Showing Posts For raGingIMP.8496:
Now as for Spirits (and Signets imo)… the problem with Spirits (and Signets imo) is they require 30 point traits to be useful. While a case could be made that you don’t need the 30pt trait in sPvP because fights are all focused around objectives, WvW is far too fluid. There’s no reason a class should have so many of their skills be useless without first investing 30 pts into a tree. Just allowing spirits to move and signets to affect the ranger and needing a low level trait to make them all affect the pet is all that’s needed.
I had to come in on this one spirits should never be made to automatically follow the ranger, as someone who plays a lot of pve I want my spirits to stay still where I put them out of AoEs in fact the way I see it spirits are in a pretty good place. You only really need two out of three traits for them to be effective the third nature’s vengeance is pretty optional.
What annoys me most about spirits is the actives, they’re only useful with spirits unbound active and even then they’re kinda dodgy because of the long activation time and the need to get the spirit into position which is not as simple as it should be due to AI following.
What I would like to see is the actives re-worked to be completely different or be channelled through the ranger himself to always be useful.
I’d also point out the condition defence is to remove them. The idea is that direct damage is mitigated by protection and armour, whereas conditions are mitigated by removing them.
Remember that conditions already have a lower absolute amount of damage than power attacks their advantage is that they ignore armour, but their disadvantage is that they can be removed before their full damage is applied.
If your having condition issues the solution is to bring more condition removal, and have more regen to mitigate some of the damage.
I’d second the beastmastery overhaul back when I was using a beastmaster build I never invested in the beastmastery line for the major traits, just the pet stats, which says a lot.
It’d be nice if they sorted out the master level majors, from the look of them they wanted to encourage more specialised attack, support or control pets, but they’re all lacklustre. Maybe trying a system where there are no pet type restrictions along with really useful perks would be the way to go.
I know Chaplan is a nice guy and entertains our questions, as well as Hrouda, yet here’s an analogy: us trying to give John Chaplan Sharp game design advice is like us trying to give Phil Mickelson golf advice. It just doesn’t make sense. I’m a mechanical engineer, you’re whatever you are, and ANET makes games. Let’s all stick to our day jobs. They’re career professionals, ya know?
I hope that helps. Rock on dude
I like this and find myself agreeing, altho I would say what is helpful is identifying issues to the devs and giving constructive criticism. Comments on why certain weapons and builds don’t work for you will probably help them, tho I totally agree I tend to avoid suggestions or keep them very general as I have no chance of balancing this game.
For example, the spirit actives annoy me no end, in pvp where you use spirits unbound they’re fine, but in pve when I’m in dungeons I want to hide them from AoE so the actives become pretty useless, I would like the devs to look into making the actives more useful in builds where the spirits are kept static as I feel you shouldn’t be punished for not wanting your spirits to move. I adapted to dungeons by putting them out the way in safe spots but would love to get play from the actives.
Also spirits should never be made to move automatically its so bad for dungeon runners, I specifically need static spirits for that content.
OK this has been annoying me for a while and doesn’t seem to have been brought up much or talked about but when path of scars is used often it doesn’t fly as you would expect.
Now path of scars as a skill tracks a certain height for the ground at all times, I don’t think this is a bug but intentional as much as I don’t like it and would love to use the skill on enemies on a higher level than me.
However this seems to lead to some issues in certain situations, mainly involving ledges. Basically as soon as the attack goes over a ledge it instantly drops to a couple of feet above the ground below it rather than maintaining the same height as it goes off the ledge. In practise this means that this attack can not be thrown across a gap between two ledges as it will drop down the hole and not rise back up.
The way it currently works is not only unnatural with the axe suddenly rising and falling it makes the attack unusable except of flat ground. The basic fix would be to solve the rising and falling problem but ideally the easiest thing and nicest for general usage would be to make it work like a normal projectile.
Leaving the whole nature thing aside I don’t see what role the rifle would fulfil, all you would get is another power weapon vying for use alongside the longbow. My vote for either a staff or sceptre, it would fit with the nature theme as they could use nature magic, and could help the ranger into another role, in this case making a good control weapon with vines etc.
I think my current line of thinking follows what a lot of others have said in that currently there is just too many other required traits for this to fly.
My solution is to look at the whole minor trait line. First of all the marksmanship line is the only one on any class where you have to get all 3 minors and the grandmaster major just to get decent play from the trait line, this seems to go directly against minor trait theory in that everyone other one is generally useful standalone. So to solve this I would as many have said merge the marksmanship minor adept and master into one, I was also thinking that remorseless should be an adept not grandmaster it doesn’t feel better than many adepts. This I think would also mean that splashing a small amount in marksmanship is possible, right now I see the line as go big or go home you never see 10 points in marksmanship.
Currently I find that if the F3 actually made the pet heel properly everything would be fine. Right now it often ends up still over 500 away from me after pressing F3.
Sadly the ranger class as a whole seems to be a haven for bad players ,moreso then any of the other classes. So while the class has some deficiencies the general lack of players experienced with the class tends to bring a ton of QQ posts and omg I’m quitting threads.
I find it really wierd that when you look carefully you find ranger actually has probably the highest skill floor of all classes and too many ignore ranger melee, or event Axe since recent updates.
Rangers are not doing as badly as people think, recently I’ve been using guard a lot and have found that it make my pet survive almost anything in dungeons, at some point I’m going to make a more offensive dungeon pet build using companions might thrown in and see if I can get it to work well. My current build is more defensive and the perma regen and sig of the wild probably also contribute a lot to keeping my pet alive.
That said I still have long lists of improvements I’d like to see but its nowhere near as doomier or gloomier as some of the community suggests.
I would like to point out at this juncture that through use of companion’s might, fortifying bond, and sigils of battle the pet can easily do more damage than before. What Anet set out to do and actually achieved is to take damage away from bunkers, a correctly spec’d ranger can have his pet do more dmg, as well as being tankier if you use guard.
I think the big shame from this patch is the death of the BM line except for using 10 points to get shout mastery in new bunker builds. I’d implore Anet to re-access all the master level traits and fast as right now they plain suck apart from making cats give bleeds.
For any condition or boon it uses the caster’s boon or condition stats not the receivers. So in this case the boon is cast by your pet using its boon duration so your runes don’t come into it. It also means conversely that is you use a warhorn to apply fury to someone else they would get the effect of your boon duration not theirs.
The issue with events occurring too often is simply that there not enough dynamic event in an area, so a lot of the issues in pve I see are caused by event density. If there were more events per metre square you would see repeats less, and its something I’ve wanted to see happen since launch with just trickles of events added to areas so more happens.
In terms of rewards for events they currently have the perfect system its just under utilised and that is Karma. The current problem is that there isn’t enough stuff to buy with karma, if they added new weapon skins to karma merchants that are unlocked by winning meta events, material sacks, recipes for crafting skins and other fantastic things I haven’t thought of the gw2 reward system would be perfect. If people could actually get what they want from karma then the reward to effort ratio for doing events would be fine.
Unfortunately your pet does not get your boon duration so the effect of your runes and nature magic is not added to Furious Screech, this is working as intended.
Good points, going to play Devil’s Advocate for a moment.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D44YUfi92ls
- 1) The f1 command is finicky. I’ve found you can get your pet to lock onto a target providing it and you are in combat. Basically, if I want my pet to focus on target B, I have to engage it as well, lock him on it, and then switch targets. A good place to try this is in CoE versus the common-boss of the golem and five support cannons. (Sidebar, if you target the Cleansing Turret and stand between the boss and the Protection Turret, GS will cleave to hit both the boss and Protection Turret. But that’s a story for another day.) It’s times like this I wish they kept the hero control panel from GW to help control out pets. A quality of life upgrade for pet control would be nice down the pipeline.
- 2) I used to think f2 skills were fine, I would take advantage of quickness on pet-swap to get off the high cast times, however with the changes to the BM tree, the f2 skills need to be re-balanced around the loss of quickness during the pet-swap being unavailable in most builds. This could also encourage people to spend the 30 points to have faster activating pet skills to get that trait.
- 3) I rely on swap or heal instead of movement to keep my pet alive in those AoE’s. It is also a good idea to understand when and where you can break aggro to stow-revive the pet. It would be nice if I could flag my pet to run to a specific area (much like “Guard,” except without wasting a utility slot.)
- 4) Another quality of life upgrade that could help players move away from needing to use snares to make their pet have the chance to hit. At least we have decent access to snares to overcome this problem in the mean time. If you’re really having trouble, try to get more chills and immobilizes to help.
- 5) A pet dodge would be nice, I’d just prefer a nice simple change to our minor BM trait – your pet evades for 1 second when you dodge. Alternatively, the implementation of a better version of “Guard” that would reduce damage taken by a large percentage (example, 50%) but would reduce the damage the pet is able to do for its duration (again, let’s say 50%). Give it 2s duration, 8-10s cooldown. Of course, just thinking out loud here, it has got to have some major problems I’ve not considered. And it would have to be on the pet command bar, not in a utility slot.
- 6) Pathing can only be solved by swapping right now, so, getting used to stowing the pet out of combat before traversing ledges and falls is a good idea. When not possible, save the swap until you’re at the bottom. If the pet is going to aggro, lock him on a target so you won’t have him drag them back to you (hint: really helpful in dungeons when running by things), then either stow it when it dies and you break aggro, or swap it when you think you’re far enough to break aggro. I’d like to say #6 could be fixed, but I think that one is a case of player skill < skills.
Of course, that’s just me trying to suggest tools we have right now to help alleviate these issues until something from the developers is introduced that either helps or exacerbates it further. Hopefully the former.
I have to say I do most of the stuff you suggested at the moment and it was very much a braindump on how to make our quality of life better and like I said to lower what is currently a very high skill floor for the class.
I would point out that I’ve been using guard a lot recently as I started using nature’s voice and I have to say the perma protection my drakes end up with mean they haven’t died for ages in dungeons especially combined with the regen and sig of the wild.
Nice post lunchbox +1’ed.
I have to agree fixing the pet to make it work should be Anet focus, and form my point of view I can see numerous things that can be done not just to improve dungeon survivability but also general quality of life. What I’ve doe is listed these first as changes/bug fixes to current abilities, the upgrades.
1) F1 – currently telling your pet to attack a target can be over-ridden by you changing target in active mode. Personally I would change this behaviour to always have the F1 command take priority, currently to achieve this the pet must be in passive all the time which while very doable in SPvP is not very doable in WvW and PvE due to mob/player density.
The reason I suggest this is it will lower the skill floor of the profession in a sensible way (which is currently remarkably high) by allowing player to more easily take advantage of the fact there is two of you and can attack separate targets. I also believe it would make the function more intuative.
2) F2 – This has been done to death so I’ll be quick in saying that F2 is not responsive enough and skill cast time are too high.
3) F3 – This is one of my biggest annoyances that when I press F3 the pet doesn’t always leash properly. If I’m in a fight and I’m being skilful by trying to micro my pet out of an AoE you can get my annoyance that the pet decides to stand not at my heel but far away, often still within the AoE I was trying to remove it from. Sorting this would be a surprisingly large help in dungeons so I can at least micro properly.
As an addition this problem seems to occur most when I press F3 and the pet is in front of me or I’m standing still. If the pet is behind me or I’m moving its less bad, but this really needs sorting soon, the pet should always return to less than 100 from the ranger.
The first few were thing that I think needed sorting with the currently implemented stuff the next is upgrades.
4) Pet moves and attacks. This I see would be more helpful to PvP and WvW people but it would sort all issues of pets landing attacks instantly if this was sorted.
5) Pet endurance bar and dodge. What it says on the tin, to make the pet viable and interesting without making it invulnerable this would probably make pet survivability about right as you would set up the AI to activate a dodge when in a red circle getting the pet out of the first two AoEs its hit by in a short period. Would also mean vigour received through the nature magic 15 point minor trait would be useful.
6) Pet pathing. Simply put if I jump down ledges or jump up stuff the pet should follow me directly even if there is a path along the ground that could be used.
Right now that all I can think of except to say that as a community we need to stop trying to push major class rebuilt as it isn’t happening instead we should focus on crying out with one voice for things that Anet will implement, which is improvements to the current system and in my mind to make the system work it has to come from AI improvements which is what most of the above pretty much is apart from point 2.
I always find theses threads amusing when I see them. To keep it simple downing someone is not a kill and for you to ever be happy you need to get this idea.
If you want to compare this to other mmos in gw2 your equivalent health is the bar for both standing AND downed. If you think about it logically in gw2 you get weakened for the last quarter or so of your health bar, but in return everyone of your party members effectively get a super heal they can use on you. I think this is a neat solution to the help the fact there are no healers.
I believe our axe pull will not oh idk actually pull people off of towers and such (it works on the y axis rather then the z axis) from what I have read.
To add more to this as this is something major I think needs fixing soon.
Currently the projectile only moves in the x/y directions it stays at a constant height from the ground, what this means is:
1) This skill can’t be used on anyone higher than you, the projectile doesn’t go up.
2) If you are on a ledge and throw it, it will trace ground height so if it goes off the ledge it instantly sinks to the ground below and trace from there, this means you can’t throw path of scars across a gap between two ledges.
The pull itself is working but the attack itself is not acting correctly as every other projectile in the game making it unusable on anything but flat level ground.
I have to say this debate has got me interested and with the suggestions going round I wanted to chime in with my thoughts.
First I wanted to look at the ranger greatsword’s purpose in the game, I think some people are making the mistake that it is the melee dps weapon. In fact my thought is that the signs from Anet point to them trying to position it as the defensive melee, while the 1h sword is the melee dps. The fact that the sword does more dps seems to back this up.
That said I still think the auto combo could use a slight tune in the upward direction, and if Anet didn’t want to do this as a straight dmg boost to keep burst down, it could be given as an increase to attack speed to improve dps that way. I also think the attack speed increase would be awesome as it would make the evade better.
I also have to say I’m all for upgrades to maul as well, and while I think the dmg is right, it always annoys me that it bleeds the target, this doesn’t seem to energise with the rest of the weapon. I’d go with what others have said and remove the bleed in favour of weakness as well as making it a blast finisher, this would also make the greatsword an interesting control weapon.
I’d say that while the stack issue is a major thing there’s also a second issue that seems to get discussed little that screws up condition risk vs reward.
That is the fact that as it stands if you use power you front load your damage and the only way to get rid of it is to heal yourself. However if you use conditions not only can your damage be healed but entire stacks can be cleansed with one condition removal.
Now this is not a rant about condition removal, but the fact that in return for the removal mechanic conditions ignore armour, which seems good until you realise there aren’t any super armoured foes in the game. The devs need to add enemies to each faction that have lowered hp but super high armour to the point where direct damage takes ages to kill them but conditions kill much quicker. All pve areas should have a mix of high health/low armour, high armour/low health and mid armour/mid health.
I would point out that there were few changes to classes in general that weren’t bug fixes, we in fact got one of the few buffs going for anyone, and technically its only a bug fix.
While I completely agree that the bosses need some sort of CC resistance, I think defiance as it is, is incredibly clunky and maybe trying to develop something new would be a good idea. What this could be I could only make wild suggestions about.
Simple things like maybe giving defiant stacks a time limit may help a bit, or maybe at least something for those who use a lot of cc would be to make it so removing a stack of defiant damaged the boss (representing him breaking the cc at a cost).
What I would like to see is that defiant was put on an agenda somewhere and the subject of boss cc resistance and possible better mechanics discussed.
I’d say the solution lies not in changing whirling defense but making path of scars more useful. Currently whirling defense is interesting and can be useful, I’ve managed it. But if path of scars became a pull for example the whole weapon would be beautiful in my opinion.
I’d say whirling defense is let down by path of scars, for an offhand attack to be useful it has to have utility not just pure damage (and paltry damage at that). Even if they don’t make it a pull if they added some sort of utility to the skill like apply weakness, even adding some support maybe, the weapon would work as a whole.
My current opinion is simple whirling defense = good (you just can’t use it like other whirling attacks, and if this is what people have been trying its the reason they fail with it), path of scars = bad therefore offhand axe = bad.
Well we do know AoEs are being considered on a case by case basis so I would hope that barrage is seen as not problematic
Once again… the problem is NOT that I don’t know how to play this over-simplified easy class. The problem is there’s little to NO reason to choose a Ranger when I go to a dungeon.
I asked in another thread, but I’m going to ask it here; Let’s play a scenario, why would I choose my Ranger over any of the other classes when I go to a dungeon? Solid and direct answers, and don’t say “enjoyment”.
Still waiting for an answer to this. It seems no one can provide one, and it’s just mostly people saying “I love the ranger class! So therefor it’s good”
To answer the question directly even me who has mained my ranger since release could use other classes to do things the ranger does better.
But I would point out specially for you Jay that for you it may be necessary to use the class which is strongest for build x to enjoy the game, this is not true for others. So when people answer your statement there is no reason to use a ranger over other classes, with the statement I enjoy the ranger, this is in fact a valid reason you can’t just discount it from the argument at will because it doesn’t suit your purpose.
I love my ranger but i did want to quote this guy because he/she makes sense. Though I have been thinking that Anet hates Rangers because we really just don’t have a lot of power..but as is stated above, maybe Ranger is jut not who I need to be…or maybe i need to play around more with traits…who knows.
I don’t think Anet hates rangers in fact I see the opposite. From update to update we’ve got stronger and some may say that its not by much. But what I would highlight is that the developers have been trying to fix fundamental problems (e.g. pet, bow shots missing) and while this is not complete to me it shows good design philosophy. This is for the simple reason that they’re bringing the class up slowly so hopefully, eventually we’ll hit the sweet spot, meaning we don’t get super buffed only to have the nerf bat swung round soon after.
Now for some I can see that this may be taking too long, I respect that and would highlight that some of the issues are quite fundamental and can’t be fixed by tweaking numbers like some other classes, but I’m happy to wait, the ranger works for me now and I only see it getting better. Just think anyone who can use the class well now will be amazing when we reach an equal footing.
One of the things I find really annoying about spirits currently is that 4 traits exist to improve them. Now consider our other types of skill signets have 3, and traps only need 2 for max effect.
A simple thing which would benefit the ranger loads would be to remove 1 and make it automatic, my personal choice would be the double health trait. The upside to that would also mean that they could add a new trait that supports greater build diversity for the class.
I know this wouldn’t solve all the problems with spirits, but one major issue I currently have is that any spirit build has to pick 3 out of 4 traits to even think of having any kind of use. Ideally what should be happening is we should have a choice of either taking 3 traits for max spirit usage or picking 2 out of 3 for a more diverse build.
What I think some of the biggest issues everyone has with the class is that the builds that work well in the various parts of the game (BM PvP, defensive condition pressure, Traps) are not the builds that ppl want to use. They would like to be able to be a full archer/glass cannon type dmg and this is currently not especially effective.
So I would say it seems to split between ppl who like the types of build that work and are at least partially happy with the class (I still think it needs work to give us more options) and the ppl who would like to play a build type that doesn’t work but probably should be viable and so hate the class.
Can I also point out at this point that any nerf to AoE is an effective buff to our pets, I for one am looking forward to trying WvW with reduced AoE. Secondly since we have so few AoE attacks especially compared to some classes we lose out a lot less than others.
Also I think traps will remain pretty much the same as the dmg is delivered through conditions which deliver the dmg over a period of time rather than front loading which is probably their main problem with AoE.