Showing Posts For Phalaphone.1642:
I feel that thematically our bows are lackluster and run of the mill. We are suppose to be unparalleled archers that are in tune with nature and spirits, however our bow skills and talents seem to be applicable to other archetypes and professions and they don’t feel unique. I would like to see better animations and designs to make them feel like ranger weapons rather than two bows. The idea would be the make the visual effects of the skills function more like either the swords (spirit animals follow the ranger through the motion) or even the war horn where the ranger summon animals or even aspects of nature (vines, other plants, etc.). Another thought was to help tie the ranger into nature spirits by having for example barrage be changed from what it is not to a long cast time (1-2s) where the ranger fires a spirit arrow that summons a spirit that pulses damage and cripple over a targeted area. As far as traits goes other professions have piercing traits or abilities that innately pierce, so traiting for piercing arrows doesn’t feel unparalleled in skill. I would prefer (thematically, i am not sure how this would affect the effectiveness of the trait) something like bouncing arrows or a PBAoE because this effects would be more unique that just piercing.
tl:dr I rambled a bit how I would prefer bow skills and traits to be more unique and fit in with the whole idea of the ranger (archer, beastmaster, nature spirits).
The Spirits
- Weaknesses:
- Untraited Spirits
Simply too weak. Small chance to trigger passive effects, stationary, low HP pool and weak active effects hinder the spirits.- Spirits + “Vigorous Spirits”
The spirits remain useless for the most time. You can only use them in dungeons vs. boss encounters. You have to place them in a save distance so that they don’t get hit from the boss. Thereby their active effect remains unused.- Spirits + “Vigorous Spirits” + “Spirits Unbound”
The spirits become somewhat useful in open-world PvE due to their passive effects.
Their active effects are on a too long cooldown to use them against normal mobs. Certainly the spirits are both too weak to survive heavier mobs and their active effects are too weak vs. those mobs. You don’t want to use them in dungeons since they get killed rather easily when staying by your side.- Comparison with banners:
Banner skills vs. Spirit actives
- Both are pretty useless vs. boss encounters => Banner = Spirit
- Both have passive effects (I don’t know which ones are better) => Banner = Spirit
- Spirits can use their effect while the summoner is fighting => Banner < Spirit
- If traited, spirits will follow the summoner, banners have to be carried => Banner < Spirit
- Banner skills offer dashes, explo. finishers and additional effects => Banner > Spirit
- Spirits can die, banners can’t => Banner > Spirit
- Untraited, spirits are stationary, banners can be moved => Banner > Spirit
- Banners can be used by other classes => Banner > Spirit
- Conclusion:
Spirits are only worthwhile if traited. The mortality of the spirits is a big hindrance and I can’t see how spirits can compensate for that. Right now, they are weaker banners.- Suggestion:
If you are using “Spirits Unbound”, you should be able to put them down on a save place. Furthermore, the active effects should be changed from just one skill starting from the spirit into 5 charges, which will be consumed on the next hits. The charges should also apply to 4 more allies. To make them more useful in dungeons, you could add a flat damage of 1% of the maximum HP of the target.
I like the analysis and would like to point out a couple things. First, banners passive effects are generally considered better in PvE than spirits because they give unique large stat increases versus the only useful effect is a 10% damage increase based off of RNG (as far as pvp goes idk who’s effects are more wanted). Another big difference is that banners take 10 points and one trait to bring to an effective level where as spirits take 20 points and 2 trait (arguably the first 10 points and trait are needed to make them viable where as banners are viable from the start). Also due to the fact that banners produce the stat buff that lasts 5 seconds, ever 3 seconds the buff from each banner lasts 95 seconds total. This means that with the 10 point/1 trait investments banners passive component can get 100% up time where invested spirits have an 71% up times assuming they do not die (since the cd of spirits doesnt start until their duration ends or they die). Banners win in the effect up time too. The only advantage that spirits have is that they move with little effort.
First off Nike, I like the creativity and reasoning you put into these ideas many (if not all) were fresh and seemed effective. However I did have some concernes.
Marksmanship IV: Perfect Aim (NEW) – The damage from your attacks is not reduced by protection. (fills slot vacated by Signet Mastery; coding note – equivalent to +50% damage against targets with protection)
I understand the want for this but to me there seems to be no counter play. Some builds rely on protection and there is no way for them to alter to play style to counter this. They have two choices either run or try and fight without protection. This creates an un-fun mechanic for the person you are versing. (No counterplay generally means a no go balance wise). Also how would an opponent quickly and easily know whether you are using this trait or not?
Marksmanship IX: Mighty Signets – Activating signets grants might and signet recharge time is reduced 20%. (combines Signet Mastery & Beastmaster’s Might)
This is an exact copy (barring differences in might duration and stacks) of the necromancer trait but it is one tier up. I don’t like the idea of spending 10 more points than a necro to get a better version (longer might or more stacks) of their trait. As a community we deserve something unique (idk short-medium fury).
Skirmishing X: Nature’s Venoms (NEW) – Each time you or your pet poison a foe, that foe loses regeneration. (fills slot vacated by Quickdraw)
Depending on how much poison you run and the fields your teammates (pets) run this can become a no fun mechanic. Since if there is enough through projectile poison field procs and spider poison and so on… that it is impossible to counter all incoming forms of poison, you opponent gets punished harshly if they are bunker who relies on regen with little counter play. For this I think it would be better to increase poison damage by % or add stacks of either bleed (more reasonable thematically) or burn. The increase of damage would help counter the already reduced healing of regen but allow for the counter play of cleansing the condis.
Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 600 (15 second cooldown) and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (renamed Shout Mastery)
This reveal of trait would be useless in pve (to my knowledge at least) and extremely powerful in pvp and WvW. I don’t believe that this is the right way for Anet the address the stealth issue. It would create shout hunters to be hard counters to PU mesmers and thieves in general. This single targeting of one mechanic (that certain builds rely on) shifts balance but it doesn’t make it even. Just as many classes can’t do much against a thief in stealth, the thief couldn’t do much against a shout ranger. I do believe that stealth needs to be addressed but I don’t think aoe reveal is the option. The core of stealth in this game should be looked at.
So ANet asks us for feedback but has already decided ahead of time what will be listened to and what will be ignored. Makes me wonder if this thread has any purpose besides venting for us and PR for ANet.
I can only assume that you are referring to permastow. If this is the case, Anet decided that allowing permastow would be a huge alteration to their concept and class design (essentially a big enough tweak for it to be considered a new class**). If you don’t like this, I understand, it is tough to accept that what you seem as a good and easy solution to be thrown out completely but Allie has worked with us. She first insisted that traps belong in skirmishing (citing both work to move them and thematics) but after the community pointed out that traps would fir better into wilderness survival (functionally and thematically) she changed her mind and decided to pass this on to the devs. I am sorry if you feel that because they have ruled out on sugestion it might be a pr stunt and not actually about balance. However it is clear by looking at the whole picture that at least Allie (and I assume the whole Anet team) cares about the ideas coming from the ranger community.
One a side note: Collaboration is a two way street and yes while Anet (due to the massive number of posts) is struggling to read, discuss and give us direction it doesn’t help that one thing they did give us direction on (permastowing) we refuse to collaborate with them. Instead of saying “No permastowing? Ok well here is another solution by doing x y and z to pets that would help us out” the community is saying “No permastowing? why? it is the only solution? give us permastowing or I am going to leave/never play my ranger again/write a depression sonata/etc.” That is not colaboration that is bullying and since we are not ultimately the ones who vision and work is directly making the game, we as a community need to play ball and understand that there are changes coming that we don’t know about so there are probably both philosophical and balance reason they say no permastowing.
Anet has defined classes based off of several core abilities, Ranger’s being the pet. Anet decided to define Tyria’s rangers (at least in this installment) as pet wielding classes. Many people have expressed feeling that this forces them to play a beast-master rather than a ranger (any of interpretation of the thematic idea) and suggest permastowing to allow them to play the other roles. There are often other cries that no other class is forced to play with their class mechanic and none are punished by its existence. I have several problems with this train of thought:
First, permastowing is a band-aid solution, it ignores the problems of the pet and hides them under the rug. Also it allows a class to ignore its class mechanic,the aspect the makes each class unique. Some suggestions to remove the pet and make it an option redefines the classes identity (forcing Anet to give it a new class mechanic) this would force beastmasters into a role similar to mm necros.
For the notion of being punished by our class mechanic, every class is more or less. Thieves are squishy because their mechanic promotes a more mobile game play (with a free guaranteed gap closer) and both the engi and ele lose a weapon set if they ignore their class mechanic. The engi’s weapons lack support because they get it through some kits and toolbelt skills. The only exception is the warrior, if talented the warrior can be rewarded for ignoring his class mechanic (this is a different problem for a different day). The problem with the pet is the amount we are punished. A 70:30 split will not be solved (while following Anet’s design) with permastowing. The key is for the base pet to deal less damage (still it will need to be tankier than it is now, an unspec’ed pet should still have uses). This means that the beast master line should increase the effectiveness of the pet exponentially. The 70:30 or even 60:40 split should be the goal of 100% damage beastmaster split where as a mm, skirmisher should look more like 90:10 (maybe 95:5). This also would mean that going into beast master line should greatly increase (through major traits so its either or not both) support, control, and damage. This means that a non beast master would be free to choose a cat for top dps or a support moa and see his numbers waver only a couple percent (3-5%). Where as the beastmaster specced should see much bigger dps from a cat and much better support from a moa. This would be accomplished through the base stats, inheritance of stats from ranger, and the best master line’s special stat. Since Allie has stated that she did bring this up to the dev’s (the stat inheritance), I believe if done effectively it would allow for the multiple archetypes of the rangers to exist.
1. any traits encourage the player to play in a certain way, and the way I understood it, was that it would be a trait… So just don’t take “on swap” traits, build works like you want it to…
2. If I build zerk using a zerk pet zerk pet will deal even more damage, using a bunker pet? Well bunker pet is still gonna be tanky, but will also deal damage.
If one build tanky having a tanky pet, pet will be even more tanky, but if taking a damage pet, it will also have more life.
I find it’s great that synergy with the pet would be increased, while allowing a more startegized build.
+ for those having ascended, pet scaling with gear is badly needed…
1. Sorry that i didn’t make it clear, or even remotely state my problems with this trait, I do not think it belongs on in the beastmaster line as it promotes swapping pets for a function ignoring the actual change of pets. I like the trait as it is but I feel that both thematically and functionally it would fit better into another trait line as the interaction with the pet is more of a side effect rather than the point of the ability.
2.I am 100% for pet scaling, the problem I have is with the weighted stats for pet families (or at least how i understood it). My interpretations is that pets would get x% of the masters stats for all stats except for the primary stats of the master where they would get y% (where y>x). The reason I am against this is that pets would get different amounts of total stat points from their masters. This is a simplified example that I am using to communicate my idea more clearly. Lets assume we have 2 rangers, one with 200 power and 100 vitality and one with 100 power and 200 vitality. We also have two different families feline who’s main stat is power (for the sake of representation lets just say main stats get 10% of the rangers stats and all others get 5%) and the bear who’s main stat is vitality. This means that the bear gets 10 power and 10 vitality from the power ranger and 5 power and 20 vitality from the vitality ranger. The feline gets 20 power and 5 vitality from the power ranger and 10 power and 10 vitality from the vitality ranger. Why I have a problem with this is that non-ideal pets, i.e. feline with vitality ranger, get less stat points than ideal pets (25 versus 20 point in our example). This might seem small but depending on the numbers the divide could be a larger percentage.
I believe even stat gains would function (every pet gets x% of every stat from the ranger) because each family already has greater benefits from certain stats. The cats (currently) passively casted abilities deal damage and scale off of power where the bears do not for example.
I get your second argument, which could be remediated by having all stats apply to pet, and not just an add to their base stats, but I really don’t get your first… If I would put 30 in BM line, I would expect all my pet’s attribute to go up, not only its main… 300 more attack to a tanky pet, and 300 more life/toughness to an attack pet are not negligible…
and what… 30 points to have a 30% reduction in CD, VS 30 points to get my pets to be at the same time more tanky and stronger in their attack… I’d rather have the stronger in everything than a mere 30% CD reduction on skills I don’t even get to control…
Two things first, since conditions duration and boon duration and very difficult to gear for (with these being the main benefiting stats for support or control pets) making every stat be improved by the trait line it would not make it a completely even bonus for every pet it would help.
Secondly, stats and scaling would need to be balanced so an un-invested pet is not useless and a fully invested pet is not op. Also my interpretation of the new traitline stat would be and increase in stats from the ranger (so un-invested gets x% and a fully invested gets 3x% for example). My fear is that this change would mean that general pet survialebility would be decrease (being remedied by the aspect for non-beastmaster rangers). Since all scaling is based off of the rangers stats (no longer a flat 300 vit and toughness for a zerker ranger) that a fully invested zerker ranger would have a super squishy pet because the ranger has nothing invested in vitality and toughness (I don’t want a tanky cat for everyone but I want a noticably more tanky cat for a beastmaster ranger than non-beastmaster). My suggestion would alleviate this fear and some potential problems because the range of stats would decrease (would now be proportional to the rangers gear instead of rangers gear and points in beastmasters line) but the range of effectiveness would still exist.
The beastmaster trait line special stat should be made into pet ability cd reduction and not an increase to stat investment.
By cd reduction I mean to both the passive abilities used by the pet and the active abilities (F2).
The reason for this is two fold, first is a ranger wants a pet that is a complementary role to their own role, i.e. tank/dps, bruiser (tankydps)/support, they would be more punished because they went into the pet traitline compared to other pet trait line rangers using pets of the same role (dps/dps) than their non beastmaster counterpart. This is because a tanky pet does not take full advantage of dps stats as a dps pet or vice versa but they take similar advantage of cool down reduction on their abilities.
The second reason is that support and control pets do not get as large of an increase off of more stats than dps or tank pets. This is due to the majority of their functions coming from abilities the do not scale with main stats (except for maybe healing power). This forces the trait line to focus on dealing damage or mitigating it, instead using each pet to the best of its functions.
Having the stat be cd reduction would solve both of the problems. An offensive bear would get tankier because they could use defy pain more often and a defensive feline would become more of an offensive threat because they could maul and bite their foes more often. Also this would increase the effectiveness of support pets because they could support more often (moas could heal more often and spiders could imobilize more often)
This change would allow increase the effectiveness of every pet family equally for every ranger, rather than just those that compliment the rangers stats.
PvE
Goal
To remove some of the randomness from the shortbow in PvE
Proposal
Removing the flanking requirement from the shortbow 1 skill.
Reasoning
First, the Ranger is suppose to be a skirmisher and not bursting. This means that their 1 skills should be reliable as they will be used throughout the fight (as opposed to ideal burst where you opponent would be dead after using all you abilities). Right now the shortbow has a bit of unpredictability when it comes to its constant damage in pve settings. This is due to the lack of an aggro function. Since aggro can not be controlled and it often switch between players it is hard, if not impossible, to guarantee every attack will be flanking. This is a problem because some fight have time sensitive components (due to damage outputs, risk of mistakes, achiev) and unreliable dps like from the shortbow holds back the user.
Risks
If this is implemented in pvp there is a risk of the bleed spam being too strong. If not implemented in pvp there is a risk that the associated damage adjustments would make the weapon weak in pvp
Although I like some of the ideas in the summary two additions seems to push beastmaster rangers into using one family of pets.
1. Cleansing Swap: it encourages the player to swap for the condi cleanse and not to utilize the other pet. The best way to make this effective as it is describe is for the player to take two of the same pet families. This way when the player decides they need a condi cleanse they can switch pets without worrying about the effectiveness of their other pet.
i.e. A ranger in a group whose goal is dps takes a feline. Normally they might take a moa or a hound for the extra suppor/controll but because one of their active condi cleanse is linked two swapping they might pick another feline to not inhibit their main goal of dps.
2. Having stats scale with pets is needed, having these weighted by family is against using varied pets. My interpretation of the weighted by family is that one family, lets say bears, gets more of on stat (via percentage of masters stats), vitality, than another family. The reason this forces players to grab pets of the same family (or a limited number of families) rather than for personal play style or content is because non-ideal pets (pets who’s family do not specialize in the stats of the rangers gear) get less benefit than ideal pets. This would mean that an ideal pet would get a greater number of stats (larger numerical value) if its family lines up with the rangers stats then if it didn’t.
While have pets game the same stats seems a little unfair and that is might lead to bears being kinda tanky and doing the same damage as a feline, I do not believe this would be the case. The families stats benefits are already limited by their abilities. Felines could be given better scaling with less base damage then a bear so they would gain the same about of hp and toughness as a bear but would need power to be beneficial.
As far as the increased scaling for the new beastmaster stat, would it be additive or multiplicative? If it were additive it would help less the impact of non-ideal pet families but if it were multiplicative it would increase the impact on non-ideal pet families.
P.S Sorry i got a little worried and carried away
Game Mode: PVE
Overview:
Naturally allow the pet to get exact copies of boons applied to the ranger (but is unable to get un-shared boons)
Goal:
To prevent pets negatively affecting the ranger or group.
Functionality:
Many boon sharing skills (i.e shouts, warhorn) have maximum number of recipients. Most of these are 5 people, the same number of a dungeon or fractal group. Since as it stands now the ranger and pet count as 2 targets. This means that either a player in the group will not receive the buff or the ranger will not receive the full effect of the buff. Allowing all boons that the ranger gets to be innately shared (exact copies) with the pet allows the ranger to function as one individuals in group when considering supports. This would make it so warhorn skills with a max of 5 targets would benefit the ranger to a full degree like other classes without punishing the rest of group.
Risks:
That the pet will receive buffs that are not expected (i.e. ranger is in range but pet is not) or miss out on buffs (i.e. pet is in range but ranger is not)
1. Necromancer
2. Ranger
3. Engineer