Guild Wars 2

phys.7689:

many of you guys who want full uptime of pet with minimal involvement are essentially asking to do 40% of your damage at all times with no risk.

yeah, when you call your pet back you are losing 40% of your dmg (depending on your build) however, do you really think a theif/warrior/melee mesmer anyone in melee doesnt lose damage when they have to retreat?

i understand the desire to avoid micromanagement, but you should still have to manage your pet, just like a guardian or warrior can build and stat so that its less reactive and use general boons and other things so they dont have to react instantly, there is no way your pet(or any class at all) should be able to do 40% of your damage with no risk/tradeoff/player input.

the balance may have to be tweaked, maybe the benefit should be higher, and they really do have to look at the effect power creep they instituted with ascended gear is going to effect pet usability (perhaps we will need to ascend our pets) but what many of you are asking for (an unstoppable 40% ranger damage bot) is completely unreasonable.

While I get what you are saying, pets that require micro-management to keep alive in normal fighting situations like many others have suggested, is not a solution either. This game makes you focus heavily on your character already and there are plenty of situations that make it impossible for the average player to maintain focus on their pet and character at the same time, let alone the extra keys and whatnot you would have to use to manage your pet.

The issue I see is that pets have too much down-time compared to the players. Right now a ranged character has insane up-time in fights, being able to strafe for no delay in attacks and the only thing stopping the up-time being dodges and healing. Even a melee character has a very high up-time as dancing around the enemy to avoid attacks, dodging through the enemy to minimize down-time, and using leap skills allow them to stay on the target.

Pets on the other hand have lousy up-times. They take longer to reach targets, have more trouble hitting them, have to run back after a swap, and go on lengthy cool-downs after a swap which can leave you without a pet for much of the fight. Even if pets had their swap cool-down removed they wouldn’t be all that better off up-time wise than players in PvE and would be worse than a player in PvP due to their inability to hit targets.

What I feel we need is essentially a unstoppable pet while the ranger is playing well. Pet survivability needs to be in the hand of the player, but this should not through management, but instead through something like a bond where the pet takes damage whenever the player does.

If a system like that, where the pets health was 2-3 times what it is currently and got AoE damage reduction, yet took damage whenever the player took damage due to its “bond”, it would allow the pets survivability and up-time to mirror the players without a need for excessive micro-management.

Daemon Hawk.9406:

I don’t understand the point of your second suggestion. What problem are you trying to solve? There is already a limit on how far you can F1 your pet, and how far you can get from a pet in combat before it magically appears at your side.

It would break most uses of “Guard”, and the extended attack range of “Sic ’Em”. Would you also propose changing turrets to only attack what their owner is attacking? Necro minions? Other summons? Why?

Currently you can send a pet in to fight at over 3,000 range and the enemy will only attack the pet. If multiple players do this they can fight without any risk. I suggested this because of concerns that this tactic would trivialize content if pets received a survivability increase.

I can see how some things like guard could become useless in PvE if this was implemented though. Perhaps there is a better way of handling this.

Right now it seems like pets will try to use their F2 skills even without a target so that would need to be addressed, but I’d love to be able to set F2 skills on auto-attack.

KensaiZen.3740:

And a lower cooldown as well please 60 seconds on a ranger is like an eternity… considering you usually drop in about 10 seconds lol

Its actually 45 seconds, 36 if you have the 20% cooldown trait.

Speaking of other improvements to the skill though, I’d love for it to break immobilize and perhaps stun any enemy it damages for 2 seconds. Heck, I’d probably take a stun effect over the unimpressive damage it has.

Daemon Hawk.9406:

This would break my game. I hate it when pets can’t hold aggro, and the idea of a mob getting to recover while I’m down but my pet is still attacking is awful. I see why someone would like your ideas, but I’d have to quit playing.

Sorry, I don’t think I explained myself well enough. I don’t want a flat decrease in aggro, but a change in how pet aggro works to prevent issues like Robert Hrouda was concerned with. This change in aggro can be handled in many ways, such as activating on certain pet swap situations, and I’m sure its possible to achieve while still allow pets to function as people enjoy.

As for my second suggestion, this shouldn’t have any impact unless your sending your pet out at large distances to fight alone. NPCs won’t start recovering if you go down in combat unless that NPC was never in fighting range in the first place.

If it is technically possible, it would be nice if lightning reflexes would always dodge in the opposite direction your camera is facing. Right now it activates in the opposite direction your character is facing which you cannot change while stunned or knocked down.

The current situation and discussion so far about the pet seems rather hopeless.

Robert Hrouda states:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We tried giving them reduced damage from AOE/attacks, and it opened up other problems – mainly that a team of 2 rangers could take on almost any boss in a dungeon by smart swapping of pets and letting the pet take aggro. It’s unfortunate, but we can’t just increase and decrease numbers until pets are perfect – we’ve tried really hard, but numbers are not going to fix pets without letting them break everything. We have to look deeper into mechanics, AI, player actions, and skills.

In short, increasing the pets numbers makes them too powerful as they can tank too much damage, so the solution has to come from micro-management and skill changes.

But on the other side, these things would not solve the problem for most players as others like Gutbuster have stated:

Gutbuster.8745:

Often it’s difficult enough to know exactly when you need to dodge in order to avoid some damage, with a pet dodge you’d be required to not only keep track of your own position but also your pet’s exact position which also trying to see your pet amongst all the spell graphics surrounding bosses getting nuked, seeing red circles on the floor which may be behind the boss since that’s where your pet is, camera angles etc the list goes on a bit. In addition you’d also have to hit your own dodge key as well as an additional F key or any other key bind you have.

The same concept also applies to every aspect of pet management as a solution. Expecting us to manage the pet so heavily (more like babysit) would require too much effort and attention for the vast majority of players. However that’s not to say some better management options would be nice to have, but they are not the solution to pet survival and viability.

What I feel needs to be done is to find a solution that allows the pet to survive with only minimal management, yet not be overpowered.

In my opinion this can be achieved by decreasing the aggro pets draw while toughening up their health and damage reduction. This way the rangers pet could be very resilient without creating situations where they could hold the attention of and tank enemies.

In addition, a pet attacking should not make NPCs considered to be in combat. This way players cannot send in their pets alone to take down an enemy; a player needs to be fighting the NPC as well otherwise the NPC will gain health recovery.

Pets and companions in general just aren’t advanced enough compared to players. In the original Guild Wars pets, spirits, and minnions were very useful because of the bulky combat shared by both players and NPCs. There was no dodging and you couldn’t use attacks or skills on the move which put players at an equal level with NPCs.

But to survive in this game they expect players to use smart positioning and doges, neither of which companions have access to. To pursue targets they expect players to attack while moving and use leaps, neither of which companions have access to.

This is the mistake I see, making something so primitive and ineffective as the rangers class mechanic. Other classes also have companions available to them yet you rarely see any experienced players using them for good reason. The ranger however, is stuck with one and even gets a cut in his damage because of it!

While it would be nice to be able to get rid of the pet and a damage boost in its place, or to just redesign the ranger giving them a new class mechanic, I don’t believe anything like that will be done. Pets and companions in general are flawed and need to be fixed, and maybe after that having a pet as a class mechanic won’t be so bad. Until then however, we are stuck with a broken mechanic that takes away from our damage.

What I’m getting from Robert’s responses is that the only solution comes from the player managing the pet better and the solution to the pet might come from better management tools.

However pet management already requires additional effort for no benefit compared to other classes. I’m fine with common sense management like not sending your pet into dangerous situations, but making us babysit the pet like some people seem to want, constantly recalling it to avoid attacks or using a separate dodge button like was suggested, is not the answer.

The amount of time a pet is actually able to attack and hit a target has to be one of the largest issues when it comes to the pet. This is affected by the amount of time it to reach the target, the amount of attacks that connect, and how long pets are on cool-down from going down.

Players have gap closers to reach the target easier and can attack while moving whereas the pet has no gap finishers and stops in place whenever it uses an attack. This slows down the amount of attacks a pet gets on a moving target.

From testing in the mists it’s easy to tell the massive effect this has on a pets DPS. When attacking a stationary heavy golem a feline will get 10 attacks in around 13 seconds. However, against a moving heavy golem a feline with 25% increased movement speed will take 20-30 seconds to make those 10 attacks depending on how well the pathing went.

A simple act like the opponent moving can basically halve a pets damage by reducing the amount of attacks it can make. Then you have the attacks that miss due to the slow projectile speed and cast times that decrease a pets effectiveness even further. With the recent changes to guard you will also have situations where your pet can’t help you at all, such as if you are shooting enemies from a tower in WvW.

Pet survivability and upkeep is equally if not more of a problem. Whenever a pet goes down you must switch it for another, and that other pet must now reengage the target costing time. If this second pet goes down quicker than the cool-down, you will be without a pet for what can be most of the fight.

In more difficult places like dungeons the pet is just too fragile. It goes down in just a few attacks and unlike the players who can dodge and use positioning to avoid damage, the pet can only be recalled which often isn’t enough.

But recalling your pet causes another problem. Whenever you recall a pet to pull it out of AoE or make it avoid an attack, it takes time to walk back to you, then you need to send it back in. This management not only takes attention away from the player character, but cuts the amount of time pets get to fight compared to a player. Players can use precise movements and dodge roll to avoid attacks, all while still attacking their target, while pets have to run back to their master, stand there for a while because their master is busy with other things, then run back once told to be sent back in.

Throw all this together and you have a pet which isn’t able to reliably fight because it’s either running around or dead most of the combat time. But why is all this an issue? Well because in order to balance the ranger, ANet weakens the player character to account for the pet.

But unlike other classes where they are happy to have their class mechanic, many of us find ourselves wanting to get rid of the pet as we would be better off having a stronger character than an unreliable pet following us around.

Something needs to be done about this. Players should be glad to have a pet with them in every situation, not wanting to get rid of it because of how unreliable they are.

All dungeon specific runes are like that. I’m not sure why they are (and yet the sigils aren’t). I have a few bank slots being occupied by them and I can’t really do anything with them, not even give them to my other characters. =(

I’m sure anyone who experimented with builds in GW1 remembers the Master of Damage in the Zaishen Isles. He made it so much easier to test the damage output of our builds

Unfortunately GW2 doesn’t have anything like that right now. If we want to test our damage we are basically stuck attacking golems or dummies which provide limited results and leaves the players to manually do the math. I think we could really use something similar to the Master of Damage in both PvE and PvP.

I’ve noticed that it isn’t just AoE that melts pets; direct and melee attacks can be just as much of a problem. Since melee companions are up next to the enemy whenever they are fighting, the chance of them taking direct hits by multiple enemies is common and even a single enemy can down them in a few hits.

The problem I see is that this game expects you to use positioning, dodges, and defensive skills to avoid attacks, but companions lack any of this. In order to address this companions for all classes, not just the rangers pet, need mitigation techniques they can use to effectively avoid attacks, or just a raw increase in their health and toughness.

I’ve been trying to make a melee focused build for my ranger in PvE, but other than against open-world trash mobs, it seems outclassed by the ranged weapons no matter the build I try.

The main problem I’ve noticed is that there isn’t a high enough DPS or survivability increase to make melee weapons worth using over ranged weapons. When you use melee weapons you need to switch to higher defensive armor in order to take hits at such a close range, but doing so decreases your damage output. For ranged weapons however, you can use more offense focused equipment and use evasive techniques for just as much survivability without cost to your damage.

Or am I missing something? Does anyone know of a melee focused build that can be just as effective as ranged builds?

You need to use ranged pets, the only available being devourers and spiders. Because dungeon monsters hit so much the only way to keep pets alive is to keep them away from the monsters and AoE, which melee pets are incapable of doing.

Tolmos.8395:

Personally, I enjoy downed state. Adds a level to PvP that doesn’t exist in other games. Yes, it can be frustrating… but it gives the opportunity for 2 or 3 skilled players to take on a far larger number and have a chance.

I’m confused here, I find the exact opposite happening where the 2 or 3 skilled players are unable to take down any of the larger numbers as once they do, they get back up in seconds and its as if they never took down the player in the first place. The only real way for those 2 or 3 players to make any sort of difference would be to use a hail of AoE to take down many players at once, including downed players, and even then they would be in a better situation without the downed state.

phys.7689:

the flaw in your premise, is you are missing that downstate is part of the TEAM effort in the game, if people are good at ressing their friends, they have an advantage, and they are supposed to have that.

People always complain the game is too DPS focused, and lacks strategy, in the same breath they hate downstate, which is a strategic team focused non dps way to help allies.

Part of the advantage of toughness and vitality is to be able to better revive allies ( this is why revive boosting/helping skills are usually in these trait lines)
essentially you succeeded at part one of the DPS game, but you failed at tactical planning and dealing with your opponents ability to recover.
the battle isnt over when your opponent falls down, its only over when they are dead, that is intentional, and logical, and mirrors real fights. And yes people who have someone who can support them in combat have an advantage over you, this is completely logical. and intentional.

The only team effort I see is using simplistic and overpowered healing to bring back defeated players. There is little actual strategy involved other than “hey everyone, Bob is down, cover and revive him!”. 5 seconds later, it was like Bob was never down in the first place.

Funnily enough, this downed state system actually encourages DPS focused gameplay. Its so forgiving I can sacrifice most of my defense as I know the down state has my back and I’m actually more of a benefit with this type of behavior as the advantages of sacrificing defense outweigh the potential risk.

Heck, I can even use my offense to benefit downed players as well. Did someone down my ally and is going for the kill? No problem, just burst him down and help your friend. Or I can even use quickness to revive him twice as fast.

Firegoth.6427:

You’re talking from a point of view of what other games when you die, you simply die and have to respawn.

GW2 does things differently, and in GW2 there is downed state which is integrated as part of the difficulty of the game in both PvE and PvP.
It is something you must adapt yourself to.

The devs do not want you to single out players in a zerg so easily, or want to turn PvE into a chore where you have to keep respawning. Let’s admit it – it’s not fun.

The way I view things, downing a player means they are defeated. It gives a chance for the player to finish an enemy to revive or for his allies to eliminate the threat before he is fully dead.

But the issue I have here isn’t really how things are viewed, but how it affects the game. When players are allowed to rapidly revive, or essentially heal others with no effective way to counteract it, it makes it very difficultfor players to pick players out of large groups.

I do not find this to be of good design. Designing the game around not being able to pick apart groups strengthens zergs and lowers the effectiveness of the individual. It turns WvW into running around in a zerg and the only hope of being able to weaken or defeat the zerg is with another zerg.

In my view, this system degrades the combat as a whole. It turns the game into overpowering the enemy group via numbers and creates very stale fights, such as in castle warfare when one team stands in the castle, and the other outside, without either being able to reduce the others numbers.

Rapid reviving of downed state players is the root of this. It gives a player too much survivability in a group because they can just have a few players near instantly revive them without effective ways to counter the revival.

And also, if a player was able to down a player even when he had multiple allies supporting him, I say he deserves a good chance at finishing off the player, not 5 people running over and bringing him back up in a second even though that player failed to keep himself alive and those players failed to support him while he was alive. The ability to interrupt reviving players would allow this.

critickitten.1498:

It sounds like you’re completing missing the point of the downed state.

The whole point is to provide players with a second chance, an opportunity to fight your way back up, or to have an ally help you back up. You’re proposing changes that would basically destroy the downed state simply because you’re having trouble finishing people off when they’re downed. I don’t usually have any problems with that unless there’s several guys healing the one downed person, in which case why exactly should a single player be able to singlehandedly defeat the combined resurrection efforts of several other players?

If anything, what needs to be changed is the fact that players can use finishers while in stealth, or shrunk, etc, as this takes the fight completely out of the downed player’s hands and renders him completely helpless.

But that second chance is too forgiving and has too much impact on the game which is the whole point behind this thread.

I’m fine with a second chance, and a weakened downed state will still provide that.

From my experiences with the game over the past few months the downed state has only caused problems.

In PvP the defensive side of the downed state makes it near impossible to single out players in zergs and in smaller scale fights it gives an even larger advantage to the group with a few more players. On the offensive side things like quickness or stealth stomping feel necessary for finishing off downed players, putting classes and builds which don’t have access to these things at a disadvantage.

In PvE it greatly reduces the difficulty of the game. Did you just mess up? No problem, you just got a second wind where your allies can revive you in mere seconds, an enemy that you have attacked can be killed to get you back up, or you can use defensive downed skills to escape and heal yourself back up.

Overall the downed state is just too much of a factor in the combat system and does more harm than good. I’m not advocating a removal of the system; I just want to see a few changes to make it less of a factor in the game and to balance out ways to deal with downed opponents.

Anyways, here are two simple changes I feel will address this:

Revised suggestion:
• If a reviving player is damaged they are interrupted and cannot attempt another revive for 8 seconds.
• Finishing moves should remove stealth, quickness, stability, and anything of that sort.

Old suggestion:
• Players cannot revive downed-state players while in combat.
• As an alternative to the above: If a reviving player is damaged they are interrupted and cannot attempt another revive for 15 seconds.
• Finishing moves should remove stealth, quickness, stability, and anything of that sort.

Compared to other trait lines, I find opening strikes to be a pretty pathetic. 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds and a critical if you have 25 points in the tree, and that’s only if you and your pet connect with your first attack. Unless traited the only way to revive opening strikes is to exit combat for a moderate duration meaning you can only use it once per fight.

The only place where I’ve found this to be useful is in WvW where I use hit-and-run tactics often consisting of QZ, sharpening stones, hunters shot, then rapid fire to burst someone down. Anywhere else it just isn’t that helpful as it only applies once every fight.

I think its an interesting mechanic, but it really needs some work. Maybe instead of that guaranteed critical it could give something like 5 stacks of might for 5 seconds and/or should reapply upon a kill by default.

As I look at the companions in this game I can’t help but notice how they are rarely used, and for good reason! The stats and behavior of companions simply aren’t designed around an action based game.

If you look in the ranger forum you will see many threads related to their pet’s ability to survive and hit a moving target. This issue affects every single companion in the game and is a direct result of companions not being balanced around their simple behavior.

This game was largely designed around being able to dodge attacks and attack while moving but companions can do neither of these things affecting their combat effectiveness. They have a lot of trouble connecting with their attacks against moving opponents and due to not being able to avoid attacks or position themselves to reduce damage, they die very easily.

Companions need to be balanced around the fact that they cannot utilize kiting techniques and such through a major increase in survivability, both against AoE and direct attacks, and their ability to hit a moving target needs to be improved.

Here are a few I have.

The pet can no longer lose more than 20% health per second from attacks. This may be a better solution than AoE mitigation seeing how pets die easily from normal attacks in dungeons, not just AoE.

While pets are on avoid combat, NPCs will no longer attack them.

Upon stowing your pet in combat the ranger gains 3 seconds of invisibility and opening strikes is regained. This requires an alive pet and puts a 60 second cool-down on stowing your pet.

The pets casting time on F2 skills should be greatly reduced, just the delay of your pet responding and having to run up to use them is enough.

Anyone else want to give their opinion on this?

I enjoy WvW, although the large group centric game-play bothers me. I can’t stand SPvP though; the game mode is uninteresting and the incentives are lacking in my opinion.

Compared to GW1 I am unhappy with the current state of the PvP in this game and am hoping for some new game modes to come soon. Something like random arenas, fort aspenwood, and maybe that DotA style game mode I heard about would be pretty satisfying.

I think the issue with berserker equipment has to do with the class and build used more than the stat itself.

The issue people have with warriors seems to be limited to certain classes. The ranger or guardian for example is not overpowered when using berserker, and with many of their strong builds benefits more from throwing in defense or condition damage.

Seeing that the complaints here seem to be about the warrior, perhaps the problem is that their damage is simply too high? I don’t play one myself, but I just don’t see this problem in the few classes I have experience with.

With all the races and with armor classes being so generic, I don’t think the argument of armor being a defining aspect of certain classes holds much ground.

If I look at a Asura for example, it can be extermley difficult to tell what armor style they are wearing. The same goes for some charrs and norns, and with some armor sets that look somewhat like other sets. Then after discerning their armor style you have 2-3 classes they could be which can be impossible to tell by character looks alone.

This game is hardly like GW1 when it comes to this where every class had very distinct armor, weapon animations, and body types. Finding what class someone is in this game is just too difficult by looking at their armor; you really need to look at their skill effects and class symbol to accurately tell what they are.

To me anything below level 80 is a grind and not fun. All equipment is outdated quickly making you constantly replace it and you can’t progress as you like in the games story unless you grind up levels after every few story missions.

Honestly, I’m unsure as to why we even needed so many levels to begin with. I really don’t see what it adds other than a sense of progression would could have been delivered well enough through exploration, mission completion, equipment, and skill unlocks.

For me it really depends on what comes with the level cap increase.

I wouldn’t mind things like more trait points, I actually feel like the current amount is a bit too limiting and even 10 more would enhance the game for me.

However, if with a level cap comes higher level equipment that is stronger than the previous equipment, then ABSOLUTELY NOT. This type of equipment progression is not what the game needs and would be magnitudes worse than ascended equipment which many people are already upset over.

I’d rather have these events run frequently allowing players to cycle between multiple lengthy chain events eliminating wait times. If they were weekly you’d have to be on at a specific time or you’d only be able to participate in the repeatable event once per week for decent rewards, defeating much of my reason behind this.

Your idea of a PvE area that resembles WvW sounds pretty cool. Perhaps this could be similar in WvW in the fact that you fight and progress for a week then it resets. It would be pretty awesome for a server to work towards progressing to fight the dragon, every day having new objectives and the progress of previous days having an impact on the battle. At the end of the week the boss fight could commence and after that it would reset.

Thinking of that more, I think something like that would have been far better suited for things like elder dragon fights. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone who hasn’t done it yet, but the role your character plays as well as the means of taking it down all felt disappointing. In GW1 you felt like the hero that took down the lich, shiro, the destroyers, and even a god, but in this game it really feels like you are some lackey. A World versus Dragon system where the players of the server have to team up to progress and take down the dragon would have made it much more satisfying.

I agree with a pet stow that doesn’t release upon entering combat.

They should also remove the timer on the pet stow and possibly modify the stow effects from traits when they make this change. Its annoying to release your pet just to find that it puts both pet swap AND stowing on cool-down.

Something which has bothered me about open-world, and is the primary reason I don’t participate in it any longer, is the lack of lengthy chain events.

Because of the mostly unlinked and short-lived nature of the current dynamic events players often quickly complete an event, than just wander around looking for another or wait for the ones they have just completed to revive. This not only makes leveling up tedious (especially in lower event density areas), but creates a lower replay-value once the player has completed an area.

Then you have the rewards. Farming the same events over and over in Orr can be decent money and karma, but as stated above this is dull. Temple events on the other hand can be fun due to longer, yet still short, chains as well as a boss at the end, yet the rewards are somewhat lacking. Dragons take the worst part from both of these with extremely short chains and generally poor rewards, yet the scale of the fight can be fun.

Something which addresses both these things, and is what I strongly feel we need to improve open-world, is the karka event that took place in the lost shores map. This event had a very long event chain with the end result being a boss followed by good rewards. Sadly this was a one-off event and the map is now considered dead content for the most part.

This formula needs to be repeated again in many of the open-world maps. The long event chain would keep people interested as they wouldn’t have to stand in place waiting for events to revive and given the length of the event chain you can give strong rewards at the end. However, one change I suggest would be making the rewards based around how much of the event chain you have completed in order to stop people from just jumping in at the end for full rewards.

These long chain events could possibly be added to extend current event chains, or entirely new ones could be added, and having multiple of these throughout the game would allow players to be constantly engaged in meaningful content rather than sitting around waiting for something to happen.

I think this is a great idea and I would love to be able to use some of the heavy and light armor skins on my ranger!

I personally don’t find many of the medium armor skins all that impressive, and only have like 2 sets of armor that I really like the looks of, but if I could mix some light and heavy armor with that medium armor I could make some really awesome looking combinations.

Giants aren’t even a tough enemy to fight compared to what you go up against in dungeons. They are so slow, limited, and predictable in their attacks that they cannot compare to most of the enemies you fight who are fast, unpredictable, and in groups.

In CoE answer me this, how exactly do you expect a pet to survive the frost AoE that covers a large portion of the map? The mechanic excepts you do either stand in the middle of an ice AoE or run or dodge out of them. This requires precision and if you try to call your pet it will often get hit in the AoE while it is running to you, or because you cannot control exactly where they stand, they will often run into an AoE while following you.

Reduced AoE damage would be nice. 90% sounds really large, but in some cases my pet dies in just a few AoE hits so we definitely need a high amount of mitigation.

Jake Dressler.8204:

I would love to see pets with the ability to dodge… not sure how it would work well, unless they designed some decent AI for them.

The best they could probably do is some random form of evade, somewhat like what nightmare court archers have.

Something which may help survivability however, is by giving our pets an evade status whenever our characters dodge. This would help a lot against large scale AoE effects that activate all at once.

In the game update notes ArenaNet recently commented on their design philosophy regarding rangers and their pets. “The ranger class combines its own innate abilities with the skills of their pets. We’ve balanced the class around the idea that you always have a pet with you to aid in any fight.”

However, for this to work, rangers need a reliable pet that is able to attack and hit the target for the majority of the fight. The recent fix to the melee pets that allows them to hit moving targets is a good start, but pets are still very much unreliable for a few reasons.

For starters, few pets are able to survive for very long in PvE. Most pets are simply too squishy to be viable melee attackers in dungeons, getting killed in just a few hits. Bears and ranged pets do have better survivability, but still have some trouble surviving, especially if hit by AoE or strong single target attacks which many champions and above frequently use.

I believe this problem is mainly caused by the action based combat. You cannot sit there and expect to live in this game; you need to be constantly moving and using skills at the right time, and this also applies to companions. The issue is, pets have no reliable method of dodging or mitigating attacks at the right moment; they just sit there and and the only thing you can do is waste a utility to keep them alive for a few more seconds, or make them run back to you.

Pets also have issues with ranged combat putting rangers at a disadvantage. In WvW they are virtually useless in castle warfare other than their F2 skill. Ranged pets cannot effectively hit targets due to their short range and unwillingness to get into the correct positions to hit the opponent, while melee pets cannot do anything.

In some dungeons, such as the forward/up path of twilight arbor, I am unable to even use ranged pets due to the aggro they cause. I find myself putting my pet on avoid combat during the entire fight because they are unreliable. If only there was a pet with 1,200 range.

Some skills being designed to apply effects to the pet also disadvantage the ranger class. Take the shortbow #4 skill, crippling shot, and the sword auto-attack for example. Crippling shot makes your pets next 4 attacks apply bleeding, but if your pet is down it cannot do this, and the bleeding applied by your pet with this skill is WEAKER THAN YOUR OWN. The sword auto-attack applies might to your pet, but because your pet is unreliable it is not as effective as applying it to yourself, it puts you at a disadvantage to other classes which would apply might to themselves.

And finally, F2 skills are often too bulky to be effective. After pressing the F2 key it may take your pet a few seconds to start up the ability, then depending on its casting time, it can take a few seconds for your pet to launch its attack. The amount of time required makes many pet F2 abilities unreliable.

I’m sure there are other reliability issues out there, but these things are serious issues seeing how the ranger is balanced around always having a pet to back him up. The pets need to be reliable for this class philosophy to work, and this is currently far from the case.

It has worked on dead players previous to this patch. I’ve used it in FotM in the past to save players who fell into the lava seeing how pets are immune to it.

The only real use I’ve gotten out of 1,500 range is in castle warfare. Just few rangers can cause an extraordinary amount of pressure from using their barrage at 1,500 range, pushing attacking enemies back or attacking from beyond the range of the enemy defenses.

I’m not sure how it compares to the skills from a rifle warrior however. I’ve seen some videos of them being extremely effective, especially with their adrenaline skill, but I’ve yet to try one for myself.

I’ve been attempting to use my longbow as a primary weapon in some dungeons and its been painful to use.

The design of long range shot simply isn’t suited for the design of PvE. Many fights are done in cramped fighting areas and you often need to maneuver within close distance of your target to avoid AoE, kite mobs, ect. And what if an enemy or two starts chasing you? It’s hard enough to keep them at 500+ range let alone the 1,000+ you need for optimal damage.

I can understand a range requirement on certain skills that aren’t used as often, but adding it to the auto-attack of all things just isn’t a good idea. It affects the performance of the weapon too heavily.

I’ve been attempting to make longbow fit into my builds and thought it would be a good idea to start a discussion about its viability in the game.

Viability in PvE:

From what I’ve noticed the longbow really struggles as a primary weapon in PvE. This is mainly due to the very situational long range shot skill which requires you to be at 1,000+ range otherwise you will hit close to nothing, and even at the 1k range the damage isn’t spectacular. The slow firing rate and projectile speed adds to the frustration, making it harder to “tag” enemies to get drops and hit targets at the 1,000+ range needed for viable damage, not to mention it only has a 20% combo field chance.

Rapid fire is a channeled attack taking away some of the pain of long range shot being your auto-attack, but its damage isn’t very high. Hunters shot, point blank shot, and barrage are all good skills, but you’ll be relying on long range shot and rapid fire for most of the fighting if you use this as a primary weapon.

As a secondary weapon however, the longbow can be a very useful weapon. What I found to be effective is using a different weapon such as the shortbow as your primary weapon, then switching to the longbow every so often, laying down a barrage, hunter shot, then rapid fire, and as soon as rapid fire ends you are able to switch back to your primary weapon.

But using it as a secondary weapon has an issue; what your stats are specialized to be. Both the axe and shortbow seem very much condition damage focused while the longbow is solely physical damage focused. If you use condition damage you will notice that your longbow is lacking in its damage and you would be better off using either a shortbow or axe/torch combo as your secondary.

Viability in PvP:

In WvW the same applies for secondary weapon usage, but the longbow becomes a much more viable primary weapon due to its range.

Because WvW fights are done in wide open fields over long ranges and castle warfare, the longbow can be an effective primary weapon. When enhanced to 1,500 range with one of the traits you can outrange most players, allowing you to sit in the back and sniper and barrage people. In castle warfare the longbow can be extremely effective and is possibly one of the strongest weapons in the game for that purpose. But if you get pulled into a 1v1 fight or lose your range advantage, don’t expect to be very effective.

I haven’t tried out SPvP with the longbow as the current game modes don’t appeal to me, but I suspect the situation to be similar to that of PvE.

So in short, the longbow is a horrid primary weapon in PvE and possibly SPvP , but is a decent secondary weapon if you go with a critical damage or bunker build. In WvW the longbow is a decent weapon in zerg fights and castle warfare.

My personal analysis brings me to the conclusion that the longbow needs its long range shot and rapid fire skills to be modified to make it into a more viable primary weapon, while the other functions of the weapon seem okay. The effectiveness of long range shot needs to be less situational (possibly giving it the same damage at any range and giving conditions like vulnerability and confusion based on the range), a higher combo field chance, and maybe a projectile speed increase. Rapid fire just needs a damage boost.

Thoughts?

The current drop system is based entirely around damaging individual monsters which causes various problems.

Such a system pushes players away from certain builds and classes, even if they would be more effective for the dungeon or event. If I wanted to use spirits to support nearby players on my ranger for example, I’d get fewer drops than if I used traps. Certain classes also get far more AoE than others giving them a huge advantage when it comes to drops, such as a necromancer with wells and marks giving him 7 place-able AoE.

It also rewards selfish actions. Instead of focusing on taking out enemies in the most efficient way or supporting your team, this system encourages players to tag as many enemies as possible, even if this means running in the middle of a hoard of enemies and risking your life just to get the drops (I see this happening a lot in places like the dredge fractal).

The drop system needs to be modified for group play to get rid of these issues. My suggestion is that while you are in a party you get drops from any enemy a party member “tags”, although there are a few potential exploits that come with this that would need to be addressed.

Well, the ranger update was a let down. Perhaps my hopes were high, but I was hoping to see some signet, shout, and pet changes, as well as something to make up for the reduced attack speed on the short bow.

A left click option to change its stats also sounds viable, and I don’t think it would be overpowered due to the difficulty in obtaining a legendary.

I don’t see the appeal in large group play at all.

Just look at the dragons if you want to see what raids would be like. The more players you introduce, the less team focused this already individual-focused game becomes and the lower the difficulty becomes. It would basically be a swarm of players attacking a boss with a trillion HP and if anyone goes down, no problem, you have a few people to bring him up in a second. If a few people die its not a problem either, as you still have enough players to fight the boss.

They would need to redo the downed and death system, as well as make enemies have extreme amounts of AoE damage, just to make raids begin to work, but even then raids couldn’t do what 5 man dungeons can’t already do better.

Currently when you craft a legendary weapon it always comes out with power, toughness, and vitality on it. If you want different stats, say power, precision, and critical damage, then you are forced into transmuting it, lowering its tier from legendary to exotic.

Now, this wouldn’t be a problem if exotics were always going to be the highest tier equipment, but with the announcement of Ascendent equipment, and potentially even higher grade equipment in the future, this is no longer the case.

Legendary weapons will be getting an update in their stats to always stay equal to the highest tier equipment, but this only works if it is still a legendary tier item, which requires you to never transmute it.

See the problem here? To keep your weapon in the legendary tier, and for it to be continually buffed every time a new tier of equipment is released, you need to keep its default stats.

To address this problem I suggest a simple solution; allow us to pay a small fine to modify our legendary weapon stats to whatever we please.

Thinking about this some more, 5% is probably too high of a minimum change.

Even something like 2% would be enough of a change at a time. For 1 silver this would be a minimum 2 copper price increase/decrease, 10 silver is 20 copper, and 1 gold is 2 silver.

High traffic, low valued, and items with a very close purchase/sales could be exempt from the 5% minimum price change.

My main issue is with low traffic items costing 10 silver or more. If players want to increase their prices they still can, but increasing the price by less than 0.1% of the items total value just to prioritize yourself won’t work any longer.

Something which has really been bothering me is the constant undercutting that goes on in this market. Likewise, if you are buying something, you’re likely to see a list of people all paying 1 more copper than the person below them.

I feel the trading post could be improved if there were incentives to meeting the lowest seller or highest buyer when putting in items or offers, as well as a system which prevents the ability to prioritize yourself by increasing/decreasing prices by merely 1 copper.

For instance, we could remove listing fees if you meet the lowest seller when trying to sell an item. We could also require a minimum price change of around 5% when selling an item for lower than the lowest seller or buying an item for more than the highest buyer, although this shouldn’t apply to all items such as those which have very similar buying and selling prices.

Thoughts?