the pet/no pet discussion. Technically it would be the same as having no pet with just an added graphic of something following you and an f2 skill)

More realistically, a pet which removes boons from opponents with f2. At the moment, no pet can remove boons. It can be useful to remove troublesome boons in fight, but rangers have neither skills or pets able to. So if a new pet is added, this would seem a good choice of f2.

Sorry for very long post. (goes back to trying to get pet to chew up druid staff)

Thx a lot. Must just be a bit of bad luck then. RNG really is the hardest opponent in game

I think the problem is that we don’t know what the content of the expansion is. The logical order would be to look at the content, assign a value to that, then add gems/char slot … to get from that value to the 50D.
From what we currently know, that’s not possible. Lacking a release date is also, at least to me, a major red flag.

It’s the lack of information that makes me hold back. I’ve paid similar prices for expansions in other games, but I’ve always known what I was getting and already had a lot of trust in the game.

For me, I am too unsure where this game is going (I have thief/ranger, all I know is ranger is getting staff, not if it will improve the class and thief elite spec is unknown). There have been many updates I sincerely disliked and many things I wished fixed that remain flawed still. Until I know where the game is going, I can’t put money into it.

So the answer for me is enough content + extras to be worth 50D as well as actual communication and information about both expansion and future direction of the game.

I realize it’s probably not the simple answer you’d hoped for, but well, it’s an answer

RabbitUp.8294:

Gray.9041:

I ran the numbers a while back, and I think between the tax differences and the currency conversion, it works out about the same.

For the standard edition, the price in euro is a direct conversion. It doesn’t add up.

Aria.5940:

I’m starting to actually see a point why they are not addressing the issue yet. As much as I hate to say it, every article about this mentions how great value it is to new players. So I guess it’s possible anet want as many potential players to hear about this and so caused the uproar deliberately.
I really do hope that’s not the case, as that would be reason enough to walk and not look back and might also leave potential new players wondering if they can trust anet.

Honestly though, if you were a new player, would you join a 3 year old MMO in the middle of a kittenstorm?

that’s true. Most ppl probably would hesitate at that. That said, at least it proves that the community does care about the game’s direction. I find silent forums worse because that’s usually when the community just doesn’t care anymore

I’m starting to actually see a point why they are not addressing the issue yet. As much as I hate to say it, every article about this mentions how great value it is to new players. So I guess it’s possible anet want as many potential players to hear about this and so caused the uproar deliberately.
I really do hope that’s not the case, as that would be reason enough to walk and not look back and might also leave potential new players wondering if they can trust anet.

I was actually looking to buy HoT until I saw the price for it. That cause me to reconsider whether it was worth it. So far the new pve territory seems somewhat low for any expansion regardless of price.

The elite specializations didn’t appeal to me either. I play ranger and thief. Ranger is getting staff (which I think is probably the least useful possible. I kept hoping for a 1h power main weapon like dagger to get rid of the clumsy sword jumping) and thief isn’t even announced yet.

So it seems to me that the price was just a large sum for something I would not use (ranger elite spec) and something I didn’t yet know what would be (thief elite), as well as maps I had no idea of the quality of.

I generally have no problem with pre-purchase. But I’m very concerned about seeing a pre-purchase that doesn’t state what exactly you’re getting (maps, elite specs …) and doesn’t state a release time either.
At a lower price, I might have taken the bait. But as it is, there’s no way I can feel good about buying it. 50D is too much to throw at something that is not clearly defined.

Was looking through dungeons wondering if I should join any. But even the casual pug runs seem to have rather high requirement.

lol, fun thread

that said, if guardian is getting longbow based off living story Braham/Eir and necro is getting gs based on Belinda/Marjory, shouldn’t thief be getting a dragon pet (seeing as Caithe stole the dragon egg)?

I’ve mostly been playing my main in ranked for a long time, but thought it was finally time to start playing other classes. I never saw this kind of behavior while playing my main (once every 100 matches hardly counts).

I’m really bad with my alts though, as I never played them a lot and I learn by trying rather than reading about a build. So I thought it safest to do unranked with my alts, and was shocked that almost every match I ran into something like this.
I know my alts suck, but I really don’t see the point why someone feels the need to remind me every single match when we’re not even in a ranked queue.

I’ve never been a hardcore pvp and never will be, but I enjoy taking 1-2 matches every now and again, but this kind of thing really makes me dread playing alts. So I’m kind of at a point where there’s no reason to play my main (having played too many matches with that single class) and I’m feeling discouraged from learning to play my alts.

I suspect it might have something to do with MMR as my alts (hopefully) have a lot lower MMR than my main, but it really ruins the fun in pvp.

And yes, I could put them on ignore, but I really just want to play pvp for fun. Even if I put them on ignore, they already ruined my fun.

More pet options would be good. What are the odds of a pet that has a boon-stealing f2? That is something that none of the pets can currently do.
Thinking an AoE block similar to guardian Aegis would work with dolyak though (it’s big enough that it should be able to do an AoE block of an attack).

Also how about coyotes? The guard npc in the human starter instance has one as a pet and I’ve seen lots of wild coyotes in wvw.

And let’s not forget mordrem wolves that positional damage would be priceless to have on a pet.

Weapon:
On my ranger, I find myself using 1-hand sword most of the time because it’s got high dps and allows use of an off-hand weapon. But everytime I find myself wishing for another solid power weapon to replace sword and after playing thief, I had to wonder, why a ranger shouldn’t be able to handle a dagger mainhand.

A dagger with dps comparable to sword and without the rooting animation seemed like a good alternative. With the first skill being an aa focused on damage, and the other 2 having 1 hard hitting skill and perhaps either an evade or condition on the 3rd (without the root, an evade wouldn’t feel as critically necessary)

Is there any compelling argument besides development effort why a ranger shouldn’t be able to wield a mainhand dagger?

Pet:
Looking at heroes in gw1, you could first of all control their movement a lot easier, flagging them to a location. But the thing I found more interesting was that you could order them not to use a skill by blocking a skill in their bar. There are pets where the f2 is great, but some of the other skills you may prefer the pet not to use (for me, the most glaring one is the shark fear. The shark loves casting this skill, but I’ve yet to find a use for it).
A simple, ‘’block this skill’’ option would be a small improvement. If it would be possible to have a hotkey for unblocking the skill, it could even be a huge improvement as you could then save valuable skills for late into combat when you need them rather than the pet using the skills at the start of the fight (wolf pounce for instance, that the wolf often loves to start the fight with)

As a ranger main, I’d call it a feature :P

I have tried joining a fractal/dungeon group and getting either kicked instantly or asked to switch class, but it’s actually only less than 1% of groups or something like that (happened twice for me. Was asked to switch class for 1 Arah path and was kicked from a low lvl fractal before start once). At least as a ranger, if they dislike rangers, you get a kick before start, so you avoid the trouble of wasting time only to get kicked near end bosses.

That said, it can be a bit sad sometimes. Personally I think the worst thing is having a warrior ask why you bring a ranger to the dungeon at all.

A piece of advice could also be to chat with other players. Particularly if they try talking to you. I think most ppl would attempt to talk to someone before concluding that player to be a bot.

So answering anyone talking to you would instantly erase the risk of getting reported by that player. (I don’t think bots can generally answer? or is it just that most aren’t programmed to? perhaps someone with more knowledge about bots would know this)

I did a fair bit of underwater farming but never got reported for it. Though I don’t think I ever saw another player near where I farmed either now that I think about it, so that could also be a factor.

Largos ele/thief/mesmer/ranger

I really love those. From look and behavior, they seemed to me like killer butterflies

A skelk warrior/guardian/engineer could be fun too though, but it might be difficult to train them to handle weapons reasonably

I was very happy to see the retaliation go away. I play a ranger main and the wolves are mostly dangerous due to their positional damage.
Having retaliation on them only leads to long and really boring fights (attack a few times … kite for an eternity … attack a few times …). Also if I hit it while it had retaliation up, I’d generally take more damage than it would. Before anyone mentions, no ranger skills or traits remove boons, and nor can any pet do this.
With swiftness at least they’re slightly harder to kite (though they still suffer from same issues as any pve mob and ranger pets in regard to pathing and keeping up while attacking).
So the way I see, swiftness serves the purpose of increasing the chance that the wolf keeps up with its target. Retaliation served no purpose other than extend fights. Swiftness would be way more efficient if Anet would actually fix mob AI though so mobs would reliably hit while pursuing things.

I like all game modes, but I hate making builds for pvp, so only did that for my main. Since I don’t play that char anymore in pvp, I’ll always join pvp with a char I don’t know the build for. (figuring sooner or later my rating will be low enough that it won’t matter)

I only go into wvw when I can charge into zerg vs zerg fights with my thief and the moment it looks like we’re losing, I’ll attempt to disengage and sneak off.

I sometimes do a bl key run (story lvl 10 reward) and I always try to choose a race/story I don’t remember and read the dialogue (probably the least efficient way to do the runs possible).

And through taking my main char through the entire story, both personal and living, I read every bit of dialogue. Same for first time in every dungeon.

That would help a lot.

One thing I miss a lot with pet is the ability to flag it, like you would heroes in gw1. Guard is not optimal for this as I have to give up utility for pet control. I would like to be able to set my pet to back away from a boss while I remain melee (seeing as I can dodge, but the pet can’t) or to run around an AoE instead of going the most direct way to the target.

Even with 0 cd flagging ability, it would still require a lot of the ranger because it would be necessary to do often but at least it would help mitigate some of the problems with pets, particularly in wvw zergs (imagine actually being able to tell your pet to go around AoE just by flagging it every few seconds to a new location as it approaches)

I interpret exp as having done the path before and if there have been changes, having done it again after the most recent changes.

Some paths (CM p2) really are hard to know the pug strategy for as it varies widely depending on the group (there are at least 3 different pug strategies for kegs, possibly more). So in such, I understand exp as knowing there are kegs and that you need to place them somehow. So while for some dungeons, I can see the point of exp meaning knowing the strategy, for others it’s impossible to know before joining the group.

That said, I also always wonder at the lfg exp and usually avoid them if there are other options. In the end, what matters isn’t what I think exp means, but what the group leader thinks it means.

I’ve been trying to use open world lfg to get into an organized dry top map. So making a lfg post and waiting. What I’ve observed is that the group request disappears on its own, without getting a group.
Is it a bug or how often does a lfg need to be refreshed to remain in place?

It’s a windows 8.1 problem. I briefly had a computer with the same problem (bought and returned to store the same day due to this). You can try to work around it, but the easiest way is just to replace the win8.
Replacing it with win7 (or any other system you like) will solve this problem (note that you’ll need a code from windows to be able to change out windows 8.1 for something else in most laptop computers).
Win8 will do this in multiple games, so even if you do a work-around for gw, you’ll likely encounter this problem often in different programs

In the new Collection tabs there is one collection which requires a masterwork dredge manifesto. I happened to have one equipped on one of my chars (before anyone mentions, yes, my alts are poorly geared). However, whenever I try to add the manifesto to collection by unequipping and choosing the add to collection option that appears when it’s selected in inventory, my game crashes.

I had been playing without problems until then and my internet was stable.
I repeated this 5 times to check if it was in fact the manifesto or the game being unstable. Basically, I could stay logged on for hours and do anything in game (PvE, PvP. WvW, crafting, achievements …) without crashing, but the moment I tried to add the manifesto to collection, it lead to an instant crash.

Have anyone successfully added the manifesto to collection? and if so, how?

While I absolutely love minis, I’ve also been in wvw a bit. I adore my fox kit mini, and in wvw whenever it disappears, I know I need to be alert.

When fixing the disappearing minis, would it be possible to have an option of keeping the old settings in wvw? It is actually fairly great for determining potential trouble nearby.

Yesterday I was gathering materials in wvw while trying to grab a camp here and there. While walking from a camp, my mini disappeared, and at the nearest tower an opponent group was attacking. If it had not been for the mini, I wouldn’t have gone close enough to the tower to even see them.

I realize it may provide a slightly unfair advantage, but even the cheapest mini will do this, so anyone can make use of this. It does make it a lot easier to break away from the wvw zerg and roam a bit without getting trampled while distracted by something else.

I’ve noticed a bug with responsiveness of wolf f2. The delay is dependent on what animation it’s doing when you press f2. I’m still working on figuring out which animations cause delay, but so far the start of the pounce animation (right as it crouches) will cause a couple of seconds delay as opposed to using fear while the wolf is idle. If the pounce animation goes further than that, the wolf has in most cases ignored the f2 order.

There’s another animation that also causes delay, but so far I haven’t been able to identify it (it’s not as obvious as the pounce start). And I got tired of testing it after a while due to the cd on the f2.

I imagine other pets might have similar errors in response. But based on your mention of fear, I’m assuming it’s the wolf that’s been bothering you.

Great idea with the stacks and buffs remaining. I agree after armor repair was made free, the outnumbered buff needs something new.

How about not giving any loot/wxp on defeat while outnumbered?
It would still not solve the problem about getting zerged but at least there’d be less incentive to trample the few remaining ppl on an outnumbered server.

That way 90%? of the other server (however many care about loot/wxp instead of world ranking) would quickly lose interest and move on to another map. At least ideally.

Ok, i didn’t know it had been around before patch as I only encountered it after.
I’ve had both the skill lock and the weapon lock in a few days, so I thought they were the same thing just different degrees of severity.

If it has been around for a while, are there any guesses to what starts it?

After the update, I’ve had a regular bug where my weapons lock so I can’t do weapon-switch, not even out of combat. I don’t know what triggers this bug as I can’t be sure I noticed it right as it happened (not being able to switch constantly due to the cd on swap).
It can sometimes be solved by manually switching in [H] equipment option, but most of the time, the only way I can get weapon-switch to work again is by dying.

I’ve ruled out my main world. Last try I witnessed there weren’t even enough ppl to do the pre-event for wurm. (Gunnar’s Hold)
The worlds I’ve tried guesting so far have had more ppl but also failed.

Which EU server do I need to guest to get these 2 done? Seems lately too few ppl are doing them, so every event fails.

From what I’ve noted down so far:

Hotjoin lose : 1%
Hotjoin win (volunteering for losing side but still win reward I think) : 2%

solo-q lose : 1%
solo-q win : 3%

This seemed consistent for the matches I played. Team-q I don’t do often enough to be sure of reward % for

Thanks for the answer. That’s nice to know.

Does anyone know how the reward tracks work? I tried doing a few games to find out, but I wasn’t able to get enough different results to actually obtain much info that way.

Does the reward track advance equally for different modes, hotjoin/solo-q/team-q (it does advance for all I found)? And does it require wins or will it advance on lost fights too?

I know this information is probably there somehow, but being a bit sleepy, I haven’t been able to track down info about this. So hoping someone stumbled across it and remembers.

ranger without spirits (or defense for that matter)

Heaven knows why, but there’s something fun about ranger without BM/spirits. Not very high ranked though

Sorry long post. Basically pointing out a few flaws in out utility skills from a range play-style (I know range isn’t viable, but if it ever does become viable, having utilities for it can’t hurt)

One of the major things I noticed was the utility skill issue. If you want to play a range-focused build (it’s not viable at all in game currently dps-wise, which is another issue), there are very few utilities to support this.

The shouts are for the pet and someone wanting to play range won’t benefit much from the pet most of the time and likely won’t be traiting into BM to make the pet more likely to survive.

The traps, you need to trait deep into to have them work and playing a range build makes them less potent as using the fields is harder (blast/leap finishers generally being better than the projectile ones). While this is the choice that struck me as most logical, it still leaves a lot to be desired.

The signets would be a good choice but again require a massive investment just to have them actually affect the character.

Spirits can be useful in cases untraited (a couple of places in dungeons), but outside of fights in a small area with safe spots or no AoE, the value of spirits drop. In WvW, PvP or PvE/dungeons where you’d need to move a lot, an unmoving spirit is not a good choice. Traiting deep into spirits again is a lot to just make a utility useful, particularly if you don’t bring a full set of spirits.
An additional issue is that with the spirits following close while traited, they will likely get hit by any AoE the ranger dodges. Traiting 30 points into spirits should allow positioning (leaving a spirit by an ally or in a safe spot while the ranger fights)

The survival skills are somewhat useful, but also there are a few issues with them. Both Sharpening Stone and Lightning Reflexes have very long cd for effects that don’t seem to warrant it. Sharpening Stone can add a bit of pressure but unless you keep the pressure up with other conditions, it’ll get cleansed fast. In a power build it can tip the scale if not cleansed, but it’s a rare thing and it’s a long cd.
Lightning Reflexes is a great skill (just to get that clear first), but with the massive amount of hard CC in game, the cd seems excessive. However, this could also be contributed to the cd on CC abilities on other classes (warrior) being too short.

Quickening Zephyr isn’t as efficient after the changes to quickness, also it comes with a healing debuff which does make it a high risk/low reward skill the way I see.

Muddy Terrain is great for a range build by at least slightly improving chances to stay range a few seconds more, but I’m left wondering why this isn’t the way all traps are. This skill triggers when cast and is always ground targetted. I’m left wondering why it doesn’t count as a trap and even more so why all traps are not by default like this.
Traiting for traps should give the option of placing them ahead of time and manually triggering instead of the current way. That way traiting traps would still be worthwhile but traps would be more viable without traits.

Apart from synergy with pet, the bows also need damage badly.
It’s been an issue for a long time that you can’t viably play ranged in any game mode as a ranger (lack of AoE in wvw, lack of ability to keep distance in pvp and lack of damage/utility in pve).

I’d love to see the damage get scaled in a way so you can pick up a bow in any game mode without being scolded or ridiculed for it.
I imagine I can’t be the only one who started a ranger with a hate for melee fighting and wanting to play ranged. I’ll go in melee in dungeons and such, but always wishing I had another viable option.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/wuv/wuv/Edge-of-Extinction-and-Frozen-Soil-please/

Just came across this thread while looking through the forums. A great idea for making rangers viable in large scale WvW.

A couple of our pet utilities could be easily replaced by this. (“guard” for instance should be a basic pet functionality, not a utility)

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview

Changing pet range of attack compared to distance to trigger attack to improve hit rate. Also changing the angle the attack would allow to discourage sidestepping pets continually.

Goal of Proposal

The idea with the proposal would be an attempt to make the melee pets hit more reliably against moving targets. This would improve the ranger’s ability to provide sustained dps by allowig for my reliable hits from the pet.

Proposal Functionality

The way I usually see the pet attack is that it attacks the moment the opponent is within range of the attack, which means a small amount of movement will put the opponent out of range.

angle of attack
Allowing pets to attack in a larger angle around their position would partially mitigate the ability to continually sidestep most of the attacks. This would need to be tested but a guess would be 2x or 3x the current attack angle would work.

attack distance
Also if the pet was made to trigger an attack at a distance half the range of the attack, the chances of the opponent moving out of range would decrease. So if the attack-trigger range was 120, the range of the attack should be 240.

This is based purely on the observation of the pets’ attack range compared to when they start their attack animations. If this was implemented (and worked to make pets hit better), it would still be possible to dodge or use terrain/movement skills to avoid pet skills. Possibly each melee pet should have a gap closer as well.

Associated Risks

There is the risk that the solution would not solve the pet problems due to the attack-range/attack-trigger condition being a guess at what causes a problem. Also not sure if a change like this would affect PvE opponents (would it truly be a problem to allow common PvE opponents to hit a target though?).

Tried to link to the whole thread, not a particular post. Hoping it works now.

I think the reason many ppl who don’t post much otherwise posted in the CDI might also be due to it being the hope for this class.

I generally don’t post much and ranger was my main class from the start (for a long time been playing a non-stealth thief or mesmer though). I love ranger in gw1 and really wish for the CDI to improve ranger, but posting suggestions on the forums previously has seemed in vain.

So my best guess is that ppl who have long lurked the forums see the CDI as a chance to actually make suggestions that will get read by devs. Also, for myself and probably others too, the CDI is the make-or-break point. Either ranger will improve as a result of the CDI and suggestions will be heard, or another game may prove a better option (my point of view, not necessarily shared by many others).

The best thing I could recommend is for the devs to read through
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-PvP-WvW-PvE-PvX/

It has a lot of great suggestions and has been kept on track for ages. (the entire thread that is. Not just whatever post it comes up with first when clicking the link)

With respect to the burst/sustain discussion, that is a problem in every game mode. Ranger doesn’t have the survivability to account for sustained damage. There are just too few defenses and particularly immobilize will leave the ranger vulnerable and defenseless.

In PvE, you need fast burst if there are other ppl around if you want to actually get a reward for events. Most opponents in PvE have low health, so fast burst will kill them and then the skills will be recharged before next encounter.

In PvP, we have 1 viable build atm (spirits), so that in itself is a problem. Also again sustain doesn’t work well because a fight rarely stays 1v1 and if you need time to kill, your opponent will have more time to get reinforcements. In addition any opponent in PvP will move, making the pet hit less than it’s supposed to.

In dungeons damage wins in all cases but lack of AoE hinders the class along with the fact that our sustained damage even in long fights rarely add up to the burst of other classes (the cd on most burst skills on burst heavy classes is too short along with the non-burst skills being too strong). Also in dungeons, you have to constantly babysit the pet to keep its moderate contribution to damage, and even then the slow response of the pet along with the inability to control where it goes (without sacrificing a utility you can only order it to switch between ranger and opponent) will often get it killed anyway. Adding to this problem is the melee/range problem. Range will deal less damage and gain/give no party buffs but may just use recall/attack to try to keep the pet up. Melee will have better damage but nowhere to call the pet to save it. So we either lose damage from going range (ranger should be able to range without penalty) or from our pet dying.

1. Ranger (needs help in every game mode. Only pvp spirits work and that is a build run not because it’s fun but from lack of other options)
2. Thief (not a bad class, just a lack of diversity)
3. Warrior (needs serious nerfs in every game mode. Too high health, defense, trait synergy, mobility, damage … basically too high everything)

Even only 10s every minute is high in stability, but seen warriors with higher stability uptime than that as well. As far as I know they have 3 separate skills for stability + trait options for extra stability.
This means they reliably have stability up for most fights and in combination with beserker stance, there’s very little chance to use any cc on the warrior. 10s in a fight is a very long time for a glass spec and without glass, you’re back to the healing signet issue.

With warriors, apart from healing signet, the stability uptime also seems a bit too much. In my experience, if I go full dps, I need enough CC to keep the warrior from hitting me too much, but with the uptime of stability it’s hard to actually find a window of opportunity.

And while the stances may have long cd (not that long actually), it is very hard for a dps spec to survive while waiting out endure pain. Even though the stance itself doesn’t take long, a warrior will usually heal quite a bit while in the stance so it can draw out a fight more than just the length of the stance.

While I’d love to have the option of a utility instead of pet, wolves are actually quite useful for pvp (when they feel like obeying at least). That fear can save you a lot of times and the knockdown is also very good. Though a huge improvement would be to control all the pet’s skills rather than just 1 of them. One of the main problems I have had with pets (apart from it refusing the attack, skills bugging …) has been the inability to control when it uses which skill. If for instance a wolf is getting ready to use knock-down and you tell it to howl, it will (in my experience) ignore the order and knock-down and then you have to order it again afterwards.
If I could decide when it was to use which skill, this problem wouldn’t occur as I wouldn’t order it to use a skill I didn’t want it to.

Actually as an addition to this idea, when entering a tournament, it would be fun to have the choice between anything-goes and 1-class banned. Anything-goes would be like the usual, while in the other you could select 1 class you didn’t want to fight with or against (and obviously you wouldn’t be allowed to enter with that class either).
Meaning that you’d be matched in a team that had none of that class. It might slightly increase q times, but would at least also make it less worthwhile to roll fotm class as ppl could select out on fighting against it.

Just a suggestion for making pvp a more fun experience