Guild Wars 2

Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582:

I want to have my cake as well as eat it

The cake is a lie.

But on topic I am guessing they are not sure what to do with the ranger traits at the moment the amount of didn’t change is kind of depressing when compared to the amount of effort they seem willing to dedicate to rebuilding the engineer.

Instead of repeating yourself how about you state what would bring ranger into high tier play otherwise you two are only going to get this thread closed with your ‘is not/are to’ skritt.

rager.4963:

If a core problem with Minions is still around for how long, how can I have faith in this new content coming out, when this pet problem has been around for how long now?

If this is primarily a necromancer based concerned you do have the option to not slot minion skills, but that probably isn’t what you are looking for.

One concerned if ranger plays too defensively with these changes there might be backlash as some of community have a poor view of ‘overly’ defensive playstyles not to mention the amount of complaint that will be directed rangers way if it is perceived ‘tougher/more durable/harder-to-kill’ than warrior.

I would guess that duration is going to be one of those things adjusted first on baseline and then the rune/sigils well probably be reexamined.

StickerHappy.8052:

Guys please stay on the original suggestion please

Ok same question as I posted to him, Will it only effect on actual deaths or will replacements trigger it as well?

Ithilwen.1529:

@StickerHappy

You’re right, very tough clones would be nasty. So distortion might be the answer.

Better yet, leave the condi clone death or make it baseline. It has never been shown to be OP. The only given reason for removing it is that it annoyed a dev. That simply is not a good reason.

Would they only apply on actual clone deaths or are you want replacement to trigger that effects a well? The latter is probably more of the issue for the developers than the death traits take at just face value.

mistsim.2748:

I let out a big sigh when Roy was explaining how awesome this trait is. Words of a true casual.

Who knows, maybe if traps are buffed enough it might become good. I have no idea how they’re gonna make traps work. I feel trappers need more access to stealth so they can’t be see placing the trap. But then how do you counterplay that? And how far do you go buffing them? For example, spike trap should have a 3s immob base or something. When it activates, it must make a significant difference in the fight.

Judging solely by general tone and body language Roy did not want to have to be the one doing that section at all. It wasn’t changes he worked on and I would venture a guess that it was better to have anyone from the design team talking about it after the debacle the ranger CDI was.

binidj.5734:

You are mistaken, my mesmer build uses (legitimately) 4 trait lines currently, chosen for the traits rather than the stats. Mind you, the trickster build has been erased completely from the new system so being limited to 3 trait paths is the least of my worries.

Have you looked at the relocation/merger of the traits and seen what build would play in that spirit? If you were focused on clone replacement death traits then it might be one of those bad for the player good for the game changes.

Just a thought here, but they stated that the revealed changes are works in progress so the the functionality not the numbers show is what they are presenting so Elemental Attunement is more that likely looking at being improved based on the new placement over the current one.

Most of it was probably that replacement counted as a death.

It should be noted that the icd could (probably will) change so that has to be at least thought about when speculating.

They probably got tired of trying to balance things variable bonuses to duration.

runeblade.7514:

Ranger boon removal is just dumb.

How so? That seems more of a opinion base statement there. It could be just as easy to say that warrior or engineer having condition removal is just dumb, but those exists and have /are getting improvements.

runeblade.7514:

I disagree because of Quickening Zephyr.

Quickening Zephyr was an overpowered trait in the beastmaster line; however, since there is no other useful traits in the beastmaster line, it remained unused ever since they moved it from a adept minor to grandmaster trait.

Because there are useful beastmaster traits, Quickening zephyr may be played again.

It doesn’t help that instinctual bond is not exactly a good trait either, might be better to move load whistle down to adept minor, pet’s prowess master minor, and place merged Instinctual bond and zephyr’s speed to grandmaster minor.

There’s been a lot of issues with that particular design as they’ve had the stance that it was part of the ranger’s strength to have diverse selection of focus between the pet and the ranger (then they reduced the damage of pets across the boards as bunker ranger zerker pet beastmaster showed the worst having any pet class in a game that focuses on competitive small scale pvp over other all of it other content).

The pet isn’t working well enough by design to really warrant the limitation they have placed on the profession to make it feel balanced. The pet will always be a problem area for the game as one it was designed to use the same baseline mechanics and the PvE elements (so improvements risk breaking the game), the perception of the pet class getting a ‘easy mode’/‘I win button’/‘no skill’ label for having the pet coupled with the stigma that the competitive community has place on anything remotely labeled AI.

Also that whole ‘petting zoo’ skritt, body blocking was the actual problem, not that the spirits were actually all that good. If people could LoS using warrior banners they would probably still not receive that vitriol that the ranger community was saddled with over the general impression that label has people believe.

It is pretty much one of the two traits of similar nature that they got right the rest of the falling damage traits are illusiionary choice by design.

I’d disagree the entire trait could probably added to expertise training and that trait might be a good master trait.

Zenos Osgorma.2936:

with the removal of off-hand training

They may have baseline some/all of the functionality of Off-hand Training into the weapons themselves.

Possible solution:

Baseline the increase radial on Trapper’s expertise and add the spike trap trait as the third part of it.

Add a trait worth taking/considering to the skirmishing adept section.

Zatoichi.1049:

protective ward is very close to being quite good. 6 seconds aoe weakness every 12 seconds is potent, escpecially if you can hit 5 targets. The protection part feels uninspired though.

hell we need condi clear, but instead of clear how about pet and ranger get 3 second resistance instead of the protection?

Would it be broken to give the ranger just resistance and the pet both protection and resistance as I don’t see them really addressing the pet doesn’t do well in action based combat (no way to dodge/evade and difficult/lack of precise placement to get out of/stay out of circles-of-don’t-stand-there

Soilder.3607:

I think we need to all sit back and wait. I see tons of potential in these changes and have to say I very much like them.

Not only that, but while we’re worried about things like condition removal being only in one traitline again we really have no idea how big of a metashift we’ll see with all the classes changes.

With the proposed changes to poison and burning I can only see the condition focused meta just getting worst.

The developers asked us to theorycraft, look at builds to see if they remain in spirit (really poorly worded where rangers are concerned), and discuss. Which is exactly what we are doing and as a whole we are taking the changes abit better than many of our peers in the other communities where some of the thread are just all ’they’ve ruin it/us/whatever’ or getting bombarded with ‘X is OP’ all the while forgetting that we only were supposed to be seeing the functionality not the numbers in place (as they will be easy part as adjustments go).

We will still need to see what the elite specialization will add to the mix, so it could add a lot or it could be complete trash we won’t know this week.

I added a mechanic question thread over in the pvp subforum (only place outside of the necromancer subforum I can think to get a specialists attention) so maybe there will be an answer soon.

Belzebu.3912:

I think you read it wrong.
Ranger poison master will rise poison damage by 50% and pet also cause poison on next attack.
Since condition stacks limit will be removed and apparently all conditions will stack in intensity and not in duration, it is great to have poison from 2 sources.

But is it still grandmaster worthy and can it compete with the other options?

Any chance we could get the develops do give some clarity on how taunt and fear will interact?

If there are any other new mechanics you feel need additional explanation/clarity in and of themselves or while interacting with other mechanic then add them to the thread. Maybe we could get a post or live stream section on it as these mechanics effect every player in every mode.

I don’t think anyone (outside of the developers) know. When they first revealed taunt the necromancers had some discussion about it (being surprise there), but other than speculation nothing really happened there perhaps we could flag down a forum specialist to collect a ’How does the mechanic work?" report to give the developers and maybe they could have a brief stream on those mechanic question as they effect everyone not just one profession or game mode.

Would it work better as a heal based on bars spent?

Toxsa.2701:

LMAO, go check the “other profession’s” auto-negate CC option. They usually have a secondary effect in conjunction to it, and also without the need of sacrificing your mechenic (pet). Go check Warrior’s new “last stance” trait then we can talk again. Ignorent is bliss.

Unfortunately that ‘take it to the pet’ design direction was set fairly early on. If they maybe a stability train style addition to another trait or a when disabled the pet (or pet and ranger) enlarge/enrage (that happens maybe half the time not a 50% change but maybe have the icd line up for a 50% window of happening.).

With the amount of discussion going on about Empathic Bond and Wilderness Knowledge they may need thread just for that discuss as it dominating the topic fornearly of two pages and other traits are not getting discussed at all.

Zatoichi.1049:

true, ill give you that. I just feel like at this point we’ve all seen enough of the “Anet hates us” mentality. It just makes us look like haterz, and I know we can all be better than that.

I don’t really think they hate ranger players, I think that they dislike the profession based on the general limitation inherent in how it was implemented. So they are having to work on something that doesn’t really drawn their interest.

It could be seen as a potential parallel in saying there are probably artist in the department that dislike dealing with the non-human models, but have to work on armor/outfit skins for them anyway as part of their job it doesn’t mean is won’t have a effect on the quality of the work.

This is going to so get back to the basic pets are not reliable enough to have addition dependency on their performance. Then the pet system will be brought into discussion along with the fact that while the developer know the problems exist, they are not ready/able/willing to take the time and effort to work on correcting them for fear of breaking the game.

Welcome to ranger extra effort for minimal effect.

Also don’t yet get into the timing habit yet for blasting fire trap, the proposed trap changes will have you need to relearn the timing.

I think at this point Ranger has a problem, the developers don’t really seem interested in the profession and it is showing in the general changes that are being brought about.

runeblade.7514:

Why is Ranger not removing Boons a problem?

Half the professions can’t remove boons either.

With the focus on boons being the general direction they are going for the idea of not being able to deal with them as being part of the ‘weakness’ of the profession is just backward thinking.

It would be like them looking back at the ‘weaknesses’ of the professions and it will pretty much be similar to the issues that got the warriors a way to deal with one of the professions major weaknesses conditions.

As for boon hate any mechanic short of removal (theft or corruption being just better removal) is generally lackluster and usually passive (and probably weak) or random neither of which makes for a good play experience.

The two issues I am seeing with the current changes coming are one some of the falling damage traits got additional effect rolled in while other are just taking up space. Second issue is somehow they keep two revive trait in ranger neither are really good, it is like they just don’t know what to do with the profession or don’t want to work on it,

ronpierce.2760:

In a world of power creep, that’s called a nerf. :P

Going with that definition which profession is getting nerfed the most?

Vavume.8065:

Played DD since release, had cloaked in shadow in my build forever, will still have it after the patch, I have no idea what you are talking about tbh.

I think the general idea is that some don’t like having to choose between Cloaked in Shadow and another of the options in the line. Basically the same problem that is being talked about around many of the professions.

It worries me a bit as I see it a peek at the timeline of the development and that could mean either a long wait or rushed content which could really put any of the profession in a worse place than they started in.

Title says it all after view/reading about the new changes being worked on which trait would you say is probably the worst out of the lot? If you have reason share it.

For me I really think in may have to be Trapper’s Defense. A second revive oriented train for a profession and not even a very good one at that, (Honorable mention goes to all the fall damage reducing traits except for toxic landing and the thief one who’s name escapes me at the moment, it must have stealthed).

It is probably the design behind an entire legend.

ronpierce.2760:

Not only this, but they sort of need to to counteract the power creep a bit.

Depending on your profession of choice some of that seems to centered around ‘that train remained the same’

Wondrouswall.7169:

I’m concerned about the arming time as well. Though numbers were never officially stated, they did toss out ½ second, which would allow opponents more than enough time to react to the trap toss animation and shift away from that general direction.

I would prefer if Anet made traps to be manually detonated.

Basically it seems to me to be yet another niche change focused on conquest style spvp. Secondly it reinforces the ranger’s single target nature as the AoE option seem to need to be lacking for whatever reason they are current going with.

Durzlla.6295:

I love how remorseless went from absolute garbage trait that doesn’t synergize with anything to being amazing and synergizing with EVERYHING.

At the expense of basically everything else getting worked on it seems. I will be watching to see what they choose to do as it is all a work in progress. With the basic rebuilding of engineer that is going on we can only hope that once that is done they will consider taking that amount of care with all the profession (though experience teaches that ranger will get the short in of the development stick).

They are attempting to make the grand master choice actually matter to have to make a choice (or having a choice for that matter) should be part of the build process.

Access to some form of boon stripping would take some of the issue out of this as the ranger for the most part seems to be designed to be death by a thousand cuts style play with maul being the only exception.

mistsim.2748:

All spirits will have a base 75% proc chance and maul will never ever become a blast finisher because it would be OP on such a short CD. So I would cross those two off.

I wouldn’t count it out as they it is part of a grand master trait, but at the same time I would as it is ranger and they didn’t exactly seem that interested in the ranger profession in general (or it might have been part of being at the end of long stream).

Just want to point out the trait lines no longer effect stats they are just traits that adjust what is listed in the trait.

Base stats and the stats on gear are going to be adjusted to deal with the loss of trait line stat.

Might be a bit early to be worried as their other choices for elites might just make elixir x be a rarity to be seen outside of the practice mode.

It you manage to dodge it and the minions get hit they well probably perform better than in their natural state.

We can only hope you are right Shiren, however the general tone of the section on ranger doesn’t garner any trust, that and the general ranger community is not exactly favorable to many of the Developers. Aquaman patch not least of the bad blood reason.