Showing Posts For Wyrmrider.1692:
Predator’s Onslaught gives me a weird vibe. Like the big signet changes are ushering in a bold new world where both Ranger & pet (which is to say, the “whole character”) benefit from buffs equally, but this trait is a relic of a less egalitarian age…
Seems fine balance-wise though, considering it an 8%-ish buff that’s relatively easy to activate.
Let me start by saying that I truly love the themes of the Ranger class in general. Played a Hunter & Druid in WoW, a Ranger in Aion, a Ranger/Marksman/Bard in Rift, and so on… including a Ranger in the original Guild Wars.
So of course I rolled a Ranger in Guild Wars 2, but to be honest the GW2 Ranger was a huge disappointment. I ended up deleting it a few months after launch and mostly lost interest in the game at that time.
Now the Living Story has brought me back (currently playing a Necromancer main). I understand the Ranger is about to get some love, but it seems like most of the old annoyances & clunky mechanics are still there.
For example, am I right in thinking that:
- Pets still can’t stay on a moving target effectively? (compare to WoW, where a typical pet will “charge” in, move with +30% speed, and attack without rooted animation delays, all without spending the Hunter’s talent points)
- Pets still don’t dodge or resist AoE, and must be kept out of the action or risk dying immediately in a boss fight or WvW zerg? (again compare to WoW, where pets have 90% passive AoE damage reduction for this reason)
- Pet F2 command is still slow to respond?
- Pet command “stay here” is still considered an advanced thing requiring a slot skill?
- Shortbow is still an auto-attack-focused (read: extremely boring) weapon?
- Sword auto-attack still roots the Ranger in place?
I should be an easy sell on the Ranger profession — I mean, there is literally a small hound sleeping on my foot right now, a forest outside my window, and a longbow on the wall behind me — but many of the core mechanics just felt so janky at launch. Has that changed?
Cheers,
Wyrm
(edited by Wyrmrider.1692)
I asked for it, and had a blast wiping on Tequatl all afternoon.
SoR knows exactly how to do it!
…Of course, it will be impossible to execute until the zerg-minded get bored and leave.
“T1 server” also lol, nice one any challenge can be overcome with a big enough zerg right?
I do believe them when they said they didn’t beat it…
@Asmodeus lol, nice one
+1, do not nerf
First attempt: we done kittened it up
Second attempt: still awful, but we know some things to improve at least
Third attempt: PHASE TWO!!! — oops, we done kittened that up….
Fourth attempt: I dunno, but super excited to see those lasers fire.
This is how large-scale PvE is supposed to work.
LOL. I actually like that idea a lot, because I hate gimmicky fight mechanics that have nothing to do with your character. “Quick, learn this brand-new skill. You’ll never use it ever again!” I’d much rather play my character, thanks.
The turrets really are huge. (Which is a bad design IMHO, but that’s another conversation…)
It seems like what SHOULD be happening is that Hardened Scales never stacks beyond 1-2 and most of the raid has huge might/fury/quickness uptime, that’s how the damage becomes possible.
But I think that, at this exact moment, most people won’t have a clue what I just said.
Someone said their server had it down to 10%… from a “raiding” perspective 10% after just a couple attempts is a very easy boss… it’ll get there…
I didn’t get it either.
I figured you were planning to maybe buff Jormag next week, and the Shatterer the week after, and…
/hint
Ranger.
(OK, ok… torch.)
I just want multi-classing…
I’ll vote Power as well.
But… remember leveling is just leveling. IMO, what you really want is
1) movement speed,
2) decent blue/green gear from the trading post every 5-10 levels (basically free),
3) a playstyle you enjoy enough to get you to 80 without burning out.
I choose to believe the final L is not pronounced, but instead the “tl” together signifies a hard/ejective T sound, for example: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nahuatl (click the “listen” link near the top).
Of course, I have no particular reason to believe this except that it seems awesome.
“Why is this a problem?”
1) For PvPers, it a problem because your best-in-slot gear may now be exclusively found in dungeons. (This isn’t 100% confirmed AFAIK, but it sure looks like it.)
2) For casual PvEers, it’s a problem because you’ll be behind the gear curve, and more hardcore players will start to exclude you because of it.
3) For hardcore PvEers, it’s a problem because you’ll be pressured to do the latest dungeon (the one with the best loot) to the exclusion of all else.
All of these are assumptions.
1) sPvP won’t be affected.
WvWvW has always been considered secondary in balancing compared to the rest of the game. They’ve always said this, this is nothing new. That being said it wouldn’t be difficult to add WvWvW methods of attaining ascended strenght gear either.2) Tricky wording here since curve can imply several things, such as a treadmill. Of which there is currently none implied. People are already excluding players from dungeon pugs if their not in exotics. So I fail to see how the present system has stopped that at all.
3) Sorry but how is this an argument supporting your position?
Hardcore pvers will feel pressured into pveing… Oh no… The tragedy! Wait… but that’s what they like doing… They’re hardcore pvers remember?
Thanks for asking. I will clarify.
1) Correct, sPvP will not be affected. I should have specified WvW.
This is not a “balance” issue. It is a “just let people play the parts of the game they enjoy” issue. I agree that it would be simple to allow access to this gear through WvW, and I hope they do. I’m simply responding to what they’ve said at this time.
2) A treadmill is absolutely implied here. I think the last section of the blog post, “The Future of Items Progression,” is quite straightforward about this.
The current (pre-update) system is not a treadmill because it has an endpoint, an upper limit. A casual player might not have full exotics now, but he will eventually. And from that point on, he’s qualified (at least gear-wise) for any dungeon in the game. He can even take a break from the game and still be in perfect shape when he comes back.
In a gear treadmill/vertical progression system, the bar is always moving. Depending on how quickly it moves, there will be some number of players who don’t keep up with it. Those players will NEVER have the best possible gear. And if they take a break from the game, they’ll be even farther behind when they get back.
3) I said hardcore PvEers are pressured to do the latest dungeon (the one with the best gear), to the exclusion of all else — including the earlier dungeons, which they may like better. I’m talking about a scenario where your group may love Dungeon X and hate Dungeon X+1, but X+1 is where the best gear is, so you’d better do it if you want to stay competitive.
These are not theories. They all come from personal experience. I’ve seen guilds go inactive and even disband because people were sick of the current raid tier and had nothing to gain from the previous one. And I vividly remember off-tanking the first wing of Icecrown on my alt DK, with 4.8K gearscore. It was fantastic. The next week I couldn’t find a group; the bar was set at 5K gearscore. A few weeks later it was 5.3K, 5.4K, 5.5K… The content had actually been NERFED during this time! But people had no way of judging competence, only “commitment” as demonstrated by gear, and my alt didn’t have any.
Now, please understand: I have nothing against gear-treadmill games. I get the appeal. I’m just trying to help explain the anti-treadmill position to some nice people who have politely and non-trollishly asked WTF everyone is upset about.
What I am against is the wave of people who demand every MMO in existence conform to their pre-determined spec. Cut it out, will ya? Quit mono-gaming and get some variety in there.
Oh, and one more problem so obvious I forgot to mention it: vertical progression has the nasty habit of separating you from your friends.
Seems like there was supposed to be an MMO coming out that recognized all these issues and committed to horizontal progression in order to avoid them… hmm… is it out yet? Can’t put my finger on it…
Compared to its Exotic counterpart, new Ascended-rarity “Explorer” ring has:
+5 Power
+5 Precision
+3% Magic Find+???? (Unused Defensive Infusion Slot)
Magic Find is valuable. Some gear slots are more efficient for MF than others, but on an exotic ring 3% MF is worth ***67*** of another stat. (Compare: Opal Orichalcum Ring vs. Emerald Orichalcum Ring.)
Then there’s the Defensive Infusion Slot. It’s possible that this slot will strictly be for PVE attunement mechanics like Agony Resistance. But I don’t think so, because the blog post says: “In November, we’ll introduce Offensive, Defensive, and Omni Infusions of Fine rarity…” So they’ll have different itemizations, and probably different tiers of their own, which seems to suggest more stat boosts.
I’m not that interested in debating how many stat points is too many. (The real problem is that in the designer’s own words, “This is just the beginning.”) But for those who are, the currently proposed number isn’t 2 or 3 or 5 stat points per item, it’s closer to 100.
This should keep being quoted over and over.
Thank you. I’m still seeing people saying “4%” and “5 stat points [per item]”, so I’ll go ahead and do it again myself.
Great post, Roven.
Part of this is based on your character’s story and personality. I think GW2 has some good ideas here that aren’t really fleshed out. Home instances and the charm/dignity/ferocity mechanic sound cool on paper but are completely forgettable in practice. I think future expansions will use these mechanics better, and hopefully expand on them (from “home instance” to actual “player housing,” maybe?).
Another part is mechanics. Games with lots of moving parts, far too many for a single character to master, allow people to define their characters based on what skills/roles they choose to pursue. I don’t see GW2 moving in this direction, though, because they’ve very deliberately passed on the most common ways of creating player roles. No more trinity, so you can’t become a great healer. Crafting/gathering is unskilled labor — everyone can do everything, and the results are identical commodities — so you can’t become a great swordsmith.
I’d love the opportunity to be a merchant or a farmer or a builder, with real meaty gameplay to back it up, but at that point we’re probably talking about a different game entirely.
Glad to hear this.
However I’m with those who think the whole system as it stands now is just too dull to bother with. But I’d happily spend months or years pursuing an extremely complex, epic quest to craft a legendary, because the journey itself would be fun. “Harvest a corrupted acorn from Twilight Arbor explorable mode, and plant it in the volcanic soil of Mount Maelstrom during the real-life full moon. Water it, prune it, and defend it while it grows up, until it’s ready to be felled and crafted into a staff, which must then be dipped into the blood of each world dragon, and bathed in the glow of each WvW orb of power. Then you must travel alone to the highest point in Tyria (jumping puzzle?) where you must evoke the staff’s newfound power to summon the dreaded Beast of Such-and-Such….” etc. etc. etc.
Since we’re ultimately talking about cosmetic gear, there is plenty of room for any method of acquiring it you can imagine, and I look forward to seeing what A-Net comes up with as the game develops.
On the pet being a core class mechanic —
Personally I love the idea of ranger & pet being closely linked, working together as one. Not “I” but “we.”
But this simply doesn’t work yet in GW2. In order for it to work, we need the pet to be competent (e.g. pathfinding, attacking while moving). We also need fine control over it. We need it to respond instantly when commanded. We need it to not stand in the fire (or to be able to shrug it off). And, unless there’s a very special reason, we need skills like signets to affect both of us by default.
If all that happens, I’ll be very happy with the idea that the Ranger is a permanently pet-bound class.
But honestly, I don’t think it will happen. And if it doesn’t, I’d very much appreciate some other options. Can you imagine if a dual-wielding warrior could only control his right arm, and all warriors were REQUIRED to dual-wield?
One option might be to replace the pet with a permanent nature spirit. Could be interesting for support builds (assuming spirits in general become worthwhile after the patch). Plus, if your pet is always physically getting in the way, you can try something less corporeal!
Another option might be to go more abstract, and have Norn-style “animal spirit blessings” that provide different abilities or buffs. Random example: “Blessing of the Turtle” gives you a slowly-recharging health shield, suitable for surviving burst damage.
(Again, these are OPTIONS. Imagine a row of Spirits and a row of Blessings added to the existing pet selection table — mix and match as you see fit.)
/enddream
Dear Jon,
I know you’re flooded by QQ, so I will try to present my concerns as dispassionately as possible.
First, I want to re-state that the Shortbow #1 + Quickness interaction is currently bugged.
You can verify this in two minutes by passing the keyboard to someone with a good sense of rhythm. Quickness is supposed to make the auto-attack twice as fast. It doesn’t. That’s a bug.
Second, the Rangers in this thread are not lazy, narrow-minded players who expect to auto-attack our way to victory. We are simply responding to the game systems you’ve given us.
We care about the auto-attack (#1) because that’s the shortbow’s primary source of damage. #2 is situational, and #3-5 are utility skills. So when the goal is raw damage, the “rotation” tends to be 1,1,1,1,1,1,1 — perhaps with a little finesse in positioning and movement (flanking, lining up Piercing Shots, etc.). That’s not our laziness. That’s your design.
Personally, I hate how simple our bow combat is in general. If I wasn’t a total Ranger at heart (complete with real-life pets, real-life wanderlust, and a real-life longbow target in the backyard) I would have re-rolled another main long ago.
So, I’m with you 100% on de-emphasizing the auto-attack. But this is a horrible way to go about it.
There’s no way the one-handed sword is working as intended. The skills and animations describe a highly mobile, agile, even acrobatic style of melee combat. But in practice the whole thing feels horribly clumsy.
Skill #1 chain — Locks you in place for a significant portion of the time. Why? For comparison, the #1 chain on the more tanky/brutish Greatsword (2-hander) allows unrestricted movement.
Fix: Skill #1 should not impede the player’s movement, period.
Skill #2 — Leaping backwards out of the fray sounds like a great evasive maneuver, right? Well, only if you can precisely control the timing of it, which you can’t. On the plus side, it’s a great way to accidentally pull adds.
Fix: Skill #2 should take priority over other animations (similar to dodge), or at least be allowed to interrupt the #1 chain.
Skill #3 — Very frustrating when this skill puts you where the mob USED to be.
Fix: This could be handled in a lot of different ways, but personally I’d like to see skill #3 do damage + poison along its path, rather than only at its destination.
(edited by Moderator)