Showing Posts For Calavero.3420:
A simple and elegant solution would have the pets boost their stats according to their type (for example, cats have high precision, bears have high vitality), in an amount determined by the total stat weight of the gear the Ranger is wearing.
In other words, a level 80 Ranger in green gear will have a certain (determined by gear level and quality) amount of stat point weight, which is less than a level 80 Ranger in exotics would have.
That gear stat allocation would boost the green quality item Ranger’s pet attributes slightly, and the exotic wearing Ranger’s pet significantly more. The exotic geared Ranger’s bear gets more vitality, his cats get more precision, etc, across the board.
Everyone wins. Pets get stronger from our getting better gear, and the various pet types retain their individuality by scaling differently based on their existing stats.
This is not exactly rocket science. I tattoo people for a living. Heck, I figured this out today while I was tattooing someone.
Facepalm.
Read his post again. He, quite literally, word for word says, repeatedly, that the pet not gaining any of our stats is the deficit he’s complaining about.
The total pet damage/survivability contribution was probably balanced around the level 80 game at the time of release… which was fine, until they introduced scaling (such as the Agony system(. Once that happened, the lack of pet scaling became a real problem, which will continue to get worse as the end game scaling continues or more tiers of gear are added. It’s poor design, and lazy on the developers’ part.
To be honest, at this point I think YOU’RE the one who’s trolling. The OP has a very valid point – please stop trying to derail the thread.
Apparently the logic jump – where, though stats affect your personal DPS fully, your pet (which is not affected by any of your stats) is 20-40% of your total DPS output – was just too much for you, Abaregi.
To answer the OP’s question: badly flawed game design.
Mind sharing a capsule version of your spec and gear (X/X/X/X/X Knight’s, etc.)? I’ve just finished my exotic crit/crit% Lbow/Sbow set and I’m looking to try something new.
I hate participating in this particular dumb debate because it pops up in every MMO forum that there is, but…
@Ridgeblader: WoW was released in 2004. In the eight years, and dozens (if not hundreds) of MMO releases since that happened, people have higher expectations for things like playability and balance in their games.
It’s called progress.
It’s just so irritating having played through game after game finally getting things right, and having seemingly every new game that comes out try to reinvent the wheel regarding things like… pet scaling, resistances and ability to not be destroyed by AoE.
WoW eventually figured out that AI controlled pets will never reliably not stand in the fire. Eventually, after years of patches, they made them (for every class) take drastically reduced damage from AoE. RIFT (after a while) did the same thing, by building AOE resistance into the pet classes’ talent trees.
Both games have pet AI, pathing and and control vastly superior to GW2’s. So… how long will we have to wait before ANet finally bows to the inevitable, realizes they’ve created the same problem the same way every other game with pets has, and finally decides to implement the same solution?
Other than this, after the 12/14 patch I’m really very happy with my Ranger. I just have no desire to take her into any dungeons, because if I do I’m going to be needlessly punished by unavoidable pet death on many encounters no matter how well I play. Putting a pet on passive and only using it for a buff is not a viable solution, by the way. Like I said earlier, it’s no longer 2004.
Actually, it was signet improvements, shout improvements, viable build diversity, QoL improvements and weapon buffs that he specifically mentioned. Of course, hundreds and hundreds of posts worth of pure hyperbole and impossibly high expectations later (the thread essentially turned into a “this is my fantasy of how we should redesign the Ranger class”), people were extremely disappointed with the fixes – which were, to be perfectly honest, FAR less impressive and extensive than we were lead to believe they would be.
It was a bad failure on both sides, in my opinion.
Its comical to see rangers complaining about being “fixed”. Engineers gets nercex a d so many skills are still broken from beta.
Last time I checked, this was the Ranger forum. Go complain about Engineers on the Engineer forum.
@Ursan – yeah, I didn’t mean to detract from what you were doing with my additional commentary. Sorry for the unintentional sidetrack there.
Actually, this comparison is useful. It compares one properly specced and equipped class versus another.
I have a fully exotic equipped Ranger and Warrior (both in Berserker gear), and these test results are very consistent with the play I’ve experienced on my characters. In other words, both take about the same amount of time to ranged down a mob in PVE.
The difference between the two characters is, if I don’t feel like taking ten seconds to range down an Orr mob on my Warrior, I can use my Greatsword to effectively one-shot the mob with 100 Blades. I can repeat this every six seconds, and can do it in the exact same spec that makes my Rifle dangerous.
I cannot do something like that on a Shortbow specced Ranger, no matter what weapon I equip. The closest I can come is to swap to Axe/Torch or Greatsword and try to burst the mob down, but doing so takes about five seconds of button mashing and requires every cooldown on my bar (including both my traps).
Good luck repeating THAT on the next mob.
Also, in PVE, Orr mobs run around like chickens. They actually DO dodge my pet quite a bit, since they spend the whole fight ignoring the pet and chasing me, which means my pet is chasing them, so they are doing almost no damage.
To counter this, I switched to a pair of Devourers. Their damage is kittened as hell compared to what my cats or birds could put out if they could actually hit their targets… but they can’t, so it doesn’t matter.
The much weaker pet is doing far greater effective damage because the stronger pets simply cannot hit the targets much of the time. That’s not good.
Don’t be afraid to stick with 1handed swords. Of course crit builds will kill mobs faster than condition builds; this isn’t a Warrior thing, it’s simple math: frontloaded damage will always drop enemies faster than damage applied and spread out over time.
That being said, 1handed sword condition builds on Warriors are very very viable – there’s a guy called Yojack on these forums with a whole build based on it. The synergy you can set up with traits based on crits and bleeds in the Arms tree is just plain awesome. The mobs may take an extra second or two to fall down once you hit them, but they end up just as dead – and this is coming from a crit/crit% greatsword Warrior.
Speaking of synergy and survivability, you might want to carry a rifle as your secondary weapon. Some mobs it just doesn’t pay to stay close to (Destroyers, I’m looking at you), and everything you’re boosting on your 1handed swords will be boosted on your rifle – the rifle is a bleed weapon with the ability to frontload some awesome damage as well.
A few quick tips:
Get the Healing Signet (the three point heal ability) as soon as possible; the passive regen it gives will by itself outheal the damage most mobs will do to you – you can literally go AFK with a mob beating on you with no fear of dying at early levels. I found playing a Warrior to be difficult early on without it, but very, very easy with it.
Put the first ten trait points into Arms, and at level 20 put on the Deep Strike trait. Fill the rest of your slots with signets. This is the much maligned “signet build”, but it’s used and abused for a reason: for leveling purposes, it’s just too good to use anything else. Enjoy >100% crit rate from level 20 on – it’s just plain the best thing to do until level 60, if you want to do damage. When I’m feeling lazy even at level 80, I’ll plug all signets (except for Shake It Off) on my bar and just go to town – even at 80, with 25 points in Arms it provides ~10% crit.
So, now you have (for leveling) overpowered survivability and overpowered damage. Enjoy.
At level 40, when you can go higher than 10 points into trait trees, swap 15 points into Defense and pick up Adrenal Health. This will boost your regen to levels that will sustain you until (and if you’re like me) through level 80.
Keep 10 points in Arms for the signet crit boost (luckily, this tree also greatly boosts 1h sword damage and utility), and for the remainder of your journey, fill points wherever you feel most comfortable.
Honestly, the rest is just gravy. Once you get damage and survivability covered (which the steps I’ve outlined will more than do for you), you can enjoy the ride, and come up with weapon choices and a playstyle that suits you.
Enjoy the ride, I’ve leveled 2 Warriors (a Norn and an Asura), and greatly enjoyed both of them.
Volley is still not effected by Crack Shot trait. Tooltip says 8s cooldown, but actually its 10s.
TY. I’ll fix this tomorrow for the build on the 14th.
Jon
Excellent!
Hey, look at the bright side: you could be playing a Ranger. We GOT an acknowledgement. Look where that got us – everything that was kittened before is still kittened now, and some of it is more kittened than it was in the first place (Quickening Zephyr on Shortbow, I’m looking at you).
I do sympathize, though. Every class has a gigantic list of sometimes spec-killing bugs, and they are just not getting fixed. Traits aren’t working, weapon abilities aren’t working, abilities aren’t working… ad nauseum.
The dumb thing is, we have holiday events rolling out left and right, and bugs in those are found and hotfixed almost instantly – yet key things about how both of my characters work that are bugged or broken haven’t been touched. I couldn’t care less about virtual tricks or treats or digital Christmas presents. I just want my characters to work properly.
Ranger
Fixed a bug that allowed a ranger to have two traps of the same type active simultaneously.
Are you serious? I am trap spec…and for me that was the only build I really enjoyed using and was doing really good with. Now it’s nerfed; why ? why? Why keep nerfing the ranger, rather than improving….
Hahaha… looks like someone either misread or didn’t understand the patch notes.
My Ranger is also trap specced. This “Ranger Massive nerf” does not affect my play in any way.
I’d say Warrior.
I’ve played an “archer” main in just about every MMO since the dawn of time, but sadly in this one I just feel kittened on my Ranger. If you use the right weapons (Greatsword and Rifle or Longbow depending on what you’re doing), playing a Warrior can feel almost exactly like playing a Ranger, just without the poorly implemented pet.
In trade, you get huge reliable damage, and armor coupled with great health regeneration. I tried it, I loved it. I miss Healing Spring quite a bit, but I feel so much more capable and in control of the field soloing in Orr it’s… well, pretty sad, really.
Also, there’s no real “rotation” to anything; all your abilities are pretty reactive. like I mentioned, I made my Warrior because so much of playing my Ranger was frustrating rather than fun (seriously, it’s 2012… THIS is pet functionality and control I’m supposed to be happy with? Please.) – and it turned out that my Warrior did all the stuff my Ranger did,, mostly in the WAY my Ranger did, or was supposed to – only better.
Good luck!
Heh. Get to level 70+ and go to Orr. You’ll never have to worry about mobs running anywhere other than straight at you again.
Keep in mind these tests are against enemies that are standing perfectly still, where as in actual PvE/PvP this does not happen at all and pets are easily shut down by moving targets.
Pretty much what I was going to say. Instead of using a stationary golem, use a moving one.
Then prepare to measure your results in minutes instead of seconds.
Nah.
Against a stationary mob in Orr, at ranged my Ranger and Warrior can kill the mob in about the same amount of time.
Have the mob start moving, that changes completely.
Rangers need some form of weapon-based burst (we shouldn’t have to change our whole spec and forgo having decent ranged damage to do what all other classes can do just by pushing “2”, for instance), and our pets need to work against moving targets.
I understand where you’re coming from, but if all your changes were implemented, the Ranger class would be brokenly overpowered.
It actually gets worse as you get higher in levels. At level 20, using a Signet build with a rifle, a Warrior is straight-up godmode (my lv21 Warrior currently has ~114% crit chance (!)) – which drops off at around 60, but the slack gets picked up very easily with traits and gear.
I have a level 80 Warrior and Ranger, both in full exotics, and either of them can gun down a mob in Orr in about the same amount of time… the difference between them is, if I get bored with or tired of shooting something to death for eight to ten seconds, on my Warrior I can just swap to my greatsword, hit 2 buttons and obliterate him (and everyone near him) almost instantly.
The Ranger has no means of doing that; it doesn’t matter what weapons you use, or how you spec. You can get a kind of mediocre melee burst thing going if you really try, but it involved tying all your trait points into doing it, and dropping traps while trying to put down the burst… all of which puts your whole skill set into long cooldowns.
Also, to spec this way you need to mostly fill Nature Magic and Wilderness Survival… which utterly kittens your bow damage.
Of course, on my Warrior, I retain the ability to have excellent ranged Rifle damage and ridiculous AOE melee burst (on a 6 second cooldown no less) all in the same spec. And the longbow? Heck, that thing is incredible right out of the box. No traiting necessary.
I honestly think the people who are constantly calling “Ranger complainers” out as needless whiners have simply not tried any of the other classes. Also, I am by no means complaining here: I looove my Warrior. I really wanted to love my Ranger, as it was my first level 80 character, but sadly that’s just not in the cards right now.
That is ANet’s problem, folks, not mine. I can only play the game they give me.
(edited. I can’t spell good, apparently)
(edited by Calavero.3420)
What he said. I’m actually interested in this topic, but there’s no way I’m reading a wall of text that big.
Well, I hate to have to admit it, but I’ve been doing some (kind of goofy stuff)…
My first character to 80 was my Ranger. My second was my Warrior. While leveling my Ranger (which was right when the game released), I was thinking to myself “Man, this is awesome. THIS is what the WoW Hunter always should have been”.
Once I got to 80 I had a terrible time in Orr, and tried several dungeons and felt like I had made a mistake: my pet just kept getting killed no matter what pet I used or how I specced. I switched to my Warrior, and had an easy as pie time no matter what I did: doing map completions in high level zones, soloing champions, running dungeons… so I switched to him for a while.
I went back and forth between the two, making money getting gear, and by the end I had 2 full exotic sets on my Warrior (Rampagers/Rampagers, and Knights/Berserkers) and one on my Ranger (full Zerk everywhere, including jewelry).
Now that I know the ins and outs of the game, how to play it and where everything is, and there isn’t much to do at 80 once you’ve gotten your toons to look exactly the way you like them and completed the zones… and because I really love GW2… I deleted both characters.
Then I made a new Ranger and a new Warrior.
That being said, the more you know about this game, and the better you understand it, the worse the Ranger looks. I really want to like my (currently level 64) Ranger, but at this point I’m just going to finish him out with a buddy I duo with so I can put the gear I have banked for him on him, and never touch him again until there’s some kind of massive overhaul (or enough small fixes over time) that I feel he’s worth playing again.
There isn’t a single solitary thing my Warrior doesn’t do better. It’s a kitten shame.
That was absolutely brilliant.
It also sums up exactly how I feel. VERY well done.
The thing that amazes me is that Jon made his post in this forum in response to the huge outcry over the shortbow change (which created the QZ/Quickness bug that has STILL not even been admitted to actually be occurring).
The big patch goes through, and not only is the QZ bug unfixed, but signet and shout changes (which were specifically mentioned as being the focus of our change list) aren’t even in there.
It’s pretty ridiculous. It’s easy to see how this happened, but that doesn’t change the fact that it did. The millions of people who paid for the game and continue to pour money into the gem store really can’t be expected to happily accept “we couldn’t get to all the stuff we came onto our forums and said we’d do for you because we only have 2 people working on this stuff, and there just isn’t time to do it”. I sincerely appreciate that, but in a real life business environment, it just doesn’t fly.
I’m not angry about any of this, but I am certainly very disappointed. I plan to check the forums for changes, but I have no desire to play right now, and probably won’t much (if at all) until, at minimum, the things that Jon came on to this forum and specifically said were going to be addressed, are.
One thing is for certain: I’m not buying a single gem out of the gem store until they are. That’s one of the few ways a commerce system like GW2 has really works for the consumer: you can vote with your wallet, yet still play the game if you want to.
Yes, it’s confirmed. All channeled attacks in the game work this way. The number you’re seeing is the total of all hits during the channel combined, not each individual hit.
you link the wiki
then fail to make a Haiku
place palm upon face
I think a little reality check is needed here.
They didn’t do this because of botting. The reason you see teams of 3+ Ranger bots with shortbows and bears running through low to mid level areas is that at those levels the pets are basically overpowered. Bots couldn’t care less about a 7% damage nerf, or lack of condition stacking.
ANet aren’t saying anything because that’s how MMO companies have to operate. If they say or promise ANYTHING and any tiny little part of something they even SUGGEST is going to happen doesn’t, people will blow it completely out of proportion and go berserk – kind of like what’s happened throughout this thread.
We will not know what they are going to do to address this until we read it in the patch notes when they post the patch to the servers. Crying about it (or kittening about it or calling them liars) won’t make that happen any faster.
That being said, my Warrior is now level 60, and is absolutely destroying everything it comes in contact with. I have to reluctantly admit, after playing a Ranger for 80 (plus another 50 or 60 “virtual” levels) that the Warrior is just a plain better class all around. Better damage (by a huge margin), much better survivability, more versatility.
It’s a shame, too, because I played a Hunter for 8 years in WoW, a Ranger for a couple years in LotRO, and stopped on my bow/pet (Ranger) Rogue in Rift to come here. The GW2 Ranger is just a plain worse ranged damage dealer than both the Warrior and the Thief, and the unique class feature (the pets) have actually steered me AWAY from wanting to play the class rather than being a selling point – especially after a few dungeon runs where no matter what I did my pet was downed with the swap on cooldown basically all the time. (I was a progression raider in WoW for 8 years as a Hunter – believe me, I know how to micromanage a pet – well, at least one that functions properly when you push the buttons to control it).
Good luck, guys, I hope good changes come sooner than later. Until they do, my Ranger is shelved.
Just to clarify what I was trying to say earlier (I’ve been following the thread since it was created, and have read every post):
Numbers are rounded for simplicity.
Original regular number of arrows fired in four seconds: 8
Original number of arrows fired during QZ: 16. Effect of QZ: 8 additional arrows
Post “fix” number of arrows fired during QZ: 12. Effect of QZ: 4 additional arrows
4 is 50% of 8, therefore the effect of QZ is diminished by 50%.
Also, the “no one has seen fit to mention it” thing was directed at the devs, certainly not the players who have repeatedly and eloquently pointed it out, as you have.
To the developers: I just wanted to chime in here (now that I can finally log into the forums)…
The “spam 1” approach to doing damage with the Shortbow (while continually attempting to maintain flanking position on your enemy) is exactly why I fell in love with the class, and to me was the exact definition of “fun”.
With all the other weapons in the game, you essentially play “whack a mole” with your big hitting abilities. With the Shortbow, the fun is in the need to position yourself properly to maintain optimal damage (while dropping traps and attempting to control your pet). The beauty of it is, as long as you are doing so, you continually feel like you’re putting out solid DPS – and the remaining abilities on the weapon help you control the fight or kite your foe.
I thought it was very elegantly designed, and I loved it. Since the whole usability of the weapon is designed around “spamming 1” – there really IS no other way to use the Shortbow – and almost the entire population of the Ranger class is up in arms about the “spamming 1 isn’t fun” comment… maybe you might want to rethink redesigning the weapon 2 months into playing the game. A whole lot of people really think it IS fun.
I’m also a little disappointed that this animation fix, aside from the damage nerf caused Quickness effects (from the pet swapping trait and Quickening Zephyr) – which were the only source of burst damage available to the weapon – to be diminished in effectiveness by 50%, and no one replying to this thread has even seen fit to acknowledge that it’s happening.
My Warrior is level 44 as of today. I’d really like to play my Ranger, but every time I pet swap (which is every 16 seconds while fighting), I get a big honking reminder that my only real source of good single target ranged DPS is borked right now.