Guild Wars 2

Allie Murdock.8152:

I get the biggest issue seems to revolve around pets. I’ve also seen a couple others (utilities not being viable unless spec’d into them, burst vs sustain, traps, spirit clutter, etc.).

I get frustrated by the simple lack of synergy between skills. When you play a condi-necro and can dance through your buttons to put a bleed on the target & yourself with utility, then use your off-hand to move your bleed to them, then use a utility to copy all those bleed to all enemies in the area while putting conditions on yourself, then use your heal to cleanse those conditions and gain bonus healing for doing so… you know that playing those out of order or having to respond to changing circumstances will affect your performance.

Compared to that, ranger gameplay is just dull. You occasionally can stack up a few ‘on next hit’ buffs to pump a single maul, but their weapon skills and utilities mostly feel like oatmeal. There is no difference in what happens if I cast my traps in different orders. there’s no combos, no special order or special timing for many, many Ranger skills.

As a general statement there are also far too many ranger traits that reduce cooldown and nothing else – in other professions we’ve seen a steady march towards combing the 20% cooldown with a secondary flavorful effect. Rangers have good effects but they are spread out across too many traits. A little combining or making certain effcts default behavior of the class would go a long way towards injecting not just raw power, but some cool into a class that sorely needs it.

I have been laying into Anet for this latest LS, so I thought I would drop a line and say thank you for improving it with the latest patch. With the knights massively more doable, people show up and you beat it. I just beat them twice, along with prime and scarlet, having never managed any of them (I know, I could have done scarlet with the back piece, but I didn’t want to if it didn’t come to that).

I still find the fights gloriously uninteresting and would much prefer smaller instanced fights to these, but I recognize you were going for epic and you wanted to make the fights not merely aft on auto. That’s a tough balance. You flubbed it at first, because it was awful, but now it’s about as good as it could be, consistent with the above. So, thank you. I have a much better taste in my mouth regarding this event.

(Escape was far better, tho. Just sayin.)

Because i know you can do it Anet ;D

My post at CDI: here

Specific Game Mode

PvX

Proposal Overview

Preparations!

GW1 preparations: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Preparations

Adapt them to GW2 style, a few examples:

Read the Wind: Preparation. (10 seconds). +X damage. Your projectiles move twice as fast.

Apply Poison: Preparation. (10 seconds.) Your next X physical attacks inflict Poisoned condition.

Kindle Projectile: Preparation. (10 seconds.) Your next X projectile attacks inflict burning.

Ignite Projectile: Preparation. (10 seconds.) Your arrows deal +x damage to target and foes adjacent to target. Blast finisher.

Troll Unguent: Change to preparation. Add: Your next X attacks remove 1 condition.

You can only use one preparation at same time (no stacking problem).

Add a new grandmaster trait to survival:

Trait XIII: When you use a preparation skill, you apply the effects to all nearby allies as well.

Goal of Proposal

Improve power builds (Kindle Projectile), and condition builds(Apply Poison) without using pasive skills (spirits).

Improve party support sharing preparations like Troll Unguent

Discuss.

I do hope there’s an increase in the drop rate of the cores to compensate. We have less time now to get the cores, and their drop rate was already not THAT fantastic.

Nury.3062:

Do you expect everything to go well the first day,the previous had some patches too…be patient.

I’m not paid to test their product. It should either be tested before it’s released, or I should be paid to test this for them. It’s not a game in BETA, it’s a fully fledged, released game.

mrauls.6519:

What mmo lets you dye weapons

Guild Wars 1 xD

tldr: What I would do to a ranger in a ‘maintenance patch’

Pets

Due to this being a rushed patch we are unable to completely fix the mechanic in time. To temporarily resolve the issue we have decided on the following:

A) When pets are activated they spawn with a 5 second swiftness buff.
B) When pets are activated they spawn with a 4 second quickness buff.
C) These new buffs are not affected by traits, gear, or any other duration stacking item or trait.

• Reasoning – Currently when a pet is activated it remains idle for up to two seconds, this quick temporary fix will ease the issue by allowing the pet to ‘catch up’ to where it should have been or what is should have been doing.

Damage – Pet damage has been increased by 10% across the board.

• Reasoning – The damage is currently underwhelming and we would like to add a slice or damage at a time to test the waters.

Survivability – Pets now have ‘resilience’, this causes them to take 70% less aoe damage. Any conditions or damage transferred to the pet from the ranger is now also reduced by 50%.

• Reasoning – It is skilful play to hamstring a ranger by killing his pet, it is not skilful play accidentally killing the pet. By reducing the damage from transferred conditions we were able to bring a higher level or survivability to the pet without making them un-killable from targeted damage.

Utilities

Water Spirits (Aqua Surge) – Now cleanses 3 conditions.

• Reasoning – A step toward active conditions removal for rangers.

Guard – Now grants the pet 3 stacks of might.

• Reasoning – To give the ranger a reason to use the skill aside from the shout mastery trait line.

Lightning reflexes – Now cleanses immobilize.

• Reasoning – To allow the ranger actively react to imminent burst

Entangle – Recharge reduced to 120seconds from 150 seconds
• Reasoning – It was simply too long

Rampage as one – During this skill the ranger is immune to immobilize.
• Reasoning – Ever tried to stop the hulk with a rope?

Spirit of Nature – Healing % bug fix. – Nature’s Renewal now revives players with 25% less hp.
• Reasoning – To bring the elite in line with others.

Our focus of this patch is to bring the rangers survivability up and to allow the ranger to actively respond to threats. Due to the lure of rangers we have decided to grant them unique access to a small portion of immobilize immunity and active removal as their nature background has taught them a thing or two about coming unstuck.

Pets are a major concern of ours and we have decided to go with a ‘quick fix’ option I’m sure you will enjoy

Note – This patch is a maintenance patch and therefore won’t include any major mechanic changes or trait changes.

Weapons:

Greatsword

Hilt Bash – This skill is now has a short lunge animation increasing its distance.

• Reasoning – Activating at the current range is too RNG due to slow animation speed and any hint of in game lag.

Maul – We have decided to add the bleed stacks back to this weapon to open up hybrid build options. The stacks have been increased to 5 and the vulnerability stacks will also remain.

Longbow

Hunters shot – Fixed a bug causing the ranger to not face their target while casting this skill during immobilize.

Point blank shot – Fixed a bug causing your ranger to not face your target while casting this skill during immobilize.

• Reasoning: One of the rangers biggest vulnerabilities right now is immobilize. Allowing the player to actively and skilfully respond to threats is our aim of this patch.

Barrage – The cast time has been reduced to 2seconds from 2 & ¾ seconds.

• Reasoning: To bring this skill back in line after significantly reducing the damage

Sword

Slash – Cast time increased to ¾ of a second from 2/4 a second. Pounce has been reduced to 2/4 from ¾ of a second

• Reasoning: Currently it is difficult for players to free themselves from movement during the sword combo. Swapping the cast times allows us to give the ranger more time to cancel movement without affecting the damage output.

Axe

Path of scars – (sPvP only) – Range reduced by 33%.

• Reasoning: The returning strike is currently too difficult to land on a highly mobile target. Reducing the range effectively decreases the return time and therefore increasing the chances of a knock down. This is a pvp only skill change as it would unnecessarily nerf the weapon for pve.

Whirling Defense – Cast time reduced to 3 & 2/4 seconds from 5 & 2/4 seconds.

• Reasoning: The ranger is left quite vulnerable during this animation, reducing the cast time will upkeep its effectiveness while reducing the risk.

I’m DeShadowWolf.6854, and I support quaggans being able to jump.

Instead of investing on the uniqueness of GW1 like the lack of focus on a level cap, loot drops, highly adjustable character build system, highly focused PVE and PVP, Realistic Art styles set in real world cultural environments, battles that required strategy and teamwork instead of spam or zerg groups, etc. etc. made the GW1 really stand out on the shelf. To me GW2 is too much like other games that I already played and it has been a disappointment for me because I was hoping to continue GW1 in an updated version that offered more of the same play style but with a complete facelift to it. When I play GW2 It makes me wish I was playing GW1 again. Then I remember all those hours I spent in GW1 day dreaming about GW2 and looking forward to the new challenge.

For people that haven’t played games like WoW,Rift,or games like that for a number of years GW2 is probably “new” to you. If you never played GW1 you wouldn’t know how different this game is. I noticed a lot of players that I met that played WoW jumped to GW2 looking for salvation but only found more of the same and went back to playing WoW again once the new hype wore off. A lot of the people I met that still play this game never played WoW or games like it before. I noticed that GW1 players either hate or love GW2 or stick in the middle as they adjust to the new changes or went back to GW1 altogether.

I will say it’s hard to log into GW1 and not bump into someone that actually likes GW2. I think most players currently still playing GW1 loathe GW2 since it meant the end of GW1 and any future changes for it.

For me playing GW2 feels like I’m playing an alternate version of WoW mashed in with Guildwars. Choosing not to play WoW because I was tired of it and playing GW2 only to be reminded of how burnt out I was of those type of MMO’s really never motivated me much to play this game. The saving grace for me in an mmo is usually the community but MMO culture has really changed. People don’t group or talk they like to solo. There’s really nothing in this game that you actually need a guild for except for guild specific stuff like guild missions or bounties. With LFG and most of the main content being “zergable” A guild is hardly needed. The only time I’ve seen a guild matter is in WvsW and that’s usually because of their level of teamwork. Since this game follows the Warcraft type of style but doesn’t have raids exactly you don’t necessarily need a guild.

In GW1 guilds really weren’t needed either unless you were interested in competitive PVP. Even playing with other players wasn’t needed much because you had your Heroes. This left a pretty detached feeling a lot of times when you PVE’d in GW1 unless you invited a buddy to come along or felt like “Party Searching” for actual people for certain missions. You did however need real people for those hard—- GW1 dungeons. I thought that GW2 would somehow incorporate the MM in MMO better but their idea of this were just world bosses that required Zergs while everything else is largely soloable minus fractals.

So in closing I say that GW2 for me was a let down because it didn’t continue to carry on the lessons that GW1 taught. Instead it abandons them and takes note out of the books of other MMO’s. What I see in the future for GW2 is that as soon as a more unique mmo experience comes along GW2 might loose some steam. Right now MMO’s players are stuck in limbo. They play games they’re tired of while still searching for a replacement but end up falling on Appetizers in the mean time. Really GW2’s biggest problem is that it’s new paint on an old house. Underneath it all it’s still the same grind to shine format as every other dime a dozen mmo. It currently might offer a newer spin on it but it’s not enough to sustain the next “Guildwars” (as in a unique mmo-ish game that breaks the mold as GW1 originally did) type of game coming out.

I think I’ve felt both frustration and optimism about this game. The way I think about it is this….

Playing Guild Wars 2 is like taking your second-choice date to prom.

You’re happy. You will have a good time. There’s nothing wrong with your date. But it wasn’t the date you really wanted. And the more you think about wanting that other person, the less happy you’ll be.

I think most of us wanted more from GW2. That doesn’t mean the content we got is bad, though. I’ve gone back and forth with the Living World strategy – it reached a high point around the Bazaar stage and I remember saying, “Oh man! They’re getting their feet under them! This is going to be great!”

Then we had a few more disappointing releases and a lot more open-world zergfests.

I believe ArenaNet is a company of smart people who care deeply about this game but are working in a severely limited development environment. I don’t know if it’s because the code is a mess or the tools aren’t quite right or the engine just can’t handle the art they wish they could do or what. I’m utterly perplexed that they haven’t expanded the world we play in yet, 18 months in. I question whether zergy overflow fests are really the way of the future. I mourn the loss of each guild member who leaves (or stops representing) my small community so they can kill Tequatl or Wurm with TTS instead.

All that said, because ArenaNet is full of smart people who care, I think they’re also able to take the feedback we’re giving them and do better. Remember, they’re trying something new and expecting them to get it right the first time is maybe expecting too much.

I think Living World Season 2 will be a bellweather for this game’s future and I really hope they succeed.

Anyway, that’s my two cents.

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

Lets take this point by point.

A Resilient Profession. The Ranger is a medium armor, medium hit point profession with poor native condition removal/conversion and with a major portion of its functionality partitioned into the hands of a flawed AI where it can be destroyed independently. They’re maybe not as bad off as Elementalists, but the reality is still they are bad at one of the things the Developers think they’re good at. Yes, Rangers can — though MASSIVE trait investment — cover these flaws in a few highly specialized builds, but as a default position for the profession as a whole this statement is so untrue as to be ludicrous.

Excellence in Skirmishing. If “skirmish” means something along the lines of “mobile conflict from range” …nobody is good at it. The underlying damage co-efficients for ranged attacks are brutally punitive and doubly abusive considering most melee attacks also cleave, while Rangers have to trait for piercing. Ranger’s have modest access to knockbacks, immobilizes, cripples, and swiftness — all completely overshadowed by melee-oriented opponents’ easy access to gap closers and CC removal/immunity. And when the fight does inevitably turn to melee, the Ranger’s ability to reestablish position is limited at best, hampered by poor counters to the CC melee-based professions routinely employ to ensure their attacks land.

Supporting Themselves and Their Allies. This may come as a surprise to anyone other than most people who play the game, but Rangers are not considered an amazing Support class. While Spotter, Frost Spirit, and some shared Fury skills are welcome contributions in the one-dimension world of “More DPS”, Ranger Support tends towards inadequate magnitude, long cooldowns, or effective ranges that directly conflict with their role as skirmishers.

Alongside their Pet. Most of the time our Pets simply are NOT along side us – They’re either throwing themselves into melee like maniacs or standing like statues waiting for death to come to them. And they don’t have to wait long, because the content designers’ first and final solution to creating challenge is splashing the landscape with mega-damage red circles that pets categorically fail to respond to.

The best single target and sustained damage. This is probably true, and yet… So what? Success in nearly all encounters hinges on AoE damage or spikes. “Sustained damage” is the “I have nothing better to offer” form of damage ALL professions deliver when they aren’t doing something USEFUL. Being good at standing there hacking on a billion HP World Boss is not something to be proud of. With this statement the Ranger has been defined as the ‘supreme master of mediocrity’.

Lets Whittle our Opponents! The final piece of the philosophy neatly sums up everything that is WRONG with the Ranger profession – a class that must employ mediocre damage to slowly take tiny cuts out of their opponents, while leveraging mediocre survivability, exerting mediocre positional control, contributing mediocre support skills, and saddled with a less than mediocre class mechanic.

The Real Outcome. Its not that the final result is unplayable. You can still go and indulge in basic abnegation out on the landscape. Its that that Rangers are boring and dull, responding poorly to the slightest difficulty when compared to other professions.

Game Mode
Pv[all]

Proposal overview

Wilderness experts should be masters of poisons. Therefore, Rangers should have the most potent poisons available.

Goal of Proposal

Currently Rangers have 15 different skills that apply poison. Necros are in second with 12 and thieves are third with 9. With all that access to poison, you’d think Rangers would have some traits that make it more potent, but they don’t. In fact, there are no traits at all for Rangers that improve poison performance or help Rangers do more damage to poisoned foes. This proposal seeks to reconcile the disparity that currently exists in the Ranger playstyle.

Proposal Functionality

Rangers should be given some trait options to improve poison in various ways. Between extended duration, improved healing suppression, higher damage values, and bonuses against poisoned foes, a healthy balance should be found that rewards rangers for applying and maintaining poison.

Associated Risk

I don’t see any real risks associated with the proposal, primarily because I’ve left it general enough to allow room for various functional applications of the idea that would not unbalance the game or disproportionately reward specific playstyles over others.

Proposal Overview

Pets need help

Goal of Proposal

Currently, pets are useful for tanking open world PvE mobs but not much else. These ideas should improve the effectiveness of pets so that the ranger feels like he and his pet are one, not that his pet is a ball and chain that is holding him back.

Proposal Functionality

Pet stats should scale based on the ranger’s stats and the pet’s family, with a weight on specific stats based on the individual pets (some benefit more from power, others from condition damage, others from vitality, etc.).

Pet Melee range needs to be increased to 600, or the AI needs to be significantly improved to combat the current “Run>Stop>Begin Attack>Cancel Attack>Run>Stop” cycle that prevents the pet from DPSing moving targets.

Pets need to take 30% damage from AoEs, be immune to one shot mechanics, and take 25% damage from cleaves, when not the selected target for the cleave attack.

When Stowed, the ranger should gain the “Aspect of the [pet name]” effect, which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.
Speccing into Beastmastery should improve the pet stat scaling
Signets should always affect the Ranger and require a Beastmastery trait to also affect the pet (the opposite of the way it is now).

Associated Risks

Having a pet is a risk right now…

Proposal Overview

Redesign most weapon skills.

Goal of Proposal

Ranger weapon sets are currently lacking in focus and need to be redesigned so that your weapon selection synergizes with specific playstyles, as with all other classes. This proposal contains a list of suggestions for each weapon in general, as well as some specific weapon skills suggestions.

Proposal Functionality
(note that the numbers below refer to the skill bar number)

Longbow – Reward Max Range and synergize with pet.
1 Damage should not scale with range, but should apply vulnerability at 1000+ range
2 Cripple target and swiftness for pet
3 Immobilize target and Might for pet
5 Knockdown at 1000+, 1 second stun at 600-999, 2 second stun at 0-599. Regen for pet

Shortbow – Condition Damage
3 should apply Burning
4 should apply Torment
5 should become the leapback from old #3 and apply confusion

Sword – Power
1 Dodge should always override animation.
2 Jumps should be reversed so that the first leaps into combat and the second leaps out of combat
3 Cast time should be reduced so that the evade is easier to time

Warhorn – Group/Pet buffs
4 Protection, Regen, and Vigor to nearby allies.

Torch – Condition application
4 Thrown torch aspect remains, but sets location of target on fire for a small aoe
5 Point blank eye stab, causes Burning and Blindness

Axe – Multiple target power weapon
Base damage needs to be increased slightly
3 Needs to cause Chill AoE at target location
5 Should not cancel on movement, but movement speed should be reduced

Associated Risks

A redesign is labor intensive as it requires a rebalancing of damage, CDs, effects, and traits.

When i read this I can hardly imagine you playing Ingeneer in PvE.
First of all : Change on pistol.
(1) Actually why do you even bother to enhance the damage modifier.
(2) You add a change on volley which is an almost fine skill for power build and condition build. Why? Seems like you switch the two fonctionallity between MH pistol and FT. No needs for this change. Well, in fact, this make the weapon even worse.
(4) This skill is meant to be a burst skill you change it into a poor copy of FT(1)

Riffle :
Reducing damage across the board as always. Let me say it out loud : Right now Engi ain’t in a good position for competitive PvE, this changes on Riffle just kill them for Donjon in the actual meta.

Elixirs :
Elixir are already the best tools of Engi, do they need to be buff like you’re suggesting? No.

Elixir gun :
Honestly… I just laugh at this.

Flamme Thrower :
Useless changes.

Tool kit :
Lot of encounter require player to be actually able to Block things. Your changes to Block skills show clearly that you hate being blocked. This change cripple Engi even more in PvE encounters.

Grenade kit :
Laughable… nade’s damages, like pistol damages, are low and balanced around traits. You seem to try to break this balance. While doing this you will just cripple all viable builds by opening absolutely nothing.

Bomb Kit :
Here certainly your worst suggestion killing melee Engi.

Traits :
You seem to hate passive effect and… You add more and more passive effect. Bunch of nonsense.

Now, let’s conclude. With this, you totally kill Engis for PvE, destroy them on WvW and cripple them in PvP. While your change may be almost viable for PvP you clearly don’t understand this class mechanisms. Why don’t you change some things on gadgets? Well actually most of them are crappy and buggy but why? Do you really feel that turret are in a good place? And our elite what’s your feeling about them?

Please before writing this kind of nonsense you should try playing engi in all ply field. Don’t restrain you to sPvP.

Its starting to get dificult to take the changes you suggest seriously, when the only goal that 99% of them try to do is slow down the pace of combat, which the pace of fights in this game isn’t even a problem. Just like what I asked in the Ranger thread, I want to know how many hours you actually played the Engineer, lets make it all professions.

First off, due to the lack of the lack of, or assumed lack of experience when it comes to balancing Guild Wars 2, this write up will push to make sure that the aim of the write up, which is to present an organized list of areas in which the ranger class could be rebalanced with explanations as to why these areas are being considered as having enough weaknesses to justify the potential rebalancing of them.

While suggestions are more than welcome for discussion purposes in order to create examples to make examples so that discussions can progress more smoothly, ideally, this thread should remain to discuss the Quality of Life and balance change areas being suggested for improvement, while debating whether or not any additional line items are in need of being listed. However, because specific example discussions are deemed in the developer sticky to be more useful than more generalized topics, suggestions should definitely be worked into the discussion and discussed, as to comply with this forums guidelines.

This is going to be the initial list of areas that has been discussed within the ranger subforum as having a need for either some sort of rebalance of overhaul. Here, they will just be listed, and later on, explanations will be provided as reasoning. Due to the earlier statement that essentially states that the playerbase, for the most part, doesn’t have enough information in front of them as far as direction/core balance/balance philosophies/etc goes, these explanations will refrain from making suggestions as to what to overhaul or rebalance things to. More so, this list is just a statement of where a portion of the ranger community has taken a stance of the position of the rangers class balance across various game types, versus other classes, and within itself.

The list:

• Pet responsiveness
• Reliance on small handful of traits for every working build
• Pet survival not being balanced adequately for large scale engagements
• Utilities completely outclassing other utilities
• Weapons not having unique and competitive functions/roles versus content
• Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design
• More functionality/gameplay options for pets
• Trait reorganization stressing hybridization over heavy investment
• Lack of immediately recognizable role for team compositions