Guild Wars 2

Behellagh.1468:

I’ve always interpret that statement that the game allowed level advancement through various play styles. You can see this in all the different activities that award XP beyond bopping critters on the head. Crafters can level gathering and crafting. Explorers can level uncovering maps. The game’s co-opt nature means players who want to help strangers can without negatively affecting the player they are helping. Also the lack of a split XP and loot pool promotes socializing.

It’s not just bonking things in the head until you reach max level and then raid for BIS gear.

I’ve always viewed that as part of it as well, and it makes sense. You can level up doing pretty much anything, and gear was like that too before ascended was released.

This is a term thrown around these forums left and right, but where was the original use of this term and what content was it used in? What was its intended meaning and are players quoting it correctly?

The clearest usage I’ve been able to find was in a blog post where Collin states:

“To make playing in our open world worthwhile, we’ll make it rewarding enough for players to spend their time there across all levels. It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.”

But outside of that, the term seems to be player made. I see countless players using it, even a year before the game was released, yet nowhere can I find any official use of “play how you want” in the way players have been using it.

So please stop using it in such a broad way unless you can find a statement by ArenaNet saying otherwise. They did not promise that you’d be able to do all content with ineffective gear or builds, craft the new back piece without doing fractals, or the countless other things that players use “play how you want” for.

For games I get invested in such as this one, what I look for is a end game in addition to a post game.

Let me go over what I mean by this:

An end game to me is what there is to do one you finish the straightforward goals of the game, in this case the personal story. This game has a good amount of it, primarily being in the form of ascended gear, world exploration, skins, achievements, and dungeons.

The post game is how enjoyable the game is once you’ve completed those end game goals. Unfortunately the game is very much lacking in that with PvP, dungeons, and guild activities being the bulk of it. Since release little has been added to strengthening the post game and if season 2 continues this way, don’t expect anything new.

Having completed much of the end game I’ve grown bored due to the lacking post game. Since I don’t enjoy the poorly designed PvP they’ve created from a game mechanics standpoint, world bosses which either use poor forms of difficulty or offer no challenge due to being horribly designed for open world content, I’m pretty much left with dungeons while waiting for new living story segments.

I’m sure a lot of other people are in the same boat I’m in, with only 1-2 activities they truly enjoy in the post game, and end up quitting because of it.

Seera.5916:

Purple Miku.7032:

Agreed with OP.

A simple solution that I think would probably work would be to scale event rewards based off of several factors:

a) how much damage you dealt/how much you contributed in x ways
b) how many deaths you’ve had (the less the better)
c) the time you were present in the area while the event was taking place

Well… it definitely wouldn’t be simple to implement, but the idea itself is simple.

This method I would agree with more and I’d open that to other events, not just world bosses. Your reward being tied to how well you do in the event.

Now, if these world events were instanced and more like what I’ve heard about raids in other MMO’s, then I’m all for it needing organization and having the individual ability matter. Or if there were instanced versions of the current world bosses. I wouldn’t even have an issue with the instanced version giving considerable more loot if it was actually a considerable amount more difficult. Because I feel rewards should tie directly to difficulty and I don’t mind not being able to get something because I don’t have the skill for it or the desire to spend the ages it would take for me to get the skill for it.

But the moment it is out in the open world, it becomes impossible to really truly organize for any level of true difficulty. It’s why all world bosses become zerg content. Just because you need the DPS to knock away at the HP sponge. Some having interesting mechanics.

And Teq and Wurm being the most difficult due to their mechanics and requirements for X% of players to be doing certain things at certain times.

Reworking how rewards are distributed wouldn’t address the problem I’m trying to get at as it wouldn’t change how the encounter plays out. Players would still be an invincible blob that could get away with standing in the same spot the entire fight repeating their typical skill rotations.

If they move away from group challenge and more towards individual challenge they could up the difficulty in a way that would scale better than the current system. The issues they have with difficulty are caused by the type of difficulty they are trying to create, being based around reaching a damage amount before a timer ends and coordinating the group of players. If they were to base it more around player survivability the role of an individual would dramatically increase and a few skilled players could be the difference between winning or losing.

When it comes to scaling the event, even a small amount of skilled players would be able to complete the content because more importance is placed on the individual. This hasn’t been the case in any challenging open world content thus far because it is designed to be completed by numbers, not skill, and failure is based around a timer, not death.

A rough suggestion I have is is that a new tier of events be created called world events, replacing the group event status of some events.

Monsters in world events would be given more AoE damage capabilities. For instance, their melee attacks would be able to hit every player within range and they would drop massive AoE effects in order to deal with the amount of players. They would also need a larger variety of these attacks, not just repeat the same 2-3 attacks like in most content so far.

If players die within range of one of these events there would be restrictions on reentering the fight. For instance, there could be a barrier of entry to the fight, only allowing players to enter or reenter during certain phases. Upon death players would be kicked out of the fighting area. Players outside of the fighting area would be able to complete objectives to assist the players inside the fight area while waiting for it to open back up.

I feel something like this would be a huge improvement to large scale content. It would make the fighting much less dull and put more importance and challenge on the individual, not just the group.

At its simplest level the objective of combat is to kill the opposing side. However in content that involves large groups of players, death isn’t much of a factor which has a negative impact.

Rather than having encounters where the goal of the monster is to kill off the group of players, we instead see lower forms of difficulty, often referred to as “artificial”, such as timers before an automatic defeat, turning much of the content into “DPS tests”.

Instead of the encounter being about how well the players perform in the combat itself, the difficulty comes from how well players can coordinate and if they can deal enough damage in time.

This is most apparent in the living story releases which have focused on open world content involving masses of players, where the player group is pretty much invincible. The monsters aren’t designed to be able to wipe out the vast amount of players that can be around them, and even if they do manage to kill a few players it doesn’t have much impact due to how easily players can recover through revives or simply using a waypoint and running back.

This has caused a lot of frustration and hatred throughout the community regarding open world content. Combat loses its appeal when it doesn’t challenge the individual and since the difficulty of the fights doesn’t come from how well players perform in the combat, but instead on group coordination and damage, they are left feeling insignificant.

Large scale content needs to be redesigned, putting more emphasis on player death and individual skill for survival, continuation of the fight, and success. Monsters need the capability of wiping out entire groups of players and the punishment for death needs to have more impact.

Viking Jorun.5413:

Everything is viable in all content, don’t be ignorant. The ranger has plenty of viable bow builds, and we do in fact have the highest single-target ranged DPS in the game. Unless you’re doing speed clears in PvE and have a bear out while you stand completely still at 1500 range from every boss, you shouldn’t have any issues in PvE, PvP, or WvW. Simply moving around while attacking will make you look like a better player, and taking drakes or spiders rather than a bear will also make you appear a more skilled player. In PvE just be sure to slot Spotter and Frost Spirit for your team and nobody will ever complain, even if you’re purely ranged.

As far as WvW and PvP go, there used to be a fairly popular ‘Catsassin’ build which involved the use of both shortbow and longbow while your Jaguar did massive burst and you built as tanky as possible. Bow builds are fine. They’re far from optimal, but if you want to play them I say go for it. Nobody’s stopping you, and if your friends tell you that you need to play some other way, perhaps you need new friends. The forums are a cesspool of self-described professionals on the subject who will force their elitist values down your throat until you can no longer breathe.

In the end, the ranger is plenty viable as just that: ranged DPS.

I think he’s talking more about it being competitive. Sitting back and only letting a bear killing things is technically “viable”, but its not efficient or competitive.

As for the longbow being competitive in all areas, I don’t see it happening any time soon. Ranged weapons in general can’t compete in dungeons and this is especially true for one that expects you to stay at 1,000+ distance for maximum effect. In WvW rangers don’t bring much to the group and their pets are close to useless. Addressing both of these thing would take some major reworks.

I’d really like to have a clear writeup of the intended design for each profession. Since release most of the information has been sloppy, contradictory, and occasionally out of line with what we see in game or in the patch notes.

Also a few other questions I feel need answered:

How is the ranger considered a sustained damage profession when most of its mechanics are about burst damage, not sustained? The greatsword has three burst damage skills. 2 of the signets support burst damage. Path of scars is burst damage. Opening strike is burst damage. Had the best quickness access before trait reorganization (still has decent). Moment of clarity is burst damage. And so on.

What exactly is your definition of sustained damage? If a thief can use repeat backstabs and heartseekers are those sustained or burst attacks? Hundred blades does many multiple hits without a very long cool-down, is this considered burst or sustained?

How does your profession design model fit into every area of the game? When you talk about the professions it seems like your doing so from a mostly PvP perspective, but how do you balance their strengths and weaknesses around a PvE environment when many balance factors are less important to non-existent?

I feel the topic of universal balancing needs far more discussion that it has received. It is a very important issue due to the large impact it can have on the game.

To go into 3 major effects:

• It can cause aspects of a profession to not appropriately fit into a game format.
• It can prevent appropriate balancing from taking place.
• It can limit build variety.

Whenever I hear ANet bring up this topic their key argument against it, not wanting things to behave differently between game modes, seems petty in comparison to the negative effects such a balance model can have on the game.

So what’s your opinion on the matter? Should things be designed and balanced differently across the game formats? Do the benefits of selective balancing outweigh the consequences?

Vox Hollow.2736:

For example, another way to attack this is how support is structured.

Relative to the tight spaces we find ourselves in, the small opponents we fight against, and what little meaningful opposition they give to our clustering; ‘aiming’ a 600 range buff just isn’t very difficult. These Buffs feel more like an automatic result you can take for granted by building a certain way, than something you have to use a skillful or nuanced execution to get the most out of. So what’s the point of a 600 radius if it isn’t really furthering any gameplay?

My first thought on this was to make changes to support, but after going over what would need to be changed, its impact on the game, and what it would address, I found it would be too large of a change to fix an issue limited to very few things.

Probably the first idea that pops into people minds is “why not just increase the range of support”? At first glance it might appear to be a good solution, but could you imagine the implications? First of all, because ANet doesn’t want to split mechanics for different game modes, this would have to be a globally applied change, and could you imagine the havoc that would be caused from every support skill and effect having the 1,000+ range required to address this? And how would you address the other factors, such as the downed state and AoE applied effects like null field?

To address this issue by changing support mechanics would require nothing short of a fundamental rework of most of the support mechanics found in the game. When every other weapon works perfectly fine with the current support mechanics, don’t you think it would be best to slightly modify the 2 weapons that are in conflict with it rather than reworking the entire support system?

Carighan.6758:

Bri.8354:

No other weapons in the game force such a limited play-style on your team that is in conflict with the vast majority of weapons and encounters.

Oh, it’s not true that any other ranged weapon works with any team composition, btw. not at all. First, remove all condition weapons. We’re doing dungeons, so those are naturally out. Then, remove all low-AA weapons like Mesmer Scepter or Necro Axe. Again, we’re trying to do DPS in a dungeon here, they’re out. Then, chain weapons are also out on most bosses, or weapons balanced around multiple targets. Engi Rifle, Engi Pistol, Necro Staff, Ranger Axe, etc.

And Ranger Longbow and Mesmer GS need some special treatment? Really?

All the weapons in this game have their limitations. In some form of another. Some are ladden with an AA-condition. Some are balanced around AE. Some scale off in melee range. Some need to chain. Some only work in melee. Some don’t actually focus on damage on their AA.

And? And that’s all good, but the decreased damage of Longbow and Greatsword at close range somehow is unique and bad and needs to be changed?

I was speaking about the design of the weapon mechanics which is different from the issues you listed.

For instance, weapons that have conditions and crowd control function fine mechanically, the issue comes from excessive limitations placed on conditions and crowd control. The core systems of conditions and crowd control work perfectly fine as do the skills that apply them, all that needs to be done is to cut back on the limitations.

Issues with ranged weapons being obsolete, largely but not completely due to the lack of risk when using melee, is also not an issue with the design of ranged weapons. They work perfectly fine when the content is well designed.

The problem with the longbow and greatsword however is mostly caused by their actual design being in conflict with group mechanics. On one hand you have many mechanics telling the party to stick together to apply support effects, revive each-other, control enemies, and share aggro while on the other you have distance based damage telling the player to stay in the back of the room away from all that.

Carighan.6758:

Bri.8354:

The major difference is that melee attacks and skills that get stronger the closer you are, aren’t in conflict with support and AoE mechanics like attacks that force you to keep huge distances are.

Neither are ranged weapons, inherently.
If I take 5 people, and we all stand at 1200 range, I feel perfectly fine with my GS in the middle of them. How does that not work support/AE wise?

The issue there is, as IndigoSundown puts pretty well, “their inclusion feels to me more like ANet holding my hand and deciding the way I play, not like innovative and deep game mechanic design”.

No other weapons in the game force such a limited play-style on your team that is in conflict with the vast majority of weapons and encounters. Every other ranged weapon has the capacity to adapt and cooperate fully with every melee weapon and ranged weapon (with the exception of the ranger longbow and greatsword) without being disadvantaged.

In order to use the greatsword or longbow to full effect you need to have an entire team that:

• Consists entirely of players with long range weapons
• Never switch to closer ranged weapons
• Have no blast finishers or other support effects that take effect at the location of the enemy
• Have no summons or pets that could could take advantage of support effects or provide them
• Are fighting enemies that can’t pursue you
• Have all enemies within AoE range of each-other

Whereas any other ranged weapon can work with any team composition (with the exception of the one limited to the greatsword and longbow) without issue.

draxynnic.3719:

Carighan.6758:

Counter-question:
Ranger’s Greatsword only works at close range, it deals very low damage at larger range. How is that not an issue but the inverse is for the Longbow?

This is pretty close to what I was thinking. Ranger and mesmer have weaponswaps – the usual resolution to this problem is to use a weapon that is suited for the range you’re going to fight at.

In fact, to further reinforce your later point:

Mesmer staff can actually GAIN effectiveness at close range, due to it possibly bouncing back to you for a boon (and maybe bounce again if you have the trait). So it’s pretty much impossible for the mesmer to have an alternative to the greatsword that does not, at least potentially, benefit from being in close.

(To be fair, staff grants that benefit as long as you have SOMETHING near the target for Winds of Chaos to bounce to, but if you’re within bounce range that means you yourself are always a possible bounce recipient if nothing else.)

The major difference is that melee attacks and skills that get stronger the closer you are, aren’t in conflict with support and AoE mechanics like attacks that force you to keep huge distances are.

Carighan.6758:

Because when everyone is at 1200 range, they’re physically unable to stay close to each other, their characters actually repel one another.

Or what?

I mean what you’re saying is that a melee stack (because that’s what the 600-range thing is, you could go fully melee and still get buffs) doesn’t support range-dependent ranged weapons.

True.

Use a different weapon then?

Here’s an interesting observation I made, Mesmer:

• Staff doesn’t have damage reduction in melee.
• Scepter actually gains damage from being in melee.
• Sword works only in melee.

And you want me to use my Greatsword. Eh, why? Weapons are quite specialized in each class, why use a weapon specifically for what it isn’t meant to be used for?

Weapons with specific roles intended with them are fine, just not all of the mechanics used to create those roles.

There are many ways to design ranged weapons, but that doesn’t mean every mechanic that would support or enforce a ranged play-style is a good idea. Cripple, retreats, higher maximum range limits, and knockbacks are all examples of good mechanics.

Distance based effects in the form we see on the longbow and greatsword on the other hand are not a good mechanic. Melee and all other ranged weapons work fine together. The longbow or greatsword however are in conflict with every other weapon style because of the way support, AoE, and AI function.

Even if they were to remove the distance based damage, the theme of these weapons would remain the same. They could also add in some better designed mechanics in place of it such as:

• Long range shot arrows fly faster than arrows from other skills.
• Long range shot gives you and your pet swiftness when hitting far away enemies.
• Hunter’s shot getting a unique in-stealth skill (similar to how assassins #1 skill changes in stealth) that would teleport the pet to the target, you transfer 1 condition to your pet, and your pet would transfer 1 conditions to the enemy with its next attack.
• A new effect added to a current longbow trait: Your longbow arrows cause an effect based on the distance to the target.
  0-500 range: 1 second cripple
  500-1,000 range: 3 second cripple
  1,000+ range: 1 second stun (was thinking of immobilize, but stun would work great with moment of clarity)

jcbroe.4329:

Wordy, again, I know, so let me ask my point as a question: Would distance based skills be as poorly designed if they weren’t the source of the maximum damage output? (so that a repeatable skill rotation using the autoattack as filler would be the maximum DPS)?

I don’t find issue with distance based effects that are stronger the closer you get. Those add a level of risk to use or are a balancing aspect (imagine point blank shot having full knockback at 1,200 range) and are not in conflict with other mechanics.

For skills that get stronger the further away you are, my main issue with them is how they expect you to stay at such large distances to use the weapon effectively. I wouldn’t mind effects like cripple that would help you keep distance but don’t force it on you, it’s only things like damage force players to stay as far away as possible for the entire fight which aren’t good.

However, if done right, I think a skill did more damage the further away you were could work well. It would need to be on a long cool-down and require less distance (enough so you’re not in the enemies face, but not so far that you’re away from everything, probably 300-400 range would be good) to get its full effect. Think of an directional AoE that grows in size and damage over a few seconds in the direction you use it in.

@jcbroe

While I do agree that combat in dungeons and PvE in general needs to be addressed so its less about stacking and DPS, the point I’m trying to get across is that distance based damage isn’t a good mechanic in a group based setting even if that was addressed.

The encounter in the attached screenshot a good example of a fight where both range and melee are viable, and switching between the two during the fight is common. Notice the distance everyone is fighting at? Ranged players are staying within support distance of the melee, but far enough away to avoid attacks. This is how ranged weapons are meant to be used in a group based setting, not standing in the back of the room away from everything.

Sarrs.4831:

snip

While the longbow, and ranged weapons in general, are sub-par in PvE where you can just melee stack everything in, this isn’t necessarily what I’m trying to address in this thread. The issue there is very complex and difficult to address, and is something that requires a rework of the dungeons themselves in addition to possible reworks of conditions, crowd control, and weapon design.

What I’m trying to address here is situations where ranged weapons are viable, such as in fractals. In my opinion the design of fractals was a step in the right direction over previous dungeons. While they aren’t perfect, they do encourage the use of both melee and range weapons, a lot of the encounters punish direct stacking, and even at the highest levels of play you see players switching into ranged weapons frequently.

The problem I keep encountering with the longbow is that they have the annoying ranged based damage mechanic which has no place in group based content. I feel like I’m handicapped no matter what I do for using the weapon. If I stick by my allies to keep spotter on them and receive their support I’m not getting the most out of my damage. If I stay at range my team is loosing out on my buffs, and I of theirs.

All other play-styles work perfectly fine with the rest of the party. If you’re using melee you know the range players can still stick close, but not so close that they are in harms way. If you’re a ranged player you can support the melee player by sticking close to him, providing him your buffs and ready to revive him if he happens to go down.

The longbow however is completely selfish and screws you over unless everyone else in your party is also attacking at a far range. You cannot stick close to any close-mid range fighter without being penalized, and you cannot sit in the back to get your full damage without missing out on buffs.

I was also thinking my suggestion of multiple skill sets for weapons would address far more than just the longbow and mesmer greatsword. There are plenty of weapons out there that might also benefit from such a system.

And I’d love to read Swagg’s thread if you don’t mind finding it.

Personally I’d like some way to test damage dealt, healing applied, damage evaded, ect, for my own personal use. Without them it’s difficult to tell the true strength of what you’re using, which is very important in a game based so much around fine tuning the slightest things.

Even if we had something as simple as master of damage from GW1 (basically a test dummy that would tell your highest damage, damage over time, ect), and maybe a few others that would test other stats like your survivability, I’d be happy with it.

Sarrs.4831:

Improving the weapon from a player standpoint, or improving the weapon from a design standpoint?

Encouraging you to play differently by varying the mechanics on each weapon is good design. While it might make the longbow more powerful, it makes it less interesting.

How, from a design standpoint, is encouraging a play-style that is detrimental to the team unless everyone is also using the exact same play-style, considered healthy for group based play or of good design?

Sarrs.4831:

Being balanced does not necessarily mean that it is a good game. Rock paper scissors is a balanced game, but it is not necessarily a good one. Rock paper scissors spock handgun is a balanced game, but it’s worse than rock paper scissors.

I disagree very strongly that it would be a better designed game if it were to change skills for balance when moving between modes. Keep in mind that you aren’t asking for a simple numbers adjustment; you’re asking to change LB1 into a completely different skill by removing the variable damage.

“It seems that perfection is attained not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing more to remove.” Excessive complication makes a system worse, not better.

The issue is this; some classes, weapon choices, skills, ect are fine in one game mode but have no competitive place in another. The game is not not equal in every aspect, and so the same skill won’t fit in everywhere. This has lead to a plethora of uncompetitive options, creating a very poor variety in competitively viable builds and options.

Rather than having a lack of competitive options we should be working to make those aspects viable in more areas of the game. I don’t suppose you have a better approach to doing this that wouldn’t impact them in other formats, making them overpowered or ruining them in one area for the sake of another?

Sarrs.4831:

This is the goal of the weapon spread system. There is a variation of the longbow, which instead of being an extreme-range weapon, is an extreme melee weapon- It’s the greatsword.

The only suitable ranged weapon for a power based ranger is the longbow. However, because of distance based damage I take it players are not meant to use this effectively and instead behave like the infamous “bearbow ranger”? So then, if your “weapon spread system” worked, where is the weapon that functions properly in a group based PvE environment?

But wait! We could just add another real variation to the longbow, one that truly fits into group based play through something like I suggested.

Confirmed! “Soon” now means 34 days!

Sarrs.4831:

LB1 is kinda dinky anyway, even if you use it at its intended range, and closing that range wouldn’t actually make it a viable weapon.

Also, dividing skills between gametype is bad, unless you want people going to the sPvP forums and going “lol wtf y dos lb suck in pvp but its awesum in pve?”

Doesn’t fix a problem, and adds unneeded complexity. I don’t think it’s a good idea.

It would be a step in the right direction at improving the weapon at least.

When it comes to balancing around different game modes, Its a mistake in my opinion not to separately design and balance the skills around each format. PvE, PvP, and WvW are just so different that you’ll never achieve an acceptable balance unless you do.

Whenever this is brought up ANets argument always seems to be that they don’t want to confuse players moving from one game mode to another, but if they want a well designed and balanced game in every area you cannot use the exact same skills across every format.

Perhaps a good solution would be allowing players to select multiple variations of each weapon loadout? This would allow players to select more appropriate skill sets for each format, or use the same one in every format if they wish, eliminating that confusion.

This would also allow players who like the distance based damage design to still use it, while allowing viable alternatives to those who don’t.

I get confused whenever I see people say that GW2 is “an open world game” and that open world is something it does well, when the combat mechanics, events, and enemy design are a disaster in open world settings.

If you’ve analyzed the game at all one of the easiest things to notice is that the core mechanics of the game are best suited for a small group of players, and the more you throw in the more the game starts falling apart. Nothing gets added mechanic wise to the fights the more players you throw in, the enemies just get more HP, more enemies spawn, and other methods of poor difficulty progression are added.

In every large encounter thus far the difficulty comes not from the actual combat mechanics, but from coordination and what many deem as “artificial difficulty” such as DPS tests where you need to defeat a boss before a timer, rather than your group getting wiped out through the actual combat.

And don’t even get me started on the atrocity of WvW “combat” and mechanics.

Carighan.6758:

Eh, sure do?
Try this for comparison:

• Entire party equips ranged weapons, stacks at range.
• You equip a melee weapon, go into melee.

How many players are standing next to you now?

And now reverse the distances and weapon loadouts. The only difference is that with the melee weapon you have to close in first, but in return everything cleaves automatically, daggers excepted ofc.

The group can use both melee and range weapons while still being in support range with each-other. Its only the design of distance based damage that expects ranged players to stay out of range of both melee and mid range party members.

Carighan.6758:

Let me try to understand this: You do less damage with a ranged weapon the more allies stand next to you? How does your ranged weapon work exactly? Mine don’t change in damage unless that ally next to me buffs me with might.

Now if you meant that you equip your Longbow and then move into melee range, again, why are you using a ranged weapon in a melee fight? Do you use your melee weapon at 1200 range, too? And then complain about it?

The design and balance of melee vs ranged weaponry is so different that you can’t make direct comparisons like that. That’s why I used another comparison, one that has the same effect on the group based play that distance based damage does, although I probably shouldn’t have made that comparison at all; the two are so different that neither comparison holds ground.

Carighan.6758:

I have to say though, I don’t generally see the issue with players wanting to stand together. What’s bad about it?

Likewise, as I said above, melee weapons do very low damage outside of ~130 range. Seems to bother no one. But Longbow doing less damage at closer range is a big deal? Why not just use a closer-range weapon when fighting up close? Rangers can wield two weapon sets. And switch to longbow when at range or when you need to AE or stealth?

The design of melee weapons doesn’t have the negative effects on a group that distance based damage does. Could you imagine if melee weapons did less damage the more allies that were close to you? That’s the kind of effect distance based damage has on the group.

And yet I’m sure some players would rally around that kind of mechanic using some of the same arguments found in this thread.

Even if stacking were removed this would still be an issue. Take level 49-50 fractals where players often melee a boss until they get hit down a bit, then range while their health is recovering or there is a good opportunity. Some fights are even done with primarily ranged weapons, such as the room with the champion rabbit in the harpy fractal.

The thing with range in these situations is that its best for the team if everyone stays close together. If someone goes down you can easily revive them and you’re always in range of support skills and finishers. As a ranger you want to be in range to give your allies spotter, frost spirit, and healing spring, but if you’re sitting back at 1,000+ range you’re only a liability to the party, not granting them your support abilities and not being affected by theirs.

I hope people can understand the conflict between support mechanics in a group and the design of these skills.

I view game “balance” as primarily 2 things:

Competitive Balance – How something compares with a competitor. If one class equal with another then they are balanced, but that’s no fun is it? For this reason classes are given different roles and In order for the classes to be properly balanced, each class needs to be equally balanced based on the importance of their roles, but this is something I’ve rarely seen done correctly and is an obvious issue in this game.

Intended Design – If something is in balance with the content as originally intended. Take the issue of power creep that often happens when balancing, where everyone keeps being brought up in power to a point where they are no longer in balance with the power level of monsters. The classes may have been brought into balance with one another, but they are now out of balance when compared to the intended difficulty of content.

The scaling really needs to be looked at. With a group of 5 players I’ve damaged these bosses faster than a group of 30+ can, and it only gets worse the more people show up.

Players shouldn’t be discouraged from joining in on a fight because it might take longer to kill the boss. That’s just messed up.

A huge issue with the ranger’s longbow and mesmer’s greatsword is that their auto-attack damage is based off the range to the target. The design of these skills rewards and encourages poor group etiquette, expecting the player distance themselves from enemies and allies in order to maximize their damage, which also puts them out of range of support skills and generally supports poor positioning.

Players should not be encouraged to keep distance to deal damage, but instead be encouraged to use whatever distance is best suited for the environment. Keeping distance, or sticking close to the target, should be enough of a reward in itself through the mechanics of the encounter; we don’t need mechanics which make the player feel forced to keep huge distances no matter the situation.

Please get rid of this ridiculous mechanic, at least in PvE where it plays no positive role.

To go into better detail on my issues with the bosses, they aren’t designed for an open world situation, and this seems to be a recurring issue.

Much of the combat was designed and balanced around 5 players so the more players you throw in, the more it falls apart. The design of most monsters, including these, is also suited for that small number of players.

Instead of creating encounters and mechanics that would be suited for larger numbers of players, all we see being done is giving bosses things like more hp, damage, additional spawns, crowd control and other effect immunities, and timers before an automatic defeat.

As a result you have encounters that are best suited for a 5 man party and when thrown into the open world, degrade into a DPS race with a group that will never be wiped out or fail the fight thanks to the downed state and waypoints unless you add artificial defeat mechanics like timers.

I like the ability to swap out traits whenever you want and the streamlined system of spending the equal of 5 points at once from the old system.

However, I can’t say I like the decreased trait points at earlier levels. Getting 1 trait point every few levels doesn’t bother me, but why do we only get 1 point starting at level 30 then 1 every 6 levels after that? And why the heck do we start getting double points at later levels?!

Why did you have to weaken lower levels? Why not hand out trait points like in the old system, which would be your first point at level 15 then another point every 5 levels after that?

The issue Ive noticed isn’t so much with the damage backstab can deal by itself, but with the overall capability of thieves. Even 6-7k backstabs, half of what the OP encountered, are easily achievable yet excessive given the overall capability of thieves.

A key part of any glass cannon build is applying a large amount of damage as a defense. You try to weaken or take down the enemy before they can deal enough damage to you or your team, but this key strategy doesn’t work against thieves for a few reasons. Playing a signet build on the ranger for example:

They start the fight off with the first strike advantage, usually a backstab, easily hitting 40% or more of your health. Because of this your at a large disadvantage, and unless you do something quick you’ll be dead from their other skills. So you either dodge away, use invincibility, use counterattack, hunters shot, or point blank shot (if the thief blinded you the counterattack/point blank shot/hunters shot will miss and have no effect).

Having stopped their assault the thief will stealth again, likely with their heal skill, healing up whatever damage you managed to deal with your counterattack, and wait for any invincibility you put up to ware off. They will then follow up with another backstab, knocking out another massive chunk of your HP.

And the fight pretty much continues like that, and unless you have an ally which is actively putting pressure on the thief, its difficult to stay alive let alone kill the thief.

So I guess my points are:

• The thief has a low risk engage via stealth, massive burst damage via backstab and the initiative system, and the strongest disengage in the game also via stealth, which is too much when used together.
• Their ability to pop in, hurt someone 40% or more in an instant, disengage, then pop back in for another burst is too much against glass cannon players who’s main form of defense is to apply pressure via damage. Against the thief glass cannons don’t have effective counters due to not being able to effectively track or damage the thief while it is stealthed, and when they first appear not enough time is given to hit them back.
• Even if the player invests in an invincibility skill the thief can easily disengage while they wait for it to end then pop back in when it ends. Unless you have multiple forms of defense like a bunker would have, you cannot keep up.

Beastmastery Grandmaster: Finally a useful pet – You gain a nourishment buff giving 5,000 HP and 30% damage from the consumption of your pets.

Other traits that should be changed for individual reasons:

• Beastmaster’s bond – gain fury and might when your pet reaches 50% health.
  Why are we encouraged to let the pet get killed to buff ourselves? It would make much more sense if this activated on something like a pet swap.

• Honed Axes – 10% increased critical damage while wielding an axe in the main hand.
  The main hand axe is a lousy power based weapon so critical damage doesn’t do it much good. It should be given a condition based effect, possibly a condition duration increase.

• Moment of Clarity – Stun and Daze durations are increased by 100%. Gain an attack of opportunity for you and your pet on interrupt.
  The ranger has low access to stuns and dazes and doesn’t have access to a true interrupting or crowd control weapon. The attack of opportunity effect gives 50% damage to your next attack which is difficult for the ranger to make full use of, being a sustained damage class. While this trait does see some use in specialized builds, because of the above reasons it doesn’t fit the ranger class all that well, and should be reworked into something that would better fit the profession.

• Evasive Purity – Remove blind and poison on a dodge roll.
  This trait could use a buff to its condition removal; Just removing blind and poison isn’t very useful.

The ranger’s traits have to be their largest issue next to pet reliability. Many are too fragmented, weak, and generally don’t make sense given the design of the class. Furthermore, some of the rangers base weapons, utilities, and abilities are too weak on their own, requiring heavy trait investment for capabilities they should have by default.

The purpose of this thread is to highlight those problematic traits and the issues with them.

The opening strike mechanic consisting of:

- Opening strike – Your next attack will cause 5 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds. Only reapplies outside of combat.
- Alpha training – Your pet gains the opening strike effect.
- Precise strike – Opening strike is always a critical hit.
- Remorseless – Regain opening strike when you stealth or kill a foe.

• The general concept doesn’t fit in with the ranger. It is all about burst damage upon first entering combat, but the ranger doesn’t have the capabilities to make effective use of this, being mostly about sustained damage.

• It is weak for the amount of trait investment. You’re looking at 10 stacks of vulnerability for 5 seconds and a guaranteed critical for 3 traits, which only applies once per fight unless you have remorseless.

• With remorseless you are looking at an investment of 2 grandmaster, 1 master, and 1 adept trait for a relatively weak effect that only the longbow can make use of.

Pet focused traits consisting of:

- Speed training – 10% reduced cool-down on pet skills.
- Malicious Training – 50% increased condition duration for pets.
- Pet’s Prowess – 30% increased critical damage for pets.
- Agility Training – Pets move 30% faster.
- Carnivorous Appetite – Pets heal on critical hits.
- Expertise Training – Pets gain 350 condition damage.
- Concentration Training – Boons applied by the pet last 50% longer.
- Master’s Bond – Pets gain a stack of this buff (max 25) that increases all their stats by 8(200 at 25). This is lost on pet swap or death.
- Compassion Training – Pets gain 350 healing power.
- Stability training – Bears, pigs, and armor fish gain 3 seconds of stability when disabled.
- Intimidation training – F2 abilities of dogs and spiders cause 5 seconds of cripple.
- Instinctual bond – When you are downed your pet gains 5 seconds of quickness.

The issues with these fall into 3 categories:

• Require extremely specialized pets to get any function at all out of. Even then, you’re looking at maybe 1-2 of your pets skills getting any function out of this, making them generally not competitive.

• Not viable due to the limited capabilities and strength of pets. When you’re looking at the pets being such a low portion of your damage, of which has very low condition and boon application, that 10% reduced cool-down, 30% critical damage, 30% movement speed, 350 healing power, ect, you give to your pet, cannot compete with character effecting traits.

• Too weak statistically or difficult to use. Giving a bear or pig 3 seconds of stability when they get hit by a control effect? Don’t make me laugh. 10% reduced cool-down on pets, which only affects 2 skills of a pet which has weak skills to begin with, doesn’t do much and pales in comparison with the 20% recharge + other effect that recharge reducing traits typically get. Masters bond is too difficult to stack up because of how often your pet needs to be swapped out.

Longbow, signet, and trap traits consisting of:

- Piercing Arrows – Longbow and shortbow arrows piece enemies.
- Eagle Eye –5% damage increase and range increased by 300 for longbow and harpoon gun.
- Quick Draw – Reduces longbow and shortbow cool-down by 20%.
- Read the Wind – Longbow and harpoon gun projectile velocity is doubled.
- Signet Mastery – Reduces signet cool-down by 20%.
- Beastmaster’s might – Activating a signet grants 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds.
- Signet of the beastmaster – Activating a signet also affects you, not just your pet.
- Trappers expertise – Traps use ground targeting and are 50% larger
- Trap potency – Conditions caused by traps last 100% longer and reduced recharge by 20%.

• These traits are too fragmented and should be merged with other traits, weak and should be given additional effects, and/or are seen as something which the respective weapon/utility should have by default.

TFMurphy.5136:

Your mistake is that the percentage loss you’re recording is the reduction in “extra average damage that Critical adds on top of normal damage”. You’re ignoring the base 100% damage you’d get if you had no criticals at all.

facepalm I’m not sure how I missed that.

I redid the calculation this time including a base damage number of 1,000, and here’s what I came out with:

Let’s say you do 1,000 damage per attack without a critical hit.
Now let’s say you have a 78% critical chance and compare 163% critical damage and 125% critical damage:

163% critical damage would increase your damage by 127.14% on average.
(0.78 * 163)
125% critical damage would increase your damage by 97.5% on average.
(0.78 * 125)

127.14% damage would increase your damage by 1,271.4.
(1,000 * 1.2714)
97.5% damage would increase your damage by 975.
(1,000 * 0.975)

Now, if you add this up and look at the final damage:
1,000 + 1,271.4 = 2,271.4
1,000 + 975 = 1,975

Now, what is the percentage difference between these two?
Final damage after ferocity = a
Final damage before ferocity = b
(b – a = c)
(b / 100 = f)
(c / f = damage decreased)

A = 1,975
B = 2,271.4
C = 296.4
F = 22.714
Damage decreased = 13.04922074%

And using the same method for 188% critical damage vs 141% critical damage with 98% critical chance:

A = 2381.8
B = 2842.4
C = 460.6
F = 28.424
Damage decreased = 16.20461582%

I’ll go and update my OP with this and if I made any mistakes, feel free to point them out.

EDIT: Fixed a few number mistakes.

DeadlySynz.3471:

People just like to play certain builds. Those that play zerker builds will always play them, you can’t force them into something else. Point being, they kill their build off or alter it in such a way that they don’t like the numbers showing up anymore, they are more likely to quit rather than adjust to a build they don’t like.

That’s sort of the situation I’m in for WvW.

I typically run a burst damage signet build on my ranger, using a greatsword and longbow. While not the best build in zergs, it works pretty good at bursting down single targets, especially those pesky thieves who act like they are invincible (lets see them escape 1,500 range 15k damage rapid fires that track onto them even while in stealth).

Its only with this sort of high risk high reward build that I can enjoy WvW with. I despise bunker play and in my opinion, its toxic to the game in general. Because that ~20% cut in damage will be devastating to any berserker build I would run, I’m going to be forced into a bunker build, which will very likely make me quit WvW all together.

Latinkuro.9420:

Bri.8354:

• Banner of discipline (170 precision and 15% critical damage/170 ferocity)
• Spotter (150 precision)
• Food (100 precision and 10% critical damage/70 ferocity)

You’re assuming that the conversion to ferocity is gonna a simple rewrite of values and not a true conversion, you’re also assuming that everything is gonna be nerfed when they have said only crit dmg from traits is going to see a nerf

what I mean is this:

• Banner of discipline (170 precision and 15% critical damage/170 ferocity)
  in proper conversion not just translation it would be 15×15= 225 ferocity not 170 as you claim.

same for food:

• Food (100 precision and 10% critical damage/70 ferocity)
  in proper conversion not just translation it would be 15×10= 150 ferocity not 70 as you claim.

if you do the proper conversion instead of assigning the same value as precision, you end up with only a 10% nerf from traits just as they said it would be.

Except they have stated that conversion rates won’t be equal like that, except in sPvP where they are trying to keep critical damage like it is currently.

Blood Red Arachnid.2493:

Anyway, as much as I appreciate the math, I think the OP has messed up somewhere: Anet balances on exotics, and not ascended. So, I’ll do the exotic computation myself:

Armor:
315 Major, 224 Minor
Trinkets:
358 Major, 255 Minor
Weapon:
179 Major, 128 Minor
Jewels:
150 Major, 90 Minor

subtotal: 1003 Major, 698 Minor

120 Major/84 Minor (orbs on armor) + 300 major/minor (stats)

Total: 1423 Major, 1082 Minor.

On a standard toon, this comes to 2339 Power, 1998 Precision or kitten crit chance, and +72% crit damage from ferocity.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (.55 × 2.22 + .45) = 3908.

On old stats, you would get 62% from equipment, with an additional 14% from orbs, and 30% from stats to get a total of 106% crit damage.

So, effective power would be 2339 x (0.55 × 2.56 + 0.45) = 4346.

And, 3908 / 4346 = 0.899, or a 10.1% drop.

So, why does everyone get much bigger numbers? This is ultimately about standards, really. When Anet sought to balance zerker gear (which I argue was fine in the first place), they did so to the letter. They looked only at the gear, and nothing else. No boons, no traits, no sigils, no team composition, and no consumables.

The community, however, looks at more things. Curry Butternut Squash Soup and Banner of Discipline receive heavy nerfs, getting their crit rates cut from 10%/15% to 4.6%11.3% respectively. Likewise, the more precision bonuses one gets (fury, spotter, sigils, other banners), the more severe these changes to crit damage become.

Whether focusing on just the build was the right move is debatable. I can see both sides of the argument, but since I opposed the zerker change in the first place, this is like seeing both sides of which foot gets stomped on.

How they got the 10% number makes sense if they are solely looking at exotic equipment.

The reason I based it around ascended was in the past they stated “We expect that in the most extreme power DPS focused builds this change will account for a maximum reduction of about 10% damage.”

The way they made it sound was that in the worst case players would receive a 10% reduction. Instead we are seeing over double that at the higher levels of critical damage.

Tigera.2916:

This is why I ask… Precision doesn’t add anything to the amount of crit damage you do… so unless you’ve got figures for Precision being changed, the crit chance is gonna stay the same. That means you don’t need the crit chance formula in there… all you need is a straight max crit damage comparison to show very simply what the difference is. (especially since the base crit damage stat is 50% right now, so where the heck are you getting that Perception crit damage bonus% from?)

Precision doesn’t change critical damage, but it does increase your average damage (if you had 0% critical chance your critical damage wouldn’t do anything at all). This average damage was used in my formula and doesn’t skew the end result, which is the reason I included it.

Tigera.2916:

No, I take that back… you’ve worked this out on the assumption that Ferocity is replacing Precision… It isn’t. It’s replacing Bonus Critical Damage %. This isn’t a wording issue, it’s a fundamental error in the starting figures.

For an example, the ruby orbs should have 84 Precision AND 180 Ferocity. Why so much Ferocity?

I’m perfectly aware what ferocity is replacing; critical damage.

And if they are using a system where current equipment is given 15 ferocity for every 1% critical damage it used to have, what about the superior rune of the eagle in the blog? The amount of ferocity in comparison to precision should be much higher if they were converting it like you say.

Furthermore, why would they need to change celestial? Wouldn’t it get 15 ferocity for every point of critical damage it had currently? Apparently not, so they are buffing the stats of it by 6%.

These things point at ferocity becoming numerically equal to all other stat choices of the same tier (in the case of berserker, the minor stat). So for instance, a ruby orb would have 20 power, 14 precision, and 14 ferocity, not 20 power, 14 precision, and 30 ferocity.

draconx.3102:

It’s not quite as dire as the OP, but still way more than 10%. A change from +125% crit damage to +92% crit damage means your critical hits are doing ~80% of the damage they were doing before, or a ~20% reduction.

(base damage*1.42)/(base damage*1.75)

Thanks, its nice to have some more examples. One question though, was the equipment you used in your test exotic or ascended? I didn’t see any mention of it.

draconx.3102:

snip

I think you made an error, not including the base 50% critical damage the character has that is not shown under stats. However I believe this would make your math match closely to my own, being around a 25% decrease in damage, still far different than that 10% figure they gave us.

Here’s how I got to these results:

I took the stats from:

• Base character stats (916 precision, 50% critical damage)
• Full ascended equipment (745 precision, 71% critical damage)
• Ruby orbs (84 precision, 12% critical damage)
• Trait selection (300 precision and 30% critical damage)

Then added them up to get the base critical chance and damage someone would have in the current system.

Next I covered the critical damage to ferocity. Basically ferosity will take the minor stat in berserker equipment and will become 300 from traits, and follow the same numbers as precision would, with the exception of instead of having 916 from base stats you would have a base 50% critical damage stat.

This comes out to:

• 50% critical damage from the characters base stats.
• 745 ferocity from full ascended.
• 84 ferocity from ruby orbs.
• 300 ferocity from trait selection.

In the second test I included:

• Banner of discipline (170 precision and 15% critical damage/170 ferocity)
• Spotter (150 precision)
• Food (100 precision and 10% critical damage/70 ferocity)

From there I did with math with the following formulas:

• 15 ferocity is 1% critical damage.
• The formula for critical chance is ((precision – 822) / 21) rounded down
• The formula for finding how much critical damage increases your damage on average is (critical chance / 100) * (critical damage).
• Convert how much critical damage increases your damage on average into a decimal, take a base damage number like 1,000, and multiply it by this decimal. Now add this to your base damage number to find your final damage.

Then to check how much damage is lost from this change:
Final damage after ferocity = a
Final damage before ferocity = b
(b – a = c)
(b / 100 = f)
(c / f = damage decreased)

Zoid.2568:

And? You still do the most physical direct damage possible.

The issue is with how berserker compares to other sets. Even if it was 5% better in damage when compared to soldiers it would still be used in PvE, but in a PvP environment, such as WvW, it would become far inferior.

Now that we have the numbers on the ferocity changes (15 ferocity = 1 critical damage) from the recent blog post I decided to do some math on the changes.

A typical berserker build with ascended equipment not using consumables or skills like banner of discipline will have around:

• Precision: 2,045 (78% critical chance with fury)
• Critical damage before ferocity: 113% + 50% base critical damage (163% total)
• With ferocity: 1,129 (75% critical damage + 50% base critical damage, 125% total)

You will see a loss of 38% critical damage, which is a 13.04922074% damage loss.

A “maxed out berserker” build using multiple buffs will typically have around:

• Precision: 2,465 (98% critical chance with fury)
• Critical damage before ferocity: 138% + 50% base critical damage (188% total)
• With ferocity: 1370 (91% critical damage + 50% base critical damage, 141% total)

You will see a loss of 47% critical damage, which is a 16.20461582% damage loss.

StinVec.3621:

Email all exploits with as much detail on it as possible to: exploits@arena.net

Thanks, I think I’ll do that.

Panda Shepard.1248:

The issue is there should be no “home servers” for PvE. The guesting system is to fix the issue WvW brings by creating servers. Everyone has the right to join an event in any server. “Home server” means nothing in PvE. They need to get rid of servers altogether.

PvE should just have districts like GW1 had. When one fills, another is created. A zone should exist across all servers. It’d make it a ton easier to play with your friends and the queue would mean nothing.

Agreed; the world idea works fine for WvW, but it just creates a fragmented community in PvE and creates issues like the one in this thread. A district system would have been far better.

zMajc.4659:

I know it’s not your fault for playing on a low populated server but you have to understand why the system has been put in place and also see the opposite side of the coin too.

Many servers you and many others from low populated servers try to guest to are already very heavily populated.

Every guester on those server means 1 slot less for home server players. On Desolation main maps are so full of guesters that it get’s silly during prime time.

And you would take away even that small space reserved exlcusively for home server users.

The world doeas not revolve only around you and your friend sadly.

I know it’s not your fault for playing on an overpopulated server but you have to understand why the queue was put in place and also see it from the other players perspective.

Players on low population servers do not have the numbers to complete much of the difficult open world content, such as world bosses and their only option is to guest to overpopulated ones.

Because those server are already so filled to begin with, if you get in an overflow you have no hope in joining in on the content because others can bypass the queue while you cannot.

And there are those who are not sympathetic to these players and would rather exclude them from the content, not allowing them access via a fair queue system.

The world does not revolve around those in high population worlds sadly.

Algreg.3629:

they don´t “bypass the system”. The moment you click, the game checks whether there is a free spot or not. If you click often, chances are you hit the window of opportunity. It doesn´t the defeat the purpose of anything, joining party members is obviously set as a priority.

I think you need a logic check.

If everyone needs to wait in line for someone to finish and someone on the side can shout “me!” to take the place of someone who just finished before the first person in line can move forward, what is the purpose of the line? Are they not bypassing the line (aka the queue)?

Now what if there are 20+ people shouting “me” so fast that the person in the front of the line can never move forward?

This is essentially what is happening.

What I don’t think some people understand is that its impossible to get into a heavily desired map via the queue system because people will instantly take your spot before you have a chance to press “travel”.

A few times I’ve tried to join a friend of mine for a Teq run that was hosted in his main server (which i could not right click on him to join). I waited patently trying the queue system only to receive a network error due to people instantly taking my spot. I had the opportunity to travel at least 4 times, yet it never worked.

Does this sound like a good system to you, one which excludes players from playing with their friends and destroys the function of the queue system with nobody being able to use it to enter the map?

And to those claiming we have a right to access our home servers above guesting players, this sounds more selfish than anything else. Guesting players have just as much of a right to the content as any other server, and without guesting those players wouldn’t even be able to participate in the content. Should we exclude them from the content just because their server doesn’t have the numbers?

What I’m asking for is a fair system which gives everyone an equal chance to enter through the queue system, not one which is a spam click fest where the queue is ignored and excludes players from other worlds.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

I’ve tried to summarize most of the feedback we’ve been getting. Most of this are the big points that are being made and the high level with a few smaller suggestions and tweaks for inspiration.

Now, many of you might disagree with some of the feedback that others have been giving, but if you guys are going to take the time to write it, we’re going to take the time to read it.

These are some of the notes that I’ve been passing around to the balance team. Please know that this is not all of the feedback we’ve seen from you or from this thread.

Sorry since this is pretty late reply, but I felt it was worth replying to.

Most of these changes sound amazing, but there are a few things that I have to disagree with.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Weapons:

1. Ranger weapon sets are currently lacking in focus and should be redesigned so that weapon selection synergizes with specific playstyles.
   1. Longbow: Reward max range and synergize with pet.
      1. Vulnerability instead of damage increase with range (s1), cripple (s2), immobilize (s3), knockdown (s5)
      2. Pet might (s3), swiftness (s2), regen (s5)

Long range is enough of a reward itself. We don’t need incentives in the form of damage boost or conditions the further away we are. Furthermore, a long range play style conflicts with the pet, taking them far too long to run to the target when first engaging and when swapped.

Instead of increasing things like damage or giving vulnerability, what I suggest is the pet shadow-steps next to the opponent when you use a certain skill if you are a certain distance away from the target. (preferably based on the distance of your pet from the target) This effect should be on a internal cool-down. This would allow the pet to reach the opponent much easier when fighting at long distances with the longbow.

Something I’d like to emphasize is that the longbow should be damage focused. It should of course have some control effects to allow it to keep distance from the enemy, but unless damage is its primary focus, it won’t shine as a weapon.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Skirmishing:

1. Remove traps from this line.
   1. They simply do not make sense here, because they are largely condition based but skirmishing is the crit line. That, or swap the stats of the skirmishing line altogether.

Be careful with this. If you moved traps to wilderness survival then those who invest in them would sacrifice nearly all their defensive traits. The skirmishing line also has little to nothing to offer for a trapper build or condition damage outside of these trap traits. These changes would harm a lot of builds in favor of one and might even put trappers in a worse spot.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Marksmanship:

1. Change VII to Hunter’s Tactics – +3% increase damage on disabled enemies (stun/daze/knockdown/fear/immob)
2. IX. Beastmaster’s Might – pet does +1% damage for every boon on enemy
3. X. Eagle Eye – Include shortbow. Provides 200 range and +5% damage on longbow and harpoon gun. (no range bonus for shortbow)

The duration of disables and the rangers overall lack of them would make this a difficult to use trait. Perhaps it should also give a damage boost when the opponent is crippled since the ranger has plenty of cripple attacks, and the damage bonus needs to be much higher than 3%.

Beastmaster’s might needs more damage considering how low pet damage is. Even in some of the best case scenarios your pet is going to do 20-30% more damage (if every stack of might is counted), which seeing how it only does 30% of the characters damage if even that, will result in a 6-9% damage increase overall which is very weak given the conditions required to reach this. For more typical situations, you’re looking at a less than 3% damage increase.

The changes to eagle eye aren’t what players have been asking for at all. Buff it to the 300 range increase it currently gives and make it apply everything it provides to the shortbow, not just the damage increase.