Guild Wars 2

Hi everyone,

I would very much like to receive:

• Viper’s Medium-Armor Skin

I’m on Kaineng NA Server.

Thanks

OK, thanks for the info

Drake

Hi everyone,

I’ve been gone from GW2 for quite a while now, but I’m considering coming back to it. With that in mind, I have a question regarding Ranger builds. Whether or not I return to the game will not depend on the answer here, but I’d like to know what I’m heading into.

So here’s the question: Have Rangers been changed in ways that allows for a Longbow/Power/Trapper build to be viable?

In the past the Longbow was one of the weakest and least useful weapons for most situations, and a Power Trapper was never an option because traps always scaled largely off of Condi damage and not raw Direct damage. Has any of this changed?

Thanks,
Drake

Ayrilana.1396:

Drake Phoenix.6158:

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

The problem, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, is that doing it this way basically requires established, loyal customers to pay for the game twice, while only requiring new players to pay for it once. Why should we, who have been here since the beginning, have to pay the rough equivalent of $100+ (not counting the money we’ve spent on the cash shop) while new players only have to pay $50?

For one thing, the content additions of the expansion do not justify the $50 price tag on its own. But more than that, it simply is unfair. You should be rewarding loyal customers, not punishing them. At the very minimum, you should be giving them the same deal, namely: you only have to pay for the game once.

If you’re going to require some players to pay for the game more than once, then you ought to require all players to do so. If you don’t want to require new players to have to pay for the core and the expansion(s), but only the latest expansion, then the only fair thing to do is to give the expansions free to those with established accounts. That way, everyone only has to pay for the game once.

Aside from the fact that the HoT DLC expansion is overpriced, the business model is simply unfair to established players. Why are we being punished for our loyalty? How long do you really think that loyalty will last now that you’re punishing us for it?

The policy is a big mistake. And while I’ve gotten used to ArenaNet and NCSoft refusing to acknowledge or correct their mistakes, this one is far too big for you guys to ignore. If you ignore it, you do so to your own detriment. The policy is self-destructive.

Later,
Drake

I bolded the part in the quote that you missed.

I didn’t miss anything. The point is, we established players have had to pay for something that new players are being given for free. It doesn’t matter if the expansion is free for them or if the core is free for them. The point is that for us established players, neither the core nor the expansion are free. And therefore, we are paying twice the price for the exact same (combined) product, whereas new players are only paying once.

Later,
Drake

Your analogy is inaccurate. This isn’t anything like someone giving a sandwich free to a homeless person, where I had to pay for it. Because in that case, both sandwiches were paid for. So your analogy would be more like someone buying the game and then giving it away to someone who wants it but can’t afford it themselves. That’s not a problem.

The problem is when a company charges a loyal customer more for something than they charge a new customer for the exact same product.

Additionally, the analogy of giving to someone homeless implies that the homeless person has a need. Specifically, they need to eat, and can’t afford food, so someone gives them food for free. In other words, it is a needs-based gift.

But the HoT issue is not needs-based. Anyone who buys the HoT expansion as a new player gets both the core and the expansion for only the price of the expansion, even if they could easily afford to pay for both. While someone who has the core game already, but perhaps can’t afford the expansion because they’ve been laid off and have to feed their kids (just as one possible reason), still has to pay for both the core and the expansion separately (or do without the expansion) only because they already paid for the core before the expansion came out.

In other words, we are being required to pay for the game twice, while others are only required to pay for it once, and the determination of who pays what has nothing to do with need or affordability, but is purely a difference between new player vs. established player.

As a loyal and long-standing customer I should not have to pay more for the exact same product than someone who is buying it for the first time. It has nothing to do with being self-centered, envious, or greedy. It has to do with a sense of fairness and justice.

Later,
Drake

Regina Buenaobra.6193:

To clarify: $50 is the price of the expansion. We included the core game as a free bonus to make it easier for new players to get into it.

The problem, as has been pointed out repeatedly in this thread, is that doing it this way basically requires established, loyal customers to pay for the game twice, while only requiring new players to pay for it once. Why should we, who have been here since the beginning, have to pay the rough equivalent of $100+ (not counting the money we’ve spent on the cash shop) while new players only have to pay $50?

For one thing, the content additions of the expansion do not justify the $50 price tag on its own. But more than that, it simply is unfair. You should be rewarding loyal customers, not punishing them. At the very minimum, you should be giving them the same deal, namely: you only have to pay for the game once.

If you’re going to require some players to pay for the game more than once, then you ought to require all players to do so. If you don’t want to require new players to have to pay for the core and the expansion(s), but only the latest expansion, then the only fair thing to do is to give the expansions free to those with established accounts. That way, everyone only has to pay for the game once.

Aside from the fact that the HoT DLC expansion is overpriced, the business model is simply unfair to established players. Why are we being punished for our loyalty? How long do you really think that loyalty will last now that you’re punishing us for it?

The policy is a big mistake. And while I’ve gotten used to ArenaNet and NCSoft refusing to acknowledge or correct their mistakes, this one is far too big for you guys to ignore. If you ignore it, you do so to your own detriment. The policy is self-destructive.

Later,
Drake

Qugi.2653:

Old complain. Very old. If you have much time read thread on topic.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/hot/HoT-Price-Feedback-Base-game-included-merged/

I missed that thread, because the titel talks about the price of HoT instead of mentioning specifically Play for Free. So thanks for pointing it out. I imagine my thread here will get merged over to there.

But old complaint or not, it is entirely valid.

Later,
Drake

I have been playing GW2 since the early access pre-lauch for pre-purchase. Admittedly, that isn’t as long as some, but I don’t think that being a customer since before the launch is anything to sneer at, even if it was from only just before. With some of the changes that took place in the last 6 months or so, I found myself less interested, and therefore have played very little, but I still come back and play from time to time, and keep hoping that new changes will make up for what I haven’t liked.

Enter Heart of Thorns.

The expansion provides new zones, a new class, new events, new story. Just a lot of new content in general to try out, and most of it sounds pretty fantastic to me. So I’ve been contemplating picking up a copy.

Then I heard about the Play for Free Today concept. The way I first heard about it was “no matter how many expansions are released, you only have to pay for the game once”, and I thought, “that sounds great!”. But then I actually read up on the details of the system and how it actually works, and I found one huge problem: it only applies to new players! (At least, that is how I understand it. By all means, correct me if I’m wrong).

In other words, if you’ve paid for the game already, and been a loyal player for a while, and then a new expansion comes out (like Heart of Thorns), you have to buy the game again if you want to play the expansion. So while any new player only has to buy the game once in order to play both the original core and Heart of Thorns, anyone like me who already paid for the original core is forced to buy the expansion (pay for the game a second time) in order to enjoy that new content!

So instead of rewarding loyal players who have been around a while (something that tends to help keep customers loyal), or at least making it so that they aren’t punished for having been around a while, ArenaNet is now rewarding people for having never played or supported the game before while at the same time punishing those of us who have been around since the beginning!

But why?

Not only have those of us who have been around a while already paid for the game, but many of us have further supported the game through cash shop purchases (myself included)! And instead of being rewarded for that, we now have to pay even more if we want to access the new content. But someone who has never given any money whatsoever to GW2 before can now get the same game for what essentially equates to half the price!

And if a third expansion were to be released, that would mean that those of us who have been around since the beginning would have to pay for the game 3 times, while anyone new at that point would still only pay for it once.

I understand completely the desire to prevent expansions from getting so crazy that people have to buy the game 5+ times to keep up to date, and especially to start as a new player and still be able to play with friends who have been playing for a while. That makes sense, and I like the concept. Especially since, as more and more expansions come out, the cost to start as a new player with full access can get extremely and prohibitively high.

But the way the Play for Free Today system works (as I understand it) only solves this issue for the new players. It still leaves established players suffering from the expense of expansions. And by having established players suffer in such a way, while allowing new players to bypass the cost requirements, you’re creating a system where would-be players are rewarded, not for loyalty as a longstanding customer, but for deliberately waiting until the game is on its last legs and purchasing the game just once at a time where it seems additional expansions may be few and far between at best.

This is simply a bad policy.

If you want to ensure that players only have to pay for the game once, then you need to ensure that all players only have to pay for the game once. Which means you should give free expansion unlock codes (product keys) to the established players. And then make it so that anyone who purchases any copy of GW2, expansion or otherwise, automatically gets unlock codes for every installment. This would ensure that new players are not prohibited from game entry by vise of too many expansions to buy, but at the same time does not punish established players for having been here first.

(It would be entirely reasonable, IMO, to set up a limited time frame for free unlocks to be provided. For example, you could set up a set of events, such as part of the Living World story, that act as a precursor and introduction to the new events and story that are covered by the expansion. Then make rewards for participating in such events that can be turned in somehow in exchange for an expansion unlock code/product key. That would give the opportunity to get the expansion for free to loyal players who are still active players, but only for a limited time. Any players who have not been active and have renewed interest due to the expansion may still have to pay for the expansion because they may have missed the events).

My 2cp,
Drake

OK, thanks very much for the info everyone.

Later,
Drake

Hi everyone,

I’ve not been playing GW2 very much at all over the past year or so, but there are a few things about the expansion that have me at least a little interested again. But before I decide if I want to buy it or not, I have a question about Adventures that will make a difference to my pros and cons list…

At what level, or levels, are Adventures available? The wiki page says that they are level 80 content. Is that accurate? Or was that based on beta setups that have since been changed?

Also, are Adventures going to be only available to those who have Heart of Thorns, or will they also be available in pre-expansion zones and available to everyone?

I’d appreciate it if those who are familiar with the expansion (both from beta and since the launch) could answer those questions for me.

Thanks,
Drake

OK, I updated my drivers.

Still no AA effect in Guild Wars 2 using settings to override application settings.

I also (by chance) discovered that Photoshop doesn’t like the new drivers.

So since I gained no apparent benefit, and Photoshop is partially broken by the new drivers, I’ll be reverting back to the old version.

Also, I played around some with SweetFX and various settings there. I think I’ll continue to use it. I’ve put together a settings profile for it that uses moderately strong SMAA but with limited loss of font clarity, and I’ve also been able to enhance contrast, color vibrancy, and texture sharpness as well. So far I like the results.

I can also use a combination of the SMAA from SweetFX plus the FXAA from the game for slightly improved anti-aliasing (even despite the sharpening settings) with only an additional loss of FPS of about -3. I can live with that.

So thanks for trying to help, sirsquishy, but it didn’t work. But I found a workable alternative anyway.

Later,
Drake Phoenix

Yes, I’m using the HP OEM drivers. Device Manager reports the driver version as 8.882.2.3000. Dxdiag reports the same, so my driver version from HP is even older than you thought.

Thanks very much for the link, I’ll see if I can get those drivers to work.

I would prefer to use application override and use the CCC anti-aliasing, but as I said in my OP, that hasn’t been working. I’ll see if I can update the drivers and get it to work correctly with the new drivers.

Thanks very much for your help.

Also, I should note that I was able to get GEMFX to work. Theoretically GEMFX uses SweetFX in its back end, so I should be able to use SMAA, but the configurator has SMAA disabled for some reason, which makes me think that it is only able to use FXAA which gives me little advantage other than being able to set it to 2x or 4x instead of only on or off (no idea what level GW2 actually uses internally). I’m going to try and get SweetFX to work on its own instead of GEMFX and see if I can get SMAA to work that way.

If I can get the new drivers to work, and can also get SweetFX to work, then I’ll have a lot more options to work with for anti-aliasing and can use the methods and settings that give me the best visual quality without an unacceptable hit to frame rate performance.

Later,
Drake Phoenix

Hi everyone,

In the past, I have had no issues with my system setup together with GW2. But I haven’t played for some 6-9 months or so, and now I’m trying to play again I am finding that my system is failing to override the game’s anti-aliasing settings like it should under certain profiles.

I know I have the option to use the game’s internal FXAA anti-aliasing, And I don’t have anything against FXAA as an AA method/technique in itself. But I prefer to not be limited to that alone, especially since it only allows on/off states and I have no control over strength/quality of the AA system.

I’d really appreciate any help getting things to work better. Maybe someone could help me (point me in the right direction) to use SweetFX, GEMFX or a similar tool together with GW2 so I can have more control over the performance and visual quality of the game. Also any workarounds to help me get my AMD chipset to correctly override settings if I choose to do so would also be great.

I’m runing an HP dv7-6c00 CTO laptop. Windows 7 Home Premium SP1 64-bit. Intel i5-2450M (2.50 GHz) processor. 8GB DDR memory.

The system has switchable graphics. GPU chipsets are identified as “Intel HD Graphics Family” and “AMD Radeon HD 7690M XT”.

Using my “high performance” chipset (the AMD Radeon) as the designated chipset for GW2 and a profile that should ignore the application’s anti-aliasing settings and apply settings from the Catalyst profile being used, I find that instead AA remains fully linked to the game’s settings only.

This annoys me, as Catalyst can give me greater control over the strength and quality of AA being used.

I have tried setting my system up to always use the AMD chipset (this is set in the BIOS to fixed stated, and set in the Catalyst configuration to use the AMD chipset and to not automatically switch). This had no impact, and the game continues to use only the game’s AA settings, not Catalyst’s settings.

I suspect that this has to do with the Catalyst drivers themselves and how they interact with the latest version of the game. However, because this is a laptop with switchable graphics, I cannot simply update my drivers by downloading the latest drivers from AMD/ATI. Attempting to do so will detect that the system uses switchable graphics and requires a proprietary driver set from the system manufacturer and redirects to get new driver updates from HP. HP does not have any driver updates for the graphics systems and have never updated those drivers for as long as I have had the system (3 years now).

I have tried uninstalling and deleting the drivers, then reinstalling them fresh again from the download package available from HP, but this has had no effect.

I tried disabling the Intel graphics chipset in the Device Manager, hoping that doing so would force the game to properly use the AMD chipset for all functions. Unfortunately, this caused my screen to go totally blank (apparently the Windows OS only ever uses the Intel chipset regardless of switchable graphics settings), and I had to re-enable it through Safe Mode to get my system working again.

Again, I’d appreciate any help in giving me more control over the graphics quality and performance for the game.

Thanks,
Drake Phoenix

They would only have locked the thread if they felt the thread on the whole was a problem, not for individuals taking the thread off topic. And then only if they actually saw it and were aware of it. Your discussion regarding the writing isn’t a bad discussion on its own, it just doesn’t belong in this thread. And your own jumping into it late doesn’t gain you anything as far as I’m concerned, as you significantly contributed to the off-topic discussion, and thereby exacerbated the derailment.

As for the point, I’ll admit that I tend to talk a lot (or type or whatever), and will likely do so here again. As a result, points can get a little lost in the jumble, but the point has never changed, and if you want to know what it is, then go back to my very first post and read the TL;DR at the very top. My point has nothing to do with having to level (and I fail to see how anyone could interpret it that way), it has to do with how much of a grind it is to level, and how the game now feels like even more of a grind because you have to do it for longer durations with little to nothing purposeful to break it up, specifically more meaningful story content (or at least that would be my preference). And I don’t see how having some additional story content added, and/or options to make existing story content more noticeable for those who want it to be (but still as unnoticeable as you like depending on how you set them), would in any way push story into your face, or anyone else’s. If all you want is a game with no story and pure hack-and-slash, then there are plenty to choose from, but my suggestions wouldn’t make GW2 any less casual about the story if you wanted it to be.

In any case, my point was, and is, that the game lacks decent story content and now feels like nothing but a pointless grind, and isn’t fun anymore, and that ArenaNet should do something about it. I initially addressed this perhaps inaccurately, as there is story content (as I’ve admitted). But the way such story content is presented makes the game feel lacking in such content because of the lack of meaning from participation.

As to changing story content so it makes sense… EQ certainly made many mistakes in that regard. Most importantly that when they made major and sweeping changes to the story of the game world, they failed to change other content along with it. So you ended up with a lot of content that worked from older story perspectives, and then other content that worked from newer story perspectives, and the two can’t jive together. But GW2 is doing much the same thing at this point. LS content has drastically changed and evolved the overall story and the lore-based state of the game world. But most of the story content still present in the game (obvious and otherwise) is still largely based off of the old story from before LS season 1 even began.

And I mentioned nothing about the mechanics of DEs. I merely addressed the manner in which participation in them has no purpose, and that options could be added to make DE participation fall in as part of the story content more clearly for those who want. And as I said, these would be options no one, including you, would be required to make it work this way (if it was implemented in any way remotely similar to what I’ve suggested). If you like things the way they are, you can keep them the way they are. And I fail to see how that is any way a “derailment” from my original point either, as the suggestions for DEs and heart regions relates directly back to trying to address the feel of the game.

So other than you trying to confuse the issue (hopefully not deliberately, though I question that), and the solid derailment resulting from the unrelated arguments, where was the point lost? All of my posts (with one exception) have been about the same thing: the grind feel of the game due to (I believe) lack of worthwhile story content, and possible ways that might help alleviate that.

As for my ideas being less than fully formed. I’m not paid to come up with fully formed design ideas and spoon-feed them to ArenaNet staff. I have quite enough to deal with in my own life without trying to do ArenaNet’s job for them. What I’ve given is rough brainstorming as mere possibilities. I would hope that they would inspire those that are in a position to do something about it to at least realize that there is a problem (or at least that some players feel there is), and to start thinking about creative possibilities for ways to address that problem. If you don’t like my ideas, then feel free to suggest some of your own, or to modify the ones I’ve given to make them something that you like better, and we and others can engage in a progressive brainstorm for other possible ways to address this issue. But then, since you obviously feel there is no problem, I doubt you could contribute very much; after all, you can’t solve a problem if you believe there is no problem.

(Continued from above)…

3. Finally, I think that there should be an option for if a character is “always aware of events” or not. If the option is checked, then the system works just like now, with heart region and DE objectives laid out in the tracker without ever having to talk to anyone. But if it is unchecked (personal choice of the player): heart regions would not display objectives until after speaking with the heart NPC for the region (requiring a character flag); DEs will not be flagged on the map unless you speak with one of the NPCs that try to enlist your help, or come across the DE active area itself on your own; and DE objectives will not automatically be present and obvious as soon as you get within range of the DE active area, but will only be present and updated after a change and update takes place (NPCs that inform you of a DE should give some indication of the progress of the event and allow you to immediately get the current active objectives as soon as you enter the DE active area). In the case of the DEs, many DEs have no such NPC, in which cases either the objective should point out an NPC to talk to (such as a collection NPC for example), or should have NPCs similar to the others added in. Which solution is best would depend on each individual event, and adding this sort of thing in would take a good deal of time and effort for all DEs, so many DEs might have to remain treated as “always aware” regardless of the option setting, until they can be updated.

All of those changes/additions would, in my opinion, make the world and the story feel more natural, and would give greater story- and lore-based purpose to participation for those of us who want it. It would also make DEs feel more natural and organic, as you won’t know what’s going on or what you’re supposed to be doing until someone tells you or a change in the event makes it more obvious. Until that point you would just follow the crowd or otherwise try to find out what’s going on.

Such interactions from the relevant NPCs could be made more obvious by turning up their volume when they try to get your attention (preferably including an option to adjust it separate from other volume settings), and possibly adding speech bubbles (also with an option to turn them on or off separate from other game options).

This would give players the power to either continue as is if that is what they prefer, or to have more direct and active participation with the lore elements (not the tiny bits of lore like random NPC conversations with other NPCs, but at least the ones players will typically participate in… they can still go looking for the rest if they want to).

Adding a flag system for characters to determine if they have participated in something or not (particularly major PS or LS segments and events) so that NPC dialog and responses can change based on such participation or lack of participation would go a long way to making the world feel more organic and natural as well. And it would give more of a sense of branching stories without requiring fully branching stories.

I think such changes would go an awfully long way toward making the game feel less like a grind to players like myself and my girlfriend, as well as for new players who haven’t participated in every piece of PS and LS since game release day.

That’s all for now,
Drake

As badly as this thread has been derailed I still feel the need to address a couple of things related to my original posts and responses to them…

First, to Vayne, Tobias, Galen, and New Train: You’ve deviated so completely far from the original purpose of this thread that I’m tempted to report all of you for posts that do not add to the original discussion. If you want to continue your arguments, please post a separate thread and argue there. Your arguments about how good or bad the writing is in GW2 and your side arguments about good writing vs. bad writing in general or in relation to gaming in general has absolutely nothing to do with what I’ve been trying to talk about. Please take those arguments elsewhere, they never belonged in this thread in the first place.

To Vayne: you posted here on page 1 about how you feel like you’re totally involved in the story and the changes to the world. I didn’t properly respond to that and I would like to do so.

You obviously fully participated in the DEs related to the Living World story, and that’s great for you, but what about every new player who was too low level to participate? What about all the other content that is totally unchanged and doesn’t seem to even acknowledge that anything happened? What about the Personal Story that is now so disconnected from the “current” state of the world so as to present serious continuity problems? Furthermore, those changes would have taken place with or without you, so your participation is meaningless in relation to the changes, but more than that, what about those who didn’t get that opportunity, and what about every other piece of the game that continues on exactly as it has since pre-launch (no matter how many characters have participated in it)?

I understand that most content must, by necessity of technical issue and time constraints, be static. But that also means that that static content needs to be more compelling, otherwise it’s just tedious and meaningless.

And now, I have a couple of suggestions that could help people like me feel like there is more direct and purposeful participation in the lesser lore content…

1. There are a number of NPCs in GW2 whose purpose is to run around telling any PC that comes within proximity about an active and ongoing DE. The relevance of their information is often questionable as it never changes even when the state of the event changes. I propose that ArenaNet add additional dialog content to such NPCs that properly reflects certain states of the DEs based on event progression. Such that, if such an NPC talks to a character when the event is just starting, they may desperately ask for help, whereas if they talk to a PC when the event is 75% over, they may say something like “You could still join up and help out. Maybe you could make the difference in the final moments!” (please excuse my terrible writing, I just came up with something off the cuff as an example).

2. ArenaNet could add in similar content from heart NPCs, so that if a PC comes into proximity with them, hasn’t already spoken to them, and is less than 50% complete in the heart region, then the NPC would call out to them and ask for help. That way there would be a natural and organic reason to actually talk to that NPC and learn the story and lore of that particular region and thus learn the purpose and reason behind the activities you do. This would probably require some re-coding to add in a character flagging system, but I think character flagging for story elements would be a good thing anyway.

Continued below…

Tachenon.5270:

If I was writing this story…

<snip>

Oh so many allusions! I love it. Very well done.

Askherion.4935:

I agree with you OP. There should be more story to keep busy while levelling… While the game ils a prime example to attention to small detail given how many NPCs have dialogs, actions and whatnot, it lacks silver lining. The small thank you letters you gain from finishing a heart or completing a zone could be revamped to rectify that and make the levelling more enjoyable, I think… Maybe by changing the hearts into a regional story. Each region would still have hearts, but each would give you a part of a bigger story limited to their zone. That would make hearts more interesting the first time and subsequent times while keeping the freedom of doing whatever you want. A silver lining that makes you want to stay in the zone doing hearts to learn more instead of going somewhere else out now boredom.

^^^ This right here ^^^

Ignoring all the arguments about whether the writing is good or bad or juvenile or not (all of which has nothing to do with my original posts regarding this), the issue is one of how enticing it is (or rather isn’t) to participate in the story that exists. As I said before, yes, there is a lot of story there, but there is zero motivation to participate in it. By modifying the regional stories to be more coherent, and more directly interacted with and rewarded, it would make participating in things like heart regions a lot more enjoyable, and a lot less of a grind feeling.

And to those who have said that I sound like I’m looking for a single-player RPG… no, I’m not. I have a large number of such games, and I enjoy them, but that is not what I’m talking about here. I’ve played MMOs since before they had graphics (MUDs), and starting with Everquest and Asheron’s Call as my first graphical MMOs (I missed UO and other precursors) I’ve played well over 50 different MMORPG titles. Most of them are terrible, but some have had some very good story elements that were mired by too little exp for achievements. GW2 was supposed to be different. It was supposed to be better. And at first it was, to a degree. But now it’s worse than before.

And when I suggested before about the idea of branching stories, I mean that Personal Story content that is custom to your character anyway (to an extent), could have branching story arcs and elements that last for longer than 1-3 quests, but instead have an impact on the PS to a much larger degree (this would add replay value for anyone starting a new alt). As it is, you make a choice, you do a couple of quests based on that choice, then you return to the main story line, which is entirely linear. The only choice that makes a relatively lasting difference is your choice of Order that you join, and even that ends up joining up with the others after a relatively short time.

What I’m saying is that there should be a reason to participate, and reward for doing so, and right now there is neither. If they set up chained story arcs as part of the heart regions, and made dialog and story element presence a little more apparent, that would help. If they added some new side stories that include cut scenes and instanced playing fields, that would help too. If they added in some additional side stories to Living World content for lower level characters, so that they feel like they’re making more of a difference to the LS changes anyway, then that would also be fantastic.

I’m not asking for a game where I can walk through it and have it perfectly catered to me all the time. I’m saying that the game feels like more of a grind than it has to, simply because there is no meaningful participation with the lore all along the way. You get chunks here and there, and LS content from time to time that you may or may not be able to fully participate in depending on your character level. But it doesn’t flow. And the time spent between those choppy chunks of (debatably) meaningful story is mostly static and not particularly rewarding. And I’m not talking about loot rewards and exp, although improvements there would be welcome to me. I’m talking about feeling good about having participated rather than simply moving on and never giving it a second thought. I’m talking about feeling like I’m doing something worthwhile while I’m doing it, because I feel like there is purpose behind it (other than gaining more levels).

Those sorts of changes would eliminate the feeling of grindiness that now exists. Plus I think that the personal story arc should begin at level 2 or 3, relatively immediately after the tutorial, like it used to, so that there is more of a story hook for new players to get into the story and lore in the first place.

I think you’re all missing the point a bit.

Yes, there is lore present in the game, and you can find it if you look hard for it. But you can’t participate in it. You can’t make a difference to it (other than the limited and very temporary changes resulting from DE results). You can poke around and eavesdrop, and do a little bit of lore-related minor tasks here and there. And you receive little to no rewards for that “participation”. Plus, almost none of it feels in any way connected or chained; there’s no progression. Any given region seems totally disconnected from its neighboring regions even within the same map. And few things ever change.

So, can a player character “live” as part of the GW2 world? Yes, of course they can. But to what purpose? Where’s the meaningful story (linear or otherwise) that engages and motivates that participation? Where’s the sense of achievement and accomplishment for doing so? And why should we have to deliberately seek out story that has no reward?

I’m not saying it should be linear, and I’m not talking about just “following the arrow”. I love branching stories where decisions matter. I enjoy exploring and finding new places and new NPCs, and would like to find new stories as well. But GW2 doesn’t even have that. The little bit of story that does exist, whether it be the Personal Story or the regional lore, has no branching, no decisions that matter, no real changes that result from player interaction with it, and very little opportunities to interact anyway. And for most of it there is either no reward at all, or little to no reward other than exp.

So can we spend our time searching hard for little pieces of story that we can have absolutely no effect on, and receive little to no reward for finding? Sure we can. But why would we? That’s the point. There’s no reason to do it. Why should I spend time running around a game world searching hard for minor story and lore content rather than reading a book or watching a movie, or playing a different game, that has more obvious and profound story content?

I love the mechanics of GW2. But there’s no reason to participate in the story right now. Which means the game is nothing but mechanics. Even if we spend our time running around, exploring, listening to the idle chatter of podunk nobody NPCs here and there and learn the story of the area, that we can’t influence even if we try, there’s no gain for doing that. It feels like wasted time because there’s no reward for it, especially if you’ve already been there and done that (read world completion) because nothing’s changed. Ok, yes, few adjustments here and there as a result of Living World content, but not very much, and certainly not enough to make the game world itself feel like a story on its own unless you can participate fully in the Living World content along the way anyway.

So what’s left? We can run around searching out story that gives no reward (and then eventually have to grind away levels anyway just to be able to move on to other stories with no reward without getting killed) and thus take even more time between the more significant story arcs. Or grind as fast as possible to move on to the next story arc and eventually to get high enough level to be able to participate fully in Living World content when it comes out (read max level for full participation). But no matter which way you choose, it’s still just grinding. It’s just an issue of what you choose to do between grinding sessions to break it up a bit.

The issue is the motivation to do something or not to do something. So what’s the motivation to look for lore elements? Just to break up the monotony of the exp grind, and nothing more. You get nothing else out of the time spent searching for story elements, and even less so if you’ve already seen it before. There’s no motivation to talk to heart region NPCs to learn the story of why you’re doing the things they want you to do. And even if you do talk to them, just for the sake of the story element, none of them seem connected in any way. There’s no flow of story or lore elements, it’s all just sort of detached. The only real exception is the chained DEs, but then you have to sort of wait around for it to start up, and it always feels like you’re jumping into the middle of something instead of having participated in story that has a beginning that you’ve been a part of. So our characters are just mundane citizens of a world that they can have no real impact on most of the time.

Maybe some of you are perfectly OK with that. I’m not. I’ve never liked grind games. I will never like grind games. And breaking up the grind from time to time with crafting, or fishing, or exploring, or looking for lore, or whatever is available in any given game, doesn’t remove the grind. It doesn’t make it less of an issue. Instead, the game needs to feel like it flows, and is always fun no matter what I’m doing.

Preemptive TL;DR: The current state of the game is seriously lacking in decent story content, especially for characters that are not max level. This results in PvE feeling incredibly more like a grindfest and makes the game decidedly boring to play. ArenaNet needs to add more story content, both at end-game and at every level between arcs of the Personal Story.

Ignoring all of the old debates about vertical progressions and various grindy aspects of the game, there is definitely a more grindfest feel to the current game experience for new characters due to the revamp of the Personal Story system. The old system had too many breaks between linked story segments within a given story arc. So ArenaNet’s choice to make it more coherent was a good idea. Unfortunately, the result of their implementation is that the leveling progression for characters now feels like more of a grind than it used to. And for players like my girlfriend who already felt like it was more of a grind than it should be, it is even worse.

In GW1 a character could little beyond story missions and easily gain enough levels to be appropriate to the next mission, or very close to it. This made for a game that was truly lacking a feeling of grind until you started farming. My girlfriend and I both loved this aspect of that game. GW2 is a different game, and has its own uniqueness in play style, and that isn’t a bad thing. Many of the things GW2 has done have been fantastic and amazing. But it has always been more grindy.

Be that as it may, at least in the past you could participate in the personal story missions and only have to grind 1-2 levels or so at a time. It lacked coherency in the story, but at least it wasn’t a totally dreadful grind. But with the new system everything feels totally dragged out. You get your tutorial finished, and then you have to grind through 10 levels with absolutely no story whatsoever before you even begin your personal story missions? And once you finish your first Personal Story arc you might have leveled up all of 2-3 times and have to grind through another 7+ levels before you touch the next story arc? Plus the new system for unlocking weapon skills, utility skills, weapon swapping, class mechanics, etc. also makes it feel like more of a grind. It was bad enough to have Traits changed to unlock much later on in the game (previous Feature Pack), but now some of the most basic and fundamental aspects of the game are not unlocked until after you grind out a large number of levels!

It doesn’t matter that you can level up more quickly and easily in GW2 than in many other MMOs. This isn’t about how long it takes to reach max level cap and fully kit out a character compared to how long similar milestones take in other games. It is an issue of how the game feels. Does it feel fast-paced and fun, or does it feel slow, dull, boring, and like a chore? The latest iteration of GW2 feels like the latter.

I understand the reasons behind these changes. But the game now feels like it has no hook. What RPG game anywhere requires you to grind 7-10 levels between any story aspects?

Part of this is because the side-stories (heart regions) require zero interaction. There’s no actual story-based reasons given unless you deliberately pursue them (force yourself to talk to the NPC that you don’t actually have to talk to). There is no motivation to participate in the story of a given heart region, or even to participate in the story of a Dynamic Event; they simply exist, and nothing more. There is little reward to participating either, except for the exp. and occasionally some acceptable (albeit unspectacular) loot. So why participate in hearts and events? The only significant reason is to gain more levels. And when the majority of your activity (heart regions and DEs) is done only to gain levels, that is my definition of a grindfest, and it isn’t fun.

Where’s the story? Where’s the motivation to do anything except hit max level as quickly as possible? What do new players have to look forward to except to mindlessly grind out to level cap as fast as they can possibly manage so that they can participate in Living World content? For people like myself and my girlfriend who have absolutely zero interest in PvP, there is simply no reason to play right now.

ArenaNet needs to start focusing more attention on PvE content writing and development. Players have been begging for new end-game content for a long time, but they need to do more than that. They need to create additional story content suitable to every character level along the way as well, so new players, and new characters, have solid motivation to do more than just mindlessly grind out levels.

Drake

I have to agree with others’ statements above. SOE’s current transparency regarding EQN is at least as much about hyping the game as it is about actually telling players anything about their plans. Additionally, because of the competitiveness of the market for high-end MMOs, no company is every going to be truly transparent about what they’re working on, as to do so would simply allow other developers to capitalize on their ideas.

You can’t use a game that hasn’t even been released as a reasonable comparison. And SOE has never had a reputation for keeping players informed about upcoming changes to games that have been released already.

That’s not to say that ArenaNet’s current closed-lips policy is a good policy. In my opinion it is a mistake for them to refuse to talk about what they are or are not considering working on. It’s one thing to withhold details to protect against having their ideas copied by competitors, or to prevent players from complaining later about how they aren’t giving what they promised, but it’s another thing entirely to tell players absolutely nothing at all, and to appear to casually disregard legitimate concerns.

In my opinion, players need to realize that no developer will ever tell them everything they are working on, and ArenaNet needs to realize that they need to still keep us at least nominally in the loop in order to keep our interest alive between patches. And ArenaNet also needs to stop saying “we never promised that” when they in fact did.

My 2cp anyway.

I think you may be missing something…

On-Kill sigils (those sigils which trigger when you kill something) have received an update as well. The functionality of each sigil has changed so that killing a player is worth five stacks of a sigil in any game mode, while killing a monster only grants one stack. This type of sigil will have more strict rules applied on them, so that a player will no longer be able to gain 25 stacks and then un-equip the sigil.

That suggests to me that haivng Bloodlust on weapon A, building stacks to 25, and then swapping weapons will cause you to lose your bloodlust stacks.

This is a change from the current functionality where you can keep your stacks even if you swap weapons or unequip the weapon with the bloodlust sigil. It is unclear if you would keep the stacks if you also have a bloodlust sigil on the other weapon set (though I expect you will get to keep them in that case), but you won’t be able to exploit the weapon stacks the way it used to be possible.

So basically, the way on-kill stacking effect sigils used to work was broken, and allowed classes other than engi/ele to have a slight advantage when it came to the way they were able to use sigils, but that gap will now be closed.

Applying this back to your hambow vs your ele, with the new system, the hambow will lose the bloodlust stacks on weapon swap, or will have to take bloodlust on both weapon sets. Which means that at best they will only have the advantage of one extra sigil, whereas the engi and ele both have the versatility advantages of kits/attunements.

I’m not saying that everything is going to be perfectly balanced. But what I am saying is that because on-kill stacking sigils will no longer work the same, there will be less of a discrepancy than what you seem to be expecting.

Shockwave is absolutely right. As I’ve mentioned elsewhere, the reason for the zerker meta is because the game design currently has a rewards system that requires the highest/fastest damage possible in order to have the highest rewards efficiency. As long as that remains the case, every group will always be best served by whatever will enhance the total group dps overall the most.

While it may affect the meta to chane other systems to make it so that something other than power/crit would accomplish the greatest total group dps, that doesn’t change the fact that it is still all about the damage output (especially in PvE). They could nerf zerker gear into the ground, and all they would accomplish is to force players to replace zerker with the next best thing for increasing total group dps. They could buff conditions in some way (like changing stacking mechanics), and if it turns out that the change results in condi builds being better for overall damage output in groups than zerker currently is, then everyone will switch up to pure condi gear. In effect they would have changed everything in order to change nothing at all.

In my opinion, if they really want to change the paradigm so people don’t always take pure damage (at least in PvE), then they need to change the reward system drastically (as well as making conditions useful in PvE groups). The only way to get away from the pure damage meta is to make it so that players are rewarded with equal rewards efficiency even when they take another approach.

As others have mentioned, this idea has been brought up before. Multiple times, in fact. I don’t recall ever seeing a response from a designer on the idea. But the idea normally raises an argument regarding the nature of elite skills, and whether or not it would be OP to enable use of a 4th utility skill.

The question is this: Should elite skills be single-use skills that grant a minor boost that might turn the tide of battle, or should they be more potent and grant a greater advantage based on the timing of when you use it? And secondly, is it appropriate to replace the elite skill with a utility slot skill instead?

In my opinion, some builds could easily become OP if they were allowed to equip a 4th utility skill instead of an elite. This is particularly the case with classes that have a lot of skill synergy. But this could theoretically be compensated for by making it so that any utility skill loaded into the elite skill slot would have an increased cooldown while in that slot. But that does nothing for those classes that do not have good skill synergy, because they wouldn’t be OP with having a utility skill in the elite slot with normal cooldown. I think that skills would need to be individually evaluated to determine what their cooldown would be while equipped in the elite skill slot, as some might justify an increased cooldown, while others might not.

Other than that, I personally believe that elite skills should live up to their name, and feel elite. That is to say, I think that elite skills should not be skills that give a minor advantage that might turn the tide, but should be skills that when used with appropriate timing can make a significant impact on the advantages you have over your opponent (assuming they don’t use their own elite to counter you).

That’s my 2cp.

_
Ranger issues aside, I agree that Deathly Claws projectile speed should be improved. But given the damage potential of the skill, I think it almost needs that miss chance to be reasonably balanced compared to what other classes get from elites.

Personally, I dislike the idea of having attacks with projectile speeds so low they can be easily sidestepped. This goes for all skills for all classes. I think that if the devs really feel that a skill needs to have some sort of miss chance to balance it out (due to power or range or whatever it is they are trying to counterbalance), then they should use an RNG-based static chance to miss for the skill. While I like the idea of allowing other characters to improve their chances against a skill through their own player skill, I just don’t think it can work in this way as a balance aspect. The issue is that either a projectile is slow enough to be able to sidestep it, or it isn’t. If it is, then will almost always miss (too high a miss chance for balance considerations), and if it isn’t, then it will almost always hit (too low a miss chance for balance considerations).

And although I think a static miss chance would be better than slow projectile speed, I really don’t like the idea of having some skills with a static miss chance. But I also don’t think that inflicting a miss chance through slow projectile speed is workable in any way. In short, I think that skills like DC and LRS should have projectile speeds fast enough that they will not miss simply due to sidestepping, but would instead require an active dodge or evade. Then they each can be rebalanced as necessary based on damage, secondary effects, cooldowns, etc. if it turns out to be OP without the miss chance. And it simply is not possible to effectively lead a moving target in this game to compensate for slow projectile speed, so I hope the devs didn’t expect players to improve their player skill with target leading to make up for the projectile speeds on skills like this. Positioning can be difficult enough without having to also worry about target leading in addition.

Considering the overall mechanics of the game in almost all game modes, it is clear that the game does not lend itself to slow-and-steady damage. Right now, the game rewards efficiency far above anything else. This is why the paradigm has become one of DPS/DPS/DPS in terms of a build’s ability to increase total combined group DPS. The higher the total group DPS, the faster things die, and the faster things die, the more quickly you gain EXP, loot, achievements, chests, rare drops, etc. There is absolutely zero incentive to be slow when it comes to damage output. Combine that with the fact that most protracted battles are also best dealt with through fast DPS and substantial burst, and you find that even in such battles, slow-and-steady simply does not win the day.

The issue of reward efficiency was partially addressed in GW1 through loot scaling. But because they only scalled common items and coin, it was still best to kill as many targets as possible, as fast as possible, and preferably solo. But for those builds that didn’t have the capability of fast AoE burst, there was at least some minimal incentive to continue to play the build if you enjoyed it. I don’t think they went far enough in GW1 for scaling reward efficiency. And I think that they must implement some reasonable and significant reward efficiency scaling in GW2 if they are going to continue to try and force certain classes to be low-burst, slow-and-steady damage dealers built for attrition and sustained pressure damage. In short, if we are to be forced or pigeon-holed into attrition and/or slow, sustained pressure damage, then we need to be equally rewarded in terms of Rewards Per Minute over time (efficiency) compared to nukers and cleavers. Whereas right now we are penalized by the system through lower Rewards Per Minute than other classes. And this isn’t just an issue for Rangers either, but rather is an issue for any and all builds of any class that relies on slow and steady damage instead of high DPS burst. And similarly, groups need to have similarly equal reward efficiency regardless of if they are a pure burst DPS group or a more well-rounded group. Such a change would also make more builds viable for numerous classes, simply because groups wouldn’t be punished if you take a build that doesn’t focus on burst DPS.

I don’t have a problem with the design philosophy for the Ranger, IF the game mechanics are altered in such a way that we gain equal Rewards Per Minute regardless of if we push fast DPS and burst or instead push slow attrition and pressure damage. I don’t see a change like that coming anytime soon. And the reality is that as long as the developers, designers, and balancers stick to the current ranger design philosophy without changing the reward mechanics, the ranger class will always be broken. This is why so many suggestions have been for various ways to increase the ranger burst potential despite the fact that we’ve been told the devs don’t want to increase ranger burst, because unless the reward mechanics are changed, that is the only way to make the class comparable.

In other words, the designers and developers need to reevaluate their design philosophy for the class, or they need to change the reward mechanics in the game (or both). Until one of those things happens, the ranger class can never be well regarded when compared to other classes. Even beyond that, increasing the ranger’s ability to inflict conditions, particularly damage conditions, wouldn’t exactly maintain their concept for sustained damage. The more conditions, and the more powerful conditions we can apply, the higher our overall DPS would be (ignoring same-condition stacking problems when another character uses the same condition). For example, if they were to make GS1 inflict bleed as suggested by Tryxtr, then one could take S/T or A/T and GS, drop Bonfire and Throw Torch on a point blank target, then swap to GS and unload bleeds on top of the burning. The stacking of bleeds in addition to burn would increase the simultaneous DPS dealt. That isn’t so much an issue of sustained damage over time at that point, it becomes an issue of stacking DPS in order to increase overall DPS and thus deal the damage faster.

Beyond all of that, I do agree with Tryxtr that the ranger class could use an overall damage boost more or less across the board, but some weapons and skills need substantially more help than others. Sword right now isn’t totally atrocious, neither is GS. Axe is terrible, mostly due to the duration of the attack animation (after-cast), and longbow is not only a bit weak, but is also generally dull. More damage isn’t always going to help very much, but could help some. More interesting gameplay options and better synergy could improve some weapons considerably, most notably the longbow.

@Tryxtr:

I disagree with the idea that rangers need more condition application. We have a lot of ways to apply different conditions, we just can’t maintain them the way other classes can. But with condition stacking mechanics being as bad as they are in the game, having additional condition application or condition maintenance options would only be particularly useful in solo play, and maybe to a lesser extent in WvW zergs (where reapplying conditions easily could be nominally helpful after everything has been purged due to light fields and active contition removal). If anything, we need better love for Power/Crit options, because right now there are very few viable Power/Crit builds available to us (mostly Sword/X and GS). And since we have so little viability for Power/Crit already, I don’t think that stacking conditions onto LB and GS is a good way to go, as both are currently geared toward Power/Crit builds, and making them conditions weapons would, if anything, make Power/Crit even less desirable as a build option.

As to your specific suggestions…

• LB1 — making it bleed every strike would be too reminiscent of Warrior Rifle1.
• LB2 — is not fine as it is IMO. Choosing to use it in place of LRS results in a slight loss of overall DPS when at max range distance. Taken in combination with the CD on the skill, and the result is that the minor Vuln inflicted is just not enough to justify its use in many cases.
• LB3 — adding cripple would help the newly swifted pet close distance to target and actually successfully hit them, so that wouldn’t be a bad thing, but there are more significant issues with the skill right now, such as being revealed by skills that we already finished activating before we went into stealth. The ineffective stealth effect, combined with low damage and a 12-second CD means that this skill is also not very desirable to use in most situations.
• LB4 — While I like the idea of having some options to strip or punish boons (I prefer the idea of punishment personally, just from a conceptual standpoint), I think that having the ability to strip all boons off a target, plus the knockback and ministun already on the skill, would be a bit over-powered. I think limiting it to stripping 1-2 boons, or stripping all of a limited subset of boons, would be a better way to go there. And personally, I think that the knockback distance scaling should be improved so that at closer ranges it would knockback farther than it does now (improve the gap opener aspect).
• LB5 — I think you need to be more clear here. Do you mean that each wave should immob for 1 second, plus cripple? If so, that would be OP, as no one would be able to get out of the field of fire without using some form of teleport skill, or an extremely well-timed dodge immediately after an immob stripper. If, on the other hand, you mean that the first wave should immob for 1 second, then I think that is a reasonable addition, and would at least partially address the issue of being required to stand still while channeling. I’m not sure it would be enough to make most LB rangers happy with the skill though. I’m personally in favor of cutting channel time, wave count and overall duration, and CD all in half. That would increase the general mobility use of the skill, would not increase burst (since the devs don’t want to do that), and would not decrease the DPS of the skill. But I also think that the damage coefficient per wave should be bumped up.

• GS1 — They removed Bleed application from Maul because they wanted the GS to be more of a Power/Crit weapon. I don’t see them changing their minds on that and adding bleeds to the GS auto-attack sequence.
• GS2 — I love the idea of adding a knockdown effect to this one. It fits in conceptually with both the weapon and the skill name. And it would give the weapon just a little more defensive power as well.
• GS3 — Conceptually I don’t see confusion as being something that should be applied from the GS, at least not for the Ranger. The Ranger uses the GS as a physical attack, and unless you pound someone in the head and give them a concussion with it, I don’t see Confusion as being a good fit. Maybe it could work as a secondary effect for Hilt Bash?
• GS4 and GS5 — I am also fairly comfortable with where those skills are at right now, and don’t think they need major changes unless the concept of the weapon were overhauled.

Now with regard to the design philosophy stating that the Ranger is intended to be a single-target sustained damage class. I disagree strongly with the designers’ and developers’ choice to pigeon-hole the class so strongly. I’ll discuss that in more detail in my next post…

caveman.5840:

is this going to come down to celestial VS condition gear
with zerk being something of the past?

I think we’ll find that zerk gear will still be highly sought after, especially for PvE content…

With the way that condition stacking works (or doesn’t), direct damage is still the better choice when a group is focusing fire on a single target. And nerfing crit damage, while reducing overall burst DPS, is going to have little effect in boss fights except to make the battle slightly more protracted. In PvE everyone has shifted to the DPS/DPS/DPS paradigm in the first place because focusing down targets quickly is the most efficient way to gain maximum reqards with minim amount of time investment. By reducing crit burst damage they have effectively forced the time investment to be higher, but have not created new ways other than DPS to be efficient. DPS will remain the efficiency paradigm, and that will still be best served through high Power/Crit build designs in most cases.

If anything, I think the crit nerf might actually make zerk gear even more preferrable, because by making battles more protracted, the designers and devs have made it so that efficiency considerations are going to be even more important.

Plus, with some other build possibilities that will result from the new traits, I think having a very high crit chance will still be quite valid, even with nerfed crit damage. For example, with the new GM Fire Magic trait for eles, combined with Burning Precision (Adept Fire Magic trait), having a high crit rate could result in extremely high levels of application and reapplication of AoE Blind, so zerk, assassin, and rampager gear could have significant use to eles that choose to go that route. Also, with changes to sigils, and with 2H weapons now having the possibility for 2 sigils, on-crit sigils could be more useful, and would benefit from high crit chance.

So, in short, even though the damage burst from critical hits is being reduced, I think there is still considerable reason to continue to take gear and builds designed for Power/Crit. I think that Power may become a little more desirable compare to Ferocity than it was compared to Crit Damage, but number crunchers will eventually tell us if the revised crit burst system is actually changed. The question at this point will be if +Power will be better than +Precision or +Ferocity in creating the highest DPS potential, in general, for various builds. But keeping in mind that the baseline 150% damage on crit is unchanged, a 20% decrease to +Crit Damage is not going to equal out to a full 20% decrease to Total Crit Damage. All of the interplay between Power, Total Cirt Chance, and Total Crit Damage will need to be assessed.

In the end, I think that the crit damage nerf will result in slightly less direct damage burst, slightly reduced overall DPS, an increased desire for maximizing Group Total DPS for dungeons and general focused-fire scenarios, and a slight increase to the viability of condi builds for non-focused-fire scenarios (of which there are few). In general, I don’t think this change will have a huge impact on the game or the current meta, and I think it will (if anything) make the scramble for DPS maximizing for dungeon runs even worse than it has been, not better (of course, I’m assuming that counteracting that trend was part of their intention here, and that may not be so).

Chrispy.5641:

also, the last thing I need to decide is :::

should the topic be more focused on a single aspect of the Ranger, like the Longbow, are be a little more open ended like asking about WvW?

I personally vote for a discussion of the longbow. But keep in mind that I’m highly biased in this regard. I don’t play very much WvW, but I really, really want to love the longbow and use it regularly (and instead I nearly, but not quite, hate it). That’s my vote anyway.

Kim.4152:

Oh well, good for me, when it’s daily reviver!

LOL, no joke there, I’ve done that more than a few times

Bran.7425:

Another problem is that along with lack of direction for discussion. There was the whole discuss other aspects of the profession that need improvement, when the pet is so intrinsic to the profession and it’s balance that all discussion will eventual (even if it is the small ‘while still accounting for the pet..’ or similar) come back to that.

It may have been helpful to have multiple, more-focused CDI threads that focused on a specific aspect of the Ranger, but only as long as it was taken with the consideration that the class is a whole set of aspects that interact and interplay with each other. In the end the entire class still needs to have balance considerations taken based on the class as a whole. So going with more focused multiple threads could take longer, because not only would they need to compile summaries of the ideas for a given aspect, but they would then need to work all of those complied summaries together to come up with a broader picture. It still may have been better to do it this way, but would have required more time and effort on ANet’s part purely for opinion gathering than they have historically shown themselves willing to put forth.

One of the biggest issues is that with the pet system being so intrinsic (to use your term) to the class, I don’t think that balancing other issues can be very meaningful without balancing the pet system (the foundation if you will) first. So it may have been better for them to run a CDI specific to that issue first, and then another (or multiple others) for non-pet issues. It is precisely the fact that the pet is so core to the class right now that so many of the proposals, arguments, and rehashed ideas centered around it.

But while it is probably more important/critical to deal with the broken pet before anything else, the pet is not the only problem faced by the class. There are other major issues that need to be addressed, and rightly deserve to be discussed. And I don’t think that having them discussed at the same time as discussions of the pet issue is inherently going to take away from the discussions of pets. As the CDI showed, it doesn’t matter how many times people bring up subjects other than the pets, discussion of the pets will continue on anyway until they are fixed. And those other discussions and issues are also valid.

Chrispy.5641:

• Everyone is allowed 1 post to tell everyone their view on the current state of what the topic is about, and their suggestions for fixing it if they want to offer a suggestion.

I don’t like that guideline. It doesn’t leave room for constructive counter-discussion. While avoiding protracted arguments would certainly be quite helpful, I think that limiting to a single post is too restrictive. It might be better to go with something like this…

*The poster of an idea/proposal is allowed to make 1 (and only 1) additional post regarding their idea in rebuttal/response to another poster’s response to the idea.
*Any given player is allowed to post 1 (and only 1) response to an initial idea, but may also post a single response to any rebuttal to their response posted by the original poster.
*No response/rebuttal to an ideal or response is allowed if it is merely to repeat something you’ve already stated (even if you stated it in response to someone else), nor if it is merely to repeat something that someone else has already stated.
*If a poster wishes to modify their idea based on new thoughts that have arisen from the discussion, then they must edit their original idea post, and ideally include the original idea, the modifications to the idea, and the reasons for the modifications (insofar as character count restrictions on forum posts would allow for this).

That sort of a setup would act more like a structured debate. I think this would promote some intelligent discussion (rather than just a list of ideas), would limit useless tug-of-war arguments, and would force posters to consider what they say more carefully, to maximize their points within the limited number of posts that they’re allowed.

Chrispy.5641:

• No Chrispy calling out someone like a broken record for posting the 150th kill shot suggestion (….as much as I would like to…)(yes, I am admitting fault for my contribution to the mess).

I appreciate you taking ownership of your part in that argument. But you aren’t the only one who made that mistake throughout the thread. There were several protracted arguments where people should have just realized that they weren’t going to convince one another and let it go. So personally I would rephrase that one to be more general and applying to anyone/everyone, and using yourself as an example (to still take ownership).

I would also suggest another rule…
Do not post an idea that has already been posted by someone else, unless your idea is *substantially different.

That one would require us to carefully be aware of other people’s previously posted ideas before we chime in, thus avoiding rehashing something that has already been discussed to death.

The biggest problem I see with this whole idea, though, is that it would require a level of discipline and self-moderating that I’m not convinced the ranger forum community is capable of right now. It’s all well and good to post rules for how such a discussion thread should be managed, but it is something else entirely to get people to actually follow those rules. Would we be allowed to report a poster as “off-topic” if they violate the rules? Even if they are actually “on-topic”, but just not following the guidelines set out? In short, how could we possibly enforce the rules?

Forzani.2584:

They are not going to reinvent the class like so many think.

I think that this was at least part of the problem from the start. People seemed to have been under the impression that any and every proposal, regardless of how unrealistic, difficult to implement, or contrary to ANet’s conception for the class, would be considered by the balance team anyway. While ANet did state that there was no promises or guarantees that anything at all from the CDI’s would actually be implemented, it probably would have been at least mildly helpful for them to make it clear that wild redesigns that would completely alter the fundamental concept or mechanics would be highly unlikely to be implemented, or flat out off the table, and that the more difficult an idea would be to implement from a programming perspective, the less likely that it would be given serious consideration. And their position on that point is not wholly unexpected due to the sheer time and manpower such changes would require.

Also, as has been addressed by some, the community didn’t help much. How many times did people post proposals to remove the pet completely, even after Allie told us that wasn’t going to happen? How many proposals for the longbow would have resulted in significant increase to ranger burst damage even after Allie told us that the devs feel there is too much burst in the game and want to tone it back, and that burst doesn’t fit in with their concept of the class? It would have been much more useful to make proposals that took those statements into account, and/or to discuss reasons why ANet’s position on those subjects might be wrong (in the hopes of convincing them that they are in error and need to change their perspective).

Obviously it didn’t help that the CDI was not well structured, and that it was barely moderated due to Allie being out sick for half it’s duration without someone else form ANet staff coming in to fill the gap. But we could have shown more discipline ourselves, and tried to re-focus the discussion from time to time when it seemed to be getting out of hand. And I agree that posters who hadn’t read all of the pages (myself included, I’m guilty of this) probably should have asked if their idea had been discussed yet, and if so where, before posting their idea. Then the community gently and generously pointing them to the exact location of such prior discussions so they can read up on it.

It also would have been helpful for the first post to layout the guidelines for valuable discussion (and suggestions of what not to do as it would not be helpful to the discussion), and a second post immediately following that summarizes the major proposals that have been made, and any ANet positions that take certain proposals or concepts off the table for consideration. Allie did post a summary, but it was partial only, was in the middle of the thread, instead of at the beginning where it could be easily seen by late-comers, and it wasn’t maintained and updated. Similarly, she did post statements regarding the mind-set of the balance team regarding certain issues (like their desire to keep pets), but again it was in the middle of the thread, and not easy to find for a late-comer.

I would say that the ranger CDI is a lesson for both forum staff who moderate future CDI threads and for the player community at large on how not to handle these sorts of threads. We players need to be more disciplined, and self-police better, and try to be more constructive and less negative, especially to each other. We players, and ANet staff both need to make it easier to avoid rehashing the same old ideas that have already been discussed into the ground. ANet needs to make arrangements to fill the gap when a CDI thread moderator is unavailable to participate in the thread. And general moderation, from both ANet and from players self-moderating/self-policing, needs to try and re-focus the attention of discussions right away when it becomes clear that discussions have become unhelpful or unconstructive.

As much as I would like to see improved consistency with scenario considerations for balance changes, I’m not sure a strict methodology would work either. The potential problem I see is that different skills will have their optimal scenario occur more or less often than other skills. Additionally, I don’t think that all skills can be balanced only around the average or most typical scenario, because the other scenarios can and will happen sometimes.

Because of these issues, I think that balance considerations, if the methodology is to be consistent, would need to simultaneously consider all of the following: the normal/average usage scenario, the optimal/ideal usage scenario, the minimal/weakest usage scenario, and the likelihood of each scenario type relative to the others, and then to allow for exceptions in extreme cases where such a breakdown is less than useful. It might also not be a bad idea to try and balance around the normal/average usage as much as possible, and then implement floors and caps for skill effectiveness if it turns out that a skill is too powerful in optimal scenarios and/or too weak in minimal scenarios when it has been balanced around the average/normal usage.

So going back to your example of Locust Swarm for how this could potentially work… Right now the skill grants 2% Life Force per hit, strikes up to 5 targets per pulse, and lasts for 10 pulses, for up to 50 total strikes, and therefore up to 100% total Life Force gain. If the intended/balanced Life Force gain is based on a more average/normal/typical usage that results in closer to 30% Life Force gain (I’m just throwing out a number here for the purpose of making an example), then they could rework the skill so that the damage still works on the additional targets up to the maximum of 50 total strikes, but they could add a hard cap to the Life Force gain so that it cannot exceed, say, 50% (better than the average that it is balanced around, but not necessarily OP).

I also agree with Phenn that they need to be more willing to revert changes or make further changes when it turns out that what they have changed has worked out, in practice, to be either OP or UP. And one way to better know that, as Phenn again pointed out, would be to use a public test server so they can get a feel for how players will actually use something post-change and how that modified usage will affect the landscape.

It sounds to me like a big part of your problem is having trouble keeping away from targets, especially for big hits.

That reminds me an awful lot of my girlfriend and the way she plays. She plays an ele because she loves being able to nuke things with massive fire AoE, it was always her favorite thing in GW1. So now, in GW2 she stands there in one place and tries to blast everything to hell and back.

That simply doesn’t work in this game (and I haven’t been able to get that concept through to her unfortunately). You must be mobile. Even if you play a Guardian or Warrior with full tanky bunker build, you still have to be mobile. So if I am understanding you right, then you either need to play something that can handle being played with a lack of mobility, or you need to play something that will get you a lot of practice at mobility so you can learn it quickly.

Personally, I recommend the latter. Play something a bit squishy, with ranged attacks, preferably not full max range, and learn to stay on the move. And if you go that route, then you have quite a few options to choose from, I’ll talk about just three. First, you could take a short bow ranger, but use a passive pet (doesn’t matter what pet, just set them on passive mode and leave them there), don’t worry about learning pet management just now. Second, you could go with an ele, and don’t worry about trying to learn attunement mechanics yet, just focus on learning mobility, and then you can either learn attunement mechanics or change to another class that you like better. For that you could take scepter/dagger and stick primarily to earth attunement, and don’t change attunements much until you get better at your mobility. Third, you could go with a necro, maybe axe/warhorn, not a minion master, not a well spammer, and not a vamp. Maybe for necro take spectrals or signets for slot skills.

Again, the idea would be to improve your mobility. If you went with this suggestion, you wouldn’t be trying to make a maximized build by any means. The goal would be to make a fairly weak character, and then manage to stay alive through mobility even though you won’t have much killing power. Learn to stay on the move, learn to dodge, learn to time your dodges well, and learn to pay attention to the environment (where you move to, and the way you move can matter). And remember that you move fastest when moving forward, slower when strafing to the sides, and slowest when backpedaling. While you;re in combat (unless you’re using the combat mode mod), you should have your right mouse button firmly held down pretty much all the time. Rely on movement keys for direction and positioning, and rely on right-click for rotations and angles.

I also recommend looking up some videos on the net about GW2 kiting methods. There are quite a few, such as this one for example (I hate the camera angles he uses for circle kiting, they make me dizzy, but the principles are good, and reasonably well demonstrated).

If you can get to the point where you comfortably avoid damage from normal monsters, then try go solo against a veteran and survive that (you don’t need to kill them, just survive a good long while). You can practice against a couple of veterans in Heart of the Mists.

If you really just want to play and not worry about it as much, then go with the tanky character option (warrior, like most others have suggested). But keep in mind that you will still need to learn to dodge at the very least, and ideally to stay on the move.

Yoh.8469:

I sympathize with your position, but for different reasons.
I just think that pets are exceedingly generic by being pigeonholed into just being a DPS add-on. I’d like to see much more variation, pets that were designed more for defense or support.
Currently it’s more that they are designed for DPS, and their F2 might support you a little bit, as after thoughts.
But they clearly weren’t designed for that purpose from the ground up, and it shows.
They suck at it.

But fat chance since they simply reused their clearly inept animal AI.
I wish they took a page from a lot of the more recent mobs when it comes to AI and skill design.

I agree. I would love to see changes to the pet system that include making pets useful and valuable for purposes other than damage. None of that would matter much without either fixing the AI or tweaking basic pet mechanics to overcome the AI shortcomings, so that has to be priority. But having a greater variety of pet usage would open up some new overall build options for the class, and that wouldn’t be a bad thing. But making such a change would also require the pet system in general to no longer be based on the incorrect assumption that the pet will deal 30% of the class’s damage.

In my opinion, the amount of damage we rely on from the pet in general should be reduced, scale based on BM traiting, and we should have our own more reliable damage increased (all of which has been repeatedly proposed in this thread and elsewhere). And the pets should then be given increased utility usefulness in general, and individual pets should have their own flavor for what they can do, with greater disparity between individual pets and pet families.

Ghotistyx.6942:

Seras.5702:

Grr…my post didn’t post

Ctrl+A before every post

That wouldn’t be enough.

Has to be Ctrl+A followed by Ctrl+C. You can select the text all you want, but unless you copy it to clipboard, it’s still lost.

The ranger mechanic may not be what they rely on for survivability, but it does work against the class. The basics of it come down to the fact that the pet makes up 30% of the ranger class’s total damage output, but the AI is useless, the pets don’t scale from stats (so 30% of their damage doesn’t scale from stats), and the pets are dead most of the time. The fact is, the majority of their time during combat, Rangers are without their mechanic (because it’s dead), and they are forced to try and operate at only 70% damage output, when all of their skills were “balanced” under the incorrect assumption that the pet would always be there to provide the extra damage.

This isn’t a survivability issue, no, but it is a major limiting factor in the overall functionality of the class. It also has a big impact on how desirable it is for the ranger to be taken in groups, whether it be a sPvP team, a WvW zerg, or a PvE dungeon group. The fact is, despite all the problems faced by necros and engineers, they are both more desirable in groups than rangers are in most situations.

It’s a different problem than survivability, but that doesn’t make it less significant. And personally, I find my necro to have better survivability than my ranger (though not by much, and I choose not to use bears because I hate them), and better damage output (which is why I almost always play my necro now instead of the ranger). Of course, part of it comes down to builds. Yes, a ranger can deal heavy damage despite the handicap of the pet, with the right build. Similarly, the necro can have solid survivability if using a build that focuses on it.

The real problem I have with the necro class mechanic is that it is used for a combination of both survival and damage, but there’s no real way to make it specialize in either one.

The reality is that there are numerous classes that need major changes and fixes. And it’s easiest for the development team to run major changes for one class at a time, and then evaluate how the changes impacted things before making final decisions on what to do with the next class they work on.

Considering the fact that class and skill balance is the single most difficult thing to do well and right in any MMO (followed by in-game economics as a close second), I actually like ANet’s approach… to an extent. Yes, it’s slow. Yes, it’s frustrating to see one class get major fixes and improvements while your favorite class doesn’t even get bug fixes for broken functionality. But they don’t rush changes without putting a lot of thought into them, and most of the time that means that the changes they do make are good ones (though sometimes they make bad decisions anyway… hey, they’re human).

But if they’re going to make major changes to only one class at a time so they can get it as right as possible and evaluate how it will impact other changes that may be needed for the other classes as well (not really a bad idea all things considered), then they have to start somewhere. And if they have to start somewhere, then why be completely arbitrary about it? Why not start with the class that the most people feel needs to be addressed?

If the majority of the community is going to have to wait regardless of which class they choose to work on first, and be angry about having to wait, then why not choose the largest minority?

Personally I’d rather see them fix bugs first, and then do rebalance once they have fully functional classes. But players are screaming about balance issues, and fixing bugs won’t necessarily help that in a big way.

ANet must consider the overall manpower needed to study, rework, and implement any changes. In the end, the company needs to make a profit. With that in mind, they will always be interested in trying to make the game work acceptably well for the largest number of their customers, but to do so in the way that is most efficient and economical to accomplish. If they fail to at least pacify the customers, and/or if they fail to make choices that make their changes as efficient and economical as possible, then they will lose money, period. And they have to keep that in mind.

The fact is, that with all of the considerations they have to make, choosing to go with a basic popularity check for basic community feedback was probably a very good decision on their part. At the very least it gives them a clear idea of where the community of players on the whole feels that attention needs to be paid (even if they disagree with us). You and I may disagree with the rest of the community, but the fact that ANet bother’s to even check with us isn’t a bad thing.

And I know I’m going to probably get 50 different people flaming me for having the audacity to actually believe that ANet cares what we think. But for now, I have faith… sue me. When I stop having faith, I’ll stop playing and move on.

The system won’t let me edit to add a TL;DR note like I want, so here it is…

ANet has many, many things that they must consider when deciding what changes to make, and when to make them. And similarly, what changes to wait on in favor of others. The impressions, feelings, and opinions of the player community must be a part of that. And so must issues of efficiency and economics.

Details follow in the new long post below…

misterdevious.6482:

I use the Longbow in a few different builds, here are some of the things I use Rapid Fire for:

• Thieves (arrows tracking through stealth)
• Combo Fields (2x the chances)
• Buffing Pet before F2 (Rampage as One, crits grant might trait, crits grant might sigil, crits grant might food)
• Confusion (Every skill activation hurts)
• Enemies lined up really nice for Piercing Arrows, some close some far.
• When the enemy is too close to receive the bonus damage on skill 1.

Being able to hit rapidly with Rapid Fire or Barrage may be punishing against Retaliation, but being able to hit rapidly is essential for some effects.

I couldn’t agree more. It’s obvious to me that there needs to be some improvement to the longbow to make non-AA skills more appealing, but I don’t think that removing Barrage and/or Rapid Fire is the answer.

So here’s another possible idea (parts borrowed from other ideas that have been previously posted)…

Specific Game Mode
PvX (possibly split skills in some cases)

Proposal Overview
Improve longbow viability in general by making its 2-5 skills more appealing than just 1-spamming through skill modification (not replacement).

Goal of Proposal
The goal of this proposal is to stop making longbow feel like we’re being penalized for close combat, but instead reward max range through a bonus; make skills on the longbow more appealing to use during normal combat scenarios; and increase the Ranger’s ability to maintain or regain range advantage.

Proposal Functionality
This proposal includes changes to multiple different skills.

1, Change the functionality of Long Range Shot so that it no longer has damage adjusted by range. Instead, just a flat steady damage level regardless of range. (I’ll talk about granting bonus damage at max range later on).

2, Make it so that at close ranges, Long Range Shot is automatically replaced by another skill, Close Quarters Shot, which deals slightly less damage in favor of adding a cripple effect to the attacks. This skill would automatically replace Long Range Shot at distance ranges of 0-600, and would automatically be replaced by Long Range Shot again when distance range to target opens back up to 600+.

3, Make Hunter’s Shot grant swiftness to the master instead of the pet, or possibly to both.

4, Slightly increase the pushback range effect on Point Blank Shot for distance ranges of less than 600 in oprder to improve its functionality as a gap opener. Also perhaps decrease its cooldown. Also perhaps make it an AoE fan effect instead of single-line.

5, Remove the requirement of remaining still while channeling from the Barrage skill. If a movement penalty is absolutely required for balance (I don’t think its necessary or justified given the skill’s current lackluster damage potential), then make it inflict cripple upon the Ranger when cast, instead of requiring us to fully self-root. Perhaps make it a 0.5 second cripple that is reapplied every 0.5 seconds that the skill is channeled, but we can still break the channeling by canceling the skill partway through if it becomes more advantageous to have full movement than to complete the skill.

Alternatively, could reduce channeling time to 1.25 seconds, leave self-root requirement in place, reduce number of strike waves to 6, and reduce cooldown to 15. This would result in roughly the same overall DPM possible, but would allow greater mobility and more tactical use.

6, Possibly increase the damage per strike for Barrage so it is more rewarding to use even with the risks of Retaliation and Reflection.

7, Increase projectile speed on the longbow’s attacks so they cannot be so easily dodged without actual active dodge or evasion so that max range no longer simultaneously acts to both boost damage and negate that boost through poor accuracy.

8, Make it so that all longbow attacks automatically receive a +15% damage increase when attacking from a distance of 1000 or more. This would boost all 5 skills, so would not result in current state of making AA more favorable to other skills when at max range.

Associated Risks
Potential to increase Ranger burst damage, depending on how the numbers are tweaked, so this could run slightly contrary to the design philosophy for the class.

Long Range Shot changes could possibly justify similar changes to the Mesmer’s Spatial Surge skill.

Increasing the pushback distance #4 could have more impact than just improved gap opening, due to the way that pushback acts as a sort of mini-stun against the target for a duration equal to how long it takes the target to travel the push distance.

The damage bonus of 15% at 1000+ range might be too high, so numbers might have to be tweaked to balance it out.

Your first and third links are exactly the same information from the same source, just presented in two different locations, and with two different visual styles.

And you’re also neglecting the fact that all of those summaries are based on historical totals at the time the “census” (if you will) was taken. This means that none of that information is reflective of how popular a particular class (or weapon, or utility skill, or overall build, or build archetype) is compared to the others in the current game meta. For instance, how many new Ranger characters were created and played back when a solid 9 out of 10 bots was running a Ranger with a Brown Bear? And all of those bot rangers were probably included in the totals used.

Similarly, the Warrior has always been an effective and easy to play class, and therefore would naturally be played more than other professions by new players, and therefore would have inflated “popularity”.

If you really want to talk about the popularity of a particular class or build, then you have to ignore historical totals, and instead focus on what is being played right now in the meta. Out of all level 80 characters that are actively and regularly played in the current game meta, how many are a Warrior? How many are a Necro? How many are a Thief? And considering how much difference there is between the sPvP, WvWvW, and PvE game modes, and even the difference between dungeon PvE and open PvE, you would have to break it down by each game mode type as well.

On the whole, I think your choice to complain about the “popularity contest” as a means of expressing your views regarding the broken aspects of the necro class is not the best way to have handled it. It just confuses the issue and get’s people caught up in arguments over data sources and data accuracy, and ignores the main issue.

The main issue here is that you feel there are aspects of the necro class that are broken and need fixing (and you’re right), and that you feel they should not be delayed in being fixed merely based on the popularity or unpopularity of the class (and I would agree). Those are good points, but the way you make your point is too muddled to be of much real use.

Also, what Yamsandjams said…

..I feel that they wanted to handle a bunch of user feedback/suggestions for one profession at a time, instead of simply opening a thread that would become a cesspit of everything. It allows them to focus on and organize any of the feedback/suggestions for one profession without having to sift through tons and tons of posts of other professions….

Nike.2631:

WATCH ME PULL A MOA OUT OF MY HAT…
While pet AI may not be entirely satisfactory, MMO combat is hardly a Turing Test. We can, with a little stagecraft, easily create the illusion of intelligent play.

Nothing Up My Sleeve…
Ranger companions gain an endurance bar, identical to player endurance bars in all ways. They gain Vigor any time their master gains vigor and they benefit from Natural Vigor if their master has that trait.

Any time the pet takes more than 20% of their maximum health in damage (a trigger we know the game recognizes due to traits like Nature’s Protection) and they have more than 50% of their endurance left, the pet instead takes no damage, evades for 2 seconds, and performs a dodge animation/movement towards its master (whom we can only hope is standing somewhere not stupid…).

Presto!
Pets now pretend to dodge, using their master as a reference point to give the appearance that they roll in a sensible direction when something massive is dropped on their heads. They also interact more consistently with the boon removal and corruption skills of other players, adding value to those skills.

Are even Players that Smart?
While I feel that triggering automatically when a major hit comes in is probably consistent with the level skilled players display, it would be possible to add an addition check with a <100% chance before the “dodge” triggers to simulate lapses. Also, because the trigger is damage-spike based, there are smaller attacks the pet will not expend a dodge to avoid. Finally, some of the pets with larger HP pools might be unnecessarily reluctant to dodge. Thresholds would have to be tuned following playtesting.

I know this one was posted waaayyy at the beginning (page 18), but I feel it merits comment now that I’ve found and started participating in this thread.

With that in mind, I have to say, I LOVE this idea… with one exception. In my experience, due to the differences between pet positioning and master position in a dynamic combat exchange, dodging towards the master is not always going to be a “sensible” direction.

While the mechanics proposed would make that a non-issue in terms of outcome, giving the illusion of intelligent pet dodging would be better served by another, far more complex method. Specifically, the game determines the epicenter and radius of the attack that triggers the dodge, and then tests the pet’s current position against the outer edge of the attack effect, then the pet performs a dodge animation in the direction towards the nearest edge point. If the attack is not an AoE, then the pet dodges toward the master.

In my opinion, this would look more intelligent. The drawbacks are numerous though, and I think would make it infeasible to make the illusion that dynamic. Namely, there would be the risk of the pet dodging off a cliff or similar environmental problem, it would be a large amount of work for the programmers to implement the “best dodge direction” check function, and the basic server load for making such a calculation would be quite high (too high for what would essentially be a cosmetic change compared to Nike’s original proposal).

A quick response to the suggestions from Orpheal and BlackenX…

While I love the fact that these are very creative ideas, and I applaud you both for your efforts, I personally don’t like the ideas specifically for the Ranger. They simply feel too much like a Druid class, and just don’t fit in with my personal conception of what the Ranger class is and does. I also think they fail to fit in with what the devs have repeatedly indicated as their own conception of what the Ranger class is and does.

They’re great ideas in general, but if they were actually implemented, I would like the Ranger clkitten, not more, simply based on general flavor and play style.

rpfohr.7048:

A simple solution to this would be to add an adept trait that makes traps deal a certain amount of damage when triggered in the skirmish line. Then power trappers can take this trait and condition trappers can take sharpened edges.

I actually really like this idea. Better than my own idea for simply adding +damage to the Trap Potency trait, in fact. I think though that it would have to be a +damage% per pulse effect though. That would synergize well with both Marks and Skirm lines and open up more viable 30/30/x/x/x power/crit trapper builds.

But as with my own proposal, there is the issue of DoT vs. Burst. While I really want to see power/crit traps capable of dealing comparable damage to condi traps, I’m not sure it would be balanced to have it all dealt out at one shot, as that would be too large a burst.

I’m not sure how to fully address that issue. I had suggested maybe reducing the cooldown on traps based on the difference between power+crit and condition damage. But now I’ve thought about that some more, I realize that because traps would still be dealing some condi damage, the reduced cooldown could end up making the conditions aspect too powerful. In that case, it may be necessary to also reduce condition durations dynamically based on the dynamic cooldown. This would be less of an issue for split traits as you suggest than it would be with my own suggestion, but I think it would still need to be addressed.

Maybe an alternative possibility would be to make the new Skirm trait cause traps to deal twice as many pulses as normal (thus doubling the duration of the trap effect field), but have the extra pulses deal only direct damage, no additional conditions pulses. That would make it so that the conditions are not increased as a byproduct of the trait, would add power/crit damage for trappers who take the new trait, would spread the direct damage out so it is less of a burst and a little more DoT, and would also give opponents more opportunity to mitigate some of the trap damage by making it out of the field of effect before all pulses complete (this would be useful I think, as conditions can be mitigated through condition removal, but direct damage not so much, and I think allowing a means of mitigating the increased direct damage would be more balanced).

I also don’t have a problem with cleave damage, but I agree it would be nice to see it change based on targets hit. But I’m not sure I like the idea of a flat reduction to all targets based on number of targets hit. Instead, I think it would be interesting (but more challenging to program) to make it so that it strikes targets at staggered intervals, instead of all at the same time, and then have it so that it strikes closest target first, next closest second, and so on, and reduce the damage for each consecutive target. So first target would take full 100%, but second target might take only 66%, and third target only 43.5%, and fourth target 28.75%, etc., with a maximum number of targets hit.

Nektera.9425:

i already give suggestion before here in this forum in page 60. but i want to add things to ranger’s Longbow

Specific Game-mode: WvW

Proposal overview: changing the 4th skill of Longbow

Goal of proposal: increase ranger support in WvW zergbusting

proposal functionality: the bad thing about ranger is that almost every weapon in ranger is one targeted weapon. in fact, that is the design philosophy, which is “single target, sustained damage”. we can still keep that idea. but is it disadvantageous in WvW? well yes if every weapon is one target purpose and no more utility.
i think we can give ranger weapon a little bit more utility with still holding the design philosophy of one-targeted sustained damage. for example, we can change the idea of 4th Longbow skill knock down.
the current 4th skill of longbow is very single targeted. except if you use piercing arrow. but i think piercing arrow dont work either, because in WvW situation. enemy rarely stay in one place. so “single target sustained damage” wont work in WvW if that is the only thing that ranger do.
my new 4th ranger longbow skill is somekind of “explosive arrow” AoE blast that will explode 2 sec it is set. and will give effect to the enemy such as knockdown.
if Anet still want to hold its philosophy. this is still viable, because the 1 and 2 Longbow skill is still a “single target sustained damage” (but…….., its still a bad philosophy for a class, since GW2 have dodge mechanic")

potential risk, NONE. because its just changing how the source knockback from single piercing row, to AoE. which will help WvW ranger for using Longbow.

I like the idea of adding additional AoE like this to the longbow, while still keeping a support/control/utility type effect on it. My problem with the Explosive Arrow idea is largely that it reminds me too much of the Warrior longbow (see Arcing Arrow and Combustive Shot).

But I definitely agree that something needs to be done to add increased viability for Rangers in WvWvW zergs.

Gotejjeken.1267:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Perma stow wouldn’t make pets OP. In rebalancing for permastow, it would make those that still want to play with the pet op. THAT IS, unless we design something that gives the player a boost to balance it out.

The aspects I think were a little different. They talked about having specific bonuses based on the pet that the player was using. That is different from just giving a damage boost, which could end up being difficult to balance.

I think the reverse of this was used as the reasoning behind nerfing pets to begin with, wasn’kitten That is, the ranger and the pet did ‘too much damage’ so the pet was nerfed to compensate.

My fear with permastow is it will break things further in the balancing process. No matter what, playing without a pet would win out. Even if on paper a ranger + pet would theoretically do more damage, the pet AI is so bad at hitting things that it would not matter.

Basically, beastmasters will be seen as a huge liability. Instead of just hating rangers in general, people will start to hate based on what kind of ranger you are, which is IMO worse. Why would anyone want a person with a lackluster AI that cannot stay alive and draws huge amounts of aggro around when they could just ‘upgrade’ to the non-pet option?

I have to agree with Gotejjeken here. The pet AI is so bad that in many situations pets are a major liability. While learning to better micromanage the pet can help with this to a minimal extent, the problem still exists regardless. If an option was added to simply permastow the pet and replace it with some other sort of bonuses, then you will find that the majority of Rangers will simply stop using pets altogether. And as Gotejjeken said, other players (and even other Rangers) would automatically despise or hold in contempt any Ranger adacious enough to dare to use the pet anyway.

I’m in favor of a permastow option, but I’m even more in favor of pet AI improvements, or general pet improvements that overcome the AI drawbacks, or both.

rpfohr.7048:

rpfohr.7048:

Proposal Overview

Improve shouts to make them more attractive while increasing ranger – pet synergy

Goal of Proposal

Ranger shouts are lackluster. Sickem has evolved to just being an anti stealth counter. Protect me hurts your pet. Guard is just used to spam Natures Voice. And I don’t even think search and rescue is worth mentioning.

Proposal Functionality

Sickem – 25 second cool down.
Your next attack immobilizes target for 3 seconds.
For 5 seconds your loose control of your pet and it gains + 40% speed and + 30% damage.
This helps pets hit their targets more and is helpful synergy.

Protect Me – Cool down made to 30 seconds
Your pet gains weakness for 6 seconds. You and your pet gain protection for 6 seconds. Your pet also steals 2 conditions from you.
This improves build diversity by adding active condition removal it removes a need for every build to have Empathetic Bond. It also won’t kill your pet as a damage transfer but still can be great against burst damage. It still retains the weakened pet functionality as pets won’t hit hard with weakness

Guard – Cool down increased to 25 seconds. Cast time reduced to .25 seconds
Your pet protects a target territory for 60 seconds. Your pet gains Stability, Protection, and Retaliation for 8 seconds.
There are so many ways to share offensive boons with pet, this is great for pet defense and helps out the AOE problem in PvE and WvW. I get the need for a cast time on a ground target AoE as well but this can be sped up to the speed of necro wells or marks.

Search and Rescue – Cool down decreased to 60 seconds.
Your pet locates a downed ally in the area and attempts to revive them. If a no downed allies are found the pet attempts to rez a defeated player and the cool down goes to 150 seconds.
This makes it worthy of being taken, now even if something were to happen it can still rez a defeated player but it is balanced out by going on a long cool down

Associated Risks

It’s a rework of shouts, Natures voice spamming builds would be effected but in turn might opt to use more of these better shouts to proc it which is actually a positive in my mind.

Allie I am glad you want to talk about things other than pets.

Part 2 of my utility rework focuses on traps.

Proposal Overview

Improve trap build options and have some of its traits be affected by condition related lines. This proposal affects WvW and sPvP

Goal of Proposal

To split trappers expertise into 2 separate traits to improve the versatility of melee trapping and placing traps at your feet with the larger radius. And to still allow the common rabid trapper to still take Sharpened edges or a carrion trapper to take keen edge and ween off the crits a little bit.

Proposal Functionality

Trappers Expertiese
Your traps are ground targeted and have 900 range
This will improve the overall viability of AOE damage rangers can do in WvW and finally bring them some use.

Healers Clarity – CHANGED TO Enlarged traps
Increase the radius of your traps by 60
Rangers have 2 revive traits when they only need 1, leave trappers defense and change this. This also puts a trap trait in the wilderness survival line for condition damage and improves Melee trappers and the WS line and NM line are more focused on Sword and Greatsword

I’m sorry… you want to split a single trait into two separate traits, and then the only additional bonuses to the overall effects is that one is now an Adept trait, and the other one has increased range that realistically should take place anyway?

I understand the desire to have at least one trap-related trait in the WS trait line for synergy with Malice, at least under the current state of traps where they are pretty totally conditions skills only (a state that I am not personally fond of, as I would like to see more potential for power/crit trapping). And I understand the idea behind allowing someone to choose to go with point-blank melee traps while still gaining increased trap radius of effect (as it would be more convenient for melee trappers to do this, than to deal with ground targeting at their own feet). Also, as a ranged trapper myself, I love the idea of having 900 range ground targeting instead of only 600. But I don’t think that the added bonuses are enough to justify the split.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Modify the Longbow #1 skill to make the longbow a more viable weapon option for control and sustained damage.

Goal of Proposal
The current setup for the longbow is such that auto attacks deal considerably inferior overall DPS and DPM compared to other weapons. Part of the problem is low damage from the skills, but another part of the problem is the way that longbow wielders are penalized for failing to maintain maximum range (in a game where maintaining maximum range is virtually impossible, especially for a class that has little snare/stun control mechanisms to work with).

The goal of this proposal is to improve overall longbow viability by modifying the longbow auto-attack skill, Long Range Shot, so that damage is better balanced, and so that the skill also provides additional assistance with keeping targets at max distance.

Proposal Functionality
I propose that Long Range Shot be split into a chained skill with three different sub-skills in the chain as follows…

Long Range Shot:
0.75-second Activation Time
0-500 range — 264
500-1000 range — 311
1000+ range — 358

Entangling Shot:
0.75-second Activation Time
0-500 range — 224, 50% Chance to inflict 2-second Cripple
500-1000 range — 264, 50% Chance to inflict 2-second Cripple
1000+ range — 304 (damage only, no cripple)

?<name>?:
0.75-second Activation Time
0-500 range — 245, 30% Chance to gain 2-second Swiftness for self and pet
500-1000 range — 288 (damage only, no swiftness)
1000+ range — 331 (damage only, no swiftness)

This would result in an increase to overall damage output for the longbow auto-attacks at all ranges for all three skills in the chain (compared to current Long Range Shot), and would allow for increased ability to maintain or regain maximum range, by providing a chance for short duration Cripple on target and Swiftness on self and pet. Based on averages, Cripple would affect targets for approximately 33% of the time while the target is closer than 1000 range units away, and swiftness would affect the Ranger and pet for about 20% of the time while the target is closer than 500 range units (this in addition to the cripple).

Associated Risks
The biggest problem I see with this proposal is that I don’t know enough about how the damage scales with Power in order to determine if the increased damage is enough (or too much) to properly balance the longbow as a viable weapon compared to other weapons available to the Ranger. It seems to me that a Shortbow will still outdamage a max-range longbow on autoattacks alone, even with a Power/Crit build, simply due to the faster attack speed. As such, I think increasing the base damage even more than what I have done here would probably be necessary.

Secondly, I’m not sure that the chance of activation, nor the durations, for the Cripple and Swiftness effects will be sufficient. My goal was to provide increased means to keep good range away from the target, and to regain range when it is lost, without creating a means to gain constant Swiftness or constant Cripple. While the chance to apply the effect and the durations do result in an improvement to the Ranger ability to maintain or regain range, and does so without causing 100% Swiftness or 100% Cripple upkeep, I think the longbow Ranger will still have considerable difficulty maintaining reasonable range from their targets, and so increasing the chances and/or durations may be justifiable.

In the end, it may be easier to simply replace the Long Range Shot skill with something more basic, like a skill that doesn’t have it’s damage considerably penalized based on range. But I wanted to try and keep the general concept and flavor of the longbow, but still improve it enough to make it a more viable option.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Modify the functionality of traps to provide more AoE build options, so players who want an AoE Ranger are not forced to build Pure Conditions and/or Pure Melee.

Goal of Proposal
Ranger builds have severely limited AoE potential, currently being limited almost exclusively to Trapper builds (and some minimal melee AoE with GS or Axe off-hand). Because of the way traps are currently designed, Trapper builds must be Pure Conditions builds in order to be acceptably effective. While it is possible to build for AoE Ranger without going Pure Conditions, it is less effective to do so, and therefore inviable. The goal of this proposal is to open up AoE potential for a larger variety of builds, namely power/crit or hybrid, by modifying trap mechanics.

Proposal Functionality
This proposal consists of two parts:

First, rework trap skills so that Condition Damage and Direct Damage scale more strongly based on attributes. Thus, Conditions would start smaller, but scale up to current power levels for pure Condi, while conversely Direct Damage from traps for pure Power/Crit would be similarly high. The goal would also be to make it so that unstatted/ungeared characters, or characters who stat and gear for something other than Conditions, Power, and/or Crit would have approximately the same total damage output as current, but reduced conditions damage and increased direct damage, then have damage scale more completely based on Power or Conditions Damage stats (with scaling durations for conditions, and scaling raw damage for direct damage). The end result should be traps that deal roughly the same overall total damage for pure Power/Crit builds as they do for current pure Condi builds, and would also deal balanced total damage for hybrid builds.

Second, rework Trap Potency trait to include bonus to Direct Damage from traps in addition to the current increase to Condition Duration. This would make traps more viable for power/crit or hybrid builds by making it so that damage increase from the trait is balanced for any/all build types.

Associated Risks
Because Condition Removal and Damage Avoidance/Mitigation are very different mechanics, it would not be as simple as pure numbers changes for the skills. The new scaling, and eventual final numbers and final scaling, would need to be balanced against those disparate mechanics. Additionally, the Direct Damage numbers and scaling would need to carefully weigh both raw direct damage from Power as well as boosted damage from Crit so that Pure Power vs. Pure Cirt vs. Power/Crit Hybrid all remain balanced and in line with each other and with current Pure Conditions builds.

Similarly, this proposal would not be workable for PvP game modes of any kind, primarily due to the way Condition Removal is much more readily available than Damage Avoidance/Mitigation. That is, in PvP game modes, the powerful Conditions Damage from traps can be drastically reduced through judicious use of Condition Removal methods, while raw Direct Damage is much more difficult to address in those game modes.

Lastly, there is the issue of the difference between Damage Over Time (Conditions Traps builds) vs. Burst/Spike damage (Power/Crit type builds). Could maybe mitigate this by making it so that the cooldown for trap skills dynamically scales based on the difference between the character’s Power+Crit vs. Condition Damage. The idea there would be to make it so that Power/Crit builds can use traps more often than Conditions builds, but that the overall total Damage Per Minute would balance out for all build types (in other words, spread the damage out for Power/Crit builds so that it results in more sustained damage and less burst damage — damage more often, but smaller damage packets).