Guild Wars 2

More than likely, but only if the ranger is using the Pet’s Prowess trait.

Here is the quote:
“Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it. "

So when taking this idea into account and then hearing the reason why the sword chain attack behaves the way it does, it doesn’t boost much confident in the balance team as it would seem that the Ranger profession hasn’t been fully integrated into the game yet.

When exactly did empathetic bond start doing that? Not to sound tin hat, but it seems to me that this has to be a recent bug that might be isolated to the sPvP side of things. I have a feeling the spirit of nature ‘bug’ is probably of a similar nature.

Also what is with this skritty focus on harming the pet as about half Ranger’s condition removal?

You forgot to add the part where Scarlet destroys 80%-90% of the surface water on Tyria.

We might get lucky and they will over stack the Ferocity on Pet’s Prowess for a couple of days.

That doesn’t account for them potentially taking the on crit requirement off of air and or fire and adjusting the damage accordingly without knowledge of what the total changes to the sigil his speculations are just a accurate as if he based them on the rune example (that he a least had the good sense to leave alone).

But until we see the going live numbers we can’t be getting worked up yet.

Also does this guy know any other adjectives beside “power creep” you could make a drinking game out of this video.

I think that his speculation about thieves with sigils of air and fire together instantly killing “viable” builds seems unrealistic and fear-mongering.

I am trying to remember and am having trouble recalling the last bug effect this profession in a negative way that’s been fixed?

As of late it isn’t just risen. I have found that across many zone (haven’t tested them all yet, but getting there) that mobs will now go after the ranger once he reaches a certain range even if he is not attacking, or using any other skills. I can only guess that this is part of Anet anti-bot design at work, but it does seem like something we should have been told about.

They just couldn’t leave it Prowess. As the pro-Zerker meta folks already associate it with their manhood.

A lot of the problem is recently Anet address vigor/endurance recover on Engineer, Ranger, and Thief. And the vigor on critical hit possessed by Elementalist, Guardian, and Mesmer along with Signet of Stamina (passive effect) on Warrior remained untouched. So in the patch that was adjusting vigor/evasion balance ignored most of the professions, but stuck professions that are in an evasive Archetype (and are jokingly stating that Warrior needs a certain level of sturdiness that would be considered slightly off topic but show that Archetype within play should be maintained at least some professions) .

Think about this if you look across the boards Warriors (the profession Anet seems to bend over backwards for to make PvP “viable”) complains when they are out played by a ranger. Even with every advantage they have it is like losing boxer getting beat by a one-armed blind man.

SonOfJacob.7396:

There is ranged damage, but I don’t suppose you mean buffing that to equal zerker because as I understand it, ranged is less risk (the whole “risk versus reward” conversation mentioned everywhere). I’m honestly trying to understand what a solution could be and still not simply “nerf” something because that just seems too simple…it’s just going to make everything take longer.

Don’t start on risk vs reward there while stacking in melee provides both optimal damage and protect. That and with the limit range on boons there is less and less reason for that argument.

But if we are going there hypothetically how is it that soldier profession do not have some sort of build it reduction on their damage as they are at a base less risk than the adventurers or scholars.

For all of you that are jumping ship if the changes are not to your liking, I will be still accepting donation of gold and materials.

Could we stay on the original topic? If there is a thread here about Elixir H, place your post there if not then start a thread.

Basically could either the activation time on this skill be removed (to grant it parallel with a similar skill) or if the activation remains maybe have it feed in the endurance over time to change the basic function to fit the apparent mechanic design.

I was going to just lurk and see how this meta thread would play out, but there are some issues that I think are being ignored.

Problem one The guild wars 2 “trinity” of damage, control, support is flawed in it base. The later two are under-defined, poorly implemented (Unshakable and fear of the stun-lock party, not to mention the Conquest focus of PvP that must always be maintained), are largely not truly a specialization in and of themselves. Basically you get a party that player are some combination of Damage, Damage/with a bit of control, Damage/with a bit of support, and Damage/with a bit of control and a bit of support.

This third point needs to be related further.
There is no mechanic in the game (for good or ill) that causes a control skill that land from a player focused on control to be better than one from a damage based player. Most (with the exception of Stun/Daze) are just non-damaging conditions and benefit from the one constant in the profession design system Condition Duration comes with Power in the trait system.

That is a bit on control, then we get into support which in the DPS meta devolved into might stacking, vulnerability stacking, adding to damage stat trinity (power, precision, critical damage), raw damage increases (frost spirit/time warp), and on some fight reflection skills to protect the party while not interupting the damage.

TLDR: The DPS meta exist due to the fact that the other two roles in anet’s trinity are underdeveloped, unneeded and unusable as anything but a secondary focus in the playstyle of a character.

Arrys they didn’t change Whirling Defense they just added retaliation. The skill still reflects projectiles.

For the most part we probably just avoid it, as any/all the ideas we can come up with will fall under that whole scope clause from the sticky.

Akisame.9508:

Well, all I know is that if they don’t fix pets or if they do not remove the pets and give the damage back to the ranger’s character…come April, I’ll be playing ESO and removing this game from my hard drive. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one. At least there I can play a ranger the way it’s meant to be played…without being held back by some stupid AI. Anet better get their heads out of there kitten before they have a mass exodus of ranger’s on their hands.

Come April I will still be accepting donations of gold.

While this would not make the any additional money, I think the replacement of soulbinding in the game to account binding would be general quality of life move on their part.

First the quote:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

Now that is out of the way the developers don’t want to give Rangers more control over the pets. The state reasons include, but are not limited to after on the skill floor/ceiling and it would give the ranger more skills than they were balanced around.

So with these ideas in mind how exactly are they even attempting to continue “balancing” the profession while leaving the core mechanic sub-par and under developed.

Atherakhia.4086:

Been asking what the Ranger is supposed to do in this game for a year. Best of luck getting an answer.

I think in one of the states of the game Karl said* something along the lines of “Rangers are the long-range masters and potent skirmishers.” So after that they lower the range on short bow to make long bow more appealing (not even their first change on that weapon).

Terravos.4059:

I’m still under the opinion that Pets in this game were added kitten.

I think they just wanted an actual pet class in the game, and the Ranger was chosen, problem is they spent so much time in beta trying to get the bloody things to work with pathing that they didn’t actually spend anytime on the pet system in general.

I don’t see them fleshing out the system as well, since Most of the players in this game in the SPvP side seem to really dislike dealing with AI to the point where in past games if you dealt with a Pet class you killed its pet, while in this game the method seems to be Complain to the Devs till it gets nerfed

I laugh everytime I see an SPvP player talk about playing Camelot Unchained when it comes out, Since i’m pretty sure they’re going to slit their wrist soon as they run into a class like the Theurgist/Bonedancer/Animist of DAOC.

Here we go:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

It feels to me that over the coarse of the games development there have not been a single team continually working on ranger. So we then run into the hypothetical 2nd team hating what the original team designed, but in lacking the resources to rework the profession just pick a part they do like and focus entirely on it.

*State of the game link http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zCUvIrH2BlU not where to skip to it to hear the exact quote I can not really subject myself to that one again.

BobbyT.7192:

the vigor on crit that mesmers and guardians have are getting nerfed too, it just didn’t make it this patch.

Keep telling your self that until they release/leak patch note on it happening I doubt it will happen also the Passive on Signet of Stamina is still 50% endurance recovery and manage to not get mention much at all.

Prysin.8542:

well, the devs said they aint gonna release any armor tier beyond Ascended anytime soon. That means if they want to make more challenging content they need to get rid of the most OP defensive “ability” there is. Namely dodging. We got way too much dodges, not just rangers, everyone does. The ability to evade attack after another simply through pressing 1 button screws with the entire game balance. Thus if you are not gonna initiate a continuous power creep you must nerf something. They decided to nerf endurance regen and dodging across the board.

I doubt that PvE content had anything to do with this change (or many of the changes we’ve seen since launch) and more to do with the cries of sPvP revolving around spammy dodging.

Still it is kind of funny that they fixed the eagle eye trait so quickly, but stronger bowstrings continues to turn dual shot into a 100% combo finisher.

Hammerguard.9834:

The way you talk of spirits is as if they didn’t even exist without spirits unbound, and that’s exactly the problem.

Not that is not the problem part of the problem is the fact they a the majority of rangers utility skills were not truly designed around working ‘out of the box’ and have 20-30 point investments to bring them closer in line with the utilities of other profession.

Not to derail any but there are still bug out there (at least one from launch I can think of) that benefit the profession they are found on and somehow there is not but silence on the part of the developers.

This may be a case of preferred profession bias, but with some of the fixes/change the ranger has received since launch the some of the community is has (somewhat justified) view of Anet’s quickness to remove advantageous bug from ranger while leaving the pet mechanic flawed and (Peter’s admitted) broken.

I would still like to see the various Dungeon set runes made account bound kind of annoying for them to come out of the Mystic Forge as soul bound even though the token used to get them normally are account bound.

So http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Stronger_Bowstrings
Lists that both Dual Shot and Fan of Fire become guaranteed projectile finishers.

So is this really a bug. or is this working as intended. If its a bug how has it managed to avoid the hot fixes? Isn’t there some sort of obligation to fix game bug. If it is a trait feature could we get a tool tip fix.

I think we can just take the statement the developers made about looking at those traits as a simple PR post to temporarily placate the forums.

I really don’t think this thread is going anywhere might be best to just get it closed and buried.

What build are you running and what gear is the ranger in the picture running? I tried to reproduce the effect and could not.

Edit punctuation and to add what level is the ranger in the picture?

So I tried to reproduce the bug in Caledon Forest to no success. This is leading me to believe that it must be some sort of interaction between the pet mechanic and the Champion Toxic Spider Queen event. If so then I doubt they will fix it as it may cause more bugs fixing it. It wouldn’t be the first time a fight mechanic poorly interacts with pets. My guess is somewhere in there my pet got cocooned and that just broke them for that fight. Will test it on that fight again sometime soon.

TLDR: Pet swap not totally broken, most likely just broken because of a combat mechanic. Further testing to be done soon.

Not any points in beast mastery. Once the fight was over I did notice the health numbers going up past the previous maximums as Psykewne mention. And as for the bug report call it general pessimism, but after Peters comment on the state of pet I doubt it would be looked into I might make a video of it later to send/post.

So I was playing today doing the spider queen in Kessex and as a couple of centaurs got brought into the fight one trampled my Drake into a stalk so boom dead pet so I swap the Fern Hound at my feet is also dead with the cooldown at the normal penalty for pet death. So I a few stalks later and this effect repeats itself dead pet apon swap. So long story short my Ranger waypointed back to the Grove to stay until I feel up to playing him again.

TLDR: I think they broke pet swap.

Not to get too off-topic, but isn’t short bow still not interacting with quickness at the correct rate? I remember it was messed up from that ‘animation fix’.

Also noting it seems to me that for a lot of the guild wars 2 has become a game of specialization (example most of PvE focus on damage i.e Berserker) where the ranger seems to be designed (poorly) around the idea of generalization, where we see some ranger personally specializing in their own defense (the bunkers) while using the pet as their source of damage, or the attempt a having a tough pet protect softer more aggresively built ranger.

Anet has basically given the ranger a bit of hint (with a bat) that this spilt attempt at focus is both what should be going on but also what they are worried of getting out of hand.

So where does this leave rangers? I for one would like some more transparency on what exactly they want ranger to be. That is if they have a plan I have a growing concern that we are just beginning to see a cycle of change for the sake of change to keep the Spvp meta from stagnating further.

Another issue that rangers will be facing soon is with ascended armor looming in the near future the fact that the ranger’s mechanic does not scale with the ranger’s gear (to add to this problem most pets had the damage of their attack lowered earlier this year).

Very strong or not they are slowly removing/weakening choices to push for build diversity. Ranger traits as a whole are not that good many of which would be consider partial traits on any other profession. Once they decided to tier the traits they did not really look at the overall strength of the ranger traits and the profession has suffered for it.

That trait already does that (at least it did that last time I ran it) whether or not it proves easier to adjust the tool tip or remove the ranger being effected by the trait is another story. http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Natural_Healing

I doubt the functional pets even being on their to-do list, it was refreshing , but disappointing, to read Peters admitting the pet are basically broken by design and all they have been doing are band aid fixes.

They could also decide to leave it as is but move it to a grand master major then rework empathetic bond to some 1 transfer per 15, 20, or 30 second. Then next patch complain on ranger’s passive condition removal.

In looking at the F2 skills across the pets Anet seems very short-sighted for on: 1 designing the lag in response that nothing can fix. 2 Giving pet long activation animations along side the lack of responsiveness 3 Assigning the cool down that they did for the most of the effects.

When did it first break is kind of suspicious that there is a daily involving aetherblades and area where many have gone in the past to kill them is not accessible. Kind of wish they would just remove the POI there.

Rough idea I will be filling in more after bit. Remove the normal F2 skills from the ranger bar, place this under AI control adjust cool downs and activation times as needed. Replace the current F2 the ranger can use that is completely removed from the AI system.
So the Class Mechanic bar would be something like this:
F1 Attack My Target
F2 Pet Related Utility*
F3 Return To Me
F4 Pet Swap

*This would be a skill that the ranger would use that is based on the current pet active/out (incase of a dead pet) Note could have additional/improved functionality based on pet being alive or not.

JonPeters.5630:

Summoned creature AI is a different can of worms that we aren’t opening for the same reason. Pets that delay F2 use isn’t some wait script we put into their skills it has to do with core AI behavior shared by all pets and creatures and how they decide tasks. Rewriting that has the risks of breaking millions of unknown things so we have up until now band aided the solution. It is something that needs addressing but won’t be addressed until we can kitten how and when we will test it.

I doubt it will happen at least you only see them in the evenings.
I am normally a third shift worker EST so I play at odd hours, but I was on vacation a couple of weeks ago so I could play at time I normally could not. So somewhere during the past year the server I’ve played on since the head start must have become the unofficial server of Brazil.
Portuguese is starting to flood the map chats. I hope that Anet has some translators among their moderators as if getting verbally abused for breaking a champ train wasn’t bad enough now you get it multiple languages.

I still think the shouts on ranger were a last minute change in mechanic. They seem more likely to be ‘Pet’ skills like Rampage as One.

Fomby.4295:

No, I’d give longbow a range of 2000, but apparently it “breaks the game mechanics” whatever the hell that means. Doesn’t make much sense how I can throw an axe as far as I can shoot a bow.

I think by breaks game mechanics it probably means the reset on PvE creatures and/or it would cause issue in already established sPvP maps.

Heiltdo.2891:

Apparently short-bow is supposed to be a skirmish weapon, not a range DPSer, yet it has better DPS than LB(lolwut?), but it could use some damage and stronger utilities for WvW.

Don’t say that all you will do is get the short bow’s rate of fire and/or damage lowered.

An easier solution would be to keep the pets stat-ed as they are currently but in pve/wvw increase their damage/stats etc to the increases in ascended gear. And it would fit the pattern of buff followed by nerf.

A sarcastic solution would be just to max out beastmastery on all rangers and still give the 70 point to place where ever as Ranger traits on average are not that great.