Guild Wars 2

Bearhugger.4326:

Meh. Arenanet has never been very good at balance. The game’s change history has been a string of overbuffs and overnerfs ever since launch, which is typical of development teams that know that their game has a balance issue but have no clear understanding of all the states, numbers and conditions that are at play, and just can’t pinpoint the actual issue. Truth be told, balancing an MMO is hard. Very hard. Because it involves both a number problem and a social problem.

This is why the approach of Guild Wars 1 was so brilliant. Instead of trying to balance the game in vain they just threw hundreds of skills per expansion and let the community sort out what is good and what is bad, and with the sheer number of skills there was, there was always a dozen builds to try. But I disgress.

It’s a shame but I don’t think they will come back on that decision for the Warrior changes, however bad it is. They didn’t come back on their decisions for the other terrible changes they have made in the past.

I’m merely trying to express that I’m very unhappy about how the class feels now, power PS was always sluggish but not so bad that it couldn’t be worked around. Now its like swimming in a pool of molasses.

If the damage was or is an issue there are ways to shave off damage using the coefficients attached to each skill without changing the timings of the skills. You can take away damage and never mess with the feeling other than maybe impactfulness, which is arguably similar, but a skill has to be reasonable and enjoyable to cast before it has to have appropriate damage.

I think a lot of these balance changes were misplaced, and any game with a high number of variables is hard to balance, but balance is where there should be a higher collection of user feedback and adjustments from that, you’re best players are going to figure out how to use the strengths of a class and you can balance around that, and even inexperienced players regardless of whether or not they are doing anything intensive will be able to tell you if something does or does not feel bad.

Its like Andew Loomis said in successful drawing. A laymen does not have to have a concrete understanding of art to know whether or not he likes your work, it is beyond the artist to subvert something rooted so deeply in the subconscious.

Alright so I’m kind of livid about these changes so I’m going to express my understanding of why these warrior changes are going over so poorly with a minimal amount of rage. Primarily from the perspective of a raider.

So I played Power PS Warrior for a long time until people started to popularize Condi PS, which I tried out and enjoyed. The reason I enjoyed it more was pretty simple, it wasn’t about whether the damage was better it was about smoothness.

I invested a lot of time learning how to maximize power warrior dps through rotations on every fight because I wanted to see what it was like and I like everyone else encountered the clunkier interactions that come with the greatsword and the other skills. ex. (dodging too close to the end of whirlwind attack will cause your warrior to dodge in the direction that you cast rather than in the direction you are trying to move.)

The rotation for condi ps was a bit weird to start but after a little bit of time investment I realized it was really smooth and quite open in terms of its timing, I was never smashing buttons to try and fight the skill queuing system in Guild Wars which has a tendency to react poorly to some skills trying to be cast in certain orders.

A long time ago there was a huge change to Elementalist skill cooldowns that floored the Ele community, and I didn’t understand because I didn’t play Elementalist and I still dont. Now I get it, you’ve taken something that felt good and made it feel bad. It doesn’t flow as well.

Choosing to alter the flow of skills over choosing to altar the damage they cause is really the worst thing I’ve seen come out of the balance changes for this game. I’m not just angry, I’m sad, and I’m not sure I’m going to continue playing warrior because of it.

Please add the clipping back, the floating is unbearable ;-;

Nike.2631:

NovaanVerdiano.6174:

Thanks for the laugh. If you honestly think that your ideas shaped elite specs…

I don’t “think” they ran with my blueprint. I know.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/cdi/CDI-Character-Progression-Horizontal/first

You might start around page 38, to speed things along.

In any event I was speaking chiefly to the Revenant changes. The Druid changes are just another example of them doing what many people have suggested: reduce base values and increase stat contribution so that IF you want to be a strong healer you need to gear for it, and if you gear for it, it should be proportionately more rewarding while you’re losing capability in other areas.

The changes to the druid don’t take them out of play, it just forces harder choices, and harder choices are a good thing.

Nerfing Base Heal and Buffing Scaling does increase you need to use appropriate healing gear to achieve more effective heals, but it does not bridge the same gaps that really cement druid as the core healer for raid groups. Revenant and Tempest healers have other forms of utility, but nothing that matches the effectiveness of Grace of the Land.

If you want to make the other Healer’s more readily accepted then change GotL to something that impacts damage way less than it does.

If Grace of the Land instead stated “Your healing effectiveness on the target is increased by X% per stack” It would reward you for keeping your stacks active on targets by making your heals better and remove the dependency on Druids as Healers by not giving them basically free damage utility for healing.

Crippling the base heals makes the niche use of Direct Damage and Condition based druids less likely to function in a group and short of them actually acknowledging that base Ranger needs a buff in PvE there probably will not be builds that replace them moving forward.

Revenant is an amalgamation of abilities and options that makes it an extremely powerful mixed class, but the problem with that is not that its not strong as a class, rather that the things it is capable of collectively are found in more focused strengths from other classes. A Revenant does not offer group wide might stacking as effectively as a Warrior. The range of boons they offer is very adjustable and powerful, but these are all boons that are readily found on other classes that can cover a team.

A Revenant does not have damage to match the current state of Elementalists, Guardians, and Thieves, even though thieves are about to join in that same exodus.

Unless the Revenant sees severe parallel change that gives them enough of a focus in another area they will not compete for the damage slot of other classes, because Chronomancer’s are now doubly required.

The ultimate issue is that Chronomancers are seeing a dramatic change to SOI, not that the Revenant is a bad class.

Jski.6180:

Amaya.1483:

If the most noticeable changes are made to Druid healing and Mes/Rev Boon duration…. there is absolutely no hope for you guys left. /gquit

Druid ARE a healing class the fact that ppl made them into high in dps classes that can still heal well (mostly self heal) is a problem that needs to be fixed. Boon duration mostly mes boon share lets boons go beyond there limit duration or braking boon balancing altogether. Also +50% boon duration was a bad ideal to add to a class and to put that on an aoe is even worst most classes in the game have to work hard for +30% or even less but rev effects gets it for free.

If you want a broken game where you get a super advantages for running broken builds then i am not sure if you want to play a real pvp game and just simply want an “i win game” where you win by doing no work.

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but the only two reasons Revenants are allowed in raids is because they provide Fury and they gave the Chronomancer enough boon duration to cover the groups 100% uptime needs in quickness. Some pre patch builds currently allow you to run without a revenant because you can just as easily get Fury coverage from the druid’s Tiger.

Their damage isn’t stellar and any team that knows how to use their breaks doesnt necessitate the presence of a Revenant.

Teams WILL choose to drop Revenants from raids to run two Chronomancers for quickness coverage. The only exception to this case is if Revenants see such a huge damage increase that they are competitive for a DPS slot, but that means they are competing with damage roles, not one of the now basically mandatory Two Chronomancers. Revenants along with Thieves also do not benefit much from Alacrity.

Druids with damage are only run in groups where the mechanics of the players are tight enough that they aren’t taking avoidable damage, or there is already a healing druid present and they want a mixed class. Making this option kittentier doesn’t fix any kind of problem it literally only removes build diversity. I have never heard anyone in PvE was saying ‘Druids heal too much while doing damage’ because thats not the only team utility that they bring. Tempests have higher sustained and burst heals with a full healing build, but you dont take them over a standard druid because they can’t grant Grace of the Land.

If you wanted to increase the healer diversity you would either REWORK Grace of the Land so its not mandatory OR give tempests something similar so you have a flavor of Tempest healer to go with the three flavors of Druid.

For every person that continues to say that we have no context for the rest of the changes and we should stop making a fuss. Heres the reality, the changes they chose to display to us are BAD changes, and unfortunately part of the development process is to interpret feedback. So what kind of feedback are we giving…. you guessed it… Negative.

Do Necromancer’s need to have epidemic nerfed so that other things in the class can be buffed to shine. Yes, absolutely. Will A-net actually buff the other stuff after gutting Epidemic? Doubtful.

The unfortunate reality is if we only get negative information we can only account for negative outcomes. There was no ‘These changes were slated for PvE and these are for WvW’ because as much as we continue to pressure there has not been a serious endeavor to split the balance between the three game modes. Only minor changes.

Not splitting the game mode balance can only potentially drive players away, theres no positive effect to not splitting the game modes. Developer time or not it needs to be done. This is VERY frustrating and its not like this is the first time we have brought this up.

Ayrilana.1396:

Lendruil.9061:

At the moment, the PvE-Meta is without a doubt the best Meta since launch of the game. Every class is viable in Pve, and many classes even have multiple build options. If this changes go live, revenant will be dead in pve.
Depending on how well the chrono will be able to spread quickness, people will either run two chronos or none. If people run two chronos, thief will be dead as well, because it doesn’t benefit from alacrity, and ele will once again be untouched king of dps.
Regarding the druid-changes, depending on how strong the healing nerf will be, it might kill the condi and the berserker build and thus limit the druid to only one viable build.

Raids do not equal all of PvE. Especially so since the majority of players apparently don’t raid.

Balance does not revolve around low levels of play it revolves around high levels of play where the real squeezing of build and class efficiency comes into play. Like it or don’t if you weren’t playing a meta build or something like it to be able to effectively clear the more difficult content, balance changes are basically not a concern to you.

If competitive games like League balanced around their weakest players as opposed to their strongest players it would shift the balance of the game dramatically and not in a good way, they already went over this exact issue several years ago.

Jaberse.8726:

this is going to NUKE raid composition diversity.

these nerfs, if they go through are basically going to FORCE people to run a mirror comp of

Subgroup1: Commanders Chrono – druid – PS – dps – dps
Subgroup2: Commanders Chrono – druid – PS – dps – dps

-or-
Subgroup1: Chrono (with some boon duration gear) – druid – PS – Rev – dps
Subgroup2: Chrono (with some boon duration gear) – druid – PS – Rev – dps

this is cancer, this demolishes the flexibility and diversity of the current raid meta. if you want to nerf boons for WvW you guys should split it form the other PVE metagame like you guys did for PvP. otherwise youre going to ruin the diversity of raids in favor of catering to the zerg meta in WvW. and frankly these changes wont change anything at all in WvW zerging

Rising Dusk.2408:

OlliX.1705:

As it stands now every class has at least one viable build in raids. If we’re going to be forced to run mirror comp in order to cover the whole party for quickness, revenant won’t be needed in raids and classes that don’t benefit much from alacrity will be pushed out by other classes that benefit more from it. I fear that this patch may kill the great build diversity we currently enjoy.

Yeah, the proposed changes are devastating to PvE build and class diversity and awful for the health of the game.

sureiamdead.1087:

Nerf the Signet of Inspiration in WvW, but PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE don’t touch it in PvE. You will destroy several builds, teamcomps and overall classes (Revenants, Guardians and Thiefs) with this change alone. This is not a good change and you’re forcing the players, especially the Raid community, to play the same comp and classes. Currently every class has it’s place in PvE, even the NECROS and RANGERS which were considered for a long time Trash-tier. Don’t mess this up now.

This. This. This.

Do not just drop “We’re nerfing a bunch of kitten” without telling us what you are going to do to answer the potential fallout caused by these changes.

When people heard leaks about chronomancer nerfs to signet of inspiration of two weeks ago this was the resounding conclusion. That the team compositions would shift considerably to account for the necessity of two chronomancers for quickness uptime.

The revenant gets pushed out because it was originally kept mostly for its Fury production and the boon duration Naturalistic resistance conferred to Chronomancers allowing them to maintain quickness for the entire raid group. Two Chronomancers fill the void that the Revenant was holding onto by a whisper.

Thieves get pushed out because ALACRITY does NOT benefit them nearly as well as it does the current damage focused classes like Elementalist and Guardian. When we get two chronomancers we get more Alacrity that needs to be utilized more effectively.

Changing druid base heal effectiveness and moving into scaling ruins build diversity because it takes away heavily from allowing for mixed druid builds that can fit a variety of team compositions or scenarios that you encounter in raids whether it means needing more direct damage, needing more condition damage, or needing just a straight healer. If you really wanted to make healing the more clear choice you would just increase the healing power scaling of certain druid skills.

If you wanted to promote build diversity outside of druid for the base Ranger class you might consider finally accepting that base PvE ranger needs damage boofs.

Instead you are threatening to push the damage that is just barely worth using out of potential alternative druid builds.

If you need to balance things for WvW balance them for WvW, but please continue to
SPLIT the changes between the game modes because this is actually INCREDIBLY CRUCIAL to the health of this game.

Orpheal.8263:

Tenchu,

I know absolutely well what trait synergy is, but nerfing some traits to death in an already doomed trait line, which needs in overall a revival from the HoT-Sacrifice it received, just to improve therefore minimally in a very questionable way, that seems on first look to be far more of more nerfs, than “enhancements”… I don’t know, for me it just looks liek as if you are searchign for an excuement here – one thats not very convincing.

Serious object permanence issues. I didn’t delete a bunch of traits I moved them into places where they made more sense, and removed the power from some things to make other things more powerful.

Orpheal.8263:

And hey, if Id struggle really so much with English as you say, I’m sure, you wouldn’t have been able to know what I’m talking about so that you could answer to it :P.
I’m surely not the best at English, but I try my best, and hell, I’ve seen here already alot of other people with much worser English than me

Believe me, because most of your ideas seem to be fueled by belief, and not experience, I had to spend an inordinate amount of time deciphering your very chaotic post.

Orpheal.8263:

If its DPS, what you want for your Thief, you focus on DA or Critical Hits and Trickery, not Acrobatics. Acrobatics and Shadow Arts are the Thieve’s defensive and self support traitlines – they aren’t really meant for traits that improve DPS.

The Thief is a DAMAGE class, no one takes them for their supreme utility, or heals or class specific team buffs that only they provide in raids. The Thief is fun to play, but burdening a team with a selfish role is something you might do every once in a while, but is kind of frustrating. Most testing seems to conclude that Condi builds took a hit with the last patch too even with the advent of baseline sharing on venoms.

I didn’t propose my changes to replace Trickery, Critical Strikes, or Deadly Arts as a damage option, I proposed them to pad the damage loss from taking Acrobatics for more survivability and adding a form of team utility as an option.

Orpheal.8263:

Still, I know what your intentions were with your changes to give the thief more group support.. but there are much better options, rather than to dumb down the defensive gameplay for a whole group, because there needs to effectively dodge now only 1 single person an attack, so that automatically all others evade the attack too without that they actually needed to dodge, and instead can turn their thumbs, while just the thief needs to dodge, just because the thief magically dodged everything for the whole group as a single person with just one dodge roll….

The timer that I proposed which could be changed, but in its current state does not allow for a SINGLE thief to dodge for the entire group every time. You would start to barely reach total coverage with four thieves, not really an option. This could be furthermore controlled with a range restriction.

Don’t stick a bunch of senseless ad hoc arguments into a post and expect me to take anything you say seriously.

Orpheal.8263:

snipped cancer-post changes

None of your changes actually account for systems that would be feasible to test in a short time frame, some of them would require new systems and engineer time. Some of them completely disregard any sense of how it might impact parallel game modes, some of them are needlessly complex and are an amalgamation of effects rather than a focused choice for the player to make or for them to understand.

The core of acrobatics is and should be to support dodging as a method of control for the thief and to enhance its functional effects. Not to shoehorn a bunch of weird things in to substitute for the survivability that dodging creates.

A thief’s power is not in heal tanking, its in actually making the effort to dodge the damage that they anticipate and likewise respond with their own attack. It is a much more difficult method of surviving in certain game modes against what one might compare in Guardian or Necromancer, but its supposed to be challenging.

Orpheal.8263:

Thats the way how I would revive acrobatics in a way, how it would receive more Group Support and I included your intention of givving it more DPS in a better and more subtle way, that includes gameplay mechanics, instead of addign only halway useful buff based direct damage boosts.

Nothing is subtle about a train-wreck.

You haven’t contributed anything but abrasive cancer posting, because you can’t separate whats fun from whats feasible. The difficulty here is that I can’t tell if you’re trolling or you’re actually incapable of detecting these things. Both of these directions warrant that I dont bother responding to anything you post, so thats the simple answer. You’re free to waste your time, but I’m done wasting mine.

Jana.6831:

What? It is a mobile reflection field – what are you talking about?
I’m not using it because it looks pretty, btw.

Dagger Storm is a skill that does many things and excels at none. Its like the Tiny Tim of all Trades. The Mobile Reflection thing is interesting but is rarely useful over just dodging or letting another class take a better projectile reflection or destruction skill that always has a shorter cooldown.

The damage and condition application is poor and inconsistent and the cooldown is abysmal.

Its a cool skill, but largely inefficient. Like most racial skills really.

Jana.6831:

PvE players whined they need something to require skill – so they got PvE raids. And the faceroll Hot specialisations which destroyed pvp and wvw on top of that. And that is my point: the stuff you want for PvE would further mess with the other game modes and PvE is already fine, even if thief brings no group utility

Your post points towards complaint, but does not make a point mostly, much like your original, you indicate you are upset by something, but do not propose a way to fix it. And to be fair what your gripe right here indicates is actually quite valid, the PvP and PvE balance of this game should have been separated in a huge way a LONG time ago, but unfortunately it hasn’t.

I’m glad if you aren’t interested in PvE, but dont senselessly apply moaning to a thread focused on PvE changes about how they aren’t relevant, when they are. Provide functional critique to the things you want to see fixed, not divert attention from the actual issue.

Jana.6831:

which I do – I’m just not a healer or anything, I’m self sufficient, know how to survive and how to deal damage – that is my role – no need to turn me into a healer or anything. If that’s too much for PvE thieves or if others can’t live without a tenth squadmember bringing boons then you indeed shouldn’t roll thief, sorry.

I actually proposed to remove the senseless healing that obfuscates the power of dodging in the acrobatics tree and dodging for other players was my simple and what I believe to be creative way to approach offering some kind of thematically appropriate team utility to the traitline.

I certainly CANNOT say everything balance wise would be perfect without testing, but that is with anything.

You didn’t bother to consider the insulting tones in your post so I will show you the same vitriol.

Orpheal.8263:

You want it to grant swiftness only, when successfully dodgign an attack, not anymore generally, thats principally a 50% effectiveness nerf that you suggest there.

Next one feline Grace. you want to turn this trait, which should return to its original effect best that it has on introduction into literally a crappy situantional useful tiny damage buff of lousy 5%, which you have only when you have vigor, and if you have no vigor, this trait is a freaking WASTE.
Ever thought about it for a second, how useless this trait is, if you have no vigor??? Guess not …
Sure, the current FG is also half of the tiem a waste, but thats why i say it should be returned to its original effect, because its original effect was one of the main reasons, why people actually used the Acrobatics Trait Line at all.

I’m not sure how to respond to someone who clearly struggles to understand trait to trait synergy, but its clear to me that you might fail to understand whats there because you also struggle with English.

The baseline traits combined with some of the internal traits allows the user to easily acquire both Vigor and Swiftness, if they are not acquiring it from another source already giving them options as an alternative in that case. (This is important to consider in team composition structure where you are gaining or not gaining important buffs from your other traits or from your allies)

Just because you forgot what the previous line of text said as you started reading the next line doesn’t mean you should post about how I made one thing weaker. I made it weaker to justify making something else stronger.

It says Vigor and Swiftness Enhanced, not Duration Increased. Reading is hard. I know, but please try. Effects Enhanced in the common game language refers to the effects that it applies; not the duration that the buff itself has.

You imply I’ve never played thief but you couldn’t be bothered to do research on how enhanced vigor actually works so let me attach a link to this sentence.

Orpheal.8263:

Next One… you want to nerf our superior vigor effects for another useless damage buff trait??
Acrobatics is not a Traitline for countless damage boosts!
Acrobatics is a defensive and mobility/self/group support based trait line..at least that should it be…

Its not countless, I added two, and changed Swindler to be global, but I expect your Math is as strong as your English.

I didn’t nerf ENHANCED Vigor effects for a damage buff, I moved it.

Orpheal.8263:

Next one, your suggested change to assasins Reward.. again just a straigh nerf idea that can come only from someone with absolutley no thief playing experience.
This trait is actually there to give you as thief more sustainability, so that you dont die as quicky as without it … and you want to change it into a group support trait, just so that every 15 seconds your nearby allies automatically can dodge attacks too, when you dodge.. just of pointless trait, there are better ways to give the thief more Group Support, without destroying its very few sustain options the class has to survive longer in combat at the same time

Assassin’s Reward is not a comparable sustain trait compared to Invigorating Precision, but you might not have actually located the Critical Strikes traitline yet. (Most of the time you should be using No Quarter, but I expect you cant find your dodge key either so I’m assuming you need the sustain.)

The dodging for allies component of the trait is not automatic it is when you dodge. This enables the thief to dodge large telegraphed attacks for their nearby allies, which if you are skilled is actually quite a big deal and similarly replicates the Mesmer’s ability to use Distortion to rescue allies from attacks. It is not as powerful as Distortion because of how Distortion works, but it would still be quite useful.

Orpheal.8263:

Next one.. Vigorous Recovery..your change here would make thieves OP, as with somethign like this they would get too much Vigor and could have it basically permanently, or at least long enough over a course of a battle, that it looks like for the enemy, as if they’d have it permanently and perma vigor on thief is simply OP, especially on daredevil

I actually only moved the effects of Feline Grace to Vigorous Recovery, so the Thief always had this trait, it wasn’t something I just invented. I know I moved it from point A to point B and your object permanence hasn’t fully developed yet, but I assure you its still there.

Orpheal.8263:

Next one, again just a idea of yours, that would nerf the original effect, because the original effect of dont stop protects you as thief from being imobilized at all.
With your version it would be a 50% effectivity nerf, because under your version we wouldn’t be immune to immobilize anymore, we could get immobilized again ,but just with 50% lesser durations and in the case of a thief, its more important to NOT get immobilized at all, than to get immobilized with just half efficiency, because just the fact of getting immobilized can be already in a fast combat enough to make up for the difference, if you end up being spiked to death by your enemy, or having actually a chance to successfully avoid being hit at all..

This change (and all of the others) was on speculation obviously. I can’t flawlessly predict how useful this kind of trait change would be without actually testing it, but I can say that Immobilizes are more frequently a threatening force in PvP and I was more curious to see if the long term reduction of all Immobilizes would be more valuable to a thief than converting a single immobilize into cripple.

Don’t look at any suggestion for change as a certain end point with a certain number attached to it, rather as a starting point to see how things could be improved, if its too strong, dial it down, if its too weak, adjust the numbers upwards.

The general idea is to make dodging more effective, and add party oriented options, while not having to sacrifice as much damage potential as you already do by taking Acrobatics over another traitline. Where as it currently struggles offering anything but strong personal dodge enhancement and some condition removal options.

These are some of the Thief changes I would like to see. I’ve been playing Thief since the game was released and I’ve enjoyed a lot of it, but I feel like there are some things missing and some of the changes we see to the class are not bringing what it needs to really cement it in certain areas of the game. A lot of base traitline changes I’d like to see pertain to raid level content and offering certain kinds of team utility.

Shadow Arts

• Rending Shade - Removed.
  
  (Changed To)

• Compromising Strikes - Dealing damage to an enemy with a Stealth Skill applies the ‘Compromised’ debuff.
• Compromised – ‘Increases damage from all sources by 5% for 15 seconds, stacks up to 5 times.

Reasoning:
Shadow arts is not a solid option over most other trait lines that the thief has because of how weak stealth utility is in raids. Stealth doesn’t even work in some of the raids, period. (Gorseval/Keep Construct) No one brings a thief specifically because of their team utility because until now Basilisk Venom wasn’t better than people taking the time to not drool on their keyboard and use their CC as a team. Basilisk Venom being applied to nearby allies baseline does not change that fact either, as helpful as it is.

A lot of what people care about in Raids is damage and team utility. Right now Thief has pretty good damage and little team utility. Necromancer scepter and Chronomancer sword remove boons on auto chains, theres no way boon stealing/removal is good enough to put on a grandmaster trait because its INFINITELY easier to create your own team boons than to rely on stealing them effectively from an enemy.

Boon stealing is not a core enough mechanic that it necessitates the use of thief over other classes that don’t have to trait out or use alternative weapons to do it.

Compromising Strikes from stealth would provide team utility in the form of damage that functions from consistent application of stealth attacks. It serves the purpose of working with a core class mechanic rather than just being more static passive damage. (Based on the current cooldown of Stealth + Attacks)

Example Trait Placement for Reference

Acrobatics

Core (Minor) Traits:

• Expeditious Dodger (Mnr 1)
  -Grants Swiftness on Dodging (6s)
  -(Changed To) Grants Swiftness (6s) when successfully dodging an attack.
• Feline Grace -> Feline Finesse (Mnr 2)
  -Gain Vigor upon successfully dodging an attack. (5s) (1s CD)
  -(Changed To) Increases Damage and Condition Damage by 5% while you have Vigor.
• Endless Stamina -> Adrenaline Advantage (Mnr 3)
  -The effects of Vigor on you are enhanced by 50%.
  -(Changed To) Increases Damage and Condition Damage by 5% while you have Swiftness.[/b]

Top:

• Instant Reflexes (Top 1)
  -Gain Evasion (2s) when health drops below 50% (40s CD) (Unchanged)
• Guarded Initiation (Top 2)
  -Removes Conditions Vulnerability, Confusion, Weakness, and Slow when striking an enemy while health is above 75% Threshold. (1s CD) (Unchanged)
• Assassin’s Reward -> Acrobat’s Reward (Top 3)
  -Heals the player when using skills that spend initiative for each point spent.
  -(Changed To) Dodging grants Evasion (1s) to nearby Allies (Max: 5)(15s CD)

Middle:

• Vigorous Recovery (Mid 1)
  -Gain Vigor (10s) when using a Healing Skill.
  -(Changed To) Gain Vigor (5s) upon successfully dodging an attack. (1s CD)
• Swindler’s Equilibrium (Mid 2)
  -Successfully dodging an attack while wielding a Sword or Spear reduces Steal by a static amount (1s). Increases Sword and Spear damage (7%).
  -(Changed To) Dodging an attack reduces the cooldown of Steal by a static amount (2s). Stealing increases damage dealt by 5% for 5s. (1s CD)
• Upper Hand (Mid 3)
  -Gain Initiative (1) and Regeneration (6s) when you dodge an attack.
  -(Changed To) The effects of Vigor and Swiftness on you are enhanced by 100%

Bottom Traits:

• Pain Response (Bot 1)
  -Gain regeneration and remove damaging conditions when struck while below the Health Threshold (75%) (16s CD)
  -(Changed To) Removes a condition when struck. (2s CD)
• Hard to Catch (Bot 2)
  -[s]Break Stun and Refill Endurance when you are hit with crowd control. (30s CD) (Unchanged)
• Don’t Stop (Bot 3)
  -Cripple and Chill applied to you have 50% reduced effectiveness. Periodically ignores incoming Immobilize changing it to Cripple instead. (10s CD)
  -(Changed To) Reduces effectiveness of Cripple, Chill, and Immobilize by 50%.

Reasoning:
Acrobatics is currently the least useful traitline and a lot of what it does was invalidated in a survivability sense compared to what Daredevil brings to the table. What I did here rearranging the traits and adding some boon reliant damage means that you aren’t losing as much damage to gain more survivability and you are also given the option of some situational team utility that actually ties in with the dodging mechanic. I also wanted to reward successful dodging rather than dodging senselessly.

Utility Skills

• Signet of Whispers (Elite Skill)
  -Passive: Player gains Stealth (1s) every 6 seconds. The stealth from this signet will not apply if the player is already Stealthed.
  -Active: Player gains Super Stealth for 6s (50s cooldown)(Doesn’t Work in PvP/WvW)
  -Super Stealth stealths the player and does not reveal them when they deal damage.

Reasoning:
The purpose of this signet isn’t stealthing for an eternity it is to enable other weapons to be able to reliably use stealth weapon skills that can’t use off-hand dagger or combo with the smoke field from off hand pistol. (Most of these tricks take too much time/resources to be cost effective in combat.)

The Super Stealth thing was by recommendation from a friend because we were reminiscing over playing as Caithe in Meeting the Asura (Living Story Season 2). It would just be regular stealth in anything other than PvE for obvious reasons.

• Soulstealer Trap (Heal Skill)
  -Places a trap that when triggered steals a significant amount of health from enemies caught. (Max 5 Targets)
  -Applies Chill
  -Small heal when cast (Like most other skills)

Reasoning:
Theres no trap heal skill for the thief, might sound like filler, but it would have uses and synergy with some builds that I’m sure some people would appreciate. There isnt a Trap Elite either lol.

Specializations

Hitman/Sniper/Assassin/Marksman/Sharpshot/Deadeye/PewPew (Whatever name)

• Gains Rifle
• Gains Gadgets
• Gains Reload Class Mechanic (Replaces Steal)
• Summary of Weapon Skills: Long range, slow firing, high damage.
• Summary of Gadget Utility Skills: Thematically appropriate skills that fit with both the theme of the class and the theme of the game.

Reload (Class Mechanic):

• Self Cast
• Restores a Moderate amount of Initiative. (4-5)
• Moderate Cooldown (15-20s)
• Gains benefit from some previous Steal oriented traits that are still relevant.
• Intent of this skill is to fuel more weapon skill usage.
• (I’m sure you could change the name to suit its use for non ranged weapons/skills)

Rifle Skills:

Longshot (Skill 1 – 1200 Range – Targeted)

• Primary Attack
• 0 Initiative
• ¾ s Cast Time (Slow)
• Damage reduced the closer to the enemy that you are.
• High Damage at max range.

Headshot (Stealth Skill – 1200 Range – Targeted)

• 0 Initiative
• ¾ s Cast Time (Slow)
• Applies Vulnerability
• High Damage

Shadowblast (Skill 2 – 900 Range – Cone AoE)

• 2 Initiative
• ½ s Cast Time (Medium)
• Blinds all enemies struck.
• Medium Damage

Ruinous Retreat (Skill 3 – No Range – No Target)

• 3 Initiative
• 1s Cast Time (Animation)
• Leaps backwards firing a shell at the ground that detonates chilling and dealing damage to enemies caught in the blast.
• Medium Damage
• Leap Range (600)

Reap and Sew (Skill 4 – 1200 Range – Target)

• 4 Initiative
• Pierces (All Targets)
• ½ s Cast Time
• Applies 5 stacks of Might for 10s.

Singularity Round (Skill 5 – 1200 Range – Target)

• 6 Initiative
• ½ s Cast Time
• Fires an experimental bullet that pulls all nearby enemies to the target.
• Max 5 Targets

Traits:

Example Trait Placement for Reference, Again.

Top – Initiative Traits:

• Tactical Maneuver (Top 1)
  - Dodging restores Initiative (1) (1s CD)
• Preparation (Top 2)
  - Gadgets restore Initiative (2) when cast. (5s CD)
• Deadly Momentum (Top 3)
  - Killing an enemy restores Initiative (3). (1s CD)

Middle – Utility Traits:

• Magitech Munitions (Mid 1)
  - Longshot, Headshot, Vital Shot, and Sneak Attack pierce.
• Into Shadows (Mid 2)
  - Ruinous Retreat applies Stealth (1s) when it finishes. (5s CD)
• Laceration (Mid 3)
  - Ranged attacks apply Bleeding.

Bottom – Rifle Traits:

• Shadowsnare (Bot 1)
  - Enemies caught in Shadowblast are Immobilized (1s) (10s CD)
• Gunleash (Bot 2)
  - Enemies slain with ‘Reap and Sew’ or ‘Unload’ refund the initiative cost of the skill. (5s CD)
• Quick Trigger (Bot 3)
  - Swapping weapons applies Quickness (4s) (9s CD)

Minor – Core Traits:

• Thirst (Mnr 1)
  - Enemies slain drop orbs on death that heal on contact. (Player Only)
• Anticipation (Mnr 2)
  - Ranged attacks deal increased damage against moving targets.
• Revolver (Mnr 3)
  - Every sixth ranged attack has its damage increased.

Gadgets:

• Anchor/Retreat - (Self Cast/Self Cast)
  -Anchor: places a hook on the ground that lasts for 60 seconds. This skills cooldown is refunded if the player does not cast Retreat.
  -Retreat: The player flies backwards to their Anchor point, Knocking Down (1s) enemies caught in their way.
• Magitech Visor - (Target Enemy)
  -Targeted enemy grants Fury and Might to any attackers for a medium duration.
• Ash Legion Flasher (Ground Targeted)
  -Throws a non-lethal grenade that explodes blinding and applying vulnerability to enemies in a large range and stunning enemies caught closest to the center.
• Scorchulator (Target Enemy)
  -Applies a special sticky satchel to an enemy that causes attacks on the target to apply burns. (5s duration) (? CD) (Limit 15 Stacks.)
• Quickstim Health System (Self Cast)
  -Heals the player a medium amount.
  -Applies Vigor and Quickness.

Reasoning:
I’m not alone in the fact that I’d like to see a Rifle specialization on Thief, but I feel very strongly about the types of things I thought would be fun to see in this kind of specialization. This is why I bothered to type it all out, I enjoy brainstorming given my background, but I hope someone enjoys imagining the future state of specializations enough to share in the idea of a Rifle Thief Spec.

• Changes Not Included:
  -Make Thieves Guild elite skill not janky.
  -Make Dagger Storm elite skill not janky.
  -Add an Elite Trap
  -Plot the Downfall of the Han Dynasty.

So, I dont see anything about the Thief’s Ricochet Pistol trait and I’m really worried. Its like my favorite thing to use. 3:

I’m just hoping for an account upgrade via gems that I’ve saved up over time. I doubt I’m the only person who is going to want this option.

Am I eventually going to see an in-game purchase for the expansion? I have saved up gems to get the expansion. ;-;

Pls~

Depends on what they replace the leveling system with, I’m pretty much opposite of in love with having skills and other stuff locked out till certain levels. 3:

Nike.2631:

We’re not likely to see main hand torch. Torches are priced at all the vendors as an off hand weapon -> they’re cheaper than main-hand weapons because they provide fewer skills.

We’re also not likely to see a class jump from not being able to use a weapon at all to dual-wielding them. There’s just too many choices that fit the more limited paradigm to be jumping in the deep end like that.

Aside from the Warrior Dual Wielding Pistols I dont think I listed anything dual wield oriented that wasn’t already on the class in some manner.

The pricing is solid logic for the main hand torch thing, but my heart still says torch/torch would be hella fun for the Guardian.

I dont think its entirely unrealistic to expect something wacky/bonkers with off-hand stuff and there are a good number of classes that don’t have a matched pair for dual wielding.

The Guardian especially doesn’t have anything dual wielded but has a ton of weapons that could be, which is why I expect to see or eventually see a specialization that introduces that as a characteristic among the other stuff.

Ozgar Heavyhammer.6701:

The game will be fully playable at launch. including the mordremoth encounter. Anet doesn’t release an unfinished game and update the ending at a later date.

This has to be true otherwise the Zhaitan fight would be updated and wouldn’t suck so much.

DevilLordLaser.8619:

Horrible. Just horrible.

‘Mastery’ should mean more than “I spend this point to do this one extremely narrow, specific thing that has one use in one fight and does me absolutely zero good anywhere else so that I’m forced to find thirty-nine other guys and spend an hour coordinating who takes what 98% pointless skill to clear this one boss.”

I’m already put out with how many boss encounters we have that boil down to “the weapons you’ve trained with for the entire game are useless against this boss’ armor/shield, but here! Take these SPECIAL ROCKS something drops and huck them at his face and that shield will come down in no time!” The point of the Mastery system and this hardcore challenging content should be mastery - learning how to use your tools, earning powerful new tools, and actually developing the talent and ability to cope with hard, unforgiving enemies.

The concept of “Pull Lever A to activate Environmental Weapon B so as to disengage Boss Shield C, while ensuring that Field D is in place to stop Boss Wipe Attack E” is not challenging or masterful. It’s insulting.

This summarizes my feelings pretty well.

Elementalist
(Broad Speculation)
-I have no idea what they might do with the Elementalist given the generalist nature of the class from the mass skill variety available on each weapon, but if we are following the logic of “specialization” then my first assumption is Elemental Focus. That idea being roughly that your class only uses one element, but they might gain access to a second weapon slot (for switching) as well as new skills and maybe a weapon with skill specifically tailored to that element.

ex.
(Fireheart)
-Access to a second weapon slot.
-Restricts use to fire attunement skills.
-Access to Greatsword (More tame or different capabilities from Conjure Fiery Greatsword)

Ranger
(1) (Drood)
-Staff (we already know this)
-Possibly a focus on pet capabilities/ranged naturalistic skills.

(2) (I have no idea what to call this.)
-Access to main hand Dagger.
-Grants mid-range dagger throwing skills on main hand. Essentially a Knife thrower. Assuming it compliments the off-hand dagger it would have some kind of condition focus with bleeds.

(3) (uh lol idk Aragorn)
-Access to Off-hand Shield or Sword.

Mesmer

(1) (The Bus Station)
-The Mesmer has become so adept at moving temporal energies that they have been forced by expectations and peer pressure into acting as a sort of mass transit for other players to get around.

(2) (The Timelord)
-The Mesmer has gained control over time and is abducted by a blue box to be led around and troll Europe for a hundred or so years.

(3) Something that changes out those god awful purple particle effects to some other relevant color. (I’m sorry, I dont love purple. xD)

I dont play this class, I have no idea. :3

Engineer
(Gearhead)
-Access to Hammer.
-Focus on close range, saw some floating eye-bot things that could effectively replace turrets from the point of mobility to compliment an active moving close range Engineer.

The Engineer has so much of everything already that I can’t think of anything else to go with it.

Hope someone enjoys my speculations. :3

~Thanks for reading.

When making these considerations, I mostly focus on game systems that make sense to me. Or in some cases don’t make sense as might be the case with the train of thought that comes with giving Necromancers a Greatsword and Rangers a Staff.

Obviously “Specializations” don’t make sense if there aren’t more than one of them to choose from and there are a lot of things to consider when looking at what each class is capable of currently, or in some cases incapable of.

A lot of people seem concerned with what comes of these classes based on what they were used to in Guild Wars 1. (Which I didn’t play) But I would offer that I expect that if there are a lot of relative things to the current class options that you could very well see a return of those classes in the form of specializations if they make the most sense.

(Also obviously some of these are not serious. ;P)

Even if my speculations get drowned out or ignored I would be interested in hearing what other people think of the broad possibilities. :D

Guardian
(1) (Some holy name?, Firestarter)
-Access to Main Hand Torch.
-Condition focus capabilities on the Guardian in the form of a main hand torch for consistent burn application.
-Maybe some kind of purge skill that cleanses burn on a target, but deals damage based on the duration of burn they have stacked up. :3

(2) (Some other holy name?, Priest, Bishop?)
-Access Off-hand Scepter
-Focus on long range control capabilities, I figure if Hodgins is useless and he can dual wield scepters we may as well end up with a class that can make an art form of it.
-Crazy-cool upgrades to Virtues or something.

(3) (Crusader?)
-Access Off-hand Sword/Mace?
-Heavier focus on offensive and damage capabilities where as a lot of the Guardian is utility/support.

Thief
(1) (Sniper)
-Access to Rifle?
-Heavy focus on ranged capabilities of the Thief, hopefully including improvements to pistol skills.

(2) (Assassin/Swashbuckler)
-Access to off-hand Sword?
-Heavy focus on melee/stealth damage capabilities.

(3) (Trickster)
-Access to…???? (Glaive if it exists?)
-Heavy focus on utility aspects of the thief, traps, stealth,

Necromancer
(1) (Some Threatening Name, Deathlord, Ravager)
-So we know that the Necromancer is getting the greatsword and a lot of speculation is on the skills that are available, but my best estimation is that it will be a power oriented weapon. That is not to say that like any other Necromancer weapon that it wont have conditions, but the Staff itself is a better condition oriented long range weapon. Running a power build means you get mostly Dagger and some flavor of off-hand, (You could use axe… I guess. Pretty sure the min-maxers consider it a DPS Loss)
-Not saying it couldn’t be a Condi weapon, but if you consider that the Staff is already a long range weapon with a focus on AoE application of conditions, I don’t hold much hope of it being a copy-paste capability condi weapon.
-Possibly some focus of usage with Lifestealing capabilities that are usually more tame on other weapons.

(2) (Some other threatening name, Tyrant)
-Off hand Axe, maybe tied in with minion summoning. Since I would honestly consider the main hand Axe to be a best case scenario Minion summoner weapon for its mid-range and vulnerability applications….

(3) ?
-The Necromancer already has such a focus for conditions I’m not sure what you might do to add another level of focus or variety to their capabilities with them.
-It might be cool if there was a second form of Deathshroud that you could only charge up while in the first Deathshroud.

Warrior

(1) (Gunzerker?)
-Access to Dual Pistols
-Uhh…. Mobility and Control skills that pair well with high damage focus?

(2) (Bardzerker)
-Access to Main hand Warhorn.
-Uhhh… Focus on Metal capabilities, bleeds, mid range, more conditions for the Warrior to work with. (As Brutal as possible.)

(3) (Weapon-master)
-No new weapon? (although that art had a warrior with a Battle-axe… O.o)
-Third weapon slot for mad-switching skills, possibly a system for combo-ing adrenaline skills.

(I broke the text in half because it wouldnt let me fit it all in one post 3:)

A-net just needs to add a feature where you can toggle the right click camera by right clicking rather than having to hold down the kittening button. It doesn’t take a genius to come up with this solution in fact I’m convinced it takes an entire department of morons not to.

Yes I am also having this problem, but it stems from not having a toggle-able camera or the ability to lock the camera to the mouse like ANY OTHER NORMAL THIRD PERSON GAME. Pick any other third person game it has this functionality or the default is camera locked.

Please fix guild, developer senpais.

I can’t experience the Guild in Guild Wars 2 if you don’t fix it A-net-san.

</3

Can we get pet skins of varying qualities and prices available in the main game as unlockables, quest oriented ones, and possibly ones that we could buy in the gem store?

Every time I see Garm it makes my pets feel… inadequate…. because they are small and plain… Garm seems different and seems like he has more personality.

Armored Bears…

Murder of Ravens…

Direwolf…

Cyborg Inquest Cheetah…

Ghostly Panther…

Mecha Moa…

Cerberus Hound…

Blooming Garden Sylvan Hound

Demonic Sea Lizard…..

You could imagine any number of interesting pet skins that would help add some customization and breath some life into the kind of bland pet system. 3:

[Feature] Simply stated, I would really appreciate a bind-able hotkey that allows me to toggle the Camera Locking feature, the one native to holding down the right click while running around, on and off.

Further explanation. Its been 2 years. I’ve put in 2200 hours. More than some less than others, but regardless of that I have spent a majority of my time holding down right click so that I can have smoother control over my character’s movements. I’m kind of tired of holding down right click. Its just wearing on me at this point.

A reason it wears on me is that if you have two monitors and the right click pressure slips while you move your cursor to the right it slides off to the second monitor and then clicks something, which causes the game to minimize.

Camera controls locked to third person movement and character control is the default in a lot of games, actually most games I can think of that use third person. That and having to hold down right click is pretty tedious.

A-net pls. 3:

I would use ICM, but its a buggy third party program that conflicts with several other more important things, like my tablet, which I need for work.

I know some people who argue that servers camping jumping puzzles and controlling the areas is against the terms of service because it is “malicious denial” of an area from other players. I happen to think that the areas are just another area to be controlled and while it is annoying to deal with other players if all I am really interested in is badges, I don’t think its an unacceptable area for players to control.

I would appreciate an official response because I know people who report players for camping jumping puzzles and I would rather not see them banned for misuse of the report feature in the game.

Thanks for your time if anyone can point me to this question as someone else may have previously asked with an official response.

-Tenchu

We used up another guild rush, made and waited for it, and then activated it and we could get the rewards. Still wasted influence on the first one though.

My guild Tyrian Claws [CLAW] had this same issue today. We weren’t sure if we should wait for the timer to run out on the other guild’s rush and we didnt want to try and rush through in that short of a time frame so we waited. We started ours after, but no one in the guild got credit for the week for commendations and bonuses. I doubt we’ll be compensated, but it would be nice if this kind of thing gets fixed.

Achilles.2950:

And yes of course my words are directed at anet. You have no control over the game, have no part in designing it or will ever have a part in designing it. Apologies if you were confused.

Sounds like a personal challenge to me.

Well I’m working on a second iteration and I’m hoping with a more fleshed out full explanation for every single pet that I will be able to sway more to my cause.

I don’t claim that my way is the best way or even right way, but I would rather create a game plan than sit around and twiddle my thumbs. Communication is the most important aspect of any relationship and the more we communicate what we want to the developers the better they can understand what isn’t working. As a designer I can’t know something is off or bad unless its said and I am hoping that even if I can’t figure out the best way to amend the system that I can rally the community to put forth more effort into giving constructive feedback.

If I didn’t post and respond I wouldn’t have made the progress I’m making on my second iteration. Feedback is very important.

Achilles.2950:

Firstly and most importantly. Remove pets from being a necessity. There is absolutely no reason why anet should shackle a class with huge potential with such a limited and narrow class option such as a pet. I understand you are trying to flesh out the class and distance it from shortbow thieves, but there are so many things that can be done. I’m not saying delete pets from existence, but give the players some choice. There is no other profession in the game that thinks, kitten I wish I didn’t have these virtues buffing me constantly, or kitten I wish I didn’t have these 3 other elements containing whole new skillbars, but everytime I play Ranger at some point I will just sigh due to the pet being forced upon me. Pets right now are literally an anchor dragging rangers down, and they need to be released.

The aim would be to make the pets a more valued and useful part of the Ranger gameplay and more valued by Ranger players themselves. Look at it from a balance of systems at least how it works currently. If you appropriate a certain amount of damage and functionality to the pet that it can deal in addition to what the Ranger deals on their own how do you give the player a boost to compensate when you take the pet out of the equation?

I would have to ask if the Rangers didnt have pets what would you give them as a primary class ability instead of the pet system that characterizes them as rangers? On top of giving them the option of having a pet to begin with?

Achilles.2950:

Secondly, preparations. For those who didn’t play the first game, preparations were skills that effected your attacks for a certain duration. “Apply Poison” for example would cause poison with each hit for a duration. I know sharpening stone exists, but there is so much potential for different effects such as cripple, chill, burning, aoe, fear…. how awesome would fear causing barrage be, or a fiery barrage? This is an area that needs to be worked on, and also helps build on the wilderness image somewhat portrayed by rangers.

They gave that to thieves I think. :P

Achilles.2950:

That’s just my opinion, agree or disagree at your own pleasure. Yet atm Rangers give off the distinct impression that you ran out of ideas. you need ideas? look at gw1.

Uhh.. I’m not sure if your dialogue is directed at myself or Arena-net or both? There is kind of a jump there.

From all of the feedback I have receive I am going to do an iteration on this idea that involves a more fleshed out explanation for all of the pets. I got a good piece of feedback from the other place I posted and its got me thinking. So hopefully soon I will have another more fleshed out systems design and explanation for the pets within the system itself.

I will definitely respond to more feedback if it comes, but for now thank you all for the positive responses and the constructive criticism.

Taitsu.7425:

Quick suggestion/idea.

Maybe think about some kind of combo system. For example, your pet has 2 or 3 basic skills. Your order the use of one of these basic skill. Then, if you use your main weapon skill #2 for example, both you and your pet perform a bonus “combo” skill. Some cool combo skill ideas would be things like :
1) your pet use some kind of leap skill to your target
2) you use Sword’s skilll #2, Hornet Sting (leap backward)
=> 3) your pet launches your opponent to you as you ready a stabbing move; you impale the target dealing heavy damage.

Sorry about my english, i’m not a native speaker. I hope i made it clear.

It fine its a bit hard to interpret your exact idea separate from what I proposed of more combined interactions. The whole idea of Combination Skills is to portray combined efforts between the pet and the player and while you could attach combined skills from a pet to specific skills on the weapon that would be a problem as it would narrow the type of weapons you could use with any given pet. It would also be like… way more complex.

DeviousCupcake.1537:

Great ideas, I really like it!

I especially love the idea of the ‘pursuit quests’ type thing and the potential for Legendary pets. Seriously, the amount of times I have seen Garm and done a little sigh of envy…I want a dire wolf as well ArenaNet T-T

I have six Norns so I’m… VERY familiar with Garm. I also feel like Eir’s relationship with Garm is like Ranger envy for Rangers… sadly.

Thobek.1730:

Also I would like you to have a simple talent system giving your pet some extra abilities. So if I want an extra tanky bear then I put some points into rugged skin, or perhaps armoured skin. Even putting some armour on my pet would be nice.

Hmm I’m not sure a secondary trait tree/talent system would be as helpful since a Pet system overhaul would almost definitely already require that the Ranger’s traits be moved and re-appropriated and I’m sure with enough creative placement that you could modify or reinstall pet specific traits into the trait tree.

Hokie.1045:

I love your ideas.
Someone else posted something about a quest to get new pets, I also really like that, I would quote but idk how :c

Thanks, and its not a difficult idea to conjure, but I feel it would foster a better sense of ownership over pets, which is why I said it. I’m sure its evident in another game. Quest for pets. Its the same as questing for weapons …. just for Rangers.

Thobek.1730:

This is one of the few things I like about a WoW Hunter over a GW2 Ranger. Hunting down rare pets that have a long respawn rate to ensure they remain rare.

I didnt like WoW enough to play it longer than 24 hours.

Thobek.1730:

The only problem I see with this is the intentional griefing of players killing the rare before a hunter can ‘tame’ it. Rangers could perhaps mark the creature, which claims it at max draw distance so its unkillable until they get into range.

I was actually… also thinking of this as a pet quest style system except more akin to the legendary status of weapons. It would be more of a Ranger Ritual so to speak where you acquire a certain number of things you need for the ritual. All of the legendary pets represent a spirit of some sort and the idea would be that the spirit is using your pet as an avatar for manifesting on the physical plane.

This though… is where it is difficult because unless you designed Legendary Pets instead specifically for species, like Canine, Moa, Drake, Feline, et cetera you would need to design 45 different legendary pets, which I feel like would be far too many for a convenient development pipeline… I’m not saying it would be impossible. Coming up with the concepts wouldnt be hard its fulfilling all of the art assets that would be necessary for that.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

Pushing for a more complex pet AI could just make it worse for us.

Apart from the AI needing to be improved anyway, not all of the things I’m saying are directly oriented around AI. The standard chain attack is pretty straight forward as its already in the game.

The combination attacks are player controlled and are strictly relative to a specific action which is more of a load on animations as you would need one that is premade that fits the action or a custom animation, which obviously requires an animator.

The passive system influences stats not player or creature interactions, the pet development system is also not part of direct combat, pet combo typing is also a passive influence on the player skills rather than something that would effect pet AI.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

The only flaw I see is difficulty in balancing the class this way.

I’m not just looking for balance, because that is a given, I’m looking to enforce/provide/instill a specific experience that is not here already that is a result of the current systems design. Balance takes time and feedback.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

As the game stands a pet charges in attacks then gets totally melted regardless of the type of pet used. In every situation except solo content this happens. Pets would need a sever durability boost to make them a viable part of a Ranger build.

So there is a good way to approach the balance of pets against PvE encounters where they just get shredded apart, and I really hate that I have to cite Diablo 3’s balance for this, but there was a long standing issue of making the Witch Doctor’s pets more survivable against the increasingly dangerous enemies encountered in later difficulties.

I don’t remember the exact details or numbers, but it was something to the effect that provided pets with a specific kind of orientation towards how they took damage from enemies based on their health. For every certain amount of health that a pet had they could only lose so much of their health from a single hit/attack. Something to the effect of if they had 5,000 health no attack could deal more than 20% of their health; so if they had 5,000 health they could effectively take a minimum of five hits before dropping.

I’m not saying use that exact design, but I feel like that kind of system would help make pets more survivable when dealing with enemies that typically just blow them up. It could even be scaled per the type of pet so that pets you would expect to have a better health % cap per hit ratio would have that. You could even give it a stat name like Resilience or something. I mean I wouldn’t expect the pig to stand up to as many hits as a Bear.

Manda D Ulin.2367:

…Perhaps a permanent pet system was where anet screwed up from the start with this game engine. Maybe they should look at taking your synergistic ideas and merging them with a series of summon skills. F1-4 summons pets of different field synergies…

So an important part of the pet system and the dynamics of a pet/master relationship in a literal sense is presence and the idea that the pet is actually present to see and recognize in the space around the player. If you were to make it more of a straight animation its less of a collaborative effort and more of a particle effect. Kind of like the two greatsword skills which animate a sort of spirit that embodies with the strike.

Which reminds me if you’re going to put two sweet(b?d?ss) particle effects on two of the skills for the greatsword and than at least be consistent so that the other two skills on the greatsword aren’t really unimpressive by contrast.

Chimp.7946:

Anet, hire this guy.

My head might explode, and then I wouldnt be able to design things, although I feel like I am entirely willing to take that risk.

Mardermann.7468:

A-Nets Ranger design looks like “kitten… we just have 2 more months time to finish this class… just make some juvenile versions of some animals…”

The sad part about production is that even if there is a concept you like more or a better solution or system that you want to use you might not have the resources, time, or testing power to make sure that its a worthwhile effort.

My hope is that because Guild Wars 2 follows an iterative development cycle, by which I mean they update it and change it consistently, that there is hope for the systems that are currently used to change and evolve for the better.

My assessment is to point to a system that can use change, not for its current number balance as there are any number of slight tweaks you can make to a cast of characters to bring their effective power level closer, but rather to point out a design that doesn’t provide an experience that you would expect to gain from that kind of system; Companionship, collaboration, personality, and development are all things I would expect from a pet system especially from a game like Guild Wars 2 when you look at how dynamic and interesting all of the other classes are.

This post is going to be followed by another one of mine because I can’t actually fit all of my responses in this one post. Although this is the shorter of the two since I am going to try and keep my posts separated by the individuals I am responding to.

Is it plugged in?

Chopps.5047:

I don’t want to argue because you make good points, right? That would be cool for sure, no doubt. How do you reconcile that with the current design of species specific story arcs?

I’m not exactly sure what you’re saying here? The story arcs across the races have different time frames, but I recall several that finish after 10-15 minutes. These would be like Ranger specific stories that they find in different areas around the world. I don’t know if that answers your question because I’m not sure what you are asking entirely…

Chopps.5047:

And how do you reconcile that with pvp players who don’t like pve and only wvw or spvp? I mean, in the case of spvp, I know you get all the pets immediately. But if the pets grew and changed over time, the enemy wouldn’t be able to spot you, see that you’re running spiders, then think “nope, condition damage, I’m out of here”.

A player who can’t find the critter they want in WvW still has to find it somewhere in the open world anyway. Many/Most of the story oriented quests that are designed are designed with skip buttons to expedite the process for people who are either uninterested in the story or have already experienced that piece of content.

It was mostly another idea that I felt would represent giving the player a way to become more attached to the pets themselves. As far as a pure answer for WvW players who have no interest in PvE elements the only thing I can think of off the top of my head is a vendor that trains and sells pets for WvW Badges. Not a ludicrous amount mind you.

Chopps.5047:

In all honesty I think weapons should be easier to recognize. For example, if I see a sceptor / dagger elementalist, I know I have to dodge on the initial blast or else I’ll be in a world of pain.

Or maybe I misunderstood that part and pet skills wouldn’t necessarily change over time?

I agree that you should be able to recognize pets for specific things whether it be offensive, defensive, or some odd utility, but what I was trying to show with the Sylvan Hound example was something akin to a Guardian, it has some tanking and healing and offers different capabilities that a guardian might have over the course of its development but its largely up to the player to decide which skills they want to use. Skills that are designed with the intent of giving the feel that their efforts along side the pet are more collaborative.

Chopps.5047:

Anyhow, the big problem is the self imposed constraint that they must treat pve, wvw, and spvp as similarly as possible to prevent players from needing to massively change their style of play when moving from one to the other. From a business perspective, this saves cost and headaches so I think it’s a smart decision. So you have to live within that box with your ideas somehow. Maybe you can articulate them in such a way as to make it work?

I will try to articulate my ideas for the broad necessity of balance concerning the facets of both WvW and sPvP against PvE. Systems design is very specific and what I am doing right now trying to generate more ideas and get feedback is more broad. Although I am trying to express the ideas I have in a specific manner so that they are easy to understand, which is why I present all of the systems broken apart individually, and follow them up with an example that meets all of those needs.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Hmm, instead of a quest for obtaining the pet, how about we battle the pet to gain it? And then we train it to follow commands through constant battle? After about 20 kills, it starts listening to most orders, and after 50 kills, it starts obeying completely. Gives us the mindset that we’re “taming” a wild animal.

While that is a way to approach the system of capturing or asserting dominance over a wild beast I feel like unless you’re inserting a morality scale than you’d probably have better results with a friendly approach than beating up a wild animal.

My reasoning for the story associated link between acquiring pets and developing bonds is that not only do I feel like you could give the story around the pets personality, but it was also clear to me with the living story update and the quest involving Rox that there was a lot of personality between the baby Scavenger and the Charr. More personality I feel sad to admit than I’ve seen anywhere else in the game concerning Rangers.

Chopps.5047:

…I believe core mechanics and profession design are close to where ANET wants them and I wouldn’t count on huge chanes any time soon…

I’m trying to instill an idea that the system itself is not where it should be. I don’t think that the system where it is can be fixed by pushing numbers that wouldn’t just overall break the class. Even if it took a very long time I personally would want to see that system change for the better. I’ve played every class except the Mesmer and I’ve enjoyed all of them thoroughly I feel like they all have their enjoyable class features. The Ranger as a class was the only one that really irked me.

Chopps.5047:

no other peofession has to go hunt down some object in the world to unlock the full potential.

I feel like in a fully designed representation of a system like the one I pitched if you had a full development system for pets where they grow and change than you would not be as immediately concerned with getting all of them as you would with training along side the pet you feel deserves your attention the most.

If the acquisition quest was something short like one of the story segment missions that are apart of the main plot that last between 10-15 minutes I don’t feel that such a thing would really impact the time economy especially when its the case of only having to perform that action once.

Players spend way more time clanking ore nodes, yanking weeds out of the ground, or in the case of my Norn hitting the tiniest trees in the world with the largest axe in the world and dealing the least amount of environmental damage one could deal with an axe of that size to a tree of that thickness.

I was thinking through how player’s acquire pets and it kind of bugs me that you just kind of walk up and grab pets… there’s no initial bonding you literally just abduct them and throw them in your sweat-shop F4 Menu.

Having a pursuit quest that allows you to earn or gain access to a specific pet might be a good way to give them more personal value. The player earned them rather than got them just for exploring an area.

You could argue that finding new pets is the incentive for exploring areas, but I feel like that’s kind of a cop-out.

I’m just going to write stuff down concerning ideas that I feel directly relates to that design intent of making Player and Pet interactions more collaborative.

I was also thinking that if there was a system for pet development that you could find a foundation for Legendary Pets.

I love the positive responses, makes me feel like the seven hours writing it has some pay off. I’m open to negative criticism if anyone has it. Its better to see a hole in my logic or my idea that I haven’t justified or filled than to leave it open for debate after the fact.

Sylvan Hound
__________________________
Combo Typing : Water

Chain Attack Skill 1 (Stage 1)

Nature’s Bite – The Sylvan Hound bites the enemy using the power of nature to draw off some of the enemies life energy healing the Sylvan hound for a small amount.

Chain Attack Skill 2 (Stage 2)

Nature’s Tenacity – The Sylvan Hound bites the enemy gaining swiftness as nature helps keep the hound from being peeled off the enemy.

Chain Attack Skill 3 (Stage 3)

Nature’s Dominance – The Sylvan Hound bites the enemy casting weakness for a short duration on all enemies within a short range.

Pet Passive – Heart of the Forest
Stage 1 Bonus – Grants the player 5% Bonus Toughness from their Vitality
Stage 2 Bonus – Grants the player 5% Bonus Healing Power from their Vitality
Stage 3 Bonus – Grants the Player 5% Bonus Power from their Vitality

Combination Attack 1 (Stage 1)

Bushwack – The player and the Sylvan Hound dash to and knock down an enemy crippling them. The hound gains protection and the player leaps back.

Combination Attack 2 (Stage 2)

Collective Majesty – The player and the Sylvan Hound let out a howl to nature granting boons for each ally present up to a maximum of five for a short duration. Five allies means five boons for five allies, four allies means four boons for four allies and so forth.

Combination Attack 3 (Stage 3)

Protection of the Forest – The Sylvan hound jumps to the player and summons a Ring of Warding around the player and granting allies within the circle Vigor for a short duration.

In closing of this idea, I’m not saying, Do This, I’m saying that I feel like there is a better way to approach the design of this character in terms of the systems used to represent the class in engine that I feel the engine is more than capable of giving the class more.

As always balancing is nice, but sometimes you can’t just tweak numbers and hope that it will turn out for the best sometimes you need to re-approach the cliff from a different side. Riot as a company has taken recently to redesigning champions to see if they could more effectively design and represent what that champion is. This is merely how I would like to imagine the Ranger, but I’m sure everyone has an ideal vision in their head.

I applied for the Game Design position, but I haven’t heard back so this is how I cope with waiting.

If you read the whole thing and are taking the time to respond, I thank you and I hope you enjoyed my idea or at least the message trying to claw its way out under the mass of idea that is crushing it.

Breakdown of Example System Replacement:

(I assume you all know this I am just stating it.) Pets currently have a standard attack which they perform, a skill that the player can remotely activate, a command for holding back from attacking, a remote to switch between the two active land or sea based pets that the player has pre selected, and four shouts, which act as extra commands that offer different functionality for the pet.

At the end of all of this I will provide an example for a pet that covers each section of my systems design.

To introduce the changes I would propose to each sub-system that is part of the over arching pet system the first piece I present is what I’m calling Pet Development. I stated earlier that I don’t really feel like the pets develop alongside you, as they are now they are just like plug and play devices and you don’t really have to work to unlock their potential outside of traiting for them.

Pet Development works like this. Any given pet has three stages that they are in during the course of their development. Every ten levels the player earns with a single pet will pass them to the next stage. Since you can gain levels past 80 this doesn’t prevent players from being able to feasibly develop all of their pets. At each stage the pet will get larger , gain permanent stat bonuses, a more powerful passive, and gain access to two specific skills; A Chain Attack skill, and a bonus Combination Attack skill. As far as size reference think regular, veteran, and champion styles although champion would be a bit too big.

To connect and continue from my previous system the Chain Attack skills are designed after the player chain skills that are typically attached to the 1 key on any given weapon and meant to mimic a variety of effects from one attack chain. These are part of the pets internal automatic chain of attacks that they use. To clarify if the pet is in stage two its chain attack will start with the first chain order skill followed by the second chain order skill and back to the first again; stage three will chain through all three attacks and stage one will only have access to the first. The other aim of this would be to improve the uniqueness of each pet by offering different visual and functional effects through the standard attacks.

Combination Attacks are attacks that the player activates that both the player and the pet participate in. While you could use prefab animations the expectation is that these attacks will literally offer the player the visual satisfaction of combined efforts . As I stated before there would be an unlockable combo attack for each stage after the first that you can switch out. The aim would be to balance them to offer different functions rather than having each following stage be more powerful so that much like your own kit variety which you can swap out your pet can also change to meet the challenge.

Pet Passives are a passive bonus that your character benefits from as long as you have that pet active. These develop and become stronger each stage. The intent is that even if the bonus from these passives is Minor it can help give the pet a more unique feel or effect within the premise of working along side of your character.

Pet Combo Typing is the inherent type that any pet has that will influence your standard weapon skills to have varied effects based on your pet’s Combo Typing. Dark, Ethereal, Fire, Ice, Light, Lightning, Poison, Smoke, and Water combo types will have an influence on the types of fields that your skills generate. My reasoning for this is that there is a lack of utility inside the Ranger’s kit all around and it would be nice if on top of every standard combo field that the Ranger can apply that there was a secondary combo field they got as a bonus that allowed them to manipulate some of the utility coming out of those fields.

So to provide and example for all of these things I have stated I present to you subject one the…

Hello all,

This is a text wall. Please mind the gap, because its full.

There are a lot of straight complaints about the ranger and their state of effective play within the game realm, but as a designer I am less interested in stating those facts and more interested in looking at better ways to approach or redesign the situation so that the character fits their name better. This is a lot of text and you may not agree with it, you might even call me out and insult me as I have for some reason offended your very base nature, but if you do read it and do respond with either a critique or a counter idea I will do my best to respond and absorb your information.

My biggest issue is aside from general bugs of which there are some across all classes. My issue concerns the systems used to portray the Ranger as representative of nature . A big part of the representation, or at least what I had hoped would be a big part, is that they have companions who work with them to achieve great things and while you can argue numbers do give them a role in combat the feeling of master and pet is very lackluster.

Aside: I’ll paint for you the image as I see it now in the game as the ranger functions. I’m in the kitchen making myself a sandwich, which is of course vegan because I would never harm my fuzzy little friends. Suddenly, Jormag attacks my kitchen. I hold onto a nearby object which for some reason seems to remain attached to the ground as the whole kitchen seems to be on the verge of being blown away by minty fresh breath. My pet, who is very much a lazy roommate that doesn’t pay his rent or clean up dishes, is in the living room watching TV. He looks into the kitchen, throws me a shoe, and resumes watching TV.

Summary: The relationship that is here isn’t really going to offer the player a way of connecting with their pet. That is to say that the skills are controlled by the player and the pet follows the commands but other than that the skills don’t really reflect anything special or interesting that would make the player feel like they are having a visceral/intimate combat moment with their pet. The effects are isolated and paired not combined and synergistic. The player themselves change and develop and become better over time, but the pet themselves do not change or develop to any greater state outside of stats you have that benefit them directly or a couple of skills that have a specific interaction.

Proposal: What I propose is a design direction that promotes more skills that represent collaborative effort between the ranger and their pet of choice and that the pets themselves are given a better form of development that makes them feel more like a partner to respect and less like a tool to be used or some piece of scenery that I abducted and leashed to fight for me.

My issue isnt the gameplay mechanics, its the frame-rate drop involved with any larger group of graveling creatures that is very consistently present in every path and I am NOT alone with this issue.

Hodgins, Path 1, The Room with the Burrows. For the first scepter. The Framerate drop from the burrows and the hatchlings is INSANE. I don’t know what you guys did, but its actually one of the more frustrating things I’ve had to deal with. Also it feels like you are REQUIRED to have an Elementalist with an Icebow to clear it fast enough.

So frustrated… I disabled smilies. watches world burn

I’m not saying don’t use alternative weapons. I also feel that that ranged weapon(s) (because lets be serious we only get a scepter staff has one slightly ranged offensive skill thats more focused on AoE) we get feel visually “un-impactful”.

When my dude leaps through the air with his hammer and slams the ground theres a blast and a visceral feel to that animation. When my dude starts lobbing little blue balls that move really slowly through the air… I don’t feel like I’m doing anything. Also Smite should look like a Arcane Seal that sprays light out of the ground in a spotlight manner so that it is both more interesting to see and easier to tell where the kitten thing is. Its so easy to lose that stupid thing in combat.

OrianZeta.1537:

Animal forms…make them viable or perma.

I don’t know if this is norn-specific, but weapons are too big. I know I’m 9 meters tall but no one could swing around a 100kg greatsword that’s almost as big as I am like it’s a cricket bat. Many long weapons also go through the ground (to say nothing of the soul-crushing amount of clipping with armor).

The swords are sized a hell of a lot better for the Norn who are meant to have borderline strength then for the humans who don’t get the benefit of proper scaling.

I dont run Arah, because I dont know anyone that runs it and putting a group together is a pain in the kitten and Twilight Arbor is just a kitteny dungeon, not pertaining to any non-melee-able bosses.

I’m going to have to say that 99% of the time I never feel pressured to use a ranged weapon. I carry a scepter for the off chance I might need one, but its never been a real issue.

Can you cite me an instance of an enemy you would never approach with a melee weapon? I honestly can’t think of any.

I never really used ranged weapons on the guardian. The Staff doesn’t really count and the Scepter is kind of meh. The hammer is still useful at a range because it is good for holding an enemy at a distance in one spot as well as pushing them back.

I see no point in using a weapon that is largely useless with my build and armor setup if its more of a pain in the kitten to switch.

Switching between Hammer and Greatsword on my Norn Guardian feels really fluid and the animations for those two weapons are fantastic. Give it a try if you haven’t.