Guild Wars 2

The great and wonderful changes that they are so excited about:

Profession Changes
Ranger:
We’re going to be fixing a bug with Spirit of Nature that caused it to have an incorrect healing power value. We’re also looking at adding combo fields to existing abilities to allow for more play through different combo finishers.

• Spirit of Nature: Reduced the healing per second while summoned from 480 to 320.
• Viper’s Nest: This ability is now a poison combo field.

:( seriously?

Yea, our range weapons need more love, more utilities, better skills. Although the longbow has seen a little bit of love, our short bow has only seen nerfs. First they nerfed our damage claiming it was an ‘animation fix’, later they came clean and acknowledged that it was a nerf because they thought we where spamming #1 to much, which that was only the case because all other skills SUCK. Then they nerfed the range in order to make the longbow look better. Honestly, if they want the longbow to look better, then they should make it better, not making other weapons worse, that’s like adding insult to injury. Then everyone claims that we are master’s of range because we get the longest attack of 1500 range, but honestly, when you look around, we’re not the only ones that have attacks for 1500 range. Look at the tooltips and you’ll see that engineer turrets for example has 1500 range. If they have to trait into it in order to get that range I don’t know. If they don’t have to trait into it to get that range then I’m gonna be kittened because we do have to trait for it. It’s also funny how they can THROW something further then our short bow can shoot. It would also be nice to remove height as a distance counter to make attacking from fort walls viable. If they are going to keep pets in I would like my bird to be able to FLY up the keep wall and attack my target, and vise versa.

Problem is in WvW, the pet is Dead in the beginning 3 seconds of a battle because of area effects, so people don’t need to strafe your pet because there is no pet, which leaves you with a 30% dps handicap. Even if the pet was up, in WvW you don’t stop moving, that’s the first rule. If your target is always moving, your pet won’t get a hit in anyways. At least with my bow I’ll be able to hit him if he’s just moving in one direction, and if I’m shooting into a crowd I’ll be hitting someone or multiple people thanks to piercing arrow. Something that the pet does not do. So yes, I would rather have my full 100% of damage on my ranger.

Edit:
And lets not forget forts, pet’s won’t attack attacker’s from fort wall and pet’s, not even birds, will attack defender’s up on the fort walls, again a 30% handicap. And I say 30% but that number must be much larger now thanks to new gear and weapons.

I’m talking WvW, I have no experience in PvP, only in WvW. In WvW the pet can’t hit anything because it stop’s to do an animation before it attacks, so your target just has to move out of the way or not stop running and the pet will miss. The rest of the time the pet is dead from all of the AoE’s. So you have 30% of your damage doing absolutely nothing. Once they get pet’s to hit their target, then they can scale damage accordingly to make up for the gap in new armor’s and weapons, or they can get the pet to scale with the ranger. But all of that is useless unless they can fix pet AI

Frostfang.5109:

Not a single person thinking anything about this???

I think that before anything is touched in pets, they need to get the pet to hit their target. If they can’t get 30% of our damage to effectively hit the target, then everything else is a waste of time because even with all of these changes, your 30% damage will only hit 5% of the time. The other 95% of the time your pet is either dead, on timer, staring at you because your attacking someone on a keep wall (even the stupid birds stare are you without flying up), or lunging himself out attacking nothing but AIR. Let’s get the pets to hit their target first, then we’ll worry about everything else. Because if they can’t get the pet to hit, then we need to remove the pets from the game because they are only a handicap, and honestly, I’m tired of being the only class that has a 30% damage handicap. And that number is getting larger as new weapons and armor is being introduced into the game.

And all of that would be great and would love to have seen it if it wasn’t for one flaw in the game due to a dev’s epic coding fail…Pet’s don’t hit moving targets. Like I said, they either need to fix pet or remove pet FIRST, then we can work on traits from there on out. What good is working on the BM trait line if they decide later to remove the pet because your cat can’t catch a squirrel? Your bird is afraid of heights so it won’t fly up that keep wall to attack your target? Your target is running around in a circle, if your pet dog can’t even catch his own tail, how is he suppose to catch the target’s tail? Like I said, if this ‘amazing’ thing coming to ranger’s isn’t a pet fix or a pet removal, I will lose all faith in ANet ever being able to fix this class. Last time ANet said that they knew ranger’s needed help, they nerfed us, so I’m not doubting this amazing thing being a nerf either.

And they said they do not have the resources to dedicate that time if I remember correctly. And I agree with you, everything that you mentioned is broken or 30 points invested are needed in order to make them viable, not good, just viable. But I do believe that pet’s need immediate attention because they already had their chance for traits and what they did was a joke.

If they don’t have something to say, that means they are not doing or have not done anything yet for the class because they are still thinking of what that amazing thing should be

Chrispy.5641:

And besides, this thread is asking Anet to tell us what amazing things are coming to the Ranger, when Anet already said that they can’t tell us about it yet.

And when I read this, with ANet’s history, all I see is

Anet said that amazing things are coming, but they can’t tell us yet because they don’t know what it is that they are going to do yet.

If it’s not a fix to the pet or removal of the pet handicap, then it’s not an amazing thing and not worth anyone sticking around this class anymore because while every other class gets stronger with all the new gear and weapons, we get weaker because of the stupid pet mechanic that they kittened up and we’re paying the price for!

The thread I want a response to is https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-PvP-WvW-PvE-PvX/first

But I agree with this thread as well. We have been dealing with a broken mechanic since day one. Which other class has had a handicap of 30% of their damage for over a year now with no fixes? Just us. They finally admitted to the problem but they say that they won’t fix the problem. If they won’t fix the problem are they expecting us to be handicapped forever? I think after a year of this bullkitten we deserve to know what they are planning on doing for us.

This sub forum isn’t that new either, the livestream was what…one week after this sub forum went live? Maybe a week and a half? Still, in the 16 day’s that this section has been open, I believe all classes have already received at least one response by now except for us. I think warriors got two and honestly, I don’t think they need any buffs or are nearly as broken as the ranger class is! If this section of the forum was older then a month then I’d give in to your point. However, this forum is like 16 day’s old, half a month old, and those posts are within those 16 day’s time so they are still fresh. On top of that, out of all the threads that have received a response, I believe ours that has not received a response has been more constructive then those. (Edit: This thread: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-PvP-WvW-PvE-PvX/first which by the way has the third most responses to on the first page).

Two weeks and two days, this section of the forum has been open for 16 day’s, so please don’t say that any of those other posts don’t count when they are only two weeks old. For all classes to receive a response on less informative threads and ranger’s not receive a single response, yes, that does scream “Rangers are ignored!!!!” All I want them to tell us is what they are planning to do for us to make up for the handicap of the pet. All I want to know is are they going to give us back our 30% missing damage because of their failure with the pet AI/mechanics. We’ve had to deal with this handicap for over a year now, I think it’s time that we deserve something. I have never dealt with a company that treat’s its customers like this and trust me, I will NEVER purchase another game from ANet unless they can change their Customer Service practices!

There are a lot of things that should be applied at all times and are not. I’m a strong believer that piercing arrow should be applied at all times and not a trait thing. Same with short bow bleed, why do I have to be flanking to get short bow to bleed but warrior rifle doesn’t have to flank? What’s up with that? Why do we have to trait in order to have a decent condition cleanser? Why do we have to trait in order to make spirits viable, shouldn’t they start off viable to begin with? Why do we have to trait into BM in order to turn our 30% pet handicap into a 29% pet handicap, it doesn’t make sense to drop 30 points to pick up only 1% of our damage! (sorry for the sarcasm in that one, I’m still kittened off about pets.) I hope when they said there are changes coming that they where implying the removal of pets

I can’t believe they haven’t responded yet to any of our threads. Yet all other professions are getting responses on their threads. I think we’re the only class that hasn’t received a response on this forum yet. The silence we are receiving from Anet is what makes us apprehensive and mad because we are feeling ignored, yet the silence continues. I’ve been in retail business for a long time, been managing for a really long time. There is one saying that I truly believe in which this company seems to fail miserably at, and that’s ‘over communicate to dominate’. I also believe in lead by example, which is why I would love to see a dev play a ranger class in WvW. Which is something that I’m sure no one has seen, I know I haven’t. Speaking of which, can we have a list of the Dev’s that play ranger’s in WvW and what server they are on because I would love to visit that server and see these dev’s and how they play their ranger’s. Since they are not responding to our threads here that must mean it’s a L2P issue so I would love to see these guys in action so I can learn how to play my class.

I said April on my post. saying it’s funny they choose to do the update on march just before the new games are released in April, which should be ESO and I believe EQNLandmark is also being released around that time (Don’t quote me on the EQ one just yet though, it’s the speculation on the forums).

Maximum Potato.5923:

Also, Rangers are far from ‘Outdone by all classes’. The Longbow’s damage is nothing to sniff at, and with AoE cripple, knockbacks, and a 3s stealth, you’d be hard pressed to find anything else outside of a thief with that much kiting potential.

umm, it’s not all that. Our AoE cripple means you have to be stationary which means the person your chasing after will run out or range, the delay from the beginning of the cast till when it actually hits the ground the target is already past the spot and since you had to stop to cast it you lost your chance of catching the person. The knockback is great if he’s running at you but if he’s running away your just helping him gain distance and when your up against many classes, the pushback has no effect on them, especially warriors. And the invisible would actually be nice if it would actually work but if the person dodges or you miss the target, you don’t go invis. On top of all of this, they all have a LONG CD. Unlike Thief (since that’s the class your comparing us to) who can spam their abilities constantly with no CD.

Trust me, at the current state of Ranger’s, we’re better off without the pets and giving the pet’s 30% damage that they are suppose to do back to the ranger so we are not handicapped anymore.

I’m sorry, but all I see is scraps being tossed at us. Think of it, a few months back the dev’s said that the sword rooting you in place was intended and had a function and that they would not be changing it. Now all of a sudden they are talking about fixing the rooting on the sword? They are contradicting themselves. It’s also funny how they are planning the big patch to be in March instead of February like it should have been. Funny how they are putting the patch just before the release of ESO. Trying to see if they can keep as many players as they can with this ‘new’ toy of non-rooting sword attack. Last year they couldn’t care less about us and sword or pet, when the game first came out we didn’t see one single update while everyone else got buffs. If they where serious about working on ranger’s and getting the class up to par, they’d be working on the kittening pet issue, not the low hanging easy fruit of sword rooting you which I call bullkitten on ‘some complex back end reason’. They said it was done that way on purpose, it was designed to root you. So it should be an easy code to fix since they coded it to root you. Unless Anet wants to come on here and say that they lied to us when they said sword is working as intended. Which makes you wonder what else they are lieing to us about…hmmmm, pets maybe?

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

Ahh man, you fought against tarnished coast and I wasn’t there Although watching you play I’m sure you would have beaten me, so I guess it’s good we didn’t run into each other, hehehe

In Beta, Ranger’s also use to put out more damage then they do now it seems. It wasn’t just the healing. Then they changed everything around in ranger like two weeks before going live and never tested it and we’ve been broken since. It would be nice if they would revert ranger’s back to the way it was in beta because it seemed more rounded out then it does now. Although the pet AI would still suck

Bombsaway.7198:

I would take the counter bet that there will be more than one bullet point for the rangers. In fact, I would probably bet that it will be in the top 3 classes that get the most attention (not all positive of course).

Rangers may be a bit more complex to fix, but all vibes point to the fact ANet knows they need help.

What help. Enough help. Right help. Help you wanted. None of those things will I dare touch on a bet, but to bet that the patch notes will address more than a bullet point of change for the ranger. . . count me in!!!!

are you including toolbar text corrections? They know that we need help, yet in the last livestream, almost everything they said they where planning to do to ranger’s was a nerf with the exception of sword auto attack which is funny they said they are fixing it when recently they said sword 1 is working as intended and it’s suppose to root you in place. I swear, this company’s right hand has no idea what the left hand is doing!

Jaysin X.6740:

kyubi.3620:

truth about the signet is it was nerfed post beta because ranger in beta where prety much like the current HS warrior are. You could outheal anyone just with the healing signet. I just wish they gave back the 300 per second and made this signet usefull for more then just the active again. This would give ranger a somewhat sharpened edge in pvp. This is one of the change that was done in beta that makes little sense now that we are down to behing reduced to this.

So they nerfed it on the Ranger cuz it was op, then gave the exact same power to the Warrior? I don’t even…

Stop right there! Don’t think about! You’ll only hurt your brain. No sensible person can think backwards like the dev’s do. Trust me, it doesn’t make sense to the entire world but it makes sense to them. Don’t hurt your brain, we need good ranger’s out there!

You think they’ll undo their ‘animation fix’ which nerfed the shortbow speed?

Sasajoe.1509:

kittened devs will not even hear you i bet … they haven’t even moved their finger for an year and a half … they won’t do it anytime soon.

I actually think they will not even do the update in march (as they told us on stream it would come on jan 21st, & then delayed it to march)

It’s the beginning of the year, chances are they will do to us what they did to us in the beginning of last year when the game first came out. The first big balance patch that came out everyone had something except for ranger’s. Not even one bullet point for ranger’s. I’m betting that this time around they will stick with tradition and not give us a single thing on the next balance patch.

Atherakhia.4086:

While I’d be fine with having to gear the pet (not in ascended mind you), is it really worth discussing ways to fix the scaling issue so long as the pets remain useless overall? ANet could decide to give us explosive collars that we could detonate on F2 that would kill players in 1 hit and I’d probably still rarely get the chance to use it because the pet is dead 99% of the time in WvW and the F2 button would go over after the opponent has killed me or ran away.

I’m all in favor of explosive collars mind you… but if they don’t work, why bother?

In a way your right. Since our pet’s can’t hit worth a lick, we should worry about that aspect of pets first. However, it doesn’t hurt to review all aspects of the pet. For instance, I have been pushing on removing pet damage since day one and giving that damage to ranger. After reading Lobo’s post, for some reason, I thought of using the trait to give damage back to pets. Don’t ask me why but it just popped into my head. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before because I didn’t care for the pet and by reading his post I realize that some people want the pet mechanic.

Some people might have great idea’s which you might be able to tweak or add it to one of your own idea’s to make it more complete.

My only questions is, how do you put the explosive collar on the birds? And will the explosion be big enough if it’s on the bird?

Fermi.2409:

Imo the best way to customize/scale pets would be to give them ‘pet gear’, where you can equip them to fit certain roles better, or improve them in their ‘intended’ role. This would also allow them to be improved as better levels of gear come out.

Ofc, then you have the issue of having to fill a decent number more armor slots then other people, which could be fairly expensive.

Ouch, more crafting? I barely want to craft my ascended gear now It’s a good idea, reminds me of my necro in Everquest where you would buy summoned armor from a mage (I think it’s mage) and give it to pet to beef them up, and you can also give them summoned weapons but once the pet died you lost all of the armor and weapons you gave it. But I don’t think it will work out with the way GW2 is layed out

Lobo.1296:

One problem I see, going forward, is scaling. As gear becomes better (ascended weapons and armor) our pets will be less effective than they were a few months ago. Bosses and events will be balanced with ascended gear in mind (or at least the majority of people in full exotics) and our pets don’t have a way of scaling up.

Our BM trait line has the Empathy attribute that increases pet stats, perhaps making Empathy scale with our own attributes passively (without investing in BM if we don’t want to).

One stat comes to mind as a universal between all rangers, regardless of build, and that is our armor class (NOT Toughness – that’s different). Our armor goes up numerically depending on the color of armor we wear, as we gear up to exotics and beyond that number goes up. Having a ratio of armor:empathy will also increase the pets stats as we gear up. There’s no way to increase the scaling beyond just acquiring the best armor you can in each slot. This is a fair way to passively increase pets stats as the ranger improves his gear and takes on new content.

Slotting points into BM will, of course, make for a better pet, but that’s the way it should be and it can be balanced to accommodate for the increased pet stats gained through armor.

It shouldn’t effect sPvP at all and in WvW it will make pets far more survivable and less
frustrating and give the ranger another reason to gear up.

Thoughts on this?

It’s a good idea but you still have one major problem that this does not solve. The pet does not hit a moving target. Because of this we are handicapped in the damage department by 30% base, more if you factor in new gear such as ascended armor for people with a zerker build for instance. Now, there is a way to have both, a pet doing damage and the ranger having full 100% of their damage.

First, you have to remove direct damage from pet, give the ranger full 100% control over their damage.
Second, you leave the pet in the game as a utility, providing boons, and whatever effects they give. So your bear still remove’s effects, your dog still does knockdowns, your birds will still do bleeds, and so on.
Third, By buying into the beastmaster trait line you can add damage to the pet, this will make the beastmaster trait line viable for people who want to be a beastmaster and not just a ranger. Make it so you have to apply 30 points into it. This way you only have 40 points left so you can’t really go full zerker plus pet damage since full zerker requires 30/30/x/x/x.

In a way this is like a win/win scenario for ranger’s who want pets and ranger’s who do not want pets. Does anyone find any faults with it?

Dardamaniac.1295:

And here we are again giving em constructive feedback..Like we did in the past….And they say that they want us to be constructive and kitten to be heard by them……..

WHO IN THE NAME OF DIANNA SAID CONSTRUCTIVLY TO THEM “HEY GUYS ADD ANOTHER SPIRIT IN THE HEALING SPOT, WE REALLY NEED MORE SPIRITS”?

Eternal Facepalm for these devs, its a shame since the designers did a great job………

Im done with being constructive..i payed for this kitten and i cant enjoy this glorious combat system cause Devs are keep adding boring stuff in it……

Sorry, but they may say they are looking for constructive feedback but if you look at the threads they are posting in, none of them has any constructive feedback in it. So far we have red tags on 1 warrior thread, 1 thief thread, 1 engineer thread, 1 necro thread, and 2 mesmer threads. None of them has any real constructive feedback in it, mostly just arguments as to what’s overpowered and what’s not. From all the threads I have read on here so far, we have one of the most constructive threads. Not only that but look at all the threads on the first page, we have the 3rd most replied to thread on the first page, 1st being Josh Davis’s thread of the live stream and a thread for warrior’s having the best land speed which is full of arguments and warriors claiming they are the easy bags in WvW (what a joke). Yet, with all of this constructive feedback on this thread, the warrior one will probably see a constructive reply before this thread does. (I say constructive just to keep out any smart-kitten dev’s from poping in here saying something silly like, guess your wrong).

Dardamaniac.1295:

Let me give a good taste of Anets balance..
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March VS http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Oakheart_Salve

2 skills that are simiral..
The first tho is an adept while the second is master———-Warrior wins
The first also reduce the duration while the second its doesnt————Warrior wins
The first gives 3 sec of regen on a 10sec CD while the sec gives 5s on a 15 sec CD——-Warrior wins again…

There are more traits like this..I seriously believe that Rangers are the trashcans of every idea they had for other proffessions…

Dev1:“how about might on crit?this would be awesome for Warriors, they will become beasts.”.

Dev2:“Y sure great, test it and put it in asap”

Dev1:“And what about Rangers?”

Dev2:“oh whatever give em something for their pets, it will miss most of the times eitherway, im playing with my warrior now, leave me alone”

Dev1:“Can you please tell me how to name it?”

Dev2:“Companions might, something similar with the Warriors awesome Forceful Greatsword trait, but give it to their pets only so it wont matter, they are fine”

And this is why no dev is playing Ranger..

This is sad to say, but your probably right ;(

kyubi.3620:

Melee evade should remain the acrobatics thief speciality. Simple

we’re fine with melee evade, Thief’s already have invis and spamable abilities with no CD’s.

Durzlla.6295:

Have any of you guys saying pets need a health and toughness buff for bosses even played PvE lately? Bears have kittening 50k HP, after that whole “pets have 75% more health” boosting thing and my fernhound I believe has like 34k or something ridiculous.

If your pet is dying it’s because YOU ARE IGNORING IT unless you’re using a bear with 30BM and 25pts in MB you can’t just hit F1 and forget about your pet.

You MUST call it back to get it out of aoes, or swap it/heal it if its health gets low, especially in PvP and WvW where their health is significantly smaller.

And then your DPS decreases by 30% which puts you in a handicap compaired to all other professions. What other profession out there, especially in WvW, has to deal with a 30% handicap? Because that’s what happens when you pull your pet from battle or if your pet dies, has the same effect, your dealing 30% less damage. And now with the new gear out that 30% should be much higher of a handicap but we’ll keep at at 30% just for simplicity. Now answer my question, what other profession has to deal with a 30% dps handicap?

I find it annoying when warriors call themselves a free bag. Last night I was in a militia group in TCBL, about 8 to 10 players, we came across a warrior that pretty much stood in one place, barely moved around, it took the militia about 15 to 20 seconds to take him down, but he didn’t go down until he took down another player. So this guy had 8 to 10 players beating down on him, and he still had time to take down one of the militia people and run a stake into him before we finally took him down. Yea, on my ranger, if I had 8 to 10 players on me I’d last like 2 seconds! Don’t tell me that warrior’s are easy bags because that just saying that your full of kitten! Try playing ranger for a while in WvW then tell me who the easy bags are! And yes, I do have a warrior and a thief as well.

Kilger.5490:

I’m mostly (~70%) zerker and not liking the sound of this (obviously). It can be very difficult to impossible to down some regen bunker builds already.

What is the justification behind the nerf? If there are specific abilities that are doing too much damage look at those, blanket nerfs are generally not a good thing!

Can someone post a link to where this is presented?

From my understanding, in PvE the meta is zerker gear because you kill the mobs faster then the mob’s able to dish any damage on you. Anet doesn’t want the meta, or everyone to be on zerker, so in order to make all the other build’s ‘look’ better, they are nerfing zerker build. It’s the same kitten they did with longbow and shortbow, in order to make the longbow look better, they nerfed the shortbow. Same kitten, different flavor.

Amiron.1067:

Or you know, instead of giving rangers two pets (seems silly to me), they can take the easy route and just do what every other freaking mmo does and give pets AoE resistance so they don’t die within seconds of a boss fight, becoming practically useless.

Seriously, if they just did this, half of Ranger problems would go away. Unfortunately, ranger pets use the same craptastic AI regular mobs use, so you can forget about them ever hitting that moving target. There are so many problems with pets, and if ANet’s “amazing changes” are just more trait/utility tweaks, they’ve yet again done diddly squat for the profession.

C’mon Anet. 90% resistance to AoE. How hard is it?

Your right, that is half of the pet problems, the other half is the fact that our pets will not hit a moving target because it has to stop to do an animation before it attacks, so when the attack actually happens, the player you where attacking is not there anymore. This isn’t as much as a problem in PvE as it is in PvP and even worse in WvWvW. However, what are the chances of either of these two things being fixed? According to Anet’s description of the class, we are suppose to be a ranged pet class. It’s funny that a ‘designed’ pet ranged class has to resort to going into Melee combat in order to try and keep up with the DPS from other classes. It’s also funny how a Melee dps class, which was designed for melee dps such as warriors, can do more damage then ranger’s at range. They got the hole thing backwards.

The AI on pets is more then just half the problems we’re having. Traits and everything else can be easily fixed if Anet can get their heads out of their kitten. However, everyone has failed to remember that ANet has already stated that they WILL NOT touch pet AI anymore. They refuse to do anything to pet AI out of fear that they may mess up the AI for NPC’s in the game. This includes any of the F abilities. This leaves us with two choices…or both.
1.) remove pet damage and give full damage to ranger. Leaving pets in as a utility.
2.) rewrite pet code so it’s not leaching off of game AI so changes can be made without it affecting NPC’s.
I say both because they can implement #1 while they are working on #2, then revert the changes of #1 once #2 is complete. They claim they want a pet class in the game and they chose us for it, can’t they just see the necro’s as the pet class and leave us the kitten alone? I’m getting so tired of this crap. The pet is completely useless in WvW. The pet always dies within the first few seconds of the battle. And for those who say, oh you don’t know how to control your pet, keep him by your side and don’t send him in. blah blah blah. Question for your geniuses, What good is it to keep 30% of your damage next to you doing NOTHING! The hole idea is to have your pet in there doing the 30% damage that ANet claims they do for you!

But you know what kittenes me off even more then all of this. The fact that Warrior’s got a response to their thread. Thief’s got a response to their thread. Engineer got a response to their thread (although Engineer’s are not as great as warrior and thief but they are not as bad off as we are). Even Mesmer got a response to their thread although it was more of a generic question for any class with blast finishers. We haven’t seen a single response from a dev and we are bottom of the barrel while those classes are the best in the game. And all the stuff they mentioned in that chat the other day, all but one of them is NERF! I should have known we where the red headed stepchild when the first balance patch came out when the game began last year and ranger’s didn’t get one single bullet point in the patch notes. Then we where lied to saying that they had to pull all the changes for more testing, we where given a list of the changes, told they will be in on next patch and guess what, tool tip fixes is what we got, nothing that was promised. We should have seen this coming, it’s depressing.

I’m sorry to be venting but it just kittenes me off when ANet admits that our pets are broken and that we need help, yet they come on here and give attention to classes that are overpowered like Warriors and Thiefs! And then they saying in the pod cast that many things are coming for ranger’s just reminds me of that first patch when the game came out last year. Sorry, I won’t be holding my breath again!

Another problem that people are forgetting about, including myself is that with all these new armor set’s, other classes are gaining in strength. Our pet’s do not gain anything at all from this new armor. Because of this our 30% damage from pet is getting worse because it’s not getting buffed like all the other classes are, only the 70% from the ranger is getting buffed. This again is another handicap that ranger’s have to deal with because of pets. Before ANet does anything with fields and healing and all this crap, they need to fix pets! It’s inability to hit moving targets and the fact that they are becoming stagnant through the times while everyone else is gaining power and damage from new gear.

Anthony.7219:

so id hardly consider the skill useless.

Well, I didn’t call it useless. I was just trying to state that it wasn’t that big of a DPS skill when your comparing it to Maul. I agree that Rapid shot has it’s uses, and it’s not useless, but I wouldn’t call it a high dps skill like Maul. That’s all I meant by comparing it to our #1 skill.

infantrydiv.1620:

The pet mechanic would be a simple fix in my opinion:

F1: Attack target, Return to me (Toggle)
F2: Damage based ability
F3: Support/utility based ability
(F4):Guard/avoid combat

Both the F2 and F3 skills should be made to immediately override whatever else the pet has queued.

There is a bigger problem to pets. Even if you do the changes you say, the pet AI is handled by the server, not the PC side, so you have the lag time. The bigger problem is that pets are using the AI for game MOB’s. Because of this, they stop before they attack to do an animation. Because of this pause, by the time the attack happens, the person it was attacking is no longer standing there because he’s moving. In PvE this is not a problem because your putting a dumb AI against another dumb AI. In sPvP you do not see it as badly because your standing in one place trying to contest a point, you’ll only see it when chasing after your opponent or something similar where your moving. However, in WvWvW it becomes obvious the flaw of this system. Since in WvW people are running all around the map, no need to contest a small point, your opponent is always in motion, thus your pet doesn’t get any hits in unless you can root them down somehow, which our rooting ability is on a VERY long CD and it’s easy to break out of. Especially a D/D thief, all they have to do is hit #5 and they are out of the vine.

In order to fix the pet they will have to do one of two things.
1.) rewrite the pet code as what it’s suppose to be, pet code, instead of leaching off of other code. They wrote the code correctly for mesmer clones, they wrote the code correctly for necro pets, but they got lazy and leached ranger pet code from the game AI and now we’re broken. However, rewriting the pet code will take a lot of resources, something that ANet has already said that they refuse to do. They rather have their resources working on new content/living world rather then fixing our class. I can understand, one class, one small population of the player base, new content, the entire player base, I’ll give them that one.

2.) Since they acknowledge that pets are not working as intended, and they acknowledge that they will not be attempting to fix the pet’s because of the time/resources required and that any patching they try on the current system will cause problems with other AI NPC in-game, then it’s time to remove the handicap from the ranger. In other words, instead of splitting ranger damage 70/30 as it is right now (70% ranger/30% pet), they should move full damage, 100% to the ranger. We know they can remove and lower damage on pets without breaking the system because they have already nerfed pet damage without breaking game AI. They can leave the pet in the game but as a utility. So your Hyena will still do the KD’s for you when it actually lands it. Your spider can still shoot poison at range. Your bear can still remove conditions from you, you’ll still have all the utilities that the pets bring into the game, they just won’t provide any direct damage since the ranger/PC will now have full control over their damage like every other class. This can be a ‘band-aid’ until they do have the time and resources to rewrite the pet code correctly. Hopefully when they do rewrite it, my bird won’t be afraid of flying up the keep wall to attack my target or down the keep wall (another handicap the ranger’s have because of the pet).

runeblade.7514:

Rapid Fire does good damage, Maul does good damage.

I have not tested it personally, but a lot of people here keep on mentioning that the regular #1 attack does better damage then rapid fire. So if this is the case, then Rapid Fire does not do good damage. However, I agree that Maul does good damage, however, it’s the only skill we have that does good damage and it’s easily avoided because it has a huge and long ‘tell’ that lets your opponent know what’s coming.

Aridia.3042:

6) Pet class that harms pets, contradicting by design

I want to touch on this point. You routinely read on the forums that pets account for X% of the ranger damage. Some even like to exaggerate the number to 50%. I don’t know what the actual percentage is, all I know is, it’s a fact that rangers have lower weapon coefficient vs other classes, so it’s reasonable to assume the way the weapon damage is balanced, pet damage is being taken into account.

Shortly after the game came out one of the Dev’s mentioned that our class is balanced around the pet damage and the damage was a number between 30 – 40 percent. Many people did exaggerate it to 50% but in all honestly it’s most likely closer to 30-35%. I wish I could remember the exact amount but I honestly can’t recall, so when I quote the number’s I just say 70/30 (ranger/pet) so people don’t think that I’m pulling number’s from my kitten like saying 50/50 which is hard to believe.

It just sucks that we are the only class that has to deal with a broken AI to be responsible for 30% of our damage. On top of that, the broken AI is normally in a down state doing 0 Damage. ANet really needs to rework this class and give it a class mechanic that actually works like everyone else.

Seeing this thread hit the second page makes me feel like ranger’s have finally given up on Anet and are tired of repeating themselves and are waiting for the greener pasture coming out in April.

Right now the only way for Ranger’s to keep up damage-wise in WvW in Zerg’s is going full zerker. And even like this we still lag behind everyone in damage because 30% of our damage is tied to our pet which is normally dead in the first two seconds of the zerg battle, or in last night’s zerg battle, my spider died of a heart attack before the battle even started, don’t ask me how it happened, maybe a stealth thief missed me and hit the pet, I’m not sure. If damage is reduced even more what will happen to ranger’s with their already 30% damage handicap? And please don’t tell me to learn to use the pet, because the pet is completely useless if I’m defending a keep or attacking a keep, even my bird won’t fly up to attack as if he’s afraid of heights. For a class like Warrior that does insane DPS and thief with their insane burst and get out of jail free card, and the like, where would this leave the ranger?

Arlette.9684:

Question: Does Jon Peters feel like he’s the next Gabe Amatangelo?

It’s possible, SWTOR was big on release, after a while there wasn’t enough people to fill the que system for the PvP battles.

Wait till the launch of ESO and see if there is a que time for WvW.

You only mentioned the stuff that was added. How about mentioning all of the nerf’s we got, like Pet damage being nerfed, short bow damage being nerfed (and calling it an animation fix), Short bow being nerfed a second time for range. Endurance regen nerf, barrage damage nerf, and the list goes on. Nerf’s that the class does not need because we need help! Just the nerf’s I mentioned here already outweigh all the small decent stuff they did for the class. The acknowledgement that pets are broken and not working as intended but they refuse to fix it out of fear of breaking something else. Name me one other class who’s class mechanic is broken and ANet refuses to fix? And that the class mechanic is ‘suppose’ to be responsible for 30% of their damage which they are not receiving because of the broken class mechanic! Don’t take this as a personal attack, and if you did then I apologize as of now. I just get frustrated when I see people posting stuff on the ranger forum as making it seem that we’re doing good when in reality we are sub par compared to other classes, and yes, I know about other classes, I also have an 80 thief, 80 warrior, and 80 mesmer. I can kill more and die less with those three classes then I can with the ranger, and I play the ranger more then them.

So far I have seen Anet respond to Warrior thread, Thief thread, and Engineer thread. Now, I can understand that the Engineer’s needs some work but I think they are better off then we are. But does the warrior and thief really need a response from a dev considering how overpowered they are? Meanwhile, ranger’s with their broken class mechanic, or should I say Acknowledged broken class mechanic, hasn’t even been viewed? Do they have absolutely nothing to say about our class or our suggestions to help the class?

kyubi.3620:

3. Make pet to work more like a extra, very small damage, but instead very survivable and utility-providing tool

Please dont do that. While i agree pet damage and ranger damage depends on each other the option to actualy run a decent damage beastmaster shouldnt be removed from the game at the expense of personnal damage either. Pet damage should be related to gear and so should be its survivability. You run zerker gear you get to have a zerker stat pet you run a carrion gear you get to have a carrion stated pet (currently you only gain from condition damage) and if you want a tanky pet then for the love of melandru go ahead and wear sentinel or knight.

Mainly i think the best bet would be to switch beastmastery +300 to all pet stat to:

1. Pet gain a 3.33% of master power toughness and condition damage per trait point (up to 100%)

2. add a trait to the beast mastery allowing the pet to gain a good percentage of the master stat point so that only people who realy invest into their pet get to actualy benefit from it that much.

That doesn’t work. Having the pet responsible for, as it currently is, 30% of our damage is having 30% of our damage wasted because in WvW, the pet is either dead, or won’t attack. If I’m on a keep wall my pet won’t run out the keep or fly out the keep to attack my target below, thus 30% less damage. My target is up on the keep, my bird is afraid of heights because he won’t fly up to attack, thus 30% less damage. The only way to fix this problem is by removing damage from pet and giving it to the ranger so the ranger has full 100% of it’s damage at all times. You could maybe, through traits like a grandmaster trait, allow pets to have some damage for people that want the beast master fighting system. I agree with the other guy, unless they can fix pet AI, which I doubt, pet’s should be a utility tool for us while ranger’s do the full damage.

To be on subject with the OP, the bow has many flaws and unfortunately, it’s the only weapon choice that I love to play with in any game because I enjoy archery in real life. The longbow does not have the tools required to keep your target at range. Most classes have ways to block our knock back. Our barrage is a joke damage wise when compared to other AOE’s from other professions. Rapid shot does less damage during it’s 4.5 second channel then our auto-attack does. Especially when you compare it to like warrior’s version of rapid shot on rifle which does it in something like 2.5 seconds, making it much more bursty. Warrior’s rifle 1 auto does bleed while ours has nothing, and that’s with ANet claiming that we are suppose to be the best class for range combat during an interview…and that’s pretty much all they said about ranger’s in that interview while they had tons to say about every other class. Being the ranged class we also do not have a high damage finishing shot like warriors do on rifle, and warriors are suppose to be the melee profession here!

Yea, Traits is another can or worms but before we open that can, I would like to see if ANet would at least give us a response on the pet situations and our suggestions for temporary fix until they are able to do something meaningful with the pets. And no, the pets right now are NOT meaningful, they are useless! Even using a ranged pet last night in a zerg fight, my pet died from a heart attack before the battle even started!

Sol.4310:

So ask yourself why bother, to get the Ranger into a good state with many viable builds it would take them at-least 2-3 years as we can already see it seems to take them forever to make changes.

Who’s gonna wait that long? They got three months until ESO comes out. Wish I could say more about ESO but I can’t. And if I get tired of ESO (or even if I don’t get tired of it) we have Everquest Next coming out by the end of this year I think it is. Haven’t seen SOE fail in an everquest title as of yet (thus the nickname Evercrack, and yes, I still play my Ranger and SK in EQ1). Unless something amazing happens with the dev’s and this profession, they will be loosing at least one person here to these new games, and I’m sure that I won’t be the only one. I’m not claiming that there will be a mass exodus or anything like that, but loose a few people that spend some change in their marketplace and they will feel the pinch.

But that is a bit off topic, and the changes I have suggested shouldn’t take that long to implement if they are truly looking into pleasing their customers or at least temporarily applying a band-aid to the problem until they can rewrite the pet code from scratch which is what they should have done from the first place, kitten, they have had a full year already to rewrite that pet code! I think we have waited long enough already!

OGDeadHead.8326:

If warrior damage is 100, what is ranger damage compared to that?

1. Ranger hits every attack, pet hits every fourth/fifth attack = ? damage
2. Ranger hits every attack, pet hits every second attack = ? damage
3. Ranger hits every attack, pet hits every attack = ? damage

I would think that ranger total damage was calculated from the beginning to be ranger+pet hit all of their attacks, just like any other class.

That is the way they are doing the math, problem is pet hits less then 25% of the time and is normally dead (in WvW at least) through 3/4 of the battle on a 60 second timer is it? Leaving us with 30% less damage for a full minute during a battle. Not only that but we don’t even hit all the time with ranged weapons because of the constant sidestepping to evade our arrows and if they are standing on a pebble we get a obstruction message or out of range message even if they are not obstructed or out of range. I love it when I can’t hit someone below me from the fort wall with a bow and arrow because they are out of range but if I could spit, I’d nail them in the forehead! They need to give ranger’s 100% of the damage control, pet’s do not work, they stated this already, and they also stated that they do not plan on fixing it any time soon. We’ve waited a year already, it’s time for us to receive our full damage and screw the pet!

Searban.5984:

jcbroe.4329:

From what I understand, and from my own assumptions, the pet AI is basically using the open world monster AI, down to the point where they stop to attack the same way. It is assumed then that necro minions and mesmer summons behave in the same fashion.

So, I gather that what I’m suggesting would mean that they would have to literally recode ranger pets entire AI system. Essentially, the game would have to be overhauled to allow for this new “object,” aka the updated pet, to exist within and interact with the environment. How it takes damage and does damage and everything would have to basically be coded from the ground up.

It’s the way I understand the problem as well. And I still think that whoever has made the decision to use copy-paste method to provide AI for pets did not think it through at all. Honestly, it should’ve been already obvious back then what problems will result from this.

Sadly, it’s also the reason why I doubt we’ll see any significant improvement in the area of pet AI in the nearest future. So far Anet has been very keen to avoid devoting major amounts of effort or resources into balancing, and nothing indicates they may be planning to change that policy.

The problem is that nothing else than creation of new, separate AI for pets will work in the long run. As I already stated in another thread, even if they find any way to fix the pets without dealing with core of their problems, it will not be that different from a temporary band-aid. With every piece of new content that Anet will introduce to the game in the future, pets will be at risk of becoming inadequat for one reason or another.

That’s correct, our pet’s use the same AI as it’s NPC Counterparts. So any changes they make to the pet will effect the NPC’s as well. In order to have this fixed they will have to rewrite the entire pet code as a pet code. Just like they did for Necro’s pet, mesmer’s clones, etc.. It does not look like they wish to devote there time or money into rewriting the code so the next best thing is to put a bandaid on it which is something that they do not want to do either. For over a year we have been dealing with this problem and I think it’s time they did something about it.

As a suggestion, which I have suggested it since launch day, the damage is split now between Ranger and pet 70/30 (or there about). Direct damage should be removed from pet’s and given to the ranger. Ranger will have 100% control over their damage. Pet’s will remain in the game, they will still have their functions, fear, Knockdowns, poison, boons, etc., but they will not deal any Direct Damage. We know the Anet can remove the direct damage portion from pets without screwing up the AI of other NPC’s because they have nerfed the damage on the pet before without problems to other npc’s. With this, ranger’s will no longer be handicapped in WvW where the pet’s die in a matter of seconds. Ranger’s will now have their full damage when attacking from/to keeps where the pet will not work (not even the birds will fly up the keep wall or down the keep wall to attack). And we will still have our pets, be considered a pet class, because we will be using them for the boons and any effects they provide in combat minus the damage.

This is not a fix, this is a band-aid, but at least the ranger’s will not be handicapped while we wait for an actual fix to come down the line with a new pet AI as we have been for the past year. They have had a full year to fix or rewrite the code and they haven’t. I think we are all tired of waiting. At least do this so we’re better off for the time being until you do get around to actually creating a fix.

I’ll say it again, Since the Dev’s have already confirmed that pets are not working as intended and they do not have the resources or time to fix them because of the changes it will cause to all other NPC’s in-game, are there at least talks of changing our class mechanic for something that does work? As I mentioned earlier on this thread, removing the damage from pets and leaving them as buff and condition tools and giving the removed damage back to the PC/ranger? It was said that PC’s damage was reduced in order for the damage to balance out with the damage the pet is doing. Since the pet is so unreliable at the moment we are handicapped because of it. It makes sense to remove it and it won’t break any of the NPC codes that your afraid of breaking because you have already nerfed the pet damage in the past with no side effects to NPC’s. The pet will still be there applying fear, knockdowns, bleads, stuns, boons, etc. just no damage. In essence we are still a pet class relying on our pets for many of our utilities, etc.

If not can you at least tell us what you have planned to bring us up to par with the other professions? Or is there no talk about helping the ranger’s out?

Would be nice to get a reply from a dev with some idea’s they are having in changing our mechanic since they already admitted that the pet mechanic is not working as intended and they do not intend in fixing it. Any word on what you do plan on doing to make Ranger a viable class in WvW, dungeons, etc?