Guild Wars 2

I’ll make a party, list it in LFG, and after 5 or 10 minutes or so with noone joining, the game will kick me out of my party.

Then after sufficient relisting, I’ll have LFG messages suppressed ‘due to excessive messaging’. Which is getting more than a little old, because I play at off hours a fair chunk and would like to not have this nonsense happening.

evilunderling.9265:

The bit that’s hard is telling who a player has targeted, not telling whether or not an attack has hit a minion.

I’m kinda saying ‘ignore the whole ’who are you targeting thing’.

Nike.2631:

Could we maybe get less mitigation and duration reduction and more base health and/or toughness? (I’m also curious, at -95% duration, does that mean they outright ignore all conditions shorter than 5 seconds?)

Course not. You take fractional damage. It’s the same way .5s of condition damage added to a skill is treated. So a 4 second Condi from a boss landing on a pet will deal .8 of a full second of damage.

evilunderling.9265:

Rutee.1058:

…don’t you already?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards

Or any other similar skill.

Checking what conditions a player has is much simpler than checking who their selected target is, since conditions are figured out by the server, whereas players’ targets are figured out by the client.

Figuring out who the player’s target is is clearly a thing they can do, as evidenced by the mechanic seen in fractals, but doing any given thing in a fractal is orders of magnitude cheaper than doing the same thing in WvW.

Condition: Minion

Minions are last in the target priority line to start with, aren’t they? I’d think this is a thing the game’s /already/ checking.

The main problem would be that cleaving AoE probably shouldn’t care (Or at least, autoattacks shouldn’t)

Roy Cronacher.1576:

This is not currently possible. For this change we made creatures, at the base AI level, look at what they are targeting and what they hit to adjust damage accordingly, it has nothing to do with player damage interactions. Doing this for WvW. adjusting outgoing player damage to minions, is not tech we are currently working on and likely would cause some perf issues as well. Players attack much much more often then creatures. So doing checks on each one of the damage targets from a player can become expensive very quickly. Though, that’s not to say that we won’t ever consider investigating it, but for now this change is specifically for creatures attacking player minions and we’ll be balancing it and seeing how it goes.

…don’t you already?

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Piercing_Shards

Or any other similar skill.

An action taken by a player is always more skillful than an AI running around doing its own thing. I’m actually surprised that people don’t understand that.

Using the AI at the right time, in the right place, and in the right way, is a kind of skill. Positioning static emplacements is a skill – Given the importance of banners, it is one you CANNOT gainsay, in fact. But one of these is a utility you apparently feel should be valued, while another is considered horrible, because an AI got involved – even though it’s the same player skill in either case. Eyeroll

witcher.3197:

No. There is no middle ground. AI builds take a lot less effort to make them work (basically close to no effort, judging by the past), the moment they become as good as any other build it’s not fine. AI carrying bad players against others way out of their league is not fine – spirit ranger, MM nec, turret engi have all been the focus of community outrage in the past.

Spirit Ranger made you mad because AI invalidated skill? Spirit Ranger is the single worst plausible example you could use here, because there is no AI – the kitten things just followed you. They executed attacks only when the ranger used the sequence skill. If this is an example you have of ‘AI invalidating skill’, y’all are /bad/. Not because you lost or won to spirit ranger, but because you don’t know what AI or Skill mean.

And were they the focus of community outrage because they were OP (it’s generally hard to balance minion builds – a concern that MMOs have struggled with for literal decades, generally without players making this laughable claim of ‘zomg it doesn’t show the player’s skill’), or because of the claim you carry on? Because my understanding is turret engi was meta because it was much stronger, and that drove its nerf, not because of ‘ai having no place in PvP’.

Not every build deserves to be the same in terms of strength, in an ideal world hard builds are also the most effective ones and AI builds should be absolutely bottom tier.

In organized play, making AI do the things the team wants is a very real concern that has to be accomplished by player skill, especially since they’re usually relatively easy to winnow out if you’re organized.

Really, if this were an fps, this complaint might make some manner of sense, but you’re not aiming, so your airs of ‘zomg only the skilled allowed, no ai helping people’ seem vaguely cute.

Anet knew this in GW1, they nuked every single AI spec for Pvp by splitting the skills eventually making them useless. One can only hope they go back to their roots.

I can only hope they don’t, as someone who’s loved pet builds since the dawn of MMO time.

Fluffball.8307:

It’s not doom and gloom, I just don’t genuinely think dungeons will be run after HoT. The dungeon team disbanded not long after launch which told everyone their unofficial view on dungeons, and now they’re officially trying to move people away from dungeons. If after launch, the rewards are at like 50 silver and people keep running them in favor of fractals and raids, I think the reward will be nerfed further and further until that changes.

Disaster scenario for both players and Anet alike is that raids are a complete failure because people want to keep running dungeons.

Their endgame is fashion. People running places that give unique skins is definitionally not a failure for them, because it means people are playing their endgame, although it may be optimal to have fewer doing those specific skins. It’s POSSIBLE they don’t realize or admit that, true, but I’d need to see hard evidence of it; not doom n’ gloom about how they’re going to more actively try to actually kill dungeons because it’s the ‘only way to make raids or fractals good.’

I mean really, they claim they want raids to be like raids from other games and require real coordination – I don’t know that they’ll succeed, but if they do, many people won’t do them (which presents its own issues, yes). They almost have to know that, which is why they are ALSO focusing on Fractals (Which will, nominally, NOT require coordination). But endgame is endgame – you don’t actually WANT people to stop doing content, as such. You want them to maybe spam it less, but not fail to do it entirely. If ANet can’t admit that, that’s one thing, but you’re kinda just asserting it absent any real evidence. Yes, they want to shift away from dungeons, but that doesns’t require murdering dungeons (And again, they WANT people motivated to hunt for skins, because it’s all theyv’e got for a PvE endgame, still.)

Star Ace.5207:

It’s really pity they didn’t find a way to fix the pet naming system. I honestly doubt that it’s difficult to achieve, and would not believe even an official ANet comment to the contrary-they just don’t consider it a priority, even if it’s likely not too hard to program.

Yeah, storing what, 90 lines of text extra per player (generously assuming every player has 2 rangers) is not a horrible strain on databases.

This isn’t facetiousness, since tone is impossible to read.

Fluffball.8307:

Skip the scholar runes, they’re way too expensive. Rune of the Ranger is better and a lot cheaper. Also the dungeon meta is going to go away after HoT releases. Anet is in the process of killing dungeons completely in favor of raids.

“We’re reducing the liquid rewards” does not actually mean you stop earning ducats. It means you earn fewer in cash. I mean, technically it could go to 0, or ‘nearly nothing’, but ‘less’ doesn’t really mean either of those things. It could drop to 75 silver, or not actually be touched in less-run dungeons like Arah or CoE.

You’re right not to invest heavily, but don’t kid yourself by being so doom and gloom you totally ignore plausibility.

Names are by family type for me. I can’t decide if my character can’t be bothered to name them more specifically, or is simply engaging in mad science to alter them. Asura are like that.

Roxxy – Drakes
Rokoko – Birds (including Moas)
Rikka – Arthropods (Including Devourers)
Rukk – Jellyfish
Rinn – Fish

Never did figure out a name I like for dogs or cats though.

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

OGDeadHead.8326:

HS never directly healed allies in the first place, except for regen, but I guess that’s what you meant?

Ok, so its been a year since I was able to play, but I was certain the initial heal applied to allies as well as the Regeneration. The build editor states this as well. I was wrong? I swear it did!

I could have sworn it’s been directly healing my pet, but I might just be horribly mistaken.

Aomine.5012:

Imagine the QQ if they dare tone down Reaper, Chronomencer or Revenant They’re upgrades, and people already accept Specialization is suppose to be an upgrade.

From what I’ve been seeing, Reaper isn’t an upgrade – it gives them new tools to play with in different situations. Not all builds would want GS/REaper traitline, but some do, and new builds popped up around it. That’s about where you want to be. This caviling is because some folks are scared of green numbers. Herald is pretty explicitly not a Revenant upgrade. It does something the other stances don’t do – just like every other stance. I wouldn’t be surprised if it genuinely was amazingly better, but that’d be because force multipliers trump selfish dps (Hey, you wanna refer to the necros? Ask ’em how they feel about still relying on selfish deepz!)

Puck.9612:

…… You do realize you can blast a water field more than once right? A coordinated group easily blasts everyone back up to full health.

If everyone stacks, you will die like a dog to cleaves. It’s the NPCs who are taking 0 damage when not directly targeted, not the humans. Well, it might be fine if everyone’s tanky, but wouldn’t it have been more dps to keep some dps and get a bloody healer?

Even if raids start off requiring a healer, which so far it doesn’t sound like they do, they won’t stay that way. Anet has preached the whole “no trinity, no waiting around for a healer, anyone can fill any role” pitch for too many years. The game itself is designed around that.

And the PvE was boring as sin and generally felt like 5 people whacking the same monster at the same time – often, in the same location! It was honestly worse than Monster Hunter in that regard, and Monster Hunter has fairly minimal direct team support. I don’t know if they needed to add healers (trinity requires tanks, but it seems like if you’ve built tanky you will hold aggro in the raids), but they needed to do something.

And no, I never cared about the ‘no trinity, no waiting around for a healer’ thing. I’m an old hag, that hasn’t motivated me to buy a game in ever.

khani.4786:

No because I didn’t get to try the raids. (didn’t have time)

It’s 0.

Ten Charrs.

Puck.9612:

Even if some healing is required why would they choose druid who contributes very little else to the group when they can take a full zerk ele who is providing boons and water fields that can be blasted for a full group heal?

…PRobably because a full zerk ele and no-healing power water blasts aren’t sufficient to cover unavoidable raidwide damage being constantly output? What kind of a stupid question…

The much bigger problem is when people git gud and run a healing Guard and a Glint/Vent Rev because they don’t need insurance. At that point, your only real hope is for Druid to be capable of handling both their healing so the Rev can instead go like, Shiro or literally any more damaging stance, which is not where you want the design to be in general.

That said, the dark side of this “no we refuse to have targetted heals” didn’t occur to me. I hope they at least give targetted players priority or something. Were topped off players considered higher priority (Or did the others just constantly have like 3 HP missing?)

In principle, this is a problem that can be solved with positioning, but it’s such a basic one that ti’s probably not where you want to be.

khani.4786:

which is great if you like standing in one place…if you’re roaming around or in an aoe heavy area it’s useless because the spirits are immobile and die.

Outta curiosity, do you know how much damage NPCs under a player’s control actually take in raids?

Rifle and Physical? Since Druid’s magical, the next ES focusing on mundane tricks makes intuitive sense to me.

OGDeadHead.8326:

Also, Shared Anguish falls into the same crappy category of skills/traits that we have so many of:

• Shared Anguish: Incoming disables are transferred to your pet
• Empathic Bond: Pets periodically take conditions from you (as in, transferred to your pet)
• Protect Me: your pet will protect you by absorbing all damage you would take (damage transferred to your pet)
• Signet of Renewal: Your pet pulls all conditions from nearby allies to itself (as in, transferred to your pet)

Show me any other class in the game that gets to keep suffer like this, when using similar skills/traits.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/%22Save_Yourselves!%22

I don’t like the passive condi-mover, but you can, in principle, use SoR and then swap pets, completely wiping the transferred conditions (I’m sure this isn’t practical in real play, or it’d be more commonly done, but in principle, the option is there)

None of this says Shared Anguish is strong enough, though. I’m just saying, sometimes other classes suffer.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I believe my own data.
That’s why I was so eager to hop in onto the test fest.
Remember me saying that?

What data? I trust you aren’t going solely off of your own perception, after all. This game throws even more numbers at you than most MMOs, and subjective appearance of dps isn’t particularly reliable even then- most people believe themselves to be doing well, even if they aren’t. And support is kitten near impossible to measure except through hard data (by measuring the difference between dps when you are gone entirely and when you are present).

I believe you when you say you want to test things – what I’m questioning is your methods. This doesn’t specifically mean your methods are wrong! But when you aren’t going into what they are, I can hardly be expected to trust in them

You’re shading yourself with your past few replies. I had literally no problem going to check who was right or not. You, however, only mentioned data that you didn’t provide.

I asked if there were parsers for this game at all. I’ve also said, if there aren’t parsers for this game, then unfortunately theorycrafting is what you have to rely on – you use the best tools available to you, not what you could theoretically have. But there’s a reason I’m asking for data, and not maths; it’s usually available.

I have no stance on Ghost’s statement – I don’t have a strong stance on ANY dps proclamation in this game. Any whatsoever – I assume at least rough measures have been taken to figure out what works best by the community (Time to kill for a team is always accessible without external tools), but even that is something I only take with some skepticism, not the least of which because so much is taken as gospel.

I always use my own head and I keep it open to any valid ideas. If you have no proof to support validity of your data, the data is nothing more than a pure speculation or assumption.

Facepalm
Data /can’t/ be speculation or assumption. IT can be misleading, or it can be less than helpful (For instance, data on dps obtained through target dummies or open world mobs is generally noise outside of very specific contexts), but it can’t be speculation or assumption – it is the opposite of those things, because it is the actual result of a test (whether the test is useful is a different matter, but for the purpose of MMO DPS, doubting the usefulness of a test on dps in an actual encounter is usually odd. Not always, but usually). The theorycrafting people seem to rely on is speculation or assumption. It’s an assumption of maximum dps in an optimal environment. That’s not actually useless – I’ve seen plenty of builds, or rotations, and similar get worked out in theorycrafting, and then applied to actual play as solid improvements over the current iterations thereof. But it’s not data, in and of itself.

Believing blindly in this world of lies is a double edged weapon. Everything you see around you is a lie in half. People lie to each other without even knowing they do.
In this case it’s either the person who claimed Condi LB to be the highest DPS weapon or the one that cut him down with anti-statement.

You can actually both be ‘lying to yourselves! It’s not that simple. Only one of you can be CORRECT, because this is an absolute statement that requires someone to be on top, but that doesn’t mean you’re correct for the reasons you think you are or that you professed.

I, for example had a test where my GS dps was doing ~5% less damage than the sword on stationary targets. ~15% more DPS than sword in practice. Do you want data? I can support my statements.

What do you have, exactly? I know the game provides some statistics in sPvP, but sPvP is probably the place I’d least ask for it outside of maybe Stronghold. It isn’t a controlled environment at all, and it doesn’t actually measure dps – nor should it, because burst damage is important in every PvP mode I’ve seen in nearly every directly competitive game, MMO or not. A sustained win rate in ranked is more than sufficient to prove the validity of a build (In my view, which is subject to change).

I mean, are you soloing bosses and using time-to-kill? Because that works surprisingly beautifully for a personal dps measure, but such a build probably needs survivability that one might not need in a team.

Your data does not mean anything unless people blindly believe the numbers without knowing what they mean. That’s not how science but life works.

The numbers represent the actual dps done, preferably in live fire conditions. You’re right, they don’t mean anything unless people understand them. That’s why you explain what you’re putting up, and why the community as a whole tries to learn what it’s looking at. Other people provide their numbers, and you work communally from there to try to work out the best solutions. It’s not like this kitten hasn’t been done before – it’s ultimately what raiders do when they talk shop to each other, when they aren’t titanic tools or wrapped up in drama or similar.

On the downside, it can make a game more stale, but it’s not like GW2 hasn’t had that problem in its PvE – it’s the exact reason I stopped playing.

Chrispy.5641:

- I said videos, OR DATA, but I guess that because I didn’t say Parser, It was ignored so you can keep ranting about something Anet has stated thousands of times they do not want in this game?

Blank stare
I’ve found combat log parsers for GW2. Nearly every MMO in the history of ever has said ’don’t use them’. How much they choose to enforce it varies wildly, but this single statement is nigh-eternal.

I know what you are saying by Parser, you are talking about the Advanced Combat Tracker (why you are abbreviating it to parser which means something entirely different (similar in programming and even language terms, but still different)

…do you know what words mean? The abbreviation for that particular parser is ACT (Which is itself also an acronym). ‘Parser’ is using the generic term instead of the specific, not an ‘abbreviation’, because there are more parsers than there are MMOs and I wouldn’t dream of asking for a specific one I’m reasonably confident doesn’t have a plug in for the game I’m on. Comparing it to using SCH for Scholar is pretty hilarious – it’s the inverse! SCH is ensuring I use the specific term, not the generic, because the generic could easily be read as something entirely different. Here, I use the generic, because there is little room for confusion amongst people with any knowledge of MMOs at all (Unlike with Scholar, which even has perfectly valid GW2 intepretations, putting aside the rest of MMOs in perpetuity).

Whether it’s accurate to programming in the general, I don’t know or really care about – certainly, I’ve known multiple tech professionals refer to them as parsers, but then, the term has a particular meaning in MMO communities that may well be different from its use in tech generically. Words do that. Welcome to language, enjoy your stay.

instead of just outright saying Combat Tracker, I have no idea, especially since its not common to these forums. It might be related to the subchorionic hematoma (SCH) you main in that other game or something. I don’t know.)

…no, it’s related to the fact that unlike you, I have broad experience in MMOs. ACT is A parser. But parsers are parsers – there are plenty, and they’re a concept we’ve dealt with for more then a decade, across many MMOs. Each game, inevitably, has its own parsers or plug-ins to existing parsers, because they are made and maintained by the playerbase. Why would I expect there to be an ACT version for GW2? Plenty of MMOs, many more popular, don’t have an ACT version in particular.

For those few of you who don’t know, this program is also called MMORPG Log Parser

That’s a statement of what it is, not an alternate name. You are almost adorable.

and has been around since before World of Warcraft, and it tracks pretty much anything you could ever want from damage and pretty much everything else combat related. It was originally used for Everquest 2, but there are hundreds of plug-ins that allow its use with many other games.

Anet has said no to these types of things thousands of times, and actively works to disable them whenever a new one pops up. so, here are your options for data, from most useful to least useful…

Yeah, yeah, pretty much every company has said ‘no’ since the creation of the MMO. Most of them don’t work too hard at it, but only (to my knowledge) WoW has opened its arms and welcomed community tools – a good decision I was hoping to see replicated elsewhere, because WoW did it with the caveat that the game can’t be automated, and they’d stomp automating tools and their users flat (nfc how well they succeeded there).

This notwithstanding that from what I can tell, ANet’s policy is against reading game data – combat log parsers don’t do that – they read the combat log already available to players, and document it with accuracy humans don’t really have.

1) Videos
2) Screenshots of chat logs
3) Math for theoretically perfect scenarios
4) People who actually play the game

You’re not going to get data any other way. If you don’t trust what is said on these forums, go test it for yourself, go experience it for yourself, and even though you don’t like playing that card, come back and join us in laughing at that guy’s statement. Either way. This discussion was over before you even started posting.

…the only one ‘laughing’, was you. The other responses pointedly asked for maths to support his statement, which means they took it seriously (and prompted my question as to why maths were acceptable). Also, calling a discussion ‘over’ when you’re actively participating in it is pretty laughable!

His sig is to a qol ranger issue. This is complete insanity. I mean, I don’t know that Shared Anguish needs a nerf, but this… xenophobia is absurd.

I don’t know about ‘stronger’ (Though more pet defensive strength doesn’t seem like it’d break anything, they aren’t focus targets often), but cosmetic options would be spectacular, for sure. Some can’t reasonably be armored (birds) but most could, for a start.

They do grow and level with you though. They could maybe have their default name changed, but… I’m not so sold on them growing up.

Chrispy.5641:

People on here have more than enough experience with the Ranger to know that whatever video or data is shown as proof (…proof that longbow condi, axe/dagger, or axe/torch is Ranger’s highest dps weapon…) will be under such a specific set of perfect circumstances, that it might as well be theory crafted math. In which case, it will be exactly what the Rangers say (the Rangers who actually played the profession for the last three years and aren’t suddenly jumping on in the last year), and that is that its not possible under normal circumstances.

…That’s why you don’t use videos, which ultimately are of specific moments. It really sounds like there just aren’t parsers for this game, but parsers can’t lie like that (They can be used to lie in different ways, ofc). They can be written to include crit rates (Which should be normalized across an entire dungeon run or raid, even if you pulled a lucky break on a boss – also unlikely, but at least possible). Parses capture the exact (Or as close to it as can possibly be done) amount of damage dealt by each member, and from that derive your dps. Further, you differentiate between dummy parses, and parses of actual encounters. Dummy parses can be useful to see if you’ve worked out basic mastery of your rotation, but parses of actual encounters are, ultimately, what matters most.

Also, ‘experience can tell you’ precisely nothing. That’s basically relying on your preconceived notions to form your opinion – that’s EXACTLY why you use hard data if you can. The whole POINT of getting actual data from real encounters is to avoid that nonsense – after all, plenty of ‘experienced players’ will tell you that you can’t get good dps from a ranger to start with. People in this forum allege this is inaccurate – hard data would do a lot more for your case (if it were available, which it appears not to be) than pure math or ‘experience’ (Which is subjective to start with – plenty of old timer rangers in this very thread have disagreed on numerous points, much less elsewhere in the forum)

I swear to christ, for people who allegedly care about science, nerds are extraordinarily bad at applying its principles in day to day life. Also, the last thing YOU want to try is to pull this ‘experience’ card. I don’t exactly have cause to value your opinion. My experience with you tells me to disregard your opinion – if you had data, I would have a much harder time gainsaying you. But you don’t (granted, because it doesn’t appear to exist). I mean, I don’t even know you’ve been here – the hell makes you think I ought to trust you? I could just as easily as you say I’ve been paying attention the whole time.

Tragic Positive.9356:

No it’s just that you mentioned a weapon for highest DPS … a dagger.
If you had any idea what an error that is, you’d see why Heim asked you to demonstrate.

The Longbow might just as well be what you are trying to make it sound, but under veeeeery specific conditions. Or better said, it’s a roulette. So no, your calculations are sheer speculation. No facts whatsoever.

But since I’m long aware you can’t prove it with math, I asked when do we hop in for the demonstration. If you surprise me, I’m nothing but all in for better DPS than the one hundreds of people kept improving for several months.

You are, in a very real sense, confusing me for someone else. I’ve very carefully (Probably not always successfully) tried to avoid making pronouncements on dps – where I come from, if you haven’t seen or produced parses, you try to shut up about that. How you misread “Rutee” for “lxghostxl” I don’t know, but let’s chalk it up to tiredness (Also, I’m on EU servers – I doubt I could ‘demonstrate’ anything even if I were of a mind to)

What I said, is that it’s weird to use math instead of data. Because it is. Using math to ‘demonstrate’ the dps of a build is the definition of theorycrafting – the whole point of why that term was created, is that the actual play of the game can render the math pointless. This should be immediately obvious to GW2 players – against humans, you have iFrames that can be used against your cornerstone attacks (As well as condi-cleanse, blocks, reflects, etc), and against both players and AI, you still have defensive concerns – using D4 as an evade rather than for deepz, for instance. Math is theorycrafting – what you actually want, to establish dps, is data – for instance, parses that delineate how much damage you ACTUALLY DO per second, based on real play data. Hence my question – if there are no parsers, then theory is indeed all you have to work with, which sort of sucks, but hey.

lxghostxl.5097:

they should also fix the signet. now it has 1sec cast time which is the most annoying thing and one of our main requirements to survive. other class with signet does not have that cast time because its supposed to be instant…… ANET always mess up Rangers and they will not stop showing how worthless we are.

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Signet

Look at all dese instant signets. Seriously, the only class with more instant signets than Ranger is Thief. Does SotW need a cast time? Dunno, and admittedly probably not. But it’s not unique in having one.

Ephemiel.5694:

We aren’t a full support. I wouldn’t have minded if they expanded on the SUPPORTING aspects of the Ranger, that would’ve been awesome honestly, but why the hell are they making us HEALERS?

Healing, ultimately, is nothing more than a form of support (Which, indeed, is why many other games tend to just throw the healers in with the other supports in categorization). You are forsaking some damage dealing (either by potential or by action economy) to help the team win (and you aren’t doing it by eating hits, since it’s genuinely useful to distinguish tanks). Hearing this just reinforces that people are allergic to green numbers.

Forgot to mention that Druid also does absolutely nothing with the Ranger’s pet.

Yeah, that’s bloody weird, and a complaint I have with the traitline. I took the class for the explicit purpose of using the little guys (Or big ones, My ranger’s an asura so they’re basically all bigger than me). Like, I get ‘no minors affect it’, that’s not new, but ‘no traits at all’? No staff skills or majors? WTH?

…does this game not have parsers made for it? It’s /weird/ to see requests for proof with math, and not, like, data.

atheria.2837:

“Elite specializations aren’t suppose to be an upgrade to the core” so your premise is that the rest of the other “Elite Specializations” don’t add to the core damage?

HahahahahHAhahahaahahHAHAhaahahahah.

Wrong.

Given how many classes hate their specialization, your misreading of Ehecatl’s point is surprisingly accurate

I dunno, I thought Rangers hated Druid, but looking at the Tempest and Berserker hate seemed to quickly cure that. I thought for sure Berserker would be tons of fun too, since it has a 10s Stun break, but then, I don’t actually PvP, much less on Warrior, so I defer to the experts.

It often feels like the Necro’s the only class genuinely happy with their spec (Granted, I’d be shocked if it didn’t increase their dps, since melee tends to have higher dps than ranged if it can live through it… but that also isn’t what folks tend to talk about w/ it.)

Maikky.8526

Them bias

Berzerker ? Totally not a condi based melee elite, no such thing as sword!

Warrior is one of the most solid classes out for this, yes.

Reaper ? Totally not a power based melee elite, no such thing as dagger!

Well, there is a dagger, but see above.

DH seems to be about bringing ranged dps with some backup.

Herald focuses on boons and offensive support (In fairness, given that Revenants’ Schtick is ‘discrete modes that you pick two of, this isn’t necessarily a huge change)

Daredevil almost definitely does not change the core role that much.

Scrapper definitely does change the core that much (I mean, seriously, it’s a full melee weapon).

Chronomancer seems to get much better buff access, but maybe I’m off entirely and underestimating Mesmer!

Elementalist is hard to place, because their schtick is ‘do everything perfectly’,

Did Ranger have to be like DH or Scrapper? No. Was there a cosmic law it couldn’t be? No. Rather than making me question druid, it makes me question Daredevil and Berserker in particular.

Alack, a forum bug.

Tragic Positive.9356:

I’ve seen several groups (not many but still) ask directly for Frost Spotter rangers.

And the class has been recognized as MetaZerk by the community by metabattle (where, of course, the meta comes from) for the past few weeks even though we haven’t really been directly buffed in DPS ever since Trait Changes.

See, the fact that it’s requested in-game means infinitely more than the fact that a particular site lists it (Unless that site tracks aggregate uses of a particular thing across all games/plays/etc). The metagame is about how the game is actually played, not about how it could be played. And I can plainly tell you, I don’t see those requests at /all/ in the EU servers. Even I think they probably exist, but if they are rare requests, they aren’t really ‘in the meta’. They could be, but they aren’t (yet).

Plus, all the maths and experience say that Rangers provide better DPS than a warrior, can fill the party with perma fury and swiftness, 11 permanent might, and high amount of vulnerability. …
But that is nothing but human factor. A skilled Ranger is better contribution for the party than any other DPS fill-in (unless you need utility like skips or heavy reflects).
A bad ranger, on the other hand, is the worst nightmare you can probably get. That’s why people do not risk for the trade-off is not worth.

You sing ranger’s praises rather more highly than your source does, to say the least.

Chrispy.5641:

So it really is hard for you to type “I’m a healer main in another game”, like to the point that you are so physically unable to you spent half the thread trying to defend not just saying that to start.. Got it, As long as you admit that, everything is right in the world again.

No, it wouldn’t be hard – it would just be less specific than I wanted to be. As much as you may feel there is only one way to communicate, you are in error.

Chrispy.5641:

Listen son, you could just say healer since that’s what we’re talking about, but its pretty obvious your either too lazy to type 4 letters or just trying to complicate things by using an acronym from (let me guess here) FFXIV that not many of really care about.

Yeah… that’s kinda the idea, skippy. It isn’t immediately obvious I’m referring to a healer when I say ‘I main a Scholar’. It’d be perfectly valid to assume I was trying to be coy about maining Mesmer/Ele/Necro. Wrong, but valid.

So I’ll ask again, What is wrong with people like you who can’t be bothered to type out a full word because the acronym isn’t common on these forums?

That cute little truth bomb you fumbled with about how ‘Scholars are often not healers’ is exactly why I used an abbreviation – It would be more comprehensible, because there is no room for misintepreting it as a generic concept – it’s not like you care super much about understanding a game you don’t play and presumably had little interest in.

So….Rangers have been meta for about 9 days then? I wouldn’t call that meta, or even good.

I mean, if they’ve been in demand for 9 days, then yeah, for now, they’re meta. If they aren’t in demand, they aren’t meta. It’s not a good commentary on where range’s been for 3 years if they’ve only been meta for 9 days, you’re right, but it doesn’t mean much to their state now.

Loyo.8526:

Honestly, I think that druid in itself is a scary specialization. Its super strong in support healing, but its offensive and non-healing support is lackluster, along with its damage being on the lower end. because of this, once people get the hang of Revenant, it will just be a pretty useless specialization outside this. So it really needs to be made LESS specialized unlike other specializations because right now, its such a complete package in healing that its not even really much synergy found outside with moment of clarity.

This does seem pretty likely, yeah. Druids probably do have much better healing numbers (Given the sheer number of heals, it’d be pretty implausible for them not to), but Glint/Vent or Guardian both bring offensive team support as well as healing and defensive support, as could a Cleirc’s Ele. If you can get away with lower heal numbers (Which you should be able to, because otherwise you have poor design that forces the other healers out), you would probably shun the Druid even if they have higher HP/S, since overhealing gives nothing in most games (GW2 included)….

…but if Rangers are desired for the deepz Spirits add as support already, Druid may be fine enough (Even if it’s suboptimal to Glint/Vent or Guardian, which is my big concern)

Chrispy.5641:

I could gather that from the context. I just take issue with people who can’t spend the extra .5 second it would have taken to type out exactly 4 more letters so people would understand an acronym they don’t normally see.

You also wouldn’t have liked it when I said this about Scholars:

Just as much about damage as they are healing in most games. One subclass from one game doesn’t mean they are all healing.

Hah. This is honestly adorable – you think you’re giving me an unpleasant truth to say “sometimes, classes styled after academics are dps”. No, really? I wonder how I might distinguish the rather more generic term ‘scholar’ (which, after all, could be misinterpreted to even refer to classes in GW2) to specify the particular iteration where they’re a healer that I mained… perhaps I’ll use their abbreviation from the game where they’re healers…

Tragic Positive.9356:

That’s sad… Because Rangers have been meta ever since pre-HoT update.
I’ve explained it countless of times so I don’t feel like going through with it again.

If you feel like reading in through (instead of using your own head), feel free to do so. But I’d say chances for that are too slim. You skeptical attitude will prevent you from doing it because why on earth would someone else be right when you weren’t able to prove anything at all.

Er, aren’t you confusing ‘meta’ with ‘strong’? Maybe the NA servers are different, maybe I’m not looking often enough, but the meta seems unchanged from Guards, Eles, and Wars. I’ve not seen people ask for Rangers. I believe you when you say they’re good (I reserve such judgements for parses and similar, personally), but that doesn’t make them the meta, because the meta is determined by the community.

Kenney.5461:

Irenio CalmonHuang.2048:

The underlying system of combat is built around area attacks. This is why the majority of base weapon attacks strike multiple targets in the affected area, unlike other games which strike one target – the one you have selected. Our system makes things like positioning and facing far more important and engaging; this also means that the concept of ‘AoE’ is not as easy to distinguish and thus handle in different ways.

That said, we are currently looking at systemic ways to help with player pet and minion survivability.

Add so when the player dodge the pet/minions dodge at the same time ?

This would work for rangers, but not Mesmers or Necros. The things that kill Necro minions are not things that should be dodged. I’m kinda leery of it for Ranger pets, but since we just have the one beefier buddy it should work better.

Chrispy.5641:

He’s not saying its going to be unique to healers, he’s saying all the current problems with the game, what you just described, is going to get worse with healers in content they are required for.

If it happens, it’ll be because the community was already genuinely horrible. I get far less abuse as a healer in a game where they’re more required, and healers have far less sacrosanctity than they did a decade ago.

I mean, I’ve seen newbie Guards treated like complete crap for not slotting a particular wall skill in advance, and blamed for wipes because of it. You think that’s qualitatively different from what’s in the OP? I’m not convinced it’ll be worse for this game’s healers, because it’s already pretty bad.

Also SCH? What the kitten is an SCH? What is wrong with people who can’t be bothered to type out acronyms that aren’t common to these forums?

I expected you to know what that was about as much as I expected you to know an Empath Defender – not at all. I also figured, from context, you could gather that they were a healer class in an MMO. It’s not like ‘Scholar’ connotes ‘healer’ outside of its own game.

Chrispy.5641:

As someone who played one of those games that required a healer in absolutely freaking everything…..

I’m a SCH main, and ran a empath Defender back in the day. He’s really, truly, not. Or at least, he’s wrong if he thinks it’s unique to druids. I mean, have you dungeoned in this game? People are already titanic jerks to each other about doing everything ‘perfectly’. There are plenty of groups you can’t join without X AP and full zerk gear, with kittening gearchecks (Which given that it requires manual linking, seems like it’d take longer than just the slower run).

I don’t genuinely expect Druids to be treated better in content where you could reasonably ask for them, no, but it’s a symptom of how the game’s community usually treats people, not some weird thing only Druids (Or only healers, if you prefer) will experience.

Chrispy.5641:

Yay! I’m Cancer!!!

Yep.

Ten Charrs.

Edit: Seriously, an expansion is imminent This is the normal time in an MMO’s life cycle for players to return; all the moreso when it was B2P. And you idiots are here pretending all strange faces on the forums are ~Mysterious Strangers~ whom, GASP! PLAY OTHER CLASSES.

To be fair, this isn’t what I had in mind, in comparison to the toxic way players tend to treat each other in dungeons and the standards set for LFG, but you know, it qualifies.

Dradiin.8935:

Chrispy.5641:

Its kind of funny that there’s people posting on here saying that Ranger is in fact useful and wanted. Where the christ were these people for the last three years all the way up until Druid was announced?

Not here defending Ranger, that’s where.

EXACTLY !

None of these guys main a Ranger till POP here yah go Rangers go heal…

I got tired of the cancerous community (I frankly consider the Barrens or the Gold Saucer a step up from this game half the time, and that’s pathetic), and was stressed out trying to keep up with the Living STory’s achievements (while trying to advance in the base game’s), so I played different games. I only recently had another class besides Ranger hit 80. Not that it’s your god kitten ed business.

Tragic Positive.9356:

Will druid be mandatory for Raids? No, not really. But druid is one of the better options how to fill a certain role. To sustain the damage that you cannot avoid and your own healing source cannot keep up.

See, this is one of the things I expected to hear about Druids – who the hell made anyone think only Druids would be viable healers? Because I sure as hell didn’t see anything like that. But we knew Druids, Guards, Revenants, and Elementalists would all have varying degrees of heals.

I mean, I don’t know that it’s TRUE that they’re more efficient (strictly speaking, the most efficient healer is the one htat throws the bare minimum of support to keep you alive while maintaining the highest dps… so in other words, I fear Eles will still handle it) but it’s definitely weird that some of the posters here thought Drood would be the alpha and omega of all healing.

Like, probably (I wouldn’t immediately bet on ‘no rangers unless 2+ druids, but the rest sure) but what makes you think people aren’t titanic jerks for playing ‘wrong’ already?

lxghostxl.5097:

ranger is a dps class.

Druid ain’t.

you want us players who paid for the game and chose this class to be a healer and if we dont like it we don’t play it?

Yeah, basically. I expect you not to use the druid specialization outside of some lockdown builds if you don’t want to heal. Have a cookie.

LOL! you are fooled by ANET and it is expected since not so many out there control their own brain.

I am getting too old for these kids, I swear to youkhrist.

you were just told by ANET to be a healer

Well, no. If I find it enjoyable in this game, I may choose to be a healer, though.

in a game where healers are not required LOL!!!!

Statement assumes facts not in evidence, unless you’re a time traveler who played through Raids.

anduriell.6280:

I don’t like you to think i ave any animosity against you, i don’t.

What Ireno said it makes a lot of sense at developing level. The engine can be designed to use always a AoE effect when dealing damage. Why?

You genuinely need to speak more clearly. I’m pretty sure you’re ESL, so I’m sorry, but while I have several guesses on what you’re trying to say, I’m not sure which it is.

Otherwise design a weapon to hit more than one target would need to do the calculations separately based in distance and position, and we already see how buggy is the engine when it has to calculate paths.

Look, what I’m talking about is something the engine ALREADY does (I’m pretty sure).

Take Elementalist – let’s say you have earth spec, and the Serrated Stones talent. You deal +5% damage to targets with a bleed. You bleed your primary target with an AA, and then use an AoE – only your primary target takes +5% damage, right? Is_Minion should work out the same way – it’s a conditional damage modifier, based on the target’s state. To be fair, I don’t know that World Bosses or similar can do attacks like this, but the technology already exists within the game, and in a way we KNOW exists.

anduriell.6280:

Again, you keep misleading with your arguments:
You need the water field.
Base numbers are not the 5k they claim.

No one gives a wooden nickel for base numbers. People care about actual HP/S. Your guardian build CAN’T blast a water field; Druids have what, 3 easily accessible blast finishers in your half-finished build? And at least one water field, going solely off your build?

Hell, you kittening argue the same for base numbers – I mean have you seen CA’s channel? The base numbers on that are INCREDIBLE. IT’s up to 6k AoE healing – AT 500 Healing power. You probably won’t get that in PvP or Wuvwuv, but you will ABSOLUTELY get that in PvE.

Also i’m using the numbers from that site:
http://en.gw2skills.net/editor/
Because i will not put the game again just to check if the amounts are correct. And that could mean that also the numbers in Guardian skills are wrong.

They are accurate, for Guardian, except possibly Signet of Courage (Which I didn’t check at all). But they are inaccurate, for Druid. IT’s like the Guardian skills are old and not being tweaked constantly, and the Druid is new, and being tweaked constantly, or something.

In any case i don’t care. I’m telling you that DH build is more useful than druid.

Okay, and I’m telling you I’m the queen of england. Neither of these is a particularly believable statement.*

In my OP i stated that if you want to go healer going DH is more satisfying than Druid, because heals better and more often. And that’s a fact.

If it’s a fact, demonstrate it. All you have is theorycrafting, and you KNOW now that the Druid numbers you’re using are wrong – it’s trivially demonstrable.

*Well, technically, I’m agnostic, still, on whether the DH is more useful overall. Mace/Shield have cool defenses, many of which help the party. But it’s a less good healer.

And DH is a selfish profession.

lol. As a whole, sure, but YOURS? You have a LOT of group utility here. kitten , you’re using Mace/Shield. Be less blatantly dishonest.

Ehecatl.9172:

SemiProBBQ.8946:

if you’re argument is alot of attacks are aoe so that’s too many attacks my pet takes less damage from i disagree, any class can kill my pet in a handful of attacks a better idea would be for my dead pet to not go on a 60s cd on swap and instead keep it at 20s, there’s no reason to have our class mechanic knocked out for a minute

It’s not a matter of balance but of sheer mechanics. There is no code that differentiates “AoE” damage from “Single target” damage. They can’t make an AoE damage reduction ability because there is no AoE damage. There is only damage.

I’m extraordinarily skeptical this isn’t doable. Maybe the engine doesn’t track AoE damage, but it absolutely tracks individual skills and has conditional damage increases based on the target’s state – For instance, traits can deal +X% damage if Condition-Y is on the target. Or Ancient seeds, where if you hit people under particular CC statuses, you immobilize.

Well, here’s a state to track: Is_Minion. Then, on skills deemed acceptable, Is_Minion: -90%, or -80%, -10% damage, whatever! I don’t pretend to know what the right number is. I don’t know the full list of skills that would need this by any means, but it certainly would include at least some boss specials.

But don’t tell someone who regularly plays a modern MMO where not only do pets have pet protection, but that protection doesn’t apply to cleaves (Which, in the other MMO, only hit pets when either a tank or the pet owner drastically kitten up), most room-wide or otherwise unavoidable damage, or similar. This is absolutely doable – you don’t have to mark AoE damage as special, just the moves that cause it. It should be doable within currently existing technology, going solely off of traits we know exist (And probably without an annoying buff icon to mark minions to boot).

Would melee cleaves keep their full damage? I have no idea whether they would, or should – in the MMO I’m thinking of, they do, but you have to screw up greatly for a cleave to hit your pet (Or occasionally, be volunteering them to take damage for someone else). Maybe in Guild Wars 2, cleaves default to -30% minion damage, PBAoE defaults to -50%, and Targetted AoE defaults to -80%. I don’t know. But this should absolutely be doable. Time consuming, if they have to individually go through every single peon’s skill list, but doable. And really, they would ‘only’ need to do it for player skills, dungeons, world events/bosses, wuvwuv mobs, and raids (I’m pretty sure). Still probably time consuming, but by no means a technology issue.

These shouts aren’t hammy. Who in your voice acting or art department thought these lines should be read seriously? I’m not sure I have any desire to play a Reaper now.

This is not sarcasm. I am disappointed at all of the new shouts as things you hear in battle, but only with Reaper am I disappointed in their voice direction.

anduriell.6280:

So my point is still valid.

No. It is in fact, not. Because your point, in what I quoted, was that Staff 3 (2.1k at 500 healing power every 12 seconds – I hadn’t traited in that screenshot) was worse than 1.5k (at 1.2k healing power) every 8 seconds. Just. Stop. Talking. You can’t argue your points for kitten. Let literally anyone else extoll the virtues of other healers – you suck at it. You refuse to see that your arguments are actively harmful to your case, because you’re looking at less HP/S from the guardian as a win from the kittening guardian.

If someone claimed 5k from that, I’d like to see it, but I could easily see it breaking 4k (Staff-3 is a blast, you bloody maroon).

anduriell.6280:

Staff-3 does 1.6K healing every 12 secs. which is subpar even to the 1.5K healing every 8 secs from the guardian.

Staff 3 does 2.1k with half the healing power. Stop. Talking.

anduriell.6280:

For me the support the druid gives is really bad compared to the Dragonhunter. And you have the longBow and traps (in case you do trapper ranger in WvW).
So really i still see the DragonHunter so much better healer than the druid. In spike and sustained healing.

Are you illiterate, or are you just so intent on seeing the answer you want to see that you can’t see anything else? Let me repeat:

According to the GW2builds site, with twice the healing power I heal for less than I do in the actual game. I logged in with Cel armor and a no-stat staff (I haven’t bothered picking stats for it yet). I heal for 10% more on most skills, with up to 30% difference. And because you do not read, I repeat: This is with half of the healing power. Guardian heals are as the site says.

anduriell.6280:

Recursivision.2367:

You are using rune of the dolyak.

In this forum are a lot of people that enjoy healer theme. With Dragonhunter can get so much better and also give so much support than the druid.
So i think is important to help them in this regard. It is not noise it’s something i discovered..

You are such a transparent liar. But you know, not only is your DH build worse, you should probably know, Guild Wars 2 builds’ site is blatantly off with druid heals. With half the healpower and the default traits on logging in, I have notably more healing than the one for your build. I hope you have actual parses, at this point.

And having just checked, they seem more or less accurate for Guard heals (I’m a little short on both raw heals and healing power).

anduriell.6280:

So i’m right again.
You didn’t need to use so many words.

Have you actually passed a ToEFL? Because you’re either ESL and bad at it, or an extraordinarily bad reader (which a ToEFL should catch).

Um, it can heal max HP, not 50k, once every 2.5 minutes. Your own build that you keep slamming can easily push 10k in 3 skill casts – it gets 7.8k in 2. The DH you’re posting here looks incredibly unimpressive for the purpose of healing – it might be better at keeping people alive with some of those utilities, but its looking solidly worse at HP/S.

This doesn’t mean the DH is worse – if the DH can keep people alive while doing better dps, welp. But it appears a weaker healer.