Showing Posts For Tidalwave.9384:
I admit I haven’t read the whole thread but these are my impressions with the current trait changes, I’m sorry if these changes have been talked over already.
Spite:
Overall I really like the minor changes, the old ones were kind of a win more and most of the time just neglected. Now they can give atleast minor benefits instead of being just useless.
Of the adept traits I feel like Bitter Chill and Reaper’s Might are just underwhelming. Necro doesn’t have access to so much chills that Bitter Chill can be abused and Reaper’s Might requires for you to build specifically towards being able to stay in DS for long periods of time, which rarely happens in PvP. I would merge Reaper’s Might together with Unyielding Blast since the two fit very similar role and are both underwhelming.
Out of master traits Chill of Death is amazing as ever but Death Shiver needs major tweaking, it’s a cool idea but very underwhelming at the moment. It might just be better to replace it with something else entirely.
Also I believe that Axe Mastery was just a nerf. It’s an interesting idea to have something else than just flat reduction but especially since necro have access to DS, they just don’t auto attack that much.
Grandmasters also feel underwhelming. Signet mastery feels like a master trait, it’s not that strong although it’s a nice effect. Same goes for Spiteful Spirit, it’s a cool effect but feels weaker than Weakened Shroud which is adept. Overall the Specialization really has just 1 choice that everyone takes since it’s better than the others.
Curses:
Overall I really like this specialization but there are few traits that need work, Like toxic Landing Weakening us. Also buffing Chilling Darkness to include dazes would be nice buff to warhorn, seeing as the warhorn trait is still in this specialization.
Reaper’s Precision should be merged with another trait, it’s very underwhelming now and it was as adept trait too, it could be merged with Vampiric Precision as both traits do similar things and it would fit the vamprism theme.
Also why is Parasitic Contagion in this traitline? If Blood Magic is supposed to be the healing specialization wouldn’t this fit better there? Condi specs already have a very real choice to make in this traitline between the condi duration increase and terror (also add the fear duration into this, no point splitting the 2 when terror spec is going to take both no matter what).
Death Magic:
Combine Flesh of the master and Death Nova and move it to other specialization (spite maybe?) and remove the toughness you gain. Minionmancer is already annoying as it is, no point in it gaining free defensive stats when your minions protect you so well in the first place (counting that the AI works).
I consider Shrouded Removal to be in a good spot, it’s nice amount of condi removal on a short cd but it could be buffed to converting condi into a boon or also remove nearby allies condis but this might be too much powercreep.
Combine Greater Marks with Soul Marks and keep it at master tier in either of the specializations. If the goal is to combine weapon traits why are these 2 still separate, they’re not that strong to need to be separated, although it might need to be moved to grandmaster.
Add Cast Doom on the target who CC:d you to Reaper’s Protection (also could be combined with Fear of Death), this is a fine trait vs melee opponents but useless vs ranged as its radius is so short.
Remove Deadly Strength, this is just me disliking this type of traits. Traits should be interesting but just gaining stat off of another stat is very boring. There can be plenty of interesting type of traits that could be just as strong as this while being more fun.
Unholy Sanctuary is a interesting one but also very underwhelming, it would be awesome if your own healing effects could heal you (well heal, vampirism, regen. etc) while in DS if you have this trait. Considering that your heals outside of your main heal skill aren’t that big I wouldn’t see this being a problem.
EB doesn’t need to be what it is currently. Many traits have changed. in fact, EB doesn’t even really need to exist at this point, considering how much better WK is. so where does that leave us? We need a condi cleanse in another line other than WS, rangers should be good at getting rid of condis, and I feel like NM is the best place for it.
Why not add a aoe condi-boon convert to the new Invigorating Bond (f2 heal)?
I agree, WK is better and I know traits will change but the most realistic change that Anet will do is to buff Emphatic Bond to just remove conditions. The main point of my argument is that we need another condi removal trait overall to increase build diversity. What kind of trait it is or where it is outside of Wilderness Knowledge is irrelevant in the long run.
Ok going into more detail about Emphatic Bond, which specialization does it fit? Quick answer is none flavorwise and gameplaywise you still have to shoehorn it into one of them. About whether you can’t move it into one specialization because you miss trait X, that’s the point of a choice, each and every one of them should be something which makes you say “I really want that”, it makes the choice important. Some of them might not be good for what you have in mind but the choice should be real.
Current Problem with Wilderness Survival is that you will go there to grab either one since it’s the only specialization with good condition removal so that fact alone forces you to take it, no matter which of the two you would take.
I currently have 2 problems with this iteration First all of the condi removal is concentrated into wilderness survival which is really bad for build diversity. It means that almost all builds that run in WvW or SPvP will go to wilderness survival or risk just dying to condi builds. This is similar situation to the time before Survival of the Fittest was introduced, almost every build went into wilderness survival just for the condi removal. I would suggest moving Emphatic Bond into beastmastery traitline for two reasons: first, it makes no sense thematically in wilderness survival whereas it would fit beastmastery and secondly it would give more defensive trait for beastmastery grandmaster as Beastly Warden seems to fit more of a utility role. I do get it that it allows you to specialize heavily into condi removal but that’s no different from the current situation and ranger still isn’t as good as elementalist if they really want to focus on pure anti-condition builds.
Secondly Having weapon traits in Beastmastery seems very odd, as the specialization should be about your pet and synergy between you and your pet instead of just you. I get warhorn and somewhat the greatsword since you either summon animals or animal spirits but axe got neither of those qualities. The axe trait is cool but it just doesn’t fit the specialization. I would swap the Honed Axes with Emphatic Bond, which goes nicely with my first point and Honed Axes would fit wilderness survival better than beastmastry.
Overall I like the specialization system although I do think it needs tweaking, these were just the major changes I think have to be done (or atleast the Emphatic Bond swap) for there to be good amount of build diversity. I look forward to seeing the more finalized versions of these.
Nature Magic:
Notice: I’m not gonna talk about spirit related traits, since I never use spirits as I despise them. I’m sure there’s other people with more valid points and experience in the matter than I have.
Nature Magic 15: Move to Beastmastery 5 trait, or make it baseline. This is a trait about teamwork between the ranger and the pet and while this can be very strong, it’s very basic level interaction which is why I think this should be in Beatmastery 5.
Nature Magic II: Could use merging with some other traits, boon duration increase on the pet is really situational thing to have, the healing increase from the Beastmastery trait Compassion Training (IV) would fit the traitline better than the other ones (both very situational, so shouldn’t be too powerful at adept tier.)
Nature Magic VIII: Add remove torment to this. This is already a really strong dodge based condi clear but since it has cooldown of 10 sec, I think it could be buffed slightly. This does have a huge risk of power creep though.
Nature Magic IX: Move to Skirmishing (Master). There’s nothing about being able to connect to spirits of nature that increases your skill, or training in that matter, that makes you better wielding a two-handed weapon. Also this would be a nice buff to power based ranger builds as they are more likely to go into Skirmishing than Nature Magic.
Nature Magic XII: Move to Beastmastery (master). Shouting is something that Beastmaster would do and while I do think that this trait could be in both traitlines, it definitely should be in master tier. It gives 2 boons that don’t stack on really short range, and the uptime without using ‘Guard’ is abysmal. Also this would increase the build diversity by allowing shout builds have 10 more trait points to play around. Having cornerstone traits all locked up 30 traits deep really hurts the build diversity.
Beastmastery:
Beastmastery 5: Remove and add Fortifying bond (Nature Magic 15) in its place. If you really want to keep this, it could be integrated into Zephyr’s Speed (Beastmastery XI). Currently this is just useless, it could be nice if pets were a real threat that could balance things out by your pet bursting your opponent also down when you get downed but with the current pet AI, this is not the case.
Beastmastery 25: Move to Nature Magic 25, reduce the % amount accordingly. This just feels out of place on a traitline that could be absolutely filled with pet themed traits.
Beastmastery I & V: Combine these 2 together. These two do very similar thing without either being very powerful, or if they would be, it would be set back by the pet AI.
Beastmastery IV: Merge with Nature Magic II.
Beastmastery VII, VIII & IX: Combine these together. It’s very rare that you would benefit from multiple of these enough so that you would actually notice them and currently there’s no way you’d even want to take 2 of these since they are way weaker than Beastmastery X (Vigorous Training), also your pets tend to die too often for you to benefit in a big way from these traits unless you run two pets from the same pet family.
Beastmastery XI: Move to the Beastmastery 25 slot reduce to 2 seconds to compensate. This would fit way better than the current one in the minor trait slot while also truly encouraging swapping of pets.
Associated Risks:
Major balancing, power creep especially for power builds but I feel that the power builds really need buff so some form of power creep should even happen . These trait changes wouldn’t change the fantasy of being a ranger in a big way, nor should they alienate current ranger players.
Skirmishing:
Overall move the trap traits into Wilderness Survival and tweak some of the traits. There’s no reason to have traps in skirmishing traitline. The traps are not something that a ranger would randomly throw in a middle of a fight and instantly set them (although to make them play well this happens), they are something you plan out on and play into. Also traps are a classic way to survive out in the wilderness so flavorwise it makes no sense to have the traps in the Skirmishing traitline instead of Wilderness Survival.
skirmishing 5,15,25: Increase the duration of 5 and 15 to 9 seconds (for real, currently 15 bugged to be 5 secs.). The 25 could be reworked but I feel like it’s in the fine spot atm. (there was a good suggestion of cleansing a condition on weapon swap.).
Skirmishing III: Move to Wilderness Survival (adept), no reason to have traps in skirmishing.
Skirmishing VI: I’m running this more often than I’d like to admit. Why? Because your pet is running to your target always instead of hitting them, if you combo this and swiftness they atleast somewhat stick to the target.
Skirmishing VII: Make it so that when the pet triggers this, you also heal for a small amount. Currently this is way too situational to be picked.
Skirmishing VII: Move to Wilderness Survival (master trait). Again, there’s no reason to have traps in Skirmishing.
Skirmishing IX: Make it reduce the cooldown of your mainhand axe skills by 20% in addition to its current effects. Currently it just feels too weak.
Skirmishing XI: Move to Wilderness Survival (grandmaster). Still no reason to have traps in skirmishing traitline.
Skirmishing XII: On paper this skill looks really good, but the lack of interrupts make this mediocre trait at best. The idea behind it is nice but it lacks in execution. Adding a passive effect “You deal increased damage to stunned targets” would give this skill nice boost, although I still doubt it would be amazing. Still I think this would be the best way to start buffing this trait. Also if you want ranger to be a ‘sustained damage’ profession, why does this trait exist?
Wilderness Survival:
Wilderness Survival I: While I talked about removing Muddy Terrain, I’m fine if its legacy would live on in this trait.
Wilderness Survival II: combine with Trappers defense (skirmishing III) to make reviving traits more appealing.
Wilderness Survival III: Move to Beastmastery (adept). while fits the defensive aspect of Wilderness Survival, it overall fits Beastmastery flavorwise way better.
Wilderness Survival VII: Another trait I’d just like to talk about. While it’s true that most of the ranger weapons fit the 2 upper traitlines, think about what weapons you can use in your offhand. Warhorn fits Nature Magic/ Beastmastery, axe is Skirmishing, and both dagger and torch are used to survive in the wilderness, and to a lesser extent axe too. It’s not the functionality of the trait that matters, it’s how a woodsman would use these weapons, which would be noncombat survival when in the wilds. Flavorwise I think this trait should stay in Wilderness Survival, and gameplay wise it atleast does a decent job in Wilderness Survival.
Wilderness Survival VIII: Move to Nature Magic (master), While it fits the flavor of Wilderness Survival to use different salves or herbs to heal oneself I think Nature Magic should be the traitline which should focus more on regeneration and healing overall.
Wilderness Survival IX: Change to stealth from camouflage. Since this triggers when you’re cc:d, your opponent always knows where you are camouflaged, which mostly defeats the purpose of this trait, changing this to stealth would allow the ranger to avoid more damage that follows the cc, while currently it’s very rare that you just won’t eat the full damage.
Wilderness Survival X: Move the skill cooldown reduction for Greatsword and Spear into Two-Handed Training. Move the sword skill cooldown reduction into its own trait into Skirmishing traitline. There’s no reason for the ranger to be martial master if they have specialized into Wilderness Survival.
Wilderness Survival XI: Move this down to master tier, make this just clear 3 condis from you and your pet every 10 sec. This would be one of the more important changes to be made. This is the main source of condition cleansing that the ranger currently has and it’s tucked away 30 into a traitline. Almost any build I’ve tried out and all the builds I’m currently using have this trait. It’s so important. Having it 30 traits deep in a traitline that I wouldn’t otherwise even want to take just reduces build diversity by huge margin since playing against almost all the condi builds in the game without this trait basically means you will lose the fight. Overall even in large scale fights having some passive condi clear that’s notable is very important since it can save you.
Specific Game Mode:
WvW, but affects all game modes (overall written through a pvp perspective)
Proposal Overview:
Reworking/ tweaking traits.
Proposal Functionality:
Notice: The open slots that my suggestions/opinions would leave (Marksman (Master), Skirmishing (Grandmaster), Nature Magic (Grandmaster)) could be used to buff up currently borderline builds or to overall help certain builds in multiple ways. Even though I don’t make suggestions to them (I don’t believe myself to be good enough of a designer to do so) they are open opportunities to make the profession overall stronger in a yet unknown ways.
Marksmanship:
Marksmanship 5,15,25: Combine 5 and 10 together, move the 25 trait down to the 15. Add a new 25, something like Increased damage when attacking target over 800 rage away. Make the Opening Strike be similar to the stealth attacks of thieves, replacing your current autoattack, removing the min-maxing of the 100% crit of the trait. Make the melee versions be a leap attack with around 700 range and the ranged attacks be quick long range attacks, both with increased damage compared to rangers’ normal auto attack damage. This would truly make an ‘opening attack’ instead of just 5 stacks of vulnerability and increase the felling of being a hunter stalking its prey and killing it with one powerful attack. This does have the risk of being too good for melee weapon if you gain additional leap which you could also use to escape, but the ranged attack would be very flavorful and In my opinion a great addition for the traitline.
Marksman III: Fits more in Wilderness Survival (adept).
Marksman IV: Move to Beastmastery traitline (adept), Signets don’t fit marksmanship tree at all, not game play wise nor flavorwise.
Marksman VI: While should flavorwise be in Beastmastery traitline, but we can’t move all the stuff there. Reduce the cooldown to make it more appealing.
Marksman VII: I rather just want to give my opinion on this. A lot of people are saying to Move this to the skirmishing traitline. I disagree, it fits the Marksmanship traitline very well. You rely on a keen eye to notice the weak spots on the targets and call them out, this increasing your chance to critically strike. Keen eye is a skill fitting more for the marksman traitline than skirmishing, this I believe this should be in the marksman traitline
Marksman VIII: arguably should be baseline. Could add “your arrows deal damage in a wider radius”, overall increasing the aoe damage potential of bows.
Marksman IX: Move to Beastmastery traitline (master).
Marksman X: I’d actually like this to be moved to grandmaster spot and beefed up, though I’m not sure that it would be a good choice.
Marksman XI: Move to Beastmastery traitline (grandmaster), change function to apply the signet active bonus to your pet (since it should already apply the effect to you).
Marksman XII: Notice the stealth skills I was suggesting? Partly to make this trait reset more often. If Opening Strike is strong enough and you can reset if often enough, like you should be able to, this trait would quickly become rather good. I still think it should have more ways to regain Opening Strike, one bound into being in long range would fit the traitline very well in my opinion. Overall I think it’s the opening strike that should receive the rework instead of this trait.
New trait suggestions for marksman:
1. Similar one to that of Eagle eye, just for shortbow, in the master tier. Even though I feel like shortbow should be the condi based ranged weapon, it still should have a strong trait in the marksman tree. Also it just feels weird that longbow has a specialized trait and shortbow doesn’t have one. Could be like “Increase the duration of conditions applied my your shortbow by 33%, increases the range of your shortbow by 300. (combined with the fact that marksman traitline would give you 20% condi duration this would increase the pressure that you could put in a long fight with the shortbow.)”.
2. Main hand axe focused trait in adept tier, doesn’t have to be flashy, just to have a nod toward ‘yeah you’re pretty good at throwing axes’.
Specific Game Mode:
WvW, but affects all game modes (overall written through a pvp perspective)
Proposal Overview:
Utility/ heal skill changes
Goal of Proposal:
Make certain utilities more appealing.
Proposal Functionality:
1. Healing skills:
Heal as One:
Make the skill clean 2-3 conditions, making it the condi-clear heal of rangers.
Healing Spring:
Remove the condi clear of the skill, compensate with slight healing increase.
No changes to other heals. Overall the healing skills would become more focused and each one would have their specific uses, forcing the ranger to make a real choice between the heals they can choose.
2. Utility Skills:
Signets:
Make all signet active effects affect the ranger and if traited the pet too. Balance accordingly.
Signet of Renewal:
Make the active remove all conditions from the ranger, also from the pet if traited. No changes to passive. This way you wouldn’t kill your pet with your main "really need to get these condis off me " button.
Signet of the Hunt:
Make the active attack also be a 100% crit. Often these passive speed increase signets don’t have very good actives, but SotH is just too horrible to ever be of use. Making the attack 100% crit would make it situationaly useful, but if you would pick this skill, you would still wouldn’t want to activate it all the time.
Signet of the Wild: Add stunbreak. Since pretty much all abilities that give you stability are also stunbreakers, this one shouldn’t be any different.
Shouts:
Shouts need major rework, mostly because the pets are too clunky to get the full benefit of the shouts, or the shouts aren’t that useful.
Sic’ Em:
Fix the bugs, increase the duration of revealed and make the reveal apply in a radius around the pet, so that you can realistically counter the stealth. Even with small amount of lag you currently need to guess when your opponent is going to stealth to counter it, making the stealth counter part of skill really hard to use.
Guard:
Rework, Make it be the Rune of Lyssa (6) effect (gain all boons, remove all conditions), but just transfering the condis to your pet, working similarly to the current Signet of Renewal. While it would be a shout that kills your pet, it wouldn’t be your only source of condi clear, making it not so severe.
Protect Me:
Make your pet take 50% of the damage you take for the duration, while your pet would still act normally. Your pet gains retaliation and protection for the duration. Simply gives you another defensive cooldown.
Traps:
Traps are overall very strong, giving good condi burst that ranger weapon skills lack, but at the cost of defensive utilities.
Frost Trap:
Reduce the cooldown slightly to increase the uptime of the trap. Frost Trap is often overlooked, but chilled is very strong condi and the trap is overall good.
Spike Trap:
Rework into Arrow Trap (like the current longbow #5), Spike Trap is a very classic type of trap, compared to the others it feels out of place (as would Arrow Trap, but..), however Arrow Trap would serve as the power based trap and I feel like having 3 condi based traps gives too much condi burst to rangers. (Arrow trap: Mark a spot with an arrow, enemy walking over it triggers barrage of arrows at the location. (enemy cannot see the initial arrow), (you take reduced damage from retaiation)).
Lightning Reflexes:
Also removes crippled, chilled and immobilized. (QoL improvement)
Sharpening Stones:
Rework, while this skill might be fine for pure damage, it’s extremely dull utility to have. It’s just extremely boring.
reworked into:
Woodsman’s Guile, Become stealthed, gaining Swiftness.
Part of the ranger is being a woodsman, being able to quickly travel distances and being unseen. Having access to stealth on utility skill would allow ranger to play the sustain game better and make it easier to stay in long range from their enemies.
Muddy Terrain:
Similar to Sharpening Stones, Muddy Terrain is boring and almost never useful (outside of reducing the damage when you want to try flying), which in my opinion calls for rework.
reworked into:
Lie in Wait: Apply camouflage to you and stealth for your pet.
Having access to camouflage probably is even more flavorful than the stealth, a hunter lying in wait for their pray, however in game I’m unsure how useful having on demand access to camouflage would be. Still I think this would be more useful than Muddy Terrain. Also there has been very good suggestions for ranger utility skills, a lot of them would fit the ranger better than Muddy Terrain does.
Associated Risks:
Major Balancing issues, power creep. I don’t believe changing Muddy Terrain or Sharpening Stones would cause any harm as I almost never see these skills being used anyway.
Shortbow:
#1. Make this a skill chain, ranger should be master of bow even if it isn’t the professions main focus, having skill chains on ranged weapons makes them feel unique from other professions
1. Current
2.Current
3. Instead of bleed from sides, applies 1 stack of torment for short duration.
#2. Increase the damage so you want to use this instead of just auto attacking. Increase the duration of the poison if hit by small amount of arrows, same if hit my multiple ones (3+).
#3. Grants stealth to you to increase the utility of the weapon (only if you hit something). Your pet gains protection. Since you do a short leap when casting this it would also fit the skill if it would remove immobilizes.
#4. Increase the damage to make you want to use it more often.
#5. Increase the damage and inflict bleeding (not much though). Your pet gains fury. (Technically confusion would fit this skill but I don’t think that ranger should have access to confusion.) While daze/stun is a strong effect, especially on such a quick cast time I feel like this skill is still lacking in the damage parts.
Goal of the changes:
Increase the condi damage that shortbow can do, making it the ranged weapon of choice for condi specs, while also increasing the utility of it slightly via stealth.
Associated Risks:
Major changes, needing a lot of number crunching and other balancing to be at level with other professions and as always, there’s a risk of major power creep. I don’t think the changes would affect the flavor or the fantasy of a ranger.
Sword:
#1. Allow you to dodge while leaping. You just tend to kill yourself when auto attacking since you cannot avoid important skills.
#2.This is very weird skill, it’s very short cooldown ‘get away’ button, and you basically never want to use it when it comes off cooldown since you can’t auto attack while dodging backwards/leaping. This comes off as a situational skill and it’s a strong one, mind you but it’s also something that I feel shouldn’t be the ‘spammable’ skill of a weapon.
#3. Make the dodge frames match the animation, increase the damage coefficient and base damage since sword should be the power based 1-h weapon. Make your pet’s next attack inflicts weakness.
goal of the changes:
Make the sword less suicidal when happily attacking away at your opponent, ignoring anything since you can’t avoid. Make the weapon feel more fluent and increase the damage to make it more appealing for power builds.
Axe:
Overall make axe feel more powerful, I should be throwing some of the heaviest weapons that I could realistically throw and currently it feels like I’m throwing small stones at people. Axe feels horrible to use currently simply because it doesn’t play like an throwing axe should.
#1. Make skill chain
1. current one, increased damage
2. inflict bleeding alongside with bouncing, higher damage
3. “you throw the axe with your full force, granting your pet fury. Increased damage when your target is within ~400 range” Overall make the attack chain feel more brutal, axe isn’t a clean weapon and the skills should reflect that better, the hits need more feeling of power behind them. Also reduce the aftercast of the skill, it feels extremely clunky currently.
#2. Way too similar to shortbow #2, and I think axe 2 should be the one to get reworked, ideas could be like, throw 2 axes like boomerangs, damaging foes the pass through, fly pattern depends where your target is. I’m not certain how axe 2 should be changed, but in my opinion it should be changed to something else to make the weapons more unique from each other.
#3. Increase the damage, overall I find this skill to be very useful with its almost 100% uptime weakness but it really needs a damage increase to feel satisfying.
#4. Make the axes apply cripple and increase projectile speed. It’s way too unreliable to get the pull off since you can just sidestep it. Your pet’s next attack applies vulnerability.
#5. Reduce the duration, make you be able to move while channeling, reduce the time before the skill effects start. Your pet gains retaliation. This skill is very powerful but it’s also rather clunky, making you able to move would at least be an easy fix for some of that and reducing the starting time would make the skill feel more responsive.
Goal of changes:
Make axe more heavy feeling weapon, making it more satisfying to use and overall increasing the damage that the weapon can do, since the damage is really, really low.
Dagger: Fine as it is.
Torch: Torch #4 is really strong, as is burn overall, making torch appealing choice but the 5th skill is just lacking.
#5. It’s really hard to get any value out of this skill, even when traited. It’s really easy for the enemy to move out of it without taking damage or just to even hit someone with it is hard, even when they’re on you. Having the skill be like “Set a bonfire, causing sudden blast, dwindling down to a firefield”, effectively just adding a starting damage and burning to the skill in short range to increase the effectiveness of the skill instead of it just being a dead skill versus smart opponents. Optionally this could also work as a condi removal skill to increase its usefulness.
Warhorn:
#4. make the first attack apply blind and make your pet’s next attack inflict blind, increasing the utility of this skill, it also fits the flavor of calling dozens of birds to attack your enemy.
#5. Reduce the cooldown of the skill, it gives great utility but its uptime is rather bad, could increase the swiftness duration match the skill cooldown for easy access to perma swiftness. Even though I talked about I don’t think that ranger should have an easy access to perma swiftness, it feels to me like having a warhorn would be an expection since atleast warhorn skills between professions give swiftness, and ranger should be one of the most mobile profession in the game. Make it give the boons to your pet automatically so you can give the boons for one person more (dunno if it already does this.).
Notice: everything I’m going to talk about, even though it comes off as a wall of text, is made as suggestions.
Specific Game Mode:
WvW, but affects all game modes (overall written through a pvp perspective)
Proposal Overview:
Tweaking/ reworking weapon skills
Goal of proposal:
Major changes should start from the basics, the weapons which make the core of your gameplay (or from the profession mechanic). Ranger’s weapon skills feel unfocused or are generally uninteresting to use so the aim is to focus the skills and make them fun to use. Also attaching boons to your pet via weapon skills increases the feel of teamwork of the two.
Proposal Functionality:
Longbow:
Overall increase the projectile speed of the missiles to make the weapon feel faster and hit more reliably.
#1. Make a skill-chain.
1st attack is the current one
2nd apply vulnerability and damage 65% when closer than 400 rage away, +400 range full damage.
3rd always full damage, applies 2s cripple to increase control of longbow.
#2. Reduce the channeling time, same amount of attacks, slightly reduce the damage scaling of the skill. Increase the cooldown slightly to compensate. Remove the vulnerability from the attack, instead, your pet’s next attack applies vulnerability. The current channeling time makes me feel unsatisfying since i can’t do anything else for such a long time or I lose damage.
#3. add 1s immobilize and you also gain swiftness. Overall this skill is really useful even though it’s not a damage all-star but it needs a little umph to it.
#4. Make Moment of clarity increase the knockback duration to make longbow more appealing to people who decide to take the trait, make your pet gain might. This skill is also overall useful although it’s not one of the skills you would spam on cooldown, requiring thinking when to cast the skill is in my opinion a good thing.
#5. Rework into snipe style channeled attack, dealing more damage the longer you channel it (only 1 hit though). Barrage is a cool concept but it’s extremely clunky thanks to its channeling time and the fact that you tend to die if you hit targets with retaliation on. Even if you could move while casting barrage it would still be overall weak skill since it’s easy to counterplay and you would still waste a lot of time to channel it. Also shooting crapton of arrows in rapid succession would fit shortbow more than longbow. Snipe would increase feeling of longbow ranger being a hunter/marksman and also encourage the ranger to stay in long range to feel safe channeling this skill.
Goal of the changes:
The aim is to increase the control of the longbow in pvp environment to allow the ranger to keep their distance more easily and to make them able to counter gap-closers more effectively while also make it slightly more effective when the longbow ranger is forced into melee. Also having access to 2 major single target damage skills with 2 utility skills makes the weapon more focused.
Greatsword:
#1. Increase the overall damage coefficient of the attacks, there’s no reason to punish power based builds with bad scaling.
#2. Add blast finisher, your pet gains might. Reduce cast time. Maul is overall a good skills, it’s very telegraphed but it also got great damage to compensate. Adding a blast finisher would add team utility of ranger by little, but every bit helps. Having pet gain might increases the feeling of power that the skill has.
#3. You gain swiftness when you use this skill. Swoop is awesome. It got great utility and rather short cooldown. Swiftness is more so to add overall mobility which greatsword lacks.
#4. Make the knockback attack quicker to make the skill more fluent. Add your pet gains retaliation.
#5. Make your and your pets’ next attack deals 50% increased damage. Currently the power of this skill can be very random since the extra damage your pet can deal can be anywhere between 300 to 1k. Also the short dash of this skill just makes it harder to hit, if the dash stays you could at least evade while dashing. Also the base damage of this skill is rather low compared to its long cooldown.
Goal of the changes:
Overall increase the damage of greatsword, which is currently on the low end, and increasing the fluency of the weapon to make it feel better.
(edited by Tidalwave.9384)
Specific Game Mode:
WvW, but affects all game modes (overall written through a pvp perspective)
Proposal Overview:
Increase the amount of swiftness that ranger has access to.
Goal of Proposal:
Make the ranger more mobile while running around/ in combat.
Proposal Functionality:
Add more swiftness to weapon skills, traits and utilities. Ranger is already a very mobile profession with heavy focus on evading and staying on the move. It feels weird that a class that would want to move a lot doesn’t have huge swiftness uptime, or has to use all of their skills to have a ok uptime compared to something like a warrior, who can go 20 into Tactics to get perma swiftness. While o don’t think that rangers should get perma swiftness too easily, I feel like they should have more of it.
Associated Risks:
Might make rangers too mobile and allow them to disengage and kite their opponents too easily, slight powercreep issues could happen. Overall I feel like the benefits would be greater than the downsides.
Specific Game Mode:
WvW, but affects all game modes (overall written through a pvp perspective)
Proposal Overview:
Increase the teamwork between the pet and you.
Goal of Proposal:
Make the pet feel more like your companion, and make you two play more well together.
Proposal Functionality:
Add more ‘your pet gains a boon’ or ‘your pet’s next attack causes a condition’ into your weapon skills.
Associated Risks:
If the conditions are too strong, condition ranger could become too strong, however boons should be fine and safe addition to the skills.