Yeah, part of the problem Fluffball is that you have part of the population that enjoys PvE and, therefore, wants a challenge and the other part that enjoys the story somewhat but wants to get it over with quickly so they can go back to WvW and sPvP. I fall in the latter but respect the former. So, part of the population will cringe at raids or time sink PvE. Using a few combinations would be nice though but making it a giant mind puzzle of what combination, when, and how to build the team type bosses gets old when you just don’t PvE much and has as much appeal as the idea of a jumping puzzle.
Just read post where contributor referred to rangers getting a condition known as “pet down” and losing 25% of damage when the pet dies.
What if the death of a pet made the ranger “enraged” for a period of time (20 seconds which is 1/2 of the cool down when the pet dies if memory serves right) where they would do 25% more damage. This would be like enlargement but without the speed and stability and looking like the Jolly Green Giant if playing Sylvari.
So you can’t just stow the pet, but if the pet dies, you get a damage boost until you have time to summon another.
That would be a great addition.
Short bow needs some love, but not necessarily more love than a lot of other things with the class. Overall, I like how it plays in that it requires positioning and crippling to be effective. In short, the bow needs more ability to play “keep away” with the enemy given the mediocre range. It could use help in the following ways:
1) SB1 could provide bleeds 50% of time from front and 100% from flank/rear
2) SB2 should be like rapid fire and designed to blast a single target 5x with a much longer poison. Spreads are meh.
3) Quick shot would be even more interesting if it put us in stealth for even a short time so we could use remorselessness and lose being targeted.
4) Crippling shot should add 3 bleeds of its own vs just relying on the pet or have the cripple increase to 6 seconds as this is a complete attrition weapon.
5) Concussion shot should also give you quickness. You slow the enemy down and then have speed to get into and stay in flanking position.
That would lead to a 4 (cripple) 2 (poison and burst) 5 (daze and get quickness to flank) combo.
For WvW and Spvp, I would use a completely different build. I tend to put 30 pts in marksmanship and rely a bit more on the bow than the sword.
Signets are a great tool because you can:
1) bow them down at great distance
2) Stealth
3) Swoop/Bash/Maul
And you have an active signet which will increase damage substantially and one that will allow you to not take damage should the fight get protracted.
In larger fights, you still have the bow with great range and the ability to tag lots of enemies with the great sword. Personally, I like buffing pets. Cougar is great but so is the red Moa. It depends on the fights you will be in. I tend to find that the pets simply don’t do predictable damage in larger battles or in wvw right now with the performance issues. But they can buff me easily.
Using signets for defense and often having a bear just in case (with the cougar) allows you to run more of a berserker set of gear. You just need to be in control of what fights you get into! Stealth will hurt you.
Ok, let me take the other side. I love the design of the shortbow but find it a bit too weak.
Our key limitation is keeping you from closing the distance to us. Sure we have a leap back skill but not enough.
SB is actually more fun for me to play because I get so much benefit from flanking and trying to get around an enemy to keep up bleeds and extra damage is interesting. Long Bow feels a bit more passive in my opinion. Then I have to keep them from putting me into melee range. Pretty fun outside PvE..
In fact, I love that the shortbow is not just a “twitchy” type weapon.
This would be insanely overpowered because it essentially gives you an extra man on the field and Lord help you if you had multiple pets on a team. So, you cap a point ant then you simply attack the enemy aggressively to keep them away from your point with less danger that you are placing yourself in AE and static damage harm.
Meanwhile, the other team has to deal with you and getting someone to the point to capture it. Totally unfair.
Agreed. Make it like a thief steal. But the idea is great.
You will see more spirits being used as supplements and passives is what I mean.
Can see people using the protection and burning ones (or damage).
It is an adjustment but I think you may find far more rangers using spirits.
After all, you don’t have to spec 30 in nature to get the spirits to move with you.
Those 10 extra points can create whole new builds leveraging spirits.
The boar class has a remarkably fun F2 set but it is clunky. 1) You have to dig. 2) You have to run over and pick it up and 3) it auto replaces your weapon so you pretty much have to use the skill right when you pick it up. It just is too much micromanagement in a fast fight.
What if it automatically replaced your un swapped weapon without your having to run over and pick it up and you then could swap to it within say 10-15 seconds and use the item?
Just call it a freakin Harvest Event just like we have moved Christmas in most games to a Winter holiday. Pretty much takes care of it being an American thing.
Thank God for the gem store. It follows a pattern that is essential for a game these days in giving players, returning players or new players a way to “catch up” and buy gear that would take too long to “earn” in game.
Mind you the key is “catch up” which GW2 does well. There is no “getting ahead” of a player who slugs thru the content because they have more time. That would be a problem. There are some purchase only skins and some cool looking and nominally better gear in the game you can’t buy. That helps have people spend money and time. Common sense.
The Gem Shop is one of the highlights of good balance that GW2 has. It is getting to the point that you will need to soon see ascended gear be purchasable though.
Ranged needs far more ways to keep melee from closing. The biggest problem with ranged is that melee doesn’t take enough damage before they can close.
In most systems, melee wouldn’t have more than 50% of health by the time they closed BUT that makes it a fair fight as they are more powerful when that happens.
In short, balance should be based on what percentage of a melee character’s health has to be reduced for the ranged character to win 50/50 of fights once the melee character closes the gap. We are not even close.
One of the big problems is there is not enough CC to stop the melee character dead in their tracks or cripple their movement in a way that they have to rely on another class (not themselves) to clear it.
There really is no rock-paper-scissors element to this game which is one of the biggest challenges. Range and stealth own magic. Magic owns armor. Armor owns range and stealth. Each class is even against other members of its grouping. You have a bag of tricks CC class.
The reason you need “skins” and “toys” is because there is no real progression outside of PvE.
We need a real realm ability system (or skills that actually matter system) for WvW.
sPvP should provide bonuses you can take to WvW and PvE too (but NOT the other way around).
Without that, you have to throw in new gear. And this game gets silly with gear that has to be crafted. Crafting is usually just a subculture of a game. Here it is mandatory.
Boo Hiss. There is nothing massive about it at all.
There are several ways you could incorporate non-PvE elements. I would like to see a rotation where PvE gets only 1 in 3 updates (the other two being WvW and sPvP).
WvW would be a temporary battlefield perhaps a dungeon with great treasure but also the ability for the enemy to get access to its entrance and gank those trying to PvE much like a Darkness Falls in DAOC. Or it could be a new map with an artifact of power that you try to capture and bring back to your home map.
sPvP. Create a new sPvP map or two instead of a PvE focused event.
Is anyone feeling like Living World events just miss 2/3rds of the game??? (And the best 2/3rds)?
Hard to get excited about a new class when you play a ranger and need a lot of attention focused on classes that exist.
If there is a new map, I certainly hope it is not PvE and would be WvW focused. There is little tangible benefit for a seasoned player to PvE without a good gear progression (not that I want one). For example, a zone where great treasure exists but you can be ganked by the opposing realm. Think along the lines of a Darkness Falls from DAOC. More importantly, it would be great to see the sPvP maps and system redone. That was supposed to be the heart and soul of the game.
There is no need for a new race IMHO. It would add nothing to the game.
I can move but I can't see skill animations
in Account & Technical Support
Posted by: Bombsaway.7198
I keep having problems (no idea what the issue is) where my toon can move around but it is as if the rest of the scenery and people are frozen and my skill buttions just “pulse” as if they are going to fire but don’t for 10+ seconds. Then in a quick moment, all the animations come at one time.
I am on a 100MBS connection plus have a AMD 6120 six core 10 GB Mem and AMD 7450 HD graphics.
Thoughts? I even put all my settings on Best Performance (which this computer shouldn’t need).
Thanksgiving really isn’t an American holiday if you consider that it is just America’s version of the celebration of the harvest. Lots of cultures, particularly those with large agricultural economies, have a harvest celebration.
EU is actually a bit odd in that regard from a global perspective.
Remove “in combat” from Tail Wind. In combat, it would operate exactly the same. It would also allow a ranger to move faster out of combat.
The whole idea of ranger typically is a fast in and fast out type character.
EB should allow you to remove 3 conditions every time you use a pet F2 skill.
Instinctual Bond should allow a pet to remove passively 1 condition every 10 seconds.
Alpha training should allow a pet to remove 2 conditions every 10 seconds.
Frankly, a pet should have opening strike without a trait!!!!
It would be better to cap the total vigor bonus any player can benefit from (and other bonuses frankly) you can get than nerf individual traits and still allow stacking with gear, other traits etc.
We need heal as one to remove 2 conditions.
Can we get a buff to our healing skills particularly in the form of reduced cool downs?
One way to help the ranger is thru DPS. The other is thru defense.
Cutting 5 seconds off each healing skill would not be OP given how little defense we have.
The active effects of signets should benefit the ranger vs the pet (this does mean signet of renewal would need reworked. Easiest is that it removes 4 conditions.)
Then in the beastmaster line there should be a master trait that allows all signets to benefit the pet.
What if the autoattack of a ranged weapon and your pet’s first attack did 2X damage with an opening strike?
This would add a little burst when playing low marksmanship.
It would also really benefit going to 25 in marksmanship where the attack is guaranteed to crit.
It also makes remorselessness good for power bow rangers (or axe).
It gives you the ability to do great frontloaded damage with the right utility traits and gear at the expense of being a real glass cannon.
Thoughts?
Quick fix to opening strike that would help power builds.
Opening strikes with ranged weapons’ (bows and axe) do 100% more damage (autoattacks ONLY). This would make remorselessness interesting too.
With right traits up, it could be a very solid initial burst (at the cost of not having much other utility).
Here is an option based on poster above.
Opening strike increases the number of arrows for an autoattack (LB or SB) to 3.
That would give us the initial burst. Then we just have to sustain and live to finish.
It also makes remorselessness very interesting in a power build.
Be a tree. Put some roots down. Turn a new leaf. You really are missing the best race for a ranger!
For Pets,
PET UTILITY
Can you allow the F2 skill to have a different cool down by type of play? Right now because of the amount of movement in wvw and spvp the skills are a bit lackluster but they work pretty well in pve.
What if the “quick relief” was to lower the cooldown of the F2 skills so we could fire them more frequently to offset some of their not working quite the way we always want them too?
PET DAMAGE
On pet damage, could you similarly increase the damage in wvw and spvp to account for the “rooting” of the pet which works fine in PvE but leads to too few hits actually occurring otherwise? If we are getting less hits (for whatever reason), seems the simple solution is to do more damage per hit.
PET SURVIVORABILITY
Pet’s don’t survive long around mass AE whether dungeons or WvW. A suggestion was put out that we increase the number of pets that can be swapped to 4. Thoughts?
Jon:
As a fmr. chief customer officer, love to see the tone you have taken with the community. But we are here to talk rangers!
What might be extremely helpful is to look at and provide the community on the usage rates of different weapons by type of play (wvw, spvp, pve). I would particularly focus on the weapons new rangers pick first. Those tend to be the ones they want to play where later you adjust to play the best.
Shouldn’t that lead to which weapons might be best to first fix? I suspect you will find a heavy emphasis on bows (long and short) as most customer expectations in any sort of MMO or rpg on ranger tend to be “bow class”.
So let’s talk bows!
Would be helpful to understand what your vision is for bows considering you seem to have hinted at the need for one bow to be AE and the other single target.
Which of the following approaches do you think needs to be done with bows and which are you focused on?
Trying to provide in order of magnitude of change:
1) Consolidating traits in marksmanship?
2) Improving current skills (damage, range, rate of fire, conditions etc)?
3) Changing bow skills (e.g. making longbow single target and shortbow small radius focused etc.)?
I would like to see LW rotate between creating new content for PvE, WvW and Spvp so each element of the game would see a change once every month and a half. That might be a lot easier than my previous suggestion.
Ideally, the LW changes would be content that involves a story (that is fun frankly) and would address an issue or add content.
1. For PvE new zones like Southern Cove that stay are nice.
2. For WvW, this is where you could get some great balance effects in or have new maps, structures, siege etc.
3. For sPvP, this would allow you to have new maps with new playstyles like capture the flag etc.
I’d also make the plot lines change more, personally. There is only so much Scarlett I can take. Best thought would be to run a plot line thru the cycle of PvE, WvW and sPvP and then retire it for the next one.
Best thing for rangers would be adding utility by merging quite a number of traits together as well as making the passive effects of signets go to allies.
If you want build diversity, we need a lot of merging of traits in our power and precision lines.
Swapping more pets is a good idea.
Even if the pet is dead you still get +5% damage when using the full set right?
I love the idea of being able to keep sending another pet into combat but losing the ability to resummon and “dead pet” until you are out of combat.
I agree with the idea of improving EVERYONE’s OOC speed by 33%. Good Lord, it seems slow enough with swiftness getting into the fight in wvw not to mention running a PvE map. Snooze.
I also agree with the idea that all the signets currently increasing speed should increase combat speed. Frankly, some classes should use movement as a defensive ability like the ranger. I need to see a list of classes who would benefit/not. But it may be one of the best ways to provide defense to defenseless classes.
I like to keep life simple. LW needs to be fun. If it is, then it is working. If it isn’t then it is failing and if it sometimes is and sometimes isn’t, then there is room for improvement.
Overall, LW’s fun factor relies way too much on certain playstyles (e.g. PvE, jumping puzzles, boss mobs etc). There is no sense of LW impacting the tension between servers or WvW or Spvp. So there are large sections of play and playstyle that are not integrated into the story. As such it is more a fun distraction than really epic. Sometimes LW can be a whole lot of fun as a “side dish” but it seems to have little to do with the “main course” of kill the guy playing on the computer 1000k away from you for too many.
Yes, I pvp and wvw as my primary “course”.
LW should touch all aspects of the game somehow and should integrate those aspects at least a bit.
You could kill a number of birds with the LW stone. For example, can LW content be used to ease the impact of server population issues in WvW? Can LW PvE be tied to gaining powerful supplies or siege maps for underpowered realms to use in WvW?
Can there be special 6v6 or 12v12 spvp/wvw maps available to the overpopulated realms to siphon off their players creating balance for the Season?
Let me give you an example of each.
Example #1. An enemy realm (NPCs) seeing the growing might of the server which is grossly winning a WvW season decides to get involved in ensuring the overall balance of power. So it might have a few mobs, camps etc in each server’s map but really focus on kicking around the dominant server:
1) Danger and annoyance (say beating your walls, robbing your supplies, making it difficult for that server to move around without an npc fight but avoiding other realms etc).
2) Creating negative effects for the server to overcome (poisoned land creates weaker stats unless you hold and destroy X on the map that is underutilized and can have new content like an Asura radiation leak etc).
Example #2 PvE Linkage (Invasion)
Your realm has found the source of the invading realm’s magic, technology strength etc. In PvE, you have a challenge to capture part of that advantage and take those new blueprints or supplies with you to WvW (make all supplies temporary and poof at the end of the season).
Example #3 Integrating Spvp
If you hold the castle (which typically is held by the force creaming the other two servers), you have access to a new WvW map which pits all the castle owners against each other but siphons off only so many people at a time.
In conclusion, it would be far more interesting if LW would have elements in all three major aspects of the game pve, wvw, spvp and be used as a balance tool. LW may be the ultimate tool for quick fix population/power issues.
I would be willing to see LW content extend from 2 weeks to 3 or even 4 if it could be more robust and tie in all three aspects of the game versus only being pve.
The overriding reason you have imbalance is because it is to the advantage of players able to transfer to.
You have to change the incentives without completely creating a pendulum effect.
For WvW, you may want to allow servers getting trounced to join up. I’ll throw out if the daily point total is 1.5 times the “combined” score of the remaining two servers, they should automatically no longer damage each other. In short, their attention should focus on beating up the “king of the hill”.
Right now the reward comes from winning and winning tied to total score which leads to a pounce the minute there are new pairing effects that can put the smaller server in such a hole that it seems hopeless.
For PvE, one issue is accessibility of content which requires a critical mass of people. If I need to get something done but rarely can find enough people to do it, why wouldn’t I move? Especially if PvE is just a necessary nuisance? So, the easier you make PvE to do with a very small group and PUGS, the less imbalance. But the counter is there are people who want that difficulty. Therein lies the rub.
The more the population the harder the PvE?
Another quick answer to building up a population is rewarding new players. If you got double experience or double gold to play an underpopulated server (to 80 then the bonus would be less), you might get newer players to stick. That is especially effective for people who want multiple characters but dread the idea of redoing the leveling process. The key is that once 80 if they move you just lost the whole point.
Out of combat movement is too slow. It just takes to long to get around the maps. Would like to see all classes get better OOC speed. You can keep in combat speed the same. But way to slow getting around!
I know I should answer the question, but I really don’t have a good one for GW2.
I just seems like there is less “come together” in WvW than I found in other MMOs.
I can tell you some reasons it may be a bit light:
1) The Seasons concept was a great idea but it often leads to blow outs. When it gets to be a blow out, well, interest wanes. COMPARE TO: a system where you could more easily push the enemy out of your realm or ninja steal a relic and hold onto it with a smaller force etc. Total number tends to favor biggest team.
2) No meaningful small scale win for the smaller team. Again, being total number based versus mission etc, there is no “accomplishment” the smaller team can get when up against overwhelming odds, organization, or whatever you want to call it.
3) Guilds really don’t feel a sense of “ownership”. I can claim something but I don’t feel a real vested interest in my camp/keep etc. Not sure what to do here but maybe a guild bonus structure? Larger bonuses for defending “against all odds” and stacking bonuses for length under your control?
4) No real sense of party v party small scale skirmishing.
I really do want positive ideas on how the game could encourage more realm pride especially when WvW is going totally against you.
Not quite sure where to put this so please pardon me if you see it as its own topic as well as on this thread.
Much easier to be patient for a change if you know one is coming. Can we get someone to comment for the community on:
1) Are pets performing as you intended in terms of:
a. Damage?
b. Utility?
c. Ability to Survive?
2) Are their difficulties (technical or testing) that limit what can be done to improve Pet AI (not hitting moving targets, F2 not firing)? If so, how tough are these challenges (roughly)? Or is it really working as intended?
3) Do you have a broad theme for pet changes (as Jon highlights this is a ranger’s defining mechanic)? Any rough (we won’t hold you to it. . .or I won’t) timeline on starting to look at functionality and change?
Much easier to be patient for a change if you know one is coming. Can we get someone to comment for the community on:
1) Are pets performing as you intended in terms of:
a. Damage?
b. Utility?
c. Ability to Survive?
2) Are their difficulties (technical or testing) that limit what can be done to improve Pet AI (not hitting moving targets, F2 not firing)? If so, how tough are these challenges (roughly)? Or is it really working as intended?
3) Do you have a broad theme for pet changes (as Jon highlights this is a ranger’s defining mechanic)? Any rough (we won’t hold you to it. . .or I won’t) timeline on starting to look at functionality and change?
Much easier to be patient for a change if you know one is coming. Can we get someone to comment for the community on:
1) Are pets performing as you intended in terms of:
a. Damage?
b. Utility?
c. Ability to Survive?
2) Are their difficulties (technical or testing) that limit what can be done to improve Pet AI (not hitting moving targets, F2 not firing)? If so, how tough are these challenges (roughly)? Or is it really working as intended?
3) Do you have a broad theme for pet changes (as Jon highlights this is a ranger’s defining mechanic)? Any rough (we won’t hold you to it. . .or I won’t) timeline on starting to look at functionality and change?
What if the average daily score of a server was over 1.5X the combined score of the other two triggered the “underdog” servers to be allies for the next day (unable to fight or hurt each other but only the dominant realm?).
That might help in blowout situations which you currently have in the Seasons which makes the game less fun for all three servers.
The more tug of war the game is the better even if that requires 2 v 1. Give a bonus for the server that most often has to take on two enemies in a season if you must, but this at least makes the season have some tension versus the inevitable.
Was trying to think of common situations in wvw which would get “broken” by allowing our pet to have the HP increase it got in PvE.
Can’t think of anything being too outrageous.
1) Zergs (still gonna die but now you can get an F2 off easier)
2) Camps and NPCs (well it makes sense to be the meat tank and would allow rangers a faster ability to roam and take key camps etc)
3) Roaming (I guess BM would be a bit hard but isn’t that the point of BM? Otherwise, a good buff but not overwhelming).
How much additional “uptime” do you think your pet would have in a fight?
Would it really be too much if the +75% hps also applied in wvw? What scenario would it break?
It would be nice if we had a few more options on pet behavior “stances”.
1) Stick with your target.
2) Stay by my side and attack nearest to me w/ 600 (not my target)
3) Attack my target
4) Passive
Be nice if each “stance” would give us a bit of a bonus to the ranger.
It is outside of PvE where our pets are dying so easily. I won’t comment on dungeons as I rarely do them.