Guild Wars 2

I was pleased to see that he can jump.

Yasha.5963:

Xander.4539:

Don’t think you really understand what balance in an mmo means. You need to see the bigger picture.

Could you elaborate on this a bit more?

My primary view on balance is from an spvp viewpoint- the forum where all classes have access to all skills, equal gear, and max level. Its great that GW2 has this level playing field.

Now when you look at Ranger, you can see that if I go pure burst I can do lots of damage (but not enough to kill anyone in 2 secs) but that I will be truely squishy and exposed to enemy burst. Its a clear trade-off. Its balanced. Other classes, like thief for example, can go pure burst (and kill even tanky builds in 2 secs), but they still retain strong survivability; ie relatively they are not balanced.

When I think about balance in an mmo, it’s not about skill #1 being balanced against skill #2, or trait #1 being balanced against trait #2 and so on. It’s about whether or not the other professions are killing stuff five times as fast as you, and this is especially important in the pvp area of the game.

As it stands right now, the ranger in all its glory, is not balanced against the other professions, not even close in most cases.

I do understand what you mean though, just dont let the devs believe for even one second that “the ranger is balanced, and everything is good”.

Don’t think you really understand what balance in an mmo means. You need to see the bigger picture.

Very nice video Seraiea, I enjoyed it a lot. Hope you will make more in the future.

I had little problems with my ranger until I got to lvl 80, and started getting closer to full excotic gear. Then all the mobs started going for me all the time, and never ever for my pet. Now, Arenanet might not want us to have a pet that can tank for us all the time, but that also means that i’m not able to use the Shortbow bleed spec either.

Since we have to flank the mob, or stand behind them, to stack bleeds, we’re effectivly locked out of any form of condition spec on the ranger. And then there starts to be a limited amount of fun and usefulness left imo, because not everyone wanna stand 12-1500 ‘dots’ away from a mob with a slow, slow Longbow.

voidelysium.7285:

The aggro system must have changed. The same mobs I was fighting two weeks ago that practically hugged my bear are now chasing me around nonstop. I wouldn’t mind but the bear has more vitality and hits harder than me..feels like the mobs are picking off the weak..

I’ve played 100 hours of ranger and I am absolutely certain the aggro mechanics have changed. First they put half your DPS and HP into a pet, and then make the HP part useless because it can’t hold aggro…

Or your gear has gotten better, which is some of the worst thing a ranger can do in this game. Just take off all you gear for a few mobs, and see if you notice any change.

No, I don’t miss them at all.

Fix the broken aggro table, so that even a ranger in full excotic gear have a chance to flank a mob, without the mob ignoring the pet completely and constantly running for the rangers face. I mean seriously, if you want to have a direction requirement on the Shortbow bleeds, please at least give us the chance to do just that.

Redesign the whole Tame Pet thingy, because that’s just a slap in the face to any ranger with any respect for himself, and nature. The fact that you only want us to press F to get a new pet, is like throwing immersion right out the window. And it really gives a signal that you don’t even want to bother making rangers a fun class.

This isen’t a fight against something evil, it’s just a struggle to get the devs to see that there might be more wrong with the ranger than meets the eye.

The crappy dmg is just a little part of it all. The somewhat dull abilities is just a little part of it all. The broken class mechanics called pets – with no ability at all to hold a mobs attention for even a second, because of broken aggro management – is a bigger part of it all, for me personally.

So “fight what cannot be fought”, even tho the real threat is in the code. Arenanet, please give us back a viable Shortbow bleed spec.

Unable to apply bleeds with Shortbow when solo, because pets are being ignored by mobs, causing mobs to go for the ranger right away, whether he shoots or not. And as we all know, you have to atleast be flanking to apply bleeds, which is now impossible.

It looks like the better the gear, the bigger the problem, but it dosen’t matter if you shoot or not, one hit from the pet and the mobs turn to the ranger.

It’s like the opposite of the engineer turret aggro issues where the turrets generated so much threat that they could be used as tanks. So maybe they ruined ranger pet aggro when trying to fix the engineer turret aggro issues, i don’t really know. I do know this tho, Shortbow bleed stacking is useless if your ranger are getting decent gear.

This is quite sad, since playing a Longbow ranger is mostly about standing still waiting for stuff to come off cooldown. Please do something about these aggro issues, so the Shortbow bleedstacking ranger can once again be usefull.

Yea, i’ve spent hours testing different scenarios today, and the only time the aggro seems remotely fine, so that im actually able to put some bleeds on a mob, is if my character is naked and fighting a Risen Noble.

All other situations i’ve tried, with lvl 80 gear, lvl 60 gear, or even naked, sooner or later i’ve acummulated so much aggro that my pet dosen’t matter at all anymore. It’s like a permanent “Misdirect” of aggro from my pet to me, and the client isen’t able to reset the aggro either it seems.

You have a point .. Now my lvl 80 sylvari ranger is running around in his old lvl 60 gear, that’s the only way im able to flank any mob long enough to get some bleeds up.

And it’s not because the lvl 80 gear makes him do so much dmg that the pet can’t hold aggro. No, it’s because as soon as I put on the lvl 80 gear, the aggro table goes off the chart, the mobs run through the pet and go for my face. And it dosen’t even matter if i’m shooting the mob or not. As soon as the pet comes anywhere near the mob, the mob comes running to my face.

Worst thing is, I don’t think Anet really understand that the ranger is broken in so many places, so all of this must seem like nothing but whining to them. But I suspect that the ranger never gets tested under the same circumstances as the average ranger plays in, so there’s no way Anet will be able to really see how broken it is.

There’s one more really weird episode that happened right around the time i got my excotics. We where about 5-10 people trying to kill Melandru, and for some odd reason he locked his aggro on me. So ofc I ended up dead within minutes. Now one would think that dying might have given me some form of aggro reset, but no, nothing of the kind for a ranger.

So i end up dead again. And again, and again, and again, and again… So i thought, you know what, I can’t let all these nice people keep ressing me like this, so I ress at a waypoint, and start the long run back.

But what do you know, as soon as im getting closer to the action again, Melandru starts going for me again. And this happened several times. There was no way AT ALL I could lose the aggro I had gained, no matter what I did. Only thing that I have found to be working, is running around in my old lvl 60 gear. How fun is that …

The broken aggro table wasen’t fixed either. Makes it impossible to have Shortbow bleed spec if you’re not playing with other people that can turn the mobs away from your face, so you can stack bleeds from the side or from behind. On your own, there’s no way you’ll be able to flank the mobs if you’re full excotics. The mobs just runs right through your pet, no matter if you shoot or not.

The ranger i’m having so much problems with, is a lvl 80 sylvari with full exotics except for weapons. When i’m on another ranger, a lvl 60 human, there’s no problems at all, the pet hold kinda “normal” aggro, so I have to work a bit to pull aggro off of it. :o/

Have they said anything at all about the broken aggro table at a certain gear lvl?

Okey, looks like it might not be the latest build that causes the problems, the problems where always there, but didn’t really kick in until I bought my first two pieces of dungeon gear.

If I take away all my gear, it’s all good, but as soon as i put my gear on, the issues comes back. Dosen’t matter if i shoot at the mobs or not, i’m just a walking aggro table.

This all sounds pretty crazy – i know – but it might have been the fact that i started to buy the dungeon gear, and now the aggro is sky high, even if im not shooting at the mob.

Edit: Come to think of it, these problems all started when I got rid of my last green item. And now I’m hearing other players ingame saying the same thing: When the ranger gear gets up to a certain lvl/quality, the ranger is automatically broken. So what i’m curious about is, have any of you forum users noticed similar things, and have anyone seen Anet mention anything about stuff like this?

After the latest build tonight, the pet aggro seems even worse than before. There’s no longer any chance at all to stack bleeds with a Shortbow, because the mobs are all up in your face all the time, never on the pet anymore. It’s almost like the mobs don’t even register that there is a pet on them, even if the pet takes 50% of their health.

So now there’s no way i’m able to shoot from the side or behind anymore, and that also means, little or no bleeds. This feels very wrong tbh, and i’m thinking that something went wrong with the latest build.