Flame Blast skill:
No longer double-detonates when the projectile expires naturally.
Turns off Detonate after the flame blast ball is gone.
Little confused here. Does this mean the ball will simply vanish (and not blow up) once it reaches 600 range or will it still detonate on its own once it reaches max range?
Still a shame that the Flamethrower was left untouched apart from fixing the double-detonate; especially after seeing so many threads with good suggestions on improving it.
So effectively the Ranger has had a few broken abilities finally fixed and quickness was nerfed with no compensation for the quickness on pet-swap. Not much of an improvement in my humble opinion as a lot of Rangers will deal even less dps now.
A few common sense fixes and a big nerf. And let’s not forget that the passive effects from Warrior banners got buffed by ~90% whilst Ranger spirits are left unchanged.
Color me unimpressed; but then again the ‘balance team’ doesn’t hold that much credibility in my book. They dropped the ball too many times now and seem to live in their own imagination.
Thanks for trying to help out Robert, but next time I’d suggest bringing a wooden plank to the meetings and smack some people in the face with it.
You know, you could just throw some dice in order to to slot utility skills at random and play with a blindfold.
How’s that for RNG?
1000+ hours as an Engineer.
6000 kills in WvW
1100 Honor BadgesWhat exactly is the problem?
450+ hours as a LB/SB Ranger.
10000+ kills in WvW
2000+ Honor Badges
I guess you just outlined the problem when a Ranger (that other class at the bottom of the pile) can rake in more kills with less effort and exposure; even while his overall damage is kitten by broken pet mechanics causing it to die all the time from random AoE in WvW.
By the way, I thought Jon Peters was playing a 5-signet Warrior? At least I always assumed that’s why the warrior was always getting buffed while other classes got nerfed.
If we get a Whip mainhand; we’d need a Chair offhand
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Now what if they would exclude pets from a mob’s ‘agro radius’ as long as it doesn’t attack a mob? It might be a start to remove the frustration of accidental pulls.
At least we’re not shooting confetti out of a clown gun, but I agree that shooting unicorns with the Dreamer is a bit too much.
I really like Kudzu though, it’s beautiful and actually shoots (golden) arrows.
Next to Lick Wounds actually working 90% of the time underwater (provided you call/switch your pet) and the fact that there is no Stomp; I believe most opponents are simply not accustomed to (or bothered to familiarize themselves with) fighting underwater.
I wouldn’t be surprised if a lot of people still use their level 1 Aquabreather with some level 20 blue item as their weapon and didn’t bother putting in an exotic rune+sigil either
Its great how you leave out the fact that none boon oriented classes have: More burst damage than guardian, more health, more mobility, more CC.
It’s also funny to note that he’s playing a Might stacking Warrior and hates Guardians. So I guess it’s only natural for such people coming into these threads to gloat and troll.
I think it would be great to have turrets reworked into a ‘Turret Kit’. Never understood why Engineers had to kitten themselves by loading up all of their utility slots with turrets when it is clear that Kits are the Engineer’s specialty mechanic and their traits reflect that.
We even have 5 turrets next to the Healing Turret on our #6, so it would be perfect to assign them to the 1-5 ability slots if they were part of a kit.
Often you see people using 2 kits and a stunbreaker. As such I think it would be awesome if you could have a Turret Kit, Tool Kit and a stunbreaker.
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Play an Asura and see your tiny weapons shrink even more when sheathed.
Personally I wouldn’t be surprised if they not only nerf the KR effect for Grenade and EG, but also keep the 10s global cooldown.
I hope to be proven wrong though…
I’ll offer my suggestions regarding the Flamethrower:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Backdraft
Incendiary Ammo could also do with a little reduction on its currently ridiculous cooldown; perhaps reducing it to 45s? 45s still seems rather long for such a toolbelt skill, but the current 60s is just way too long in my opinion.
Also, I wouldn’t mind Juggernaut going back to giving Stability at the cost of reduced movement speed (the old Juggernaut). That way FT would fill the role of short-range point/bottleneck defender
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/index.php?title=Juggernaut&oldid=209198
^_^
As I’ve said before – I am not on the balance team… at best I can present things and harp on issues and constantly bring them up to keep them in focus, and to remind the people on the team and who make the decisions in the end that it is an issue that needs to get resolved. I’m a dungeon content designer who plays ranger at a high level, and that is why I am in the meetings, to be a representative for that sect (for lack of a better word).
This thread and my presence really isn’t damage control, otherwise I would have failed pretty hard at it in business terms. Making a visible list of issues to bring up with devs and allowing non-devs to see it isn’t exactly good damage control since it can set up high expectations, and the only reason this thread has reached the size it has (I feel) Is because I am posting in it; drawing even more attention that the topic would have garnered otherwise. So if anything my coming here has served only to shine a brighter light on the improvements needed to the ranger/pet/player dynamic (trademark).
I appreciate what you’re trying to do for the Ranger community and I am glad to hear that you’re sincere about adding your voice to these balance meetings in order to remind the ones responsible of the issues Rangers have had since launch.
As to this thread getting as big because of your participation, it is only natural. I mean, the Ranger community has been met with empty promises and subsequent silence for a long time, and still they are forced to operate at the bottom of the pile while apparently getting shunned/kicked from dungeon/fractal participation. So your presence has given some hope that after all these months there might finally be a chance at some actual improvements for Rangers on the horizon.
Yet we’ll still need a few more posts more in order to top the 25-page long thread that started 4 months ago.
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-update/first
I believe Robert means well and he seems one of the most amiable devs at ArenaNet. But what I’d really like is for Colin Johanson to post in this thread as he seems to be the one in charge when it comes to design decisions.
Seems like an easy solution would be to baseline the Ranger’s damage higher and the pets lower, and then offer a trait in beastmastery that allows you to flip it back.
For example: 90/10 split, UNLESS you take a tier 1 beast mastery skill that drops your personal damage by 20% and increases the pets by 200%. You could also easily slap that on as secondary effect of an existing trait like Masters Bond.
Best of both worlds. The 10 or so people out there who love their pets the way they are can keep them, while everybody else can move on with their lives.
They don’t want the pet to be “vestigial” so I know they won’t do this for us, but the truth is that our pets, as they currently stand, are EXTREMELY vestigial in end game content.
Personally I believe this is the focus of Beastmaster traits which would allow a Ranger’s pet to become more effective. There’s no real need for a trait that would buff the pet and kitten the Ranger when Rangers can simply spend points in the BM trait-line to make his/her pet more effective.
A Ranger with points in BM would then have a more effective pet in terms of damage potential than one who does not spend any points in BM.
So I would welcome a 90/10 split. That way the player gets to decide if they want to focus mainly on their Ranger aspect or focus on their pet (or do a bit of both).
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Not really sure how that is conclusive evidence of anything other than ANet are not good communicators.
Well, not trying to insult you or anything; but the giant sledgehammer that hit the Ranger from Beta to launch as well as the patch notes since then speak for themselves in my humble opinion.
Crossfire nerf getting passed off as an ‘animation fix’ (and later called out on it) and general changes that affected other classes where the Ranger just happened to benefit from as well (projectile speed for bows and 25% movement signets for example). Some minor health changes to Spirits that doesn’t help us much and general nerfs every single patch (this one mostly on other classes except for Warriors) where it feels as if the balance team is completely disconnected from reality and doesn’t even know what they’re doing (Symbol of Wrath and Spirit Weapon sledgehammer-nerfs for Guardians for example).
Since launch of this game I have yet to see Jon ‘Warrior’ Peters and his friend the Invisible Thief deliver on their promise that the Ranger would see a lot of ‘quality of life’ changes.
As such I feel like the Ranger community has been more than patient. I have done my best in offering my own suggestions regarding changes to the pets/ranger damage output percentages, pet AI modes incorporating shouts and the current imbalance of signets. I mean I’ve worked on games in terms of balance and testing myself but everything offered so far seems to be ignored unless it’s ‘common sense’ changes like shared Agony Resist.
So I sincerely hope that this in not another smokescreen to distract us, just like Jon Peters was doing before he left the Ranger forums entirely after making too many empty promises.
Sorry for the elevated tone of this message by the way. It’s not directed at you capuchinseven.8395; just my general view on the matter regarding Rangers, ANet’s balance team in general and the way they seem to set their priorities.
I’m having tons of fun in Orr with little Vyxxi and her Flamethrower. I can just stay off on the sides and tag every single mob. And because I’m set up as kinda tanky (2900ish Armor 18-19k health) I can usually survive when every mob in a group turns its attention on me when a flaming ball of napalm hits them full in the face.
As far as my build, it’s a pretty lazy and almost fully automated one because I don’t like all this kit-flipping mental-timers crap. So I just go 10-30-0-30-0 with 2×2×2 (Fire/Hoelbrak/Strength) runes for a combined 90% Might duration, Strength and Bloodlust sigils and run around with my FT equipped constantly and elixirs for everything else (my elite is Supply Crate). And if I ever find myself underwater I use the EG (currently with Earth sigil)
It works awesome for me and my bags are always bursting with loot! In fact, it feels that the button I use the most during events is ‘F’
And I just love to see Orr burn!
edit to include the correct version of my build
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I like it. Of course one never knows how hard it is to implement programmatically, but toss every idea at Anet hoping that one of them is simple and elegant enough for them to implement.
It shouldn’t be hard at all as they’d only need to add new recipes to the list. So all it would take is someone spending an few hours implementing all the recipes based on the 8 Imbued Orichalcum Inscription.
8 inscriptions x 21 legendaries =168 Mystic Force recipes total to cover them all. Hardly any effort for a lot of potentially happy players in my humble opinion.
I really, really like this idea. You should post it in the suggestions subforums, this doesn’t only apply to Rangers.
Done
There are quite the number of legendary items out there, yet all have P/V/T stats applied to them.
While it’s nice to have a generic ‘catch-all’ set of stats on such items, I personally believe that it would be even better if the player can dictate the stats he/she would like on their legendary.
In order to achieve this there is a very easy method. We need Mystic Forge recipes!
SHAZAMM! Zommoros takes your P/T/V Legendary and gives you one with the stat layout you’d want based on the Inscription you provided…
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By the way Robert, are you guys only discussing the pet aspect during these meetings; or also utility skills that primarily function on the pet?
If so, please give the team a nudge regarding our Utilities; most notably Signets and Shouts.
Signets: the active component on signets only work for our pet (unless traited with a Grandmaster trait) and is either pretty pitiful (Hunt) or even dangerous (Renewal) to use.
Main example of an underpowered Signet is Signet of the Hunt. 50% damage increase for one (auto)attack at the cost of your 25% movement speed.
I personally wouldn’t mind it if ANet would simply remove the active ability on our current Signet of the Hunt and give us something similar to what we saw with the Wintersday Scout ability (invisibility/swiftness).
Signet of the Hunt
Active – Your pet becomes invisible (3s) and gain swiftness (10s).
(which would also apply to you if you have Signet of the Beastmaster)
Also, regarding Shouts. These seem to have been slapped on at the last minute because the team needed to fill up the number of Utilities, but no regard was given on how they would function. However, in my opinion they should never have been made into Utility skills, but they should have been an integral part of the Pet AI! Heck, some even have names that other MMO’s used for their Pet-AI packages.
As such I’d suggest removing the Ranger shouts and rework them into Pet AI modes:
Agressive (Sic ’em) – Guard (Guard/Protect me) – Support (S&R) – Passive
I hope this is something you would like and be willing to discuss during a meeting
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We need Mystic Forge recipes!
SHAZAMM! Zommoros takes your P/T/V Legendary and gives you one with the stat layout you’d want (well, limited to what Inscriptions can be made through crafting that is)
Posted this in another thread, but figured it would do well to be placed here as well:
"
The only real issue I have with ArenaNet’s concept of the Ranger is that my pet has to account for ~40% of my damage. Because of its mediocre ‘AI’, inability to hit moving targets reliably and subsequent deaths whenever an AoE is flung in its general direction; you are left with a Ranger operating at ~60% potential most of the time in damage-heavy encounters (WvW and dungeons).
In a nutshell; the Ranger’s damage potential is kitten because there is too much (theoretical) damage potential allocated to a secondary computer controlled entity that does not function properly.
Next to that we have this active combat system where positioning and dodging are key to survival. Yet our pets can’t position nor dodge and basically seem to operate with a limited version of WoW style AI mechanics (and there pets had 90% reduced damage from AoE to compensate for their limited AI).
As such I believe that ArenaNet should change the Ranger60%/Pet40% to Ranger80%/Pet20%. Bring the focus back that our pet is a ‘support class’ with a special ability to supplement our own arsenal; not something that takes away 40% of the Ranger’s damage potential but is incapable of providing it during combat.
Next up they should focus on giving pets the same Agony Resistance as the Ranger and either give the pet some form of passive defenses to help it survive. A passive resistance to AoE spells and effects could be such a means of defense.
But I sincerely hope they will not simply add more and more buttons so we will effectively be forced to micromanage 2 characters in order to function. If we are forced to play with a computer controlled entity, at least try and give it some form of ‘intelligence’.
Just my opinion on the matter…
The first thing is that, even with 25 stacks of might, the flamethrower’s auto attack (it’s defining feature) is pretty god-awful. Second thing is that warrior GS has no internal cooldown, so maintaining 20+ stacks is no issue, 25 is easy if they’re against a wall. I know comparing one class to another isn’t entirely fair, but I’m simply pointing out some facts as they exist.
Ah, alright.
Yes, if it would offer Might without an icd; it could be potentially more viable for a Grandmaster trait in addition to the +200 Toughness.
However, the Might stacks offered by ‘Forceful Greatsword’ crits only have a base duration of 5s/crit; compared to the ones granted by ‘Juggernaut’ passive having a base duration of 15s/3s. But I guess the 10-attack pulse offered by FT#1 combined with a high (40%+) crit rating would ensure a steady and continuous application of new stacks.
(I’d still prefer the ‘old’ Juggernaut though where it granted Stability at the cost of movement speed)
No problem
It’s rather peculiar that you’d need 7 runes total in order to get the 6-set bonus underwater. Personally I think it would have been better that the Aquabreather didn’t have a rune-slot or stats and was mainly for visual purposes only; but that’s just me…
The only real issue I have with ArenaNet’s concept of the Ranger is that my pet has to account for ~40% of my damage. Because of its mediocre ‘AI’, inability to hit moving targets reliably and subsequent deaths whenever an AoE is flung in its general direction; you are left with a Ranger operating at ~60% potential most of the time in damage-heavy encounters (WvW and dungeons).
In a nutshell; the Ranger’s damage potential is kitten because there is too much (theoretical) damage potential allocated to a secondary computer controlled entity that does not function properly.
Next to that we have this active combat system where positioning and dodging are key to survival. Yet our pets can’t position nor dodge and basically seem to operate with a limited version of WoW style AI mechanics (and there pets had 90% reduced damage from AoE to compensate for their limited AI).
As such I believe that ArenaNet should change the Ranger60%/Pet40% to Ranger80%/Pet20%. Bring the focus back that our pet is a ‘support class’ with a special ability to supplement our own arsenal; not something that takes away 40% of the Ranger’s damage potential but is incapable of providing it during combat.
Next up they should focus on giving pets the same Agony Resistance as the Ranger and either give the pet some form of passive defenses to help it survive. A passive resistance to AoE spells and effects could be such a means of defense.
But I sincerely hope they will not simply add more and more buttons so we will effectively be forced to micromanage 2 characters in order to function. If we are forced to play with a computer controlled entity, at least try and give it some form of ‘intelligence’.
Just my opinion on the matter…
Do you have a 7th rune in your Aquabreather? You’ll need it for the 6-set bonus to activate underwater because the Aquabreather takes the spot of your Head item while underwater.
(verified this when I noticed my Centaur runes weren’t activating underwater. Popping in a 7th fixed it)
Change Juggernaut from ‘Stack of might every 3 seconds’ to ‘Might on crit’. Boom, grandmaster trait-worthy (alongside the 200 toughness). Although the damage does still need to be increased a bit anyway, 2.5 second channel for even 6k damage is kind of a joke.
I’m not too sure about that. At the moment (with runes and such) I have a constant 9 stacks passive.
And knowing ANet, if they would change it to On-Crit they’d throw an icd of 2s on. So I’d only be able to get the same number of stacks after at least 18-20s.
As you might imagine, I’d rather start the fight with my 9 stacks instead of having to wait 18-20s before I’m at the same number.
Griffons, Rock Dogs, Raptors, Dolphins. So many creatures who don’t have a juvenile version for us to tame.
Robert, our Ranger profession has the least amount of condition removal and the ones that we have is mostly harmful to our pets,some requires full 30 trait points to activate ,the signet is unreliable if pet is far from ranger,the bear is also unreliable if ur fighting from a range(which a ranger mostly do) since the bear needs to run near the target b4 he will do the “shake it off”.
Can we have a rework for the signet of renewal,more trait synergy for cond removal like ele has, so that our pets don’t get punished for cond removal since we need our pets alive.
Here is my idea for new elite skill or utility to help compensate ranger’s lack of cond removal.But I don’t like unbalanced skills,so i add in a drawback
Signet of Nature’s Equilibrium-
Passive mode- Reduces all condition duration inflicted and boon duration applied on ranger and pet to 3 seconds maximum.
Active mode- Remove all conditions and boons from Ranger and pet,gain immunity from conditions and boons for 10 seconds. Cooldown 60 seconds.
While I believe that particular suggestion would be very overpowered, we can all agree that the people responsible for creating the Signet of Renewal must have been smoking something at the time. Not only will it cause you to basically command your pet to suffer and die when activated, but when using it with Signet of the Beastmaster you’ll both suffer and die.
And there comes my Guardian, shouting ‘Save Yourselves’ and turns into a God for 10s every 60s (who has tons of additional means to rid himself from the conditions he just took from others) >_<
So I personally believe that Signet of Renewal is indeed in DIRE need of a change (this goes for some of the other signets too btw like Signet of the Hunt). At present time I see it as Signet of the Moron (as you have to be one to use it).
My suggestion would be:
Signet Passive: Cures a condition on you and your pet every 10s
Signet Active: Your pet pulls conditions from nearby allies to itself and converts them into boons.