Nemesis, please start saying “damage uptime”, not “DPS uptime”. I’m having a more difficult time taking what you say seriously when you continually make that conceptual mistake. I know you know how DPS is calculated, and I can’t help but think of some mythical damage-per-second-squared metric whenever you say it.
Also, assuming that all Zerker builds are going to get splattered is the flip side of the coin to assuming that Zerker builds are going to continue to dominate the meta. You’re basically doing the same thing, just at the other extreme, and it sounds just as ridiculous.
Let’s not jump to conclusions until all of the facts are in.
And it isn’t fake math. It’s real math. It’s the responsibility of the players/community to analyze and understand it properly. Running a propaganda campaign against it is no better than running a propaganda campaign for it.
Alduin Nightsong, 80 Human Necro
“He’s like a man with a fork in a world of soup.”
Could this be a case study on what not to do? For half this house it certainly is, the other half is not even playing anymore.
Now as a bit of background, I am time poor. Like most professionals in this world, I spend ludicrous time in the office, as well as stuck in traffic to and from the office. What should be an 8 hour work day often ends up 10 or so hours. Being a parent as well, well the kids are far more important than some computer pixels swirling about on screen. Then there is time for the other half. All in all, very time poor. That’s not to say I don’t have time to waste. Just that is very very precious. So what I do waste it on has to be the best entertainment option I can get.
Right now, Guild Wars 2 is approaching rock bottom.
I am no casual. Not hardcore either, something in between. You could say I love WvW. Well used to (will get to that). Used to raid a lot in WOW, and did a tonne load of 5 man content in that, that D&D online game, and some 5 mans in GW2. Why mention this, well the pursuit of fun is what drew me back to GW2 (I was in the beta a long time ago). I hated the grind of WOW, tired of KOTOR, but the dynamics of PvP and WvW ment that GW2 had the potential to be fresh. Warhammer Age of Reckoning had that too, but sadly is very dead.
Heat of Thorns has changed the game. Where there was fun, now it is just grind. Given the current review average on Metacritic of 4.3 (at time of writing) is terrible for what should be a top tier game. And I think this comment from mirta000 is telling, “The grindyest that Guild Wars 2 has ever been! Hey, ever wanted to buy a game, where instead of doing quests, or progressing the storyline, you’re stuck either killing enemies repeatedly, or doing the same 3 events over and over and over and over again? Well you’re in luck as this is Guild Wars 2 right now!”
What kind of Business Plan births a product that ticks so many people off? Did Anet copy and paste the old Star Wars Galaxies planning. Have I just witnesses reckless incompetence. Now I don’t consider myself casual, so if I find this expansion as not fun, imagine what many casuals think. They won’t post of forums to discuss this, they will just leave. (Maybe even not buy it after reading the reviews.) As a business you need constant revenue to remain a going concern, so appealing to a specific subset of players (beat me who this market is though), is a recipe for disaster. As soon as you hit the Jungle, masteries, mobs of uber death, the inability to glide, hell the inability to at least buy into your specialisation, just become hair yanking horrors.
I have kids; I don’t need more reasons to lose hair.
Now I see people defending this game, saying that it is not a grind, or that only those rushing will encounter a grind. Well sorry but you are incorrect. The game requires XP generation for unlocking core abilities to be able to play this game now (see Glider abilities). This is inescapable. You must generate that XP in the correct zone, to be able to progress. Now you may think that is not a grind, but the perception and lack of fun says otherwise to a lot of people (or customers for Anet’s Profit and Loss Statements). Lose enough of them, and the income loss spiral will hurt even the most avid fans of Heart of Thorns.
Right now, Heart of Thorns can get stuffed like a turkey on thanks giving. It is a turkey. I have much better things to do with my time. Like recreating that scene from Aliens where Bishop demonstrates his dexterity. Or I could have a go at learning the fundamentals of taxation law in all western democracies. Or I could boot up Lego Dimensions and actually have fun.
Markot said it well I think, “In what universe does having to take time to do something equals a challenge? Driving a formula 1 car around a track for one lap is a challenge. Driving a Toyota on a 10 hour car journey is a chore.”
TLDR: I am regretting the package I invested in right now too. Sure the 4000 gems are nice. But the game itself, I now hate. As business decision, this game defies any logic I can think off, unless Anet really wants to shrink their player base to a handful of dedicated fans buying all and sundry the gem store offers.
How to resolve: I think Anet needs to finally admit that this game is in need of three things. Many won’t like it, but it’s clear something needs to be done to address significant shortcomings.
The holy trinity recognition. Tank. DPS. Healer. Simply put these functions are needed. For tanks, make the dodge mechanic less important. DPS, I think is fine. Healing, some more love is needed. Still need to ensure classes are not pigeon holed into one of the trinity only. But from this point on realise that they are MMO staples for a reason. Create content that uses this dynamic, and make it fun.
How does this address HOT? – It provides a framework for raids and group dynamics so that hardcore players have a place for challenging content, leaving the open world to be a bit more realistic in terms of broad appeal, with appropriate XP reward.
Mounts. For the love of all that is holy, in whatever faith you choose, see that this mindset of “no mounts” is just creating additional mess. Just look at HOT for a minute, with people pulled in off the street. Then give them any MMO with mounts in it. Just watch what those people prefer to play (especially in the Jungle). Stop surrounding yourselves with yes men. And I can’t be the only one thinking a flyer of some kind is almost essential in HOT. This is why making the Glider not immediately available is in my view insanely stupid. You design an area that requires it, but then say to players, “go grind please”.
How does this address HOT? – I am sick of the new map. Can’t be the only one. Plus the constant running of the original GW2 zones wasn’t that appealing to begin with. Mounts will not break the game, just make exploring and getting about a little easier (basically getting you to the fun stuff). And with flying mounts, at least you can control where the kitten you are going. Maybe make them available like a mastery once you complete the HOT story.
FUN. This is the most critical of anything here. A game needs to be fun. Otherwise why play it. This is where WvWvW gives you a competitive edge, in that it can be used to create random on-going fun fights. This is where the story gives a competitive edge, now with the commander taking centre stage, he/she is the hero. And this is where Anet’s artwork really shines. But if it’s all wrapped up in a hamster wheel of on going grinding, even the most beautiful vista becomes a PITA. I was reading Beta feedback that suggested un-fun. Maybe think about addressing the negatives asap. Who in their right mind thinks that making elite specs hard to flesh out was a great idea?
How does this address HOT? – Well at this point the game is not fun. There are far better things to do than HOT for my entertainment needs. (For me at least and I dare say many others too). Why the heck the Elite Specs are so hard to get and flesh out is just unfathomable. Main selling point of the expac, only available after grindfest 2015. Making PvE essential for WvW, insane. And that mastery to jump on mushrooms, maybe there is a hidden message there…
It was damage control. Anet realized that so many people here have the attention span of a 2 year old and all they would have to do is keep them busy until the BWE.
More than 2000 years and mankind hasn’t grown beyond being placated by bread and circuses.
The effort you put in SW justify the farm there. No need for changes at all.
I farmed nonstop for 2 days. I made 40g. (Not my best 2 days lol)
If it got nerfed it would be a dead map. The outcome of what you get there can vary so much. You could get 2 exos from 1000 bags. or 10 exos from 250 bags. It’s luck and hardwork and I see 0 reason to nerf something that isn’t unnaturally rewarding. The reward is just and fine as is.
Why in name of all that was good and kind was Might transferring capped? I can understand fixing a bug that lets you infinitely stack boons but Might wasn’t one of those boons affected since it stacks in intensity, not duration. It was literally never a part of the problem here. The best you could do was gain a big stack of might for a few seconds, burst and then watch it trickle away. The response here wasn’t a fix, this was butchery.
Rangers have several ways to apply long duration might stacks like 15s on Clarion Bond. It was very possible to have big stacks of might for around 15s consistently.
That’s still not a problem though. Exactly the opposite of a problem. That is a good use of boons, and it’s time limited. The problem was that you could infinitely stack every single stacks duration boon permanently. That’s not okay, but completely gutting the skill and putting a hard cap on a boon that wasn’t part of the problem is above and beyond overkill.
Well yes, but when you have things that can apply 15s of might that becomes permanent with WHaO if you have some boon duration, meaning that you could in fact get an infinite amount of might duration at 25 stacks.
No, it doesn’t. Because when you combine might stacks with WHaO you get more might until you hit the cap. When you combine say, protection stacks, you get more protection time until it builds onto itself over and over where it eventually reaches the duration cap of ~8.5 minutes. Let’s say you and your pet have 10 stacks of might with 20 seconds duration each, you hit WHaO and you now have 20 stacks of might with 19 seconds duration (due to WHaO’s cast time), 16 seconds later you press WHaO again and now you have 25 stacks of might with 2 seconds of duration.
You cannot permanently keep up stacks intensity boons with WHaO. Stacks intensity boons like might were never a part of the problem here and there was no reason for them to be capped.
You can permanently keep up the might stacks from something that is applied for greater than 16s if it is reapplied. So that is indefinitely, and in doing so you can double the stacks from using WHaO. I think we are arguing different things.
We’re not arguing different things, it seems you don’t understand how the mechanics work. Let’s say you have 20 stacks of might with 2 seconds duration, then someone uses a buff that gives you 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. Your tooltip hover will say you have 23 stacks of might for 15 seconds. In reality, you have 20 stacks of might for 2 seconds and 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds. After three seconds have passed you will have 3 stacks of might for 12 seconds. Reapplication of a stacks intensity boon does not refresh the duration of your existing stacks. They stack individually atop each other and are individually removed as their durations expire.
You could not infinitely keep up stacks intensity boons with WHaO. The problem was stacks duration boons and solely stacks duration boons.
Yes, but if you get 13 stacks of might for durations longer than 16s that are reapplied and use WHaO you will have perma 25 stacks.
Edit: it allowed minor might stacking to be more powerful than it should be, by doubling stacks.
And where are you pulling these supposed 13 stacks of might with at least 18 second durations from? And keep in mind their cooldowns need to be under the cooldown time of WHaO to be maintained permanently.
Let’s have a run down of a Ranger’s might sources:
Jungle Stalker, Mighty Roar: 5 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 3 second cast time, 25 second cooldown. Not maintainable.
Hits from Strength of the Pack: 1 stack of might per hit, 8 seconds base duration, 1 second cast time, 60 second cooldown. Not maintainable.
Brutish Seals on Signet use: 3 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 1 second cast time on Signet of the Wild, individual cooldown times of (80s, 60s, 60s, 30s). Not maintainable.
Under 50% health with Most Dangerous Game: 5 stacks of Might, 3 seconds duration, completely useless once you hit your heal button. Not maintainable.
Critical hit with Companion’s Might: 1 stack of might pet crit, 5 seconds base duration, unlisted ICD. Not maintainable.
Zephyr’s Speed on pet swap: 3 stacks of might, 15 seconds base duration, 20 second cooldown. Not maintainable.
Even if you slot every single trait and skill that gives you might, a Ranger cannot get 13 stacks of might on themself and their pet with a duration that exceeds the cooldown of WHaO and whose individual skill or trait cooldowns are low enough to be used consistently on the WHaO cooldown.
It was never possible for a Ranger to maintain permanent might on themselves with WHaO.
Maybe not 13, but 8 easily. Zephyrs Speed(16s with BM line) comboed with Clarion Bond is 6 stacks ~18s with NM line, sigil of battle weapon swap is 2 stacks. Second go around your Clarion Bond won’t be triggered bc ICD, but you could actually cast CotW. This is only including might that the Ranger could throw out. There’s also Mighty Roar from Jungle Stalker(might is perma with BM minors, but would only last one rotation I guess) and Might that teammates could apply. Very easily could maintain high stacks. Especially if say you were using Runes like Runes of Strength.
So just be in combat, swap pet, swap weapon, occasionally blast warhorn, use long channeled pet skill, and use your heal, drop your condi removal for marksmanship, all so you can not hit max stacks of might. Sounds perfectly reasonable.
I mean a basic combat rotation to maintain 16 stacks of might sounds reasonable to me.
Okay, go try it out. See how long you survive after gimping your traits, and blowing pet swaps and weapons swaps on cooldown just to keep up that might. Please take a video of yourself running your “basic combat rotation” in a ranked PvP match.
Update: Idea #1 has been explained in a NOTE a little more to address a few misconception about the function of ‘Use-all’. Please be sure to read that note.
One of the new things explained in idea #1 is there would not be a “You are Encumbered” Window to prevent item overflow in the event of insufficient Inventory space to which a warning message saying so will come up before players actually use the ‘Use-all’ option.
OR if the “You are Encumbered” Window is to stay, it can be made where not every item in the window is shown, to say that “You are attempting to carry x amount items than will fit in your bags. Clean some space or delete something.” whereupon clicking the ‘Take All’ button reduces the x amount being withheld per click.
1. Give all container-type items and certain consumable items (for example Essences of Luck, Wintersday Gifts, Trick-or-Treat Bags, etc.) a ‘Use all’ option whereupon a ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ Confirmation Window pops up with a warning message saying, “To prevent overflow of items, the “You are Encumbered” Window will not appear in the event of insufficient Inventory space. Are you sure you want to use all at once?” (the sound effects from consumable/bagged items upon using the ‘Use-all’ option would sound off only once to prevent overload of too much of the same sound).
Forcing players to click 500 times to open 250 consumables that contain many items is a lot of wear and tear on our gaming mice after a while. No player should have to go through this much clicking.
NOTE: If players use the ‘Use-all’ option with an already full inventory, the action of ‘Use-all’ will never go through at all until the player makes more room in their inventory.
Furthermore, when players use the ‘Use-all’ option, it is not necessarily the case that all consumable/bagged items will be used due to lack of inventory space to store all those items, and so in the case of insufficient inventory space, no items will be lost, to which a message will still pop up saying to players that they do not have enough inventory space. Nothing changes like if a player clicks a stack of consumable/bagged items one click at a time to which they are eventually met with the same message regarding insufficient inventory space.
Let me explain this mathematically if the above is not clear:
Say you use the ‘Use-all’ option explained in idea #1, and you have room for all items coming from 150 bags out of 250 bags, yet that 151th bag contained 3 items that could not fit in your inventory because you have only 2 empty inventory spaces left. Guess what? When the game code sees 3 items at once cannot fit into only 2 empty inventory spaces left, the use of that 151th bag will never go through, and as a result, NO excess items will be lost because there would be no excess items left over.
2. Make the ‘Yes’ or ‘ No’ options Hotkeys that can be used in the Destroy Item Confirmation Window where the Y and N are underlined. I have seen this simple option in other games when destroying items and it would be great to see this in GW 2
Doing this will make it easier for players to Destroy items at a faster pace vs. using the mouse to choose ‘Yes’ or ‘No’ for each undesired item, especially after receiving many useless items that won’t sell on the TP from opening a stack of openable items.
3. Make the ‘Buy more at Trading Post’ option available in all collection windows within the ‘Collection’ achievements section for all collectible items that can be bought and sold at the Trading Post (when players Right-Click on a purchasable collectible item).
4. Without changing the current size of the Trading Post Window (this is not option-related yet should be mentioned), at least 10 items should be displayed (instead of 3) under the ‘Recently Viewed’ and ‘My Latest Trades’ columns where we can use Scroll Bars to view all 10 items under those two columns within the ‘Home’ tab.
5. Under the ‘Miniatures’ section in the Hero Window, add the ‘Find in Trading Post’ option only for Minis that can be bought and sold at the Trading Post (much like you can do within the ‘Dyes’ section).
6. Within the Trading Post, give players the option to ‘Hide all unlocked’ skins and minis like you can in the ‘Dyes’ section of the Hero Window. (This idea brought to you by MashMash.1645 in the comments. This is not really a new idea but a good one).
7. Give players the option to assign a Hotkey for ‘stowing’ and ‘activating’ a Ranger’s Pet.
8. Add a Template Saving System for Builds & Trait Lines so players can switch up their setups on the go during their gameplay to adapt more quickly to different situations.
Note: Idea 8 used to be a ‘View Gear Type’ option, that despite explaining throughout the idea players would only be allowed to view the names of another player’s gear (not Player Stats, Gear Stats and Mods within the View Gear Window), and that there would be a setting within the Settings Window named ‘Allow players to view your Gear Type’ with a Check Box next to it that is not enabled by default… the idea itself (after many conversations I have had about it with players in-game) posed an issue that was argued where elite players doing end-game content would criticize or kick players in parties that did not have the ‘Allow players to view your Gear Type’ option enabled prior to joining the Party, among similar scenarios that were argued.
That is why I no longer stand behind the original 8th idea because I believe all players should be able to go through all their scratches and bruises (as a learning experience) no matter where they are playing in the game, and no matter their game experience.
Just because a great many players have spent countless hours playing through the core content of the game prior to reaching end-game content does not mean they should be expected to fully understand how to play end-game content when they do get to it, because core content gameplay is not the same experience.
9. Create a Toy Tab in the Hero Window where players can store all their Toys bought from the Gem Store to save more Inventory space and to ensure Toys are with players anywhere they travel like players can do with Minis (this idea brought to you by jessym.2109, although I have heard other players in-game say they want this, too).
Note: I have had players tell me in past conversations that one of the reasons they will not buy a lot of Toys from the Gem Store is because they do take up too much Inventory and Bank space, and I can agree because I own many Toys from the Gem Store as well.
The reason why the original idea #9 was removed and replaced with another is explained on Page 2 of this thread between the 7th, 8th, 9th and 10th post down.
10. Implement an in-game World Boss Timer Window that has a timer for each Boss to encourage more players to participate in World Boss Events vs. making players rely on third-party/external sources outside the game to keep track of the World Boss Events. That being said, using external sources to track World Boss Events would still be viable for players not logged into the game, yet an in-game Event Timer would be more accessible.
Furthermore, World Boss Events that are already taking place in the Timer Window would read, “Started” whereas World Boss Events that are over would read, “Pending…”
NOTE: This idea is not option-related, yet it is an idea I believe that will bring more players together on the battlefield during World Boss Events.
(This idea brought to you by the general community)
Honorable Mention 11. Add a ‘Total Gathered’ label below the ‘Vendor Value’ label for all gathered materials within the ‘Buy / Sell’ Windows of the Trading Post.
Those only remove conditions if you take the trait he mentioned, which prohibits you from taking the other condition-cleansing trait. Because they’re in the same trait line at the same level (grandmaster). It also really hurts build diversity because you MUST take that trait line if you want reliable condition cleanses.
Healing Spring used to clear conditions, until they converted it to a trap. It still does if you can get the trap portion to trigger. But if the initial heal portion tops off your HP, then the trap portion doesn’t trigger, and you never get the condition cleanse.
My most frequent mode of death now is I get cripple/bleed/burn/whatever put on me, I use Healing Spring, the initial heal puts my HP to full, meaning I never get the condition cleanse, and I get killed. (If your hp drops while you’re in the HS trap, you have to move out of the trap and back in to trigger it and get the condition cleanse. Which is rather difficult when you’re crippled and quickly being beat to death.)
This used to be the ranger’s best heal, but its current state has made it the second worst. The dorky trap mechanic might’ve been acceptable when you could pre-set up to 3 healing spring “traps” for later use. But that was immediately “fixed” to a max 1 trap in the next patch, while the condition cleanse problem remained unaddressed. If they can’t make the trap trigger if you’re not at full hp or you have conditions on you, they need to make it so using the skill also cleanses some conditions.
Lightning reflexes- cleanse 2 movement impeding
The immobilize clear was added to this skill because it was silly/stupid to have a skill designed to make you leap back out of danger, but could be completely nullified with an immobilize.
Signet of the wild: cleanse 1 every 10 seconds or full clear
That is the lone utility skill he mentioned.
As far as traits I’m curious to know which one you are noting, and you might be forgetting shared anguish which transfers movement impeding conditions to your pets
That doesn’t transfer conditions. It transfers control effects like stun, knockback, and is equivalent to a stun breaker, not a condition cleanse. And it seems to be bugged at the moment. Or maybe it’s because Anet keeps adding mobs which repeatedly apply multiple control effects in quick succession, and the trait only transfers the first application to the pet before going on a 60 sec cooldown. (Side-effect of changing Stability to stacks.)
There is a ranger trait which removes blindness, cripple, and poison on dodges. Probably the weakest conditions out there.
I believe sword 2 is also a immobilize break as well as greatsword 3
Nope. They don’t clear any immobilizes, control effects, or conditions. In fact GS 3 is bugged in that if you’re immobilized during the middle of its leap, all your skills are disabled until you die or logout. Actually I think this bug affects all leap skills, it’s just more apparent on ranger GS 3 because it’s the longest duration leap.
You wanted to complain about Herald, but none…of your complaints are actually about Herald.
1. Yes, Revenant with targets far away and Shiro can quickly gapclose to visible targets. But here’s the trick: They can’t shadowstep to place with no enemy player. That means they’re rather average for any decapping, but are amazing at preventing decapping. Which is a solid thing and counter to Thief’s primary role.
That’s a complain about Shiro
2. Next one! I don’t really understand this part. What “openings” are you talking about? Should Revenant first backstab you? Should he /bow before engagement? From the latter part I guess that you expected something like Warrior 2.0. No, Revenant won’t “trade hits” with you in every build, it wasn’t the profession design goal. If you want someone to “trade hits” with, fight D/D Ele.
3. Oh my god, they can heal! And there’s absolutely nothing you can do to prevent Infuse Light’s healing, which converts incoming damage to healing, aye? They can also use Shield which will make them lose the node and can be broken with two short Immobilizes or little Chill (not to mention hard CC), but why should you counterplay it? He should die like in previous betas, know his place! And he shouldn’t be able to break stuns.
4. Okay, okay, now…serious. So there’s a Hammer, weapon which requires Revenant to go off the node to achieve good damage and has AA with 1 second cooldown and ~1/4s aftercast. Now why would you, as a good player, avoid Hammer #2 by using WASD and movement in general to sidestep attack which always goes in a straight line, while decapping a point? Or run around Revenant so he can’t hit with AA, because it will cancel itself? We all can agree that two days of beta-testing Revenant is enough to put that disgraceful profession in check. I don’t even have to check Revenant’s abilities to tell they are OP!
And knowing that Sword #3 will follow me anywhere, I totally shouldn’t consider taking Revenant off point and out of position, because he has no control over his character.
5. If you’re bad with conditions, that’s okay. We understand, many here share your problem.
6. While having little and short-range condi cleanse, being completly neutered by any good Necromancer and having little AoE/little burns?
The thing is, folks….we had 2 days to test Revenant and most of you sound like new players complaining about Kill Shot Warrior. You don’t know the profession yet, majority doesn’t know their skills, not everything is familiar yet. And we all can understand that.
But threads like this one where a person who has no clue about profession, instead asking how to counter specific things, just wants to complain for the sake of it / lost 1v1 and not even know what to complain about are just useless and lets bad players fuel their anger.
“If only ANet had some kind of forum they could use to communicate with us……”
“ANet. They never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity to not mess up.”
Mod “Posts created to cause unrest with unfounded claims are not allowed” lmao
Mmm. So if none of that is support, what is support? Just healing? Ventari tablet woosh woosh and PvE is magically fixed?
I didn’t say it wasn’t support, I said that in the current state of PvE anything outside of more DPS, wall, and occasional stability isn’t needed or isn’t meaningful and the I hope things will change with HoT and builds other than pure DPS will have more importance.
Soooo….the condi clear in some dungeons isn’t meaningful?
So the aegis that just saved you from being downed by Archdiviner isn’t meaningful?
The protection that was the sole reason you wasn’t killed by Ginva auto attack isn’t meaningful?
The vigor you have that enabled you to dodge a Mossman axe isn’t meaningful?
Chaining blinds on dangerous trash isn’t meaningful?
Clearing defiance stacks on some dangerous bosses isn’t meaningful?
You get my point, right?
They didn’t increase the radius, they made them die on activation and gave them a trait so they could passively throw out some kitten boons. Spirit ranger was only a good build when eles and warriors were non existant. After they got buffed there was no reason to play spirits anymore, and still isn’t. If you want to play a support ranger you have to do it differently now. Hence my attempt to help.
Please take over for the Rev and fix it. Theres no way the expansion is coming out before christmas with the Rev in this state. Your work with the Mesmer is a thing beauty. And while I don’t stand a lot of choices that have been made with the necro in the past, this last patch made it a lot more fun even though it’s still underpowered.
Which brings us to the Rev, which right now looks worse than the Necro ever has which is actually unbelievable. I think you’re the only designer that has a grasp on how people actually play this game. Don’t let the Rev launch be awful. Ty
So, for most of these ESL PvP events that take place players are granted the ‘’call of the mists" Buff granting them bonus Rewards and points from PvP games during the time the tourney takes place. While this buff is just a small token to players during these events, I feel it would be nice to have something similar for PvE during events related to PvE, The upcoming trio tourney would be the most obvious example. Not sure what bonuses it could give, maybe 20 tokens extra per path during this time? Or 10% bonus gold from dungeon reward chests. Anyway I’m not sure exactly how they would do it but personally I think it’s a cool idea and would be a nice move from Anet to support PvE a bit more. Anyway was just an idea I had, Thoughts and feedback are more than welcome.
I think the original idea was to make a “Season III” of Living World, but the Dev team decided to take a bit further, roll it all up into one package, shove more stuff inside, and call it an expansion.
The downscaling system is flawed because it lowers all stats by a percentage and it fails to consider some important factors.
Crit Chance – When your crit chance is lower, it’s not just your damage that drops. You also proc things less often. If you design a build with a crit procs you get them far less often while you’re downscaled. This is an unecessary penalty for being higher leveled than the area. The whole point of the system is to make it so you don’t 1 shot everything and you can take enough damage from mobs to actually care about them hitting you. It doesn’t need to ruin the functionality of sigils and traits.
Item levels – This is a huge problem with leveling up characters. When your gear is sufficient for the area, but your character level surpasses the area, your gear suffers the same downscaling as your base stats. This makes the gear worse than the area, so you need to constantly update your gear as you level up or else you end up weaker than the level you get downscaled to. This is also totally unnecessary and goes outside the scope of the original purpose of the system.
The second issue is the root cause behind people wanting only level 80 characters in dungeons. Sub-80 characters are usually extremely weak because of how the downscaling system works. In order to make a sub-80 character strong you have to deck them out with the best available gear for their level. If everyone did that, we’d see most of the sub-80 characters performing well in dungeons and groups wouldn’t be asking for level 80 characters. So changing the system in the way that you did actually made this problem worse. Because to be clear, most of the pre-80 characters trying to get into dungeon groups are still above the dungeon level. When you downscale a level 50-60 character who’s still wearing his level 45 gear down to level 35? He gets 1 shotted by everything in AC.
So yeah this system is totally broken and it just got a lot worse with the patch.
This thread will contain constructive criticism about the Ranger changes that need to be reconsidered. As a low-to-mid tier class in every single environment we need to avoid getting nerfed at this important time of changes.
This thread is a highly recommended for developers of A-net to read through as a suggestion list to correct their decisions that are clearly causing a frustration within a large community of Rangers.
I tried to do my best to gather all the issues at 1 place.
______________________________________
The thread will include:
traps
spirits (important) damage modifiers (important)
condition cleanse
survivability
support options
random traits from every line (important)
result of the changes
—Traps
Traps got nerfed in arming time and got their condition durations buffed just like every single condition in the game so far. Overall nerf with the only outcome of Destroying the Rune of the Trapper for Spike Trap and now even Ice Trap (damage added to pulses).
Moreover, the definition of traps is even more ignored since no one cares about stepping in them – everyone will just want to walk out. We still have them as condition bombs that we no longer can throw from a safe distance, the 2 sec cripple is not even funny as a compensation.
- The Trap changes are a nerf we didn’t deserve. No one was using them before, no one will use them now. ~ Consider giving traps a defining mechanic that will make people want to avoid them such as 1sec. Daze, Root, Knockdown, Fear, 1 Boon strip. We already have options to cripple or chill the enemy
—Spirits
They got a whole rework, but whoever designed them forgot the main point of the Spirit Ranger. It’s Support. To do this efficiently – we sacrifice every utility slot – being unable to support ourselves. Moreover, the support comes in 2 ways – defensive in terms of mitigation and recovery and offensive – in terms of damage and control.
What PvE says – the spirits are ruined. Frost Spotter now lacks “Frost”. If you can’t move your spirit and the cooldown increased – it clearly means your Frost Spirit won’t be even at 50% of the dungeon assuming he can’t follow you.
What PvP says – the main reason for Spirit Ranger was his multi-rally button. That was the only reason the Spirit Ranger had a place in PvP teams – and now we got stripped of the “multi” part and got stuck only with the unreliable activate button that can be interrupted.
Spirits were nerfed for it’s main competitive purpose for PvP where spirits die to AoE and conditions that we have no awareness of – meaning that Active Part of the skill is not available for the most part. If you decide to use it – you may as well consider spirits an active abilities on 30 second cooldown without passives because you have to blow them immediately. Spirit Rangers are Team Supports where their mechanic die on sight. ~Consider giving us back the “trigger on death” mechanic by default and reconsider death of Elite Spirit upon activation as well as reducing it’s cooldown by noticeable amount (30-50%)
—Damage modifiers Rangers were at a decent place in PvE environment including dungeon runs. Now that Frost Spirit is annihilated (explained above) for PvE, we need something to compensate this loss. Strangely enough – the only thing we received was a straight damage nerf in terms of missing damage modifiers.
Rangers lack Direct Damage spikes which logically asks for other mechanics in return. If we lack damage spikes – we should have unique support on a massive scale, but we don’t. Or we should have immense utility that would make you want a Ranger, but we don’t. If we have nothing of the above – we should have the highest passive spike-less damage output – but we don’t, since classes that deal damage in burst form have even higher DPS by doing that.
- By taking out Ranger damage modifiers – the only damage Rangers deal is way too low even if everything is invested into damage. That being said – while this game is about killing targets – classes that can’t do anything but kill stuff should be rewarded by doing so. Warriors can run Phalanx, Rangers can only deal damage, thus we need to deal a lot of it even if passively. We do not want the damage back. We need the damage back. ~Consider giving us back the damage modifiers at whichever place you feel like it. Bountiful hunter giving 5% baseline and 1% for every bonus boon is one of the options
Edit: I made the maths behind. I am terribly sorry for my mistake from earlier. With the Quick Draw we are going to possess damage spikes and our DPS went up a teeny bit.
Thank you A-net, we love you.
Only 5 professions can be meta anyway, so it’s not fair to expect them to be. So long as they are buffed to Engie/Ranger level of “fun to play, good DPS, good utility and not a detriment to the party” that will be good enough.
