Guild Wars 2

Zegai.8256:

They’ve just made bad business decisions. They focus on the wrong thing at the wrong time, and when you repeat that for a year, you lose your playerbase. It’s entirely subjective to say what the wrong vs right thing is for them to focus on, but based on the results we have 1+ year out, it’s pretty clear they’ve made the wrong ones.

Only pvp people think that though. PvE people actually think they aren’t getting enough attention and the devs are balancing skills based on tpvp, which they don’t want. So really, the root of the problem actually lie in the player base.

PvE people think the devs are focusing on spvp – which is a terrible decision – and Spvp people thinks the Dev are focusing too much on PvE – which is also a terrible decision. So it doesn’t matter what dev decide, when they make content for one area the other will complain.

When you separate spvp from pve what you get is two different kind of people both asking for different things, and it certainly didn’t help that the two aspect of the game (tpvp and pve) are using the ESSENTIALLY the same skill. (some are different, but not all.) So everytime a balance patch comes about people think the devs are catering one another and start qqing.

Tom Gore.4035:

Avead.5760:

Wvw folks can scream as much as they want about their 20vs20 being the future..All i know is that if there wasnt spvp and i had to grind to keep up and search for hours for a proper 1vs1 or small scale battle on wvw i wouldnt be playing this game anymore.

But there is really no reason why we shouldn’t be able to have 20v20 in sPvP (as a custom arena), though. It would add choice and diversity, something sPvP is currently sorely lacking.

lol 20 vs 20? In tpvp?
That would have been a complete disaster unless they release game map tailored to this particular game mode and remove downstate. In 5 vs 5 you can’t afford to have 4 people ressing one guy; in 20 vs 20 you can.

Plus if the game mode is the same, just more point to capture, then what’s the point? you might as well play hotjoin. It’ll be less laggy, and take less time to get out lest you get stuck on a team full of scrubs.

Nuka Cola.8520:

Ranger is the weakest class but not because you can’t do anything with it, but because ‘good’ builds available to ranger are all gimmicky trash that get nerfed month after month. This class is extremely poorly thought and if in one year we have only seen two major builds born (bm/spirit) and nerfed to the ground, this class isn’t going anywhere. Anet refuses to truly sit down and fix the kitten class and instead abandon it and suggest everyone to use the Wrongbow cuz OMFG it has stealth now, must use!!!!

Well I play a Shout ranger….

idevourwater.3149:

ya showatt is right, i meant for the ranger as well as the pet.
and your right i guess it op for regen builds… but for zerker builds i think its fine…

right now ranger is kinda boring with the bunker-ish meta

just my opinion tho.

Zerker build is pretty bad for tornument, imo. There are other class who can do that job better, and the only viable torny build seem to be spirit ranger atm. I have yet to seen any BM or trapper in any pro torny, which kinda sucks.

But it’s the meta, and good players adopt and survive until the next meta.

Kal Spiro.9745:

showatt.9413:

You guys are assuming there’s something wrong with sword…according to a GS ranger.
Come on.

No, we’re assuming there’s something wrong with Sword because of the amount of hate there is for sword and the number of people who are unwilling to use it because of its design.

I could actually see these changes working. It lets you have an auto attack while still having leaps at your disposal for gap closing. My only thing is that kick should cripple and serpent’s strike should evade.

With those two in place it could work. Though I don’t know that I like serpent’s strike flipping me all over the place more than I like pounce and kick locking me down.

okay I must be crazy then because every time I drop into a match I kid you not the rangers I’ve met are always using sword. Honestly the weapon is brain-dead easy to learn, gives you a ton of option, and boost your survivability by a tenfold because of all the leap cripple and evade you get.

Why change what isn’t broken?

Sarision.6347:

I guess I’m just an idiot for overestimating PvPers’ skills. I thought deselecting target -> Pounce -> Monarch’s Leap -> turn around -> Hornet Sting makes a great escape, but I guess I’m wrong.

Whatever, I’ll go back to forum lurking then.

You should probably try to learn and stick with sword first. See how it ticks.
It’s annoying to click 1 all the time, sure, but maybe the solution would be not to rely on sword as a active damage output but as a disengager.

by pairing up with a torch, you can easily activate fire armor while simultaneously watching the enemy burn away. If you build around condition damage the burning will take care all the damage and you only need 1 for crippling them on top of the fire.

KyreneZA.8617:

Jacks.5367:

…will make Ranger to OP.

“Make Ranger” and “OP” in the same sentence? Surely you jest! The only times Rangers have been ‘OP’ has been through community efforts.

BM ranger was quite OP back in the days…maybe you missed the memo or something. I dunno. In any case, the “nerf” isn’t really a nerf at all. If you play smart it’s actually a buff considering all your spirits CD are reduced.

Pop spirits BEFORE you arrive at a control point and you’re sweet.

Prysin.8542:

oh oh i know, we got this already. Its a utility skill called “guard”

Do you mean the ranger shout? Because Guard only turns your pet invisible (when it actually worked)

Op wants a stealth for ranger…which is kinda OP considering how many disengage we already have…not to mention signet of wild and regeneration stacks.

You guys are assuming there’s something wrong with sword…according to a GS ranger.
Come on.

Ah for god sake,

Spvp has 3 developers.
Everyone else is working on pve content like SAB and living story.
Honestly the accusations on gw2 forum are really hard to believe sometimes.

Dirame.8521:

showatt.9413:

If we were to receive this change, it is very likely we will have reduced damage on our pet as being able to maul three times (4 stack of bleed each maul) with 2 feline is just downright overpowered. You can keep bringing up gw1 as a template, but the dev already stated numerous time they weren’t trying to create a gw1 remake and the notion of ‘because gw1 did this so we should’ is tedious as it is.

The thing about that is, I can already do that. I can even make their auto attacks bleed on crit keeping up 18 stacks consistently.

All I’m asking for (and I’m guessing the rest of the guys here are asking for the same thing) is that they should make it less automated.

Yes indeed we can all do that but the problem is if – let’s say the dev actually have the time and resource/manpower to make the change – what do we sacrifice in return? Nothing? Because I’m pretty sure they’ll do something to try and ‘balance’ the changes. I have faith in anet dev, but I don’t have faith in their generosity.

I’d rather not risking losing anything more for something that I can already do on my own.

faeral.7120:

Most pets only really have 1 other ability that we want access to. These are things like stuns, roots, heals…crowd control & support abilities which require timing to gain the most out of. The pets can keep their short CD straight DPS abilities on AI.

eg. Dogs, we really just want the KD. Spider, we want the Root. Devourer, the KB. Moa, the Heal. Drake, the Blast. etc.

in lieu of that, combine F1 & F3 into a toggle on F1 & shift 1 ability per pet to F3.

F1: Attack/Return to Me
F2: Ability A
F3: Ability B
F4: Petswap

Even 1 more ability at our disposal would make a world of difference.

Which wouldn’t be a good thing necessarily. Don’t get me wrong, I want this change, but if this change come at the cost of other changes (which is pretty likely since almost every tweak in the past they’ll be some downside, so I rather not risk getting something worst) then I rather Rangers stay where they are.

Total Failure, 100 achievement, title: Embarrassment

Tier 1 of 5

Lose 5 matches without earning a single point.

If we were to receive this change, it is very likely we will have reduced damage on our pet as being able to maul three times (4 stack of bleed each maul) with 2 feline is just downright overpowered. You can keep bringing up gw1 as a template, but the dev already stated numerous time they weren’t trying to create a gw1 remake and the notion of ‘because gw1 did this so we should’ is tedious as it is.

Diage.6451:

If you have no expertise to make a conclusion.. you then have no right to even attempt to discuss that platform.. however, you didn’t just discuss it, you declared it the probable answer.

I AM a programmer.. It depends entirely on how they implemented their abstract for skills. If they’re half intelligent, it would be a pretty easy fix. All a skill should do is “Activate” and the events, despite whatever they may be, will follow from that command. All it would need is for activating the button to call the class that handles the animal AI and tell it to chomp.

This is of course assuming they are even the slightest tiniest bit intelligent.

I did say in advance – the first sentence in fact – and apologized before I even offered my take, so I really don’t understand what you’re getting so self righteous about.. Just because I said it was a probable answer, doesn’t mean I actually think I am right. (Otherwise I wouldn’t use the word probable right?)

It was an attempted guess, and I consider myself educated having worked with programmers in the past. I told everyone it was an attempted guess right from the start, and since none of us actually work for Anet, no one can say for sure how they’ve actually done their programmings.

Which company do you work for, if you don’t mind me asking? If you are such a good programmer that you would go as far as to doubt the capability of Anet’s programmers, who are industry veterans, I really want to know what company you work for and which games you’ve worked on.

sorrow.2364:

I’ll try to use logic to get to the conclusion that giving control of pet’s skill on demand isn’t hard to implement.

We all know that the F2 skill is controlled by the player and performed by the pet. This clearly means that they already know how to do this and have the code ready to add other F2-like skills (controlled by the player, performed by the pet).
It is just a matter of copy-paste the code behind the F2 skill to make other user-controlled pet skills.

So making pet skills controlled by the player is clearly possible.

What about giving the option to let the player chose if they want to control the pet’s skills or not?
I think it is possible too.

We already know that it is both possible to let the AI control the skill performing and let the player control them.
So it is just a matter of which portion of code to execute according to a boolean value (want to control it or don’t want to control it). That’s an if clause.

If you would actually read the post I was responding to, you’d understand that I wasn’t trying to explain why “adding another pet skill” won’t work. I was actually talking about how ‘making pet skill replace an exist utility might take a lot of time than you’d think’, as the person I was responding to was talking about gw1.

As for the notion that ranger should be able to command pet to use their secondary skill, my stance on that matter is fairly clear. While it is certainly technically possible and would not take nearly as much time as replacing utility skill with pet skill, the effect sounds to me very overpowering.

I have already explained this in a previous response, and if you’re having a tough time convincing me, who is a ranger and plays only ranger, that it’d be a good idea to implement such change, I think you’ll have even less a chance to convince the actual developers to follow through.

Exedore.6320:

Still a bad idea. You need to be able to spike with condition damage. That’s fine. It’s just way too easy to do it now. For non-damaging conditions, the ones that a build has are key to that build. If you all of a sudden say “you can’t apply your condition” it really breaks some builds. So teams will have to build around a fixed number of conditions, limiting compositions.

again you misunderstand me. When I say cap it doesn’t mean that conditon class won’t be able to place their conditions.

For instance, if you have a cap of 8 conditions, then any more conditions you apply will either add to the current stack or replace another conditions. Condition build will still be able to apply conditions. It’s a matter of knowing what condition would do better under what circumstances. If your opponent has a ton of movement impair/blind, or if they have like 1 stack of confusion left (buffed duration,) maybe it’d be better to apply 4 stacks of bleed, which might just replace that 1 stack of confusion and deal more damage.

You’ll also think about when to clean your conditions and when to use certain buffs. This brings strategy thinking to play and it’s certainly a lot more about condition ‘management’ than it is now, which is all about condition ‘spamming’. You’ll still be able to spike, it’s just a matter of knowing when.

At the moment your argument revolves around breaking some builds. Can you actually elaborate, since my suggestion doesn’t mean that new conditions can’t be added, and the cap is not too significant like 3 or 4?

It’s not actually that bad though. If you know how to use it elem is as deadly as ever.

The problem is the class is just not newb friendly as the others and requires a steep learning curve to be good that many are put off just from that. But if you actually have the slightest clue what you’re doing, elem is probably still the strongest class in terms of versatility.

Exedore.6320:

If you significantly limit the number of stacks for intensity-stacking conditions, then that does limit team compositions. You can’t have significant bleed or vulnerability stacking compositions because you’ll hit a cap.

And really, even a necro isn’t going to have an average of more than 10 stacks of bleed on you and many of their other conditions don’t last long. Only bleed, burning, and poison persist and account for most of their damage. Yet they still kill you.

The problem is the rate of condition application, in particular burning and how long some last. This is on a profession by profession basis.

Firstly, “significantly” is not what I have in mind, like I have mentioned it twice already.
I’m not suggesting an unforgiving cap – i’m suggesting a cap. 8 conditions are plenty to manage.

Again, you missed the part where i said “with increased duration”. The current condition don’t last very long. That is true. The problem is the application of the condition, which is also true.

therefore capping condition while increasing their duration – in my mind – certainly seem to solve this problem. The speed of application, while facing a cap, means that condition build will now have to be smart and decide when to apply the conditions, and whether or not they will override some of the “better” conditions according to the situations.

PS. I’ll quote myself just so you can actually see what you have missed:

wouldn’t it be easier to just give a cap on how many conditions you can have on you at any given time (with buffed duration) ? This way you actually have to take a look at the conditions on the opponent to see if crippling them is a good idea when they’ve got 10 stacks of bleed on them.

Exedore.6320:

showatt.9413:

Does it really? By capping I’m not saying we should have no more than 4 condition or something. I’m saying having 15+ conditions on you at any given time is a bit too much, and there needs to be a cap.

What are you even talking about? There’s only 12 conditions in the game, 4 of which stack intensity (Bleed, Vulnerability, Confusion, Torment).

It was an attempted humour via exaggeration on my part. You know how people say "kitten im so hungry I can eat a horse? " It’s exactly like that. (Though maybe I shouldn’t have done it in this forum since everyone takes it so seriously.)

Dirame.8521:

showatt.9413:

Dirame.8521:

It was an 8 slot skill bar. We had fewer skills but freeform selection.

In that case it’s most probably a technical issue than a game design one.

I really don’t understand such a technical limitation. What would be limiting them to not do something like that? Especially when the pets themselves have special skills that they use when they feel like it.

I am by no means a programmer, so if my attempted answer is wrong, please forgive. With that disclaimer in mind, here is the potential answer to your question:

It is probable that pet skills exist on a different system to normal utility skill and weapon skills. If you were to make the pet skill replacing the utility skills it would be trying to blend two separate system together, which – while not impossible – will certainly be difficult and time consuming.

We are talking about revamping an existing system, which will need approval from the higher ups, game designers to actively troubleshoot said ideas, tooltip artist and typewriter to construct and document the changes, programmers attempting to bugproof (which won’t work flawlessly) before they make the changes, and bugfix after they’re done.

All of this will take time, resource and money, something they can’t probably afford right now with all the other changes and stuff they’ve got going on. The fact that this little change is fairly insignificant, and the effort to make this change outweigh the benefit by tenfold certainly doesn’t help.

There you have it.
Once again, I am by all means not a programmer, nor do i work for Anet, but this is probably the most probable reason I can think of coming from a game design/business point of view.

Dirame.8521:

It was an 8 slot skill bar. We had fewer skills but freeform selection.

In that case it’s most probably a technical issue than a game design one.

Jatacid.3725:

I’ve been told that eles just plain suck, they got nerfed too hard and now cant really do anything in pvp unless your player skill is really high.

What are some tips that an ele should do/try to do in pvp?
Whats the most successful role as an ele right now?

I’ve tried glass cannon – doesn’t seem like I can pepper anyone unless I land every single one of my skill shots and even then it’s unlikely to kill them after which I die.

I’ve tried balance builds which don’t do anything

And I’ve tried tankier builds which don’t seem to prevent much.

I can’t seem to fight any class 1on1. So what exactly is our role?

Is ele ever going to be buffed again to a usable state or should I just not play sPvP at all?

LOL omg I was playing with you a while back.
Like I told you, elem isn’t really a newb friendly class so play a ranger or something.

Man I thought this was going to be good, with a obvious trolling title and all.
Turns out the OP didn’t even bother to troll for real.

Ps. Really though, which elem uses staff in spvp nowadays?

Wombat.3510:

I think they should nerf ranger weapon damage by 50% and give them more pet control.

Dirame.8521:

NevirSayDie.6235:

showatt.9413:

you do realize if you give ranger more control of their pet is just gonna make them OP right? You’re asking the ability to control when your pet blow their secondary skills. Does that mean I get to decide when my fern hound is going to heal me as well as knock people down? That my lynx will be able to maul the enemy twice?

This is likely the reason. If they did give rangers more control over pets, it would change balance no differently than a straight up buff.

They could add more control while simultaneously nerfing rangers in some other area again, but the entire ranger subforum is filled with hate posts every time nerfs happen.

GW1 gave you full control of your pet at the cost of one (or more) of your skill slots being used as a pet skill slot. Why can’t it be done here?

Different framework + modified engine. Having not played gw1 I assume you have more skills to use, and having one of your skills replaced by a pet skill slot isn’t as problematic as it would have been in gw2?

Coming from a game design background a lot of decisions dev made are based on technical reasons. Not all, of course, but a lot.

Exedore.6320:

If you cap boons or conditions significantly lower than they are currently, it limits team composition.

Does it really? By capping I’m not saying we should have no more than 4 condition or something. I’m saying having 15+ conditions on you at any given time is a bit too much, and there needs to be a cap.

It doesn’t have to be a big cap, nor should it be small.

As for team composition I don’t really think they’ll affect the play that much. Condition build still has superior conditions they can choose to override the current conditions (or stack. eg- bleed or regene) on an opponent. If anything it encourages team play, give you something to do during the wait for a match so you’ll have reason to ask the necro next to you how much condition damage he has instead of running around trying to break the enemy’s door.

Just my two cents.

waka.9826:

showatt.9413:

Atherakhia.4086:

Just change F1 to allow the pet to attack and recall.
Make it so F2 skills actually worked when requested.
Make F3 the secondary skill for each pet and allow players to set it to auto-cast so if ANet is serious about this somehow being too complicated, players can leave it on auto cast and nothing would change.

i agree f2 skill needs to work when requested.
Allowing players to determine when to cast the 2ndary skill of pets is just asking for ranger buff. And the ability to autocast it sounds pretty OP if you wanna know the truth.

Asking to be able to use our own skills is asking for a buff? Okay then engineer kits should be RNG as well, from now on you cannot choose which 1-5 skill you can use in kits, the game will choose for you. Fair play right.

Engineer isn’t using an AI pet. You’re asking the ability to decide when your pet should deal a secondary damage (with effect), in addition to the f2 skill, while essentially keeping the pet’s ability to deal damage on their own. Not to mention you have two pets to switch between.

Surely you can see this is very different to weapon kit?

waka.9826:

showatt.9413:

Ranger pet having too few manageable skill is a problem?
According to whom?

It’s a problem because this game is already dumbed down enough as it is. Ranger pet is just 1 small problem but it is still bothersome as a ranger player.

you do realize if you give ranger more control of their pet is just gonna make them OP right? You’re asking the ability to control when your pet blow their secondary skills. Does that mean I get to decide when my fern hound is going to heal me as well as knock people down? That my lynx will be able to maul the enemy twice?

Nah. I play ranger myself but the dev honestly have better things to work on.
Staff Elem has been waiting for a buff since the dawn of time and conditions are out of control as they are.

Atherakhia.4086:

Just change F1 to allow the pet to attack and recall.
Make it so F2 skills actually worked when requested.
Make F3 the secondary skill for each pet and allow players to set it to auto-cast so if ANet is serious about this somehow being too complicated, players can leave it on auto cast and nothing would change.

i agree f2 skill needs to work when requested.
Allowing players to determine when to cast the 2ndary skill of pets is just asking for ranger buff. And the ability to autocast it sounds pretty OP if you wanna know the truth.

Ranger pet having too few manageable skill is a problem?
According to whom?

wouldn’t it be easier to just give a cap on how many conditions you can have on you at any given time (with buffed duration) ? This way you actually have to take a look at the conditions on the opponent to see if crippling them is a good idea when they’ve got 10 stacks of bleed on them.

At the moment spvp boils down (team-torny excluded as combo field and tactic becomes common place) to 3 things, dealing burst, getting buffs and cleaning conditions.

You want as many buff on you and as little condition as possible. Bursty build is actually at a disadvantage because with regeneration and access to heal, it will be extra difficult to burst someone down without conditions, and if your condition damage is too weak it won’t be enough. Meanwhile, the amount of toughness and whatnot you sacrifice for bursts mean you die faster from condition – not to mention the amount of conditions that can be placed on you is utterly mind boggling.

Setting a cap on maximum condition lengthen TTK, increase emphasis on burst and encourage strategy thinking. When do I place the condition? What condition to place? Buffing global HP is just dooming burst classes because they most likely don’t have the toughness to back up their hp.

lol at you people who actually think Ranger got nerfed with this patch.
Sorry, but after exclusive testing it in 1 vs 1 and in pvp, I can safely say that Spirit Ranger did not get nerfed. It’s actually a lot better now because the CD in between each kill is only 25 second and the spirits would’ve still lasted 60 second if they stayed alive.

garethh.3518:

They really should have just done classes like WAR or WoW.
Sure having traits and weapons you can mix and match is cool… but only if the dev team is EXTREMELY competent…
Anet isn’t, even in the most passionate delusion.

The devs aren’t competent enough to enact good changes in an even remotely timely manner in a complicated system, and the devs aren’t able to take a simple/controlled one and tweak it to be enjoyable…

It leaves them in a terrible pickle that makes me wonder again and again how GW1 came to be…

It’s not about the competency of the dev. It’s about the team structure.
It’s more likely that gw1 was made by a smaller team, which means the rollout and changing process is much more simple than GW2. It’s actually not all that terribly hard to implement the changes. With so many industry veterans, adding these changes should take maybe a month top if they are given the greenlight to work on it.

The problem is they probably aren’t given the greenlight just yet.
A bigger team means more productivity, but it also means more politics and work relations to handle. Having an idea is no longer enough. You need to be able to convince everyone on the team to go with the changes. You need to articulate the idea – not just saying ’ hey guys wouldn’t it be cool if we do this’ – to a lot of people. You need to make sure everyone is on the same boat, and is able to understand why the change takes place when they’re asked. Some of them will be unhappy, and these people might be the people who you cannot afford to cross.

You’re also dealing with increased publisher pressure since the upkeep for bigger team is higher and if the publisher wants you to focus on certain aspect of the game you can’t really say ‘No i wanna add this instead.’

Vena.8436:

garethh.3518:

like WAR

I agree, we should have only one class in the whole game called Bright Wizard. That was probably the most brilliant design decision WAR made, one class to rule them all, along with its many other brilliant decisions that led to its astronomical and ongoing critical success.

See what I mean? If you can’t even convince some random on the forum, how are you going to convince the people who have vastly more superior industry knowledge than you that the changes you’re asking for is good?

Good stuff btw Vena. I loled a bit.

uri.6521:

Hello

Im not angry or anithing, im just curious in, for example, ¿How hard is for the devs to make necromancer´s grasping dead apply 2 bleeds instead o 3 compared to making the living story ? In a time / money / effort invested point of view.

it’s not hard at all. To apply the changes it would be a matter of coding and changing the formula. Problem is a lot of people will need to be involved after the change.

Besides the coder, tooltip artist will need to write new tool tips. QC will have to playtest the changes to make sure it doesn’t feel broken. Someone would have to document the change (though I’m not sure if they have a dedicated job for that)

Plus, if you are working in the game industry where the majority of work are team oriented, chances are there will be someone who dislike the idea. You will have to spent time trying to convince these people. It’s harder if that person is one of the higher-ups.

And since ArenaNet is a pretty big company there will be a lot of people that you need to convince.

Indikah.4869:

Sounds like they devs are spending a lot of time defending themselves. No one sees any of this they’re talking about here because it’s not reflected in-game. It’s just talk. There are plenty of jobs where people are always really really busy, but still producing sub-par results and losing business. What matters is how effectively you can keep up with what your customers want. No one cares if that takes you 1 hour a week or less, as long as there is a truly desired result. You can work all week, and if you fall short of your customers desires, they will still look elsewhere.

“what consumer wants” lol.

When gw2 first came out, the game had little reward. There is also restriction on farming. Diminishing return and whatnot. People were crying all over forums.

So the dev decided to increase the reward. Now people are complaining about too much reward. About farmers farming too much.

Once again the forum is filled with tears.

Before Daphoenix comes along and shows everyone how it’s done, people were complaining about how underpowered elementalists are. PVP Forum was full of QQ.

After a few month, people started calling D/D elem nerfs. And the QQ never left.

What consumer wants?
You have no idea how often I hear that phrase being used. Every time I hear it it makes me wanna laugh. Did you actually think you’re the first person to say something along that line?

Oblivion.8307:

showatt.9413:

Oblivion.8307:

dDuff.3860:

Ask some of pro players, do they afraid or hate fighting, say, necro? Nope, don’t care. Fight is a fight. Someone is always better then the other.
Get used to it.

I don’t know if I qualify as a ‘pro’ player, but i hate fighting necros/spirit rangers/sd thieves/warriors.

what do you think about the recent spirit ranger tweak? Would you say it’s a buff or a nerf?

For teamfights it’s probably a buff (definitely to elite) as your spirits usually die fairly quickly anyways. It just means you can’t have spirits up 24/7 anymore so you need to cast them when you’re about to engage in a fight. In my opinion I don’t think too much has changed but we’ll see.

Edit: Biggest nerfs were to the CCing spirits/sun spirit blind which were much needed, we’ll see how those play out but I see those being more nerfs to the elite, meaning you’ll have to position your spirit better to res.

It’s how I feel as well. I definitely see ccing nature being a viable strategy, but i don’t know about using CC on other spirits. Seem like such a waste. Plus the elite is also kinda buffed with the shortened CD. (if you blow it quickly)

Must be easy killing spirits in a stacked team like yours lol. Killing them in hotjoin is much more annoying.

At least they respond. If you wanna know what most dev do when it comes to interacting with players, go have a look at swtor forum. Consider yourself lucky if you see even one dev posting anything.

With all due respect I actually think gw2 devs are the reason why the forum is so negative. You guys – Allie, JohnSharp, Foreman and many others – really care too much. You care about what the player wants, you care about the game, but sometimes that can end up hindering you and burning you out. You try to keep the game design process transparent, but everyone – not realizing that certain matters are out of your hand – just keep asking for more.

Hell I don’t even think half of them even read before they post.

And the strange thing is, Swtor forum is actually a lot more positive than gw2 forum. For some bizarre reason, People are more likely to defend a silent but useless deity than a helpful, outspoken one.

I honestly think you guys should just take the positive feedback, ignore the negative ones – don’t even bother responding or trying to explain (people won’t read it) – and continue on building content according to how you see should be built.

And always remember:

Normal Person + Audience + Anonymity = complete #@(& wit.

Oblivion.8307:

dDuff.3860:

Ask some of pro players, do they afraid or hate fighting, say, necro? Nope, don’t care. Fight is a fight. Someone is always better then the other.
Get used to it.

I don’t know if I qualify as a ‘pro’ player, but i hate fighting necros/spirit rangers/sd thieves/warriors.

what do you think about the recent spirit ranger tweak? Would you say it’s a buff or a nerf?

On the Changes themselves, I fail to see how 25 second CD changes and CC vulnerability would resolve the problems. Like I have mentioned before, blowing cc on Pet is a little bit silly (I wouldn’t do it unless it’s on a nature) unless you have access to aoe knockbacks.

The 25 second CD is justifiable, but the cc vulnerability really isn’t much of a nerf and – in my opinion – don’t actually bring that much more strategies to the play. (It does, but not enough.)

Plus, the spirit of nature actually got buffed. As mentioned by other posters before, using the nature within 10 second means the CD is now reduced to 180 second, which is almost as short as other ranger elites. In between all the passive bonus and active res on kill? I’d be happy if I actually plays Spirit Ranger as a main.

Atherakhia.4086:

Lordrosicky.5813:

So lets get the facts out there shall we:
- Some top rangers actually think this patch buffed them
- Having tested it against GOOD PEOPLE (like probably nobody else on this forum has) the elite res spirit is still auto-win team fights
- The fact they get launched is borderline irrelevant
- Spirits still body block you
- You still cant see anything ever
- Spirit ranger is still the most insanely powerful build AND the lamest by far as it is a build which LITERALLY stops you from playing the game by making you see nothing
- Bad people in this thread moan about something which was barely even nerfed
- Some people are saying this patch was actually a buff
- The spirits passive buffs still linger for basically the whole time

Yeh. In fact the res spirit got buffed as now if it dies 10 seconds after spawning it then you get it back 50 seconds faster.

Spirit ranger still needs nerfing to make it bad so that people can actually get back to seeing anything which happens ever.

The changes are neither good or bad. They’ve moved the spirits inline with all other similar skills. The overall change is a nerf as the spirits are clearly more difficult to use. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing though. No one in this thread or over the past 2 months has been able to say why spirits are overpowered in a way that the Ranger needs to be nerfed though.

Everything you’re listing is targetting and AI related. It would seem the best way to nerf Rangers is for tab targetting to prioritize players before pets. That or entirely change the spirit mechanic to simply put auras on the active pet instead of spawning spirits at all.

But no one is really complaining about what the spirits actually do… only the way they behave.

I think you missed a few major point there buddy. There is a reason why every pro team has at least one spirit rangers, and there were plenty of valid point over the last 2 month regarding why spirit rangers requires some “tweaking.”

You already know the targeting system. That’s number one. few players are also encountering lag issues on older machines when there are more than 1 spirit ranger on the map. That’s number two.

Technical reason aside, Spirit ranger is becoming increasingly popular because:
1 – Rangers Pet system. We already have 1 switchable pet that deals decent damage, has multiple skills, making it nearly impossible to kill. Getting 4 more spirits – each with its own passive and active benefit – makes a spirit ranger that much more deadly.

2 Ranger Traits. Ranger’s spirit trait is on VIT which means it is possible to stack toughness + vit for a spirit ranger, so even if you managed to take out the spirit it’ll still take a long time to bring down a d/t or d/d ranger.

3 Ranger gears. Toughness trait also gives condition damage, so with shaman amulet it is possible for a spirit ranger to get around 800+ condit and 900+ healing. So this means even if all the spirits are down, a spirit ranger is still far from completely useless. handicapped, maybe. useless? nah-uh.

4 Spirit CDs. The Cooldown on spirits are laughably short (before the tweak). It is entirely possible for you to kill the spirits only for it to be revived right afterward. Plus all the spirits can be traited into activating their active skill when they die, including nature. Taking down a good spirit ranger who is capable of self-ressing via spirit is hard. Not impossible, certainly. But hard. Did I mention spirit of nature also heals you?

5. The AI behavior of spirits. For pets that are supposed to be immobile, they are surprising intelligent once you get them walking. They have a tendency to avoid aoes by themselves, and a skilled spirit ranger will be able to pull them out of the circles. Spirits can also be healed via direct heal or regeneration, in case you didn’t know.

======
These reasons are all ‘on top’ of the technical reasons why Spirit rangers tend to have an edge over other classes in spvp. There are counter, of course, but the counters requires a lot of effort to carry out and the result is (at least it used to be) sub optimal at best.

I wouldn’t, however, call Spirit Rangers broken or massively OP. They are a little overpowered, and certainly requires tweaking, but it takes a degree of skill to both manage your spirits AND play your ranger at the same time. Still, the skill required to play a spirit ranger is nowhere near as crucial as say, a hybrid BM or Shout Ranger(Both of which I tried.), and having the advantage in numbers is always a very good advantage in pvp.

I noticed a lot of new sound effects in games. Every time i get a pvp chest or complete a daily there will be a little sound cue which is nice. Can anyone please tell me if there is now sound effect when friends or guildies log on? Thanks!

jmatb.6307:

Vamp… think for a minute about the concept of counter play.

An ele can now updraft the spirit res. Guards can Banish. Warriors can Backbreaker it.

That is balanced. Most terrible players will not even see that opportunity. Good players will.

Spirits now actually have a price. That is great for the game and honestly this kind of change was needed about a month ago.

The price is nothing though. A spirit ranger has so much health and toughness, and he or she still has 2 pets to deal with. Have fun trying to kill them in 25 seconds.

And blowing stuns and cc on pet is generally considered a pretty idea. (unless it’s a spirit of nature of course, but we know that cd has been shortened by a wooping 60 seconds.)

A better nerf would be lowering the hp of spirits instead of the knockdown and what not, that’s my take on this whole spirit problem.

meh since i used to be a spirit ranger im gonna test it and see how it goes.

Baldric.6781:

As a viewer of the match, it was insanely fun to see those amazing players actively countering the passive procs. Also, the game was clear as water, at every fight of the game i was able to enjoy the skills and counterskills used by each of team.
The matches were really close, and they strike to me as very decent and nice guys.
Can’t wait to see them in another tournament, so i can enjoy the teamfights and the active counter of passive procs again.

I agree. I only wish if every gw2 torny is as balanced as Pax Grand Final. SYNC is obviously full of talented and experienced players. Car Crash clearly deserved the cash price as they were able to overcome such massive obstacle and prevail. It certainly seemed like a lot of work for 10000 USD.

I think Cate from Sync deserve a special mention. I almost cried when I saw the lone thief trying to steal the point from a warrior, dying 3 times in the process. Sure, it didn’t work out, but come on now. We all know how underpowered thieves are and how broken warriors can be, so let’s give this talented thief a round of applause as he is clearly a great asset to the team.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAryFIuRxmQ

Spirit Rangers is seriously broken. There are virtually no CD (very little) between cast and unless you stack aoe and blast them it’d be very improbable to kill them with autos. By the time you do, the ranger’s cds are probably finished and they can cast them again right the way. It’s all well and good if you run across one Spirit ranger, but what happens when there are two of them?

That’s 8 spirit to kill, plus 2 pets to avoid. Meanwhile Rangers using sword/dagger gets 3 evade and vigor on healing spring. spec shortbow and utilize combo field what your left with is 2 very hard to kill ranger (with an obscene amount of hp from the traits), and a ridiculous amount of pet.

There needs to be a longer CD between cast when spirits are killed. That way we can actually go for the spirits and not worry about them getting resummoned right after they go down.

jcbroe.4329:

So an elite skill that has multiple hard counters and can only be used twice a game is too powerful?

Seems to me that it’s just an issue of not wanting to prioritize targets that should be taking priority, especially if its something that can be decisive to a team fight and you have the potential to remove it from the equation.

But I guess not wanting to adapt to strategy is a call for complaint… I guess.

Do you even know how hard it is to kill a spirit of nature when there’s a pet and a ranger riding on you? smarter ones only calls it out when people are about to go down. By the time its dead, it would’ve ressed somebody already. on the off chance you kill it before anyone goes down, these dying people would’ve stacked enough regeneration or get healed enough from the spirit itself to keep on fighting.

Let’s not forget if you’re dealing with 2 spirit ranger, that’s 2 nature you’ll have to worry about.

There seriously needs to be a class or a skill that is capable of revealing stealthed enemies. Maybe add a torchlight to some of the points in pvp (keep in FoN, Graveyard in LoF) that allow a player to grab it and cast a spell that reveals all stealth enemies and disabling stealth for a few seconds within the circle. It will have a charging effect and other player can interrupt to buy time.

This way every class will have access to this and no one will bish about stealth any longer.

zhi.3918:

JonathanSharp.7094:

Also, a lot of our changes happen VERY far ahead of what you guys see on live. What do I mean?

• It takes us time to get our changes to editors for writing (any text/trait change has to be edited). This can take a week or more.
• We have to then get changes to writers.
• We then have to make sure we work with artists for any visual changes
• We also have to work with sound to make sure we have sound for any changes
• We have to work with icon artists for icons if they’re needed (in the case of Death Shroud 5)
• We have to make sure the changes get through multiple stages of QA testing
• Then with the changes in, we get time to play them before we do final changes
• While doing all this, we have to take the current meta, be it in dungeons/wvw/pvp, and from that, try to extrapolate what we think needs to be done a few months in advance.

This process can take a LONG time, as you can imagine. It’s not as simple as, “Oh, let’s change this to a 2, and change that to a 7.”

I know the video game industry in general is not very transparent when it comes to how things actually work, but I wanted you guys to know that a lot of times, there is a LOT of process for even the SMALLEST balance/content changes.

That it takes you months to implement changes would certainly make it difficult for you to observe the emergent behavior of your changes this month and account for them. What’s confusing is why this is your process, why not improve it?

Why does it take you a week(s) to do an editing pass? Do you not have someone capable of editing on the PvP team?

Does the company not trust you to write a tool tip? With the quality of the tool tips so far it’s not like you could do much worse…

If you had a test server set up, as many people have suggested, or a alternate Mist in game that people could try out your work in progress you don’t need polished art or sound. This would save you a significant amount of time in the development flow, and greatly improve your feedback loop (and even extend it to the development of the art). You would get players to assist with your QA, in fact they already do. The lists of bugs and glitches the community has provided you is huge. Other games already utilize such a process, why isn’t ArenaNet?

Same with ability icons, why are you requiring fully finished art for unstable releases? In a variety of other more popular games the player base is entirely understanding of works in progress and is happy to see changes and improvements in vfx, sfx and icon art weeks or months after implementation of new, reworked or tweaked content.

When you say things like ‘this is how games are made’ when many other companies that have more success also have a superior development processes, what you are really saying is ‘this is how we are making this game, even if it is quite inefficient and leads consistently to significant problems in our ability to do our job as well as we would like.’

You’re in control of your own development, you could change it so it doesn’t have such a negative impact on your ability to perform.

Have you ever worked in a big company before? I think not. In a big company, everyone has a designated role and you can’t just simply "hey you know what this is braindead easy I think I know how to change a tooltip on my own so i’m just gonna go ahead and do them’. What happen when the tooltip actually turned out wrong? who is responsible? The guy letting some one from other department handling their work, or the guy who thought he could go around doing other people’s work for them?

Game development doesn’t work that way. Your day to day job doesn’t work that way, and life certainly doesn’t work that way. If everything is as easy as saying ‘hey you know what this process is complicated let’s do this, this and this instead to speed things up’ ,the world would be perfect, and there’ll be no starving children in africa.

It’s childish to assume that a better system can be implanted on a whim simply because such system “appear” to be better at the first glance. The person in charge of the company has to take into account the different roles and dynamic of each company before deciding any major changes. Just because the player base is okay with what you suggested, doesn’t mean it’s not gonna create utter chaos within the company.

This has been bothering me for a while, but every time when a guildie logs in they were greeted with silence because people didn’t know they were online (they get too absorbed and missed the chat). It’s the same with pvp pops ups.

I like to write when I’m waiting for PVP, but again, without an notable sound effect to inform me the match is starting sometimes I missed the start of a match. I was wondering if it’s possible to add a small, short, but notable sound effect to things like menu pops up, friend/guildie logging in and the likes.

I can’t think of any negative to this function, and if anything it should be possible to disable them in the option menu. What are your thoughts?

Boomstin.3460:

How about an elite that transforms the enemy into your pet for a short period. then you just F1 him into enemy zerg and watch him melt down?

Oh my god
Mind = blown

While we’re on it, we should get a new elite that transform the opponent into a squirrel too! Why is it that mesmer get to transform people into moa and rangers can’t do anything summoning a small plant or aoe “root” or ‘become one’ with their pets (the latter two, for some reason, sounded way more creepier than they should). This really doesn’t make sense!

Ps though if the enemy are transformed into squirrel I might have a tough time killing them due to general cuteness…

Nugget.8031:

If you have 15 in ws and 15 in nature magic your pets gets like 4-5 seconds of protection when you dodge.

I really don’t see any point in trait that buffs the pet apart from damage though..Maybe it’s just me but when I play torny my pets rarely ever dies and I can always switch (and get buffed) when one does.

XRay.1920:

gw2 is everything I have in life. I’m dead and empty inside without it.

Haha see it’s not so hard to make a joke is it?
Well I guess Shatter will do 2x dmg to you from now on. :P

XRay.1920:

I’d suggest that shatter skills do 2x dmg on wannabe trolls

Yes because everyone who has a sense of humor and is trying to make light of the situation is a troll. You honestly treat this game too seriously, buddy. I play a Bm ranger and I laughed heartily when i saw the patch note.

Ps. It’s only trolling if I actually sound like I’m serious.