Not at all close to it. I run BV and rarely use Dagger Storm. If I screw up a fight to the point where I’m reliant on AI to carry me to victory, I deserve to die and should improve my own abilities.
Don’t get me wrong, the skill is absolutely amazing and extremely potent when roaming. The cooldown is justified though in that if one becomes dependent on it, they deserve to lose the fight if it’s not available.
That’s why maybe…
Were you running glass, were you upleveled, were you tanky, etc. These are important questions man, very important.
Dude, you can answer to all these 3 questions only looking at deffensive stats I posted. (no-no-yes if you can’t figure it out).
You posted armor rating, vitality, boon duration, and healing power. 3/4 of that tells me nothing. If I saw Toughness instead of armor rating, it would tell me everything. Somebody said it earlier up, why were you using just pistol and bomb? Throw grenades, use Elixir S, Supply Crate his kitten .
Also was this in WvW? Did the thief have might stacks?
Yes and yes. Thief is likely 20+/30/x/x/x in berserker’s gear running a signet build, and likely TotC for 11-16 (possibly even 21 but unlikely) might stacks to get his damage that high. You can’t get those damage values in sPvP regardless of what your build is due to the crit damage cap being half of what it is in WvW, and 9k HS is exclusive to WvW berserker status with ~120% crit damage against that armor value.
I hate to be the guy who asks for his post to get bumped/more views, but I would like some feedback on my rework discussed near the bottom of page 65 so it can be improved.
Alrighty folks, I’ve come up with my comprehensive rework. It’s probably not perfect as I’m not a real master of the Beastmastery/support ranger builds, and I’m willing to make adjustments/revisions.
Class Adjustments:
- Signet effects by default apply to the player (Remove Signet of the Beastmaster).
- Pets scale off of both player level and stats.
- Improve/Increase pet attack hitbox size/improve AI.
- Ordering a pet cancels its idle animation to proceed with the orders given to it.
- Pets’ base mobility increased by 25%
- Peaceful/Aggressive Toggle on F4.
- Switch pet toggle on F5.
- “Guard” utility skill removed. Placed on F6. Range: 2000
- “Relentless” ability added: Pets may be stowed permanently. The ranger receives a non-removable boon which grants him a 30% increase to damage to his attacks. Pets cannot be stowed or summoned while in combat.
- Pet F2 base skill cooldowns reduced by 20%.
- Increase base projectile speed for longbow attacks by 50%.
- Combine spirit effects with pets. Spirit skills renamed after various animals.
- -Beastmastery trait ranks increase pet stats more than currently.
TRAIT PROGRESSION CHANGES
Marksmanship:
Adept: Opening Strike: You and your pets have Opening Strike (Combined with Alpha Training (Master Marksmanship)).
Master: Eagle Eye: Replaced Alpha Training with Eagle Eye (Marksmanship X). Removed Eagle Eye from optional traits.
Grandmaster: Stance of Storms: You and your pet gain swiftness and fury (5s) when applying Opening Strike. Apply Opening Strike while attacking from stealth. Remove Remorseless (Marksmanship XII).
Skirmishing:
Adept: Precise Strike: Opening Strike Always critical hits (Moved from Grandmaster Marksmanship).
Master: Hunter’s Tactics: Replace Furious Grip with Hunter’s Tactics (Grandmaster Skirmishing)
Grandmaster: Peak Strength: Increase damage by 10% when health is above 90% (Wilderness Survival Grandmaster).
Wilderness Survival:
Adept: Natural Vigor (Unchanged)
Master: Primal Protection: You and your pet gain Aegis (2s) and Protection (2s) when you dodge roll.
Grandmaster: Tranquility: Upon killing a foe, gain 20 endurance.
Nature Magic:
Adept: Medicinal Herbs: When your pet reaches 20% health, cure all conditions and apply regeneration (5s).
Master: Rejuvenating Bond: Gain regeneration (5s) when your health drops below the threshold (75%). All boons and trait bonuses you obtain are shared with your pet (Combination/Rework of Adept and Master Nature Magic traits).
Grandmaster: Bountiful Hunter (Unchanged)
Beastmastery:
Adept: Loud Whistle: Reduce the recharge on pet swapping by 20%.
Master: Honed Fangs: You and your pet gain power equal to 10% of healing power. Your pet heals itself (.1) when it attacks (Rework/Combine Nature’s Wrath and Carnivorous Appetite)
Grandmster: Beast’s Promise: If your pet dies and you cannot swap pets, your other pet is swapped to and revived at 50% health.
TRAIT CHANGES:
^= New skill designed to replace skill holes.
Marksmanship:
-^True Strike (Marksmanship X): Your Opening Strikes ignore Aegis.
-Removal of Beastmaster’s Bond and Signet Mastery.
-^Calm of Battle (Marksmanship IV): Your attacks ignore Protection.
-^Pin Down (Marksmanship IX): Your Open Strikes apply 2s of Immobilize.
-^Marksmanship XI (Mighty Signets, credit to Nike): Activating a Signet grants 3 Stacks of Might and Signet recharge rates are reduced by 20%).
-^Tight-Quarter Bow-master (Marksmanship XII): Range increment penalties on bows are ignored. You gain 10% increased damage for fighting foes within 150 range.
Skirmishing:
-Agility Training (Skirmishing VI): You and your pet move 25% faster. Toned down from 30% for pets only, stacks with initial bonus pet move speed to 50%.
-Trap Potency moved to Skirmishing VII.
-^Fleet of Foot (Skirmishing XI): Cripple’s duration on you is reduced by 30%.
Wilderness Survival:
-^Antivenin (Wilderness Survival XI): Cure two conditions once every 10 seconds.
Nature Magic:
-^Longevity (Nature Magic IV): While under the effect of a Spirit spell, your pet takes 50% less damage.
-^Animal Aspects (Nature Magic VII): You also radiate the effects of Spirits.
-Nature’s Vengeance applies spirit pet effects when the pet dies.
Beastmastery:
-Speed Training recharge rate reduction increased to 20%.
-Master’s Bond: Your pet’s attributes are increased further (Apply current maximum at all times).
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
The thief definitely was running glass. Condi engi running very few bonus health items.
However this is an Engi complaining about thief?
And I can tell you that he critted CnD and that HS. Failed the stab, and managed a kill by heartseeker. ~1/3 of the damage dealt is from a gap-closing skill which can stealth (this thief was running D/D though), which frankly does just a little bit too much damage.
I do wonder, though. Why did you let him get off all of these hits? As an engi you shouldn’t be having much trouble with melee-range squishies which have little condi removal and low health. You chased him down with a pistol is all I got from the combat log meanwhile you have a ton of other skills at your disposal which could have easily shut him down.
Frankly if you wanna talk about DPS, thief isn’t the best. Axe warrior does better burst, and eles have the best DPS in the entire game of all classes.
you realize 2 other classes arguably 4…can do the same exact thing within less than a second of thief or just as fast? mmmm? so lets nerf all 4 and buff thief defense bc the lack of defense is thewhole reason for our burst. agreed?
Thief doesn’t need a buff. The class is good at what it does and if it did any more it would just be overpowered. If anything, offhand pistol and/or heartseeker need a nerf.
Keep it a one-trick-pony but nerf the trick? Gotcha.
You wouldn’t need to wait for a nerf if you would just learn the profession.
It shouldn’t be that way. HS spam is scrubby and finds ways of working well even when outnumbered. Its leap finisher is also absurd due to the synergy with blinding powder/smoke finishers which allows for out-of-combat stealth uptime on weapon skills without needing to utilize a lot of utilities.
Frankly, D/P as a build is strictly the best of the sets. It’s a huge source of complaints, and is a large reason behind why the thief class is actually regarded as being overpowered and driving away other damage dealers; forms of retaliation are kind of futile. Either the leap finisher needs to be removed, blinding powder needs to be changed, or smoke fields need a rework. Frankly, even revealed could be altered as to always go into effect after leaving stealth and/or have a duration increase based upon how long the user was in stealth to promote less stealth-based play so that the burst is a bit more sparsed out on builds intending to have high stealth uptimes while forcing builds running more burst-spam into needing to find a true way to survive.
Then maybe you could argue P/W would need a slight adjustment to immobilize the target like s/x warrior’s adrenaline skill based off of the amount of initiative the user has.
The class is far from a one-trick pony even as of now. Fact of the matter is that this trick is too strong and too easy to get access to such that most other builds are pointless and the counterplay for it increases way more than the amount of skill needed to actually play it.
Don’t get me wrong, I support thieves and do not believe the damage numbers need toning down. I have two level 80 thieves and have dumped over 850 hours into them, both of which are full-offense builds. I do however believe that stealth spamming across all classes, even including mesmer, requires a very low skill cap and makes the opponents need a much higher one. This with constant access to burst and blind fields makes such combinations a little too potent. The risk vs reward on current stealth classes is just a little bit too low and rather than simply nerfing stats, such changes could allow good thieves to keep their damage if they’re capable of needing to stay in a fight, just as every other class needs to.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Dancing dagger should just be remade into another skill, frankly. Would be interesting if the skill slot was occupied by something which copied the conditions on you back to the target.
you realize 2 other classes arguably 4…can do the same exact thing within less than a second of thief or just as fast? mmmm? so lets nerf all 4 and buff thief defense bc the lack of defense is thewhole reason for our burst. agreed?
Thief doesn’t need a buff. The class is good at what it does and if it did any more it would just be overpowered. If anything, offhand pistol and/or heartseeker need a nerf.
Going to need to disagree with you Trav regarding your statements about thief needing buffs. While I do not believe this class needs any real “nerfs” (minor reworks to pistol offhand, bonuses to pistol mainhand/dual pistol, the obvious removal of perplexity runes, changes to stealth and revealed, etc.), this class is far from underpowered. It rocks the DPS charts second only to GC ele (there is NO comparison here, anyone who says thief does more damage than GC ele has never played against or as a good GC ele), however its trade-offs are pretty real in its low survivability, party support, and staying power. In a 3v3, a thief will find himself picking off the weakest target/squishiest one, usually entering the fight after others to get the surprise. Meanwhile, your other two party members need to fight at a disadvantage to get CC cooldowns blown against them and other major nukes out of the way before you can really engage. Frankly, this can honestly get your party killed, and not abiding by this is begging for death.
Stealth proves a lot more potent in sPvP than WvW because thieves are tankier in sPvP than they are in PvE/WvW. By how much? 50% minimum. Yep, 50% or more health/defensive stats running a glassy crit build. That number is absurd and gives thieves the staying power necessary to engage and stay in fights while being border-line invincible. With the crit damage cap where it is in sPvP, it also encourages thieves to build even tankier and work with trait lines not normally used in WvW GC builds which only augment their abilities. Strictly speaking, a sPvP thief will be horrible in WvW, and vice versa, due to how the stats differ. A GC thief in WvW will not be running a build both capable of high stealth uptime AND immense burst; they need to pick one, whereas one in sPvP will be able to get their damage capped and then spec elsewhere for more durability and utility.
The real problem lies in stat capping for sPvP and how there’s no incentive to build all into one stat like there is in WvW. Yes, thief damage is insane in WvW, but it’s not the best, and in order to achieve such numbers (outside of perplex builds which again is a problem with the runes and not the thief itself), it’s very easy for the thief to get rolled. I was fighting yesterday against a hammer warrior. He managed to knock me down, and I proceeded to get killed in three hits. Yep, it only took three, and I run a tankier (valk) build. A true GC berserker would have died in two.
In WvW, the thief is far from overpowered, despite its damage frontloading (again, other classes do better, such as axe warrior), and the builds you see in sPvP wouldn’t work anywhere else except in sPvP. It has less to do with the thief being OP but the restrictions in sPvP which allow the thief to strictly have better build options which give them moderate burst potential but more importantly the staying power and utility they need to overcome their weaknesses.
It’s possible that some trait movement could resolve some of these issues, but I think what needs to be better addressed is the stat capping and the meta not moving from the one DPS roamer style of play which screams thief (as that is the basis for the class design) ultimately preventing a lot of other dynamics/classes from being considered more potent. Simply nerfing the thief’s damage or nerfing stealth or whatever it may be won’t actually solve the problems for any given game mode; if anything, it’s going to make it worse.
It’s difficult when you create the ranger to be so simple, though. I really like the way R.OH.A.N.: Blood Feud handled the class. It was based upon kiting/mobility and banked upon a skill combo to deal massive damage on a high cooldown. Problem is that this skill combo rooted you in place. The auto-attack damage was on the weaker side, and your base stats (like HP/armor values here) were trash-tier, so getting hit in the early stages of release (the game has since gone bad due to microtransactions/bad development) meant dying instantly. That said, the combo damage was arguably the best DPS in the entire game and made skillful use of it rewarding/defined the good rangers of the game.
Skills should require a lot of coordination, which often the archer classes lack in MMO’s. Yes, usually they’re very straightforward and as you mentioned is why they either beome OP or UP, however good implementation can make the class very involved just on a different level. Rather than timing heals and mitigating damage with defenses, ranger play should be based around good positioning and nothing else. A ranger left alone/un-targeted shooting people from afar should be a threat, not so much one in close combat and engaged in the fight, as ANet seemingly tried to do with the longbow damage tiers.
The biggest problem is that we’re in a game where we have impassable structures (WvW towers) which promote longer-range play and turtling. These are probably the biggest aspects which need to be overcome to make the class both rewarding but also skill-intensive.
While the combo uses more initiative, the uptime is better per initative spent.
Blind + HS = 9 initiative, regen effects in the 3s revealed timer that you’ll get approximately 4 back by uptime if traited properly, HS again at <1s remaining on blind for the double use, meanwhile also blind pulsing the target.
So you’ve spent 12 initative for 6s stealth and two heartseekers versus 18 on CnD and two HS’s.
Of course the field is a lot more accessible and can be used without a target. With a target, the result is the same, so I should have stated something along the lines of using similar levels rather than having just stated “less.” Of course, it does become strictly less when you take into account infusion, as you’re only using net 1 initative on the second HS versus 4 with CnD.
Granted, the overall result still heavily favors D/P which is kind of what I was going for.
I stated the blind field from offhand pistol does because the other DPS cannot retaliate properly.
I also stated the entire purpose of building an ASSASSIN is to hard-counter DPS. Thief =/= assassin. Very, very far from it. You want an assassin, go look at some other game videos, or even at RPG’s in general, where the assassin role is to literally one-shot the target from stealth or lose the fight. This has existed almost everywhere from Dungeons and Dragons to a lot of modern MMO’s. Not to mention ANet’s blatant ties with D&D seeing as a ton of the skill and mechanic name are the same as they are there.
But what you’re doing is disregarding all the thieves which build S/D or P/P and even arguably S/P who don’t assassinate targets.
Your disposition is almost entirely targeted at thieves which run D/P. D/D is a very fair build and easy to counter due to its predictability. S/P is predictable and just outright weak in a lot of cases, S/D is good against boon-spammers… and that’s about it. P/P is just not very good. P/D is only good for perplexity/condi builds, which are OP not because of any thief mechanics but because perplexity/condition builds are OP in themselves.
So pretty much you’re stating that people who build solely to counter other GC’s are shutting down GC’s, and this is a problem?
So wait, if in an sPvP game, a team decides to play all heavies, the usefulness of the thief decreases immensely? In a many vs many scenario, the assassin only finds himself spamming 2 and 4 with shortbow and not actually contributing to the fight in any significant way unless the enemies walk into his telegraphed skills?
I think your beef lies more in being shut down and not learning to play around/work with what appears to be strong than it is believing you’re right in your assumptions just because your experience is all you have to reference.
All it needs is an animation rework for the evade. It’s a bit finnicky.
Any damage bolsters would just make people cry more for stab nerfs/generic thief nerfs to the point where they would definitely happen. If anything, buff the condi side of it by adding another bleed or two such that the skill becomes more viable in PvP for condi builds and isn’t as spammy in PvE for the same end result.
A skilled thief can only be countered by a skilled player.
Wait a minute… are you implying that the way to beat a good player is to be better?
Holy cow, that’s unbelievable and totally revolutionary!
D/D isn’t underpowered so much as D/P is overpowered.
D/D is a fair set. You have amazing burst potential and high stealth uptime… but at the cost of needing to stick to your target and being incapable of contributing anything except raw backstab damage. They Aegis your CnD? You’re SoL. The set, building burst damage, does exactly what it should be doing: killing unsuspecting players/other glass cannons.
D/P gets all the damage but also has way better utility and in-combat survivability. Playing without auto-targeting allows for almost-equal stealth uptime at theoretical maximum, and often offers simply better uptime while still providing immensely strong counterplay to effects which could stop such behavior due to the blind field and ranged interrupt.
For people to have months ago claimed the build was a troll build is nuts. The smoke finisher with heartseeker and pulsing blind screamed OP to me from the getgo. On-demand stealth no matter the occasion for less initative just makes the CnD/Stab build concept worth nothing, especially because it was more potent before due to the initiative regen upon attempting to stealth. At the very least D/P is more fair than it was, but the bonuses to initiative regen has simply delayed spamming and replaced it with waiting a few more moments.
And the saddest part is that our damage isn’t even the best burst in the game. Warriors, mesmers, guardians (yep), necromancers, and elementalists actually have better burst throughput.
Except this is not true. Provided you’re not terrible at thief you can wear down defensive cooldowns of every other class with repeated bursts faster than they can come back up. The repeated Reset -> Burst cycle of thief is greater than even a shatter mesmer’s
In addition (excepting some peculiar warrior builds) none of them can catch you; this means that unless you are very impatient and greedy the WORST you will do in a WvW fight is escape.
This is the reason why people have legitimate complaints about Thieves, the mix of truly impressive damage paired with resets and escape ability leads to intensely frustrating play experiences for the other player.
Try playing a necro for a while on a T1 WvW server and go roam, and you will swiftly learn why everyone hates Thieves.
That’s not burst, that’s sustained pressure. Burst is the capacity to frontload immense damage into a very short period of time. The only skills the thief has which can do damage coefficients to such extents are backstab and pistol whip.
Plenty of classes can catch you. Mesmer GS has ranged advantage, equal stealth potency, mesmer AOE shatter/teleport, ranger has both a reveal and stealth tracking and the ranged advantage, Warrior running a sword can catch you. A decent guard can teleport and/or CC you. Necros and eles can chill/immobilize/cripple at range.
It was stated T1 is more about zergs. It’s arguable some of the lower-tier servers have better roaming parties than T1’s do. To also expect play is better on T1 servers is ludicrous seeing as most players on the T1 servers now have just bandwagoned there. What SoR did in S1 last year was impressive, and that’s my former server (moved down to FC due to a large group of friends from another game playing there). If you’re roaming as a solo necro, you’re doing it wrong, and even then, necromancers stand a much better chance against thieves than a lot of other classes due to death shroud giving them so much health and all the AOE/condi potential they have.
To call thieves OP because they solo roam better than other classes is totally absurd. That’s the specialty niche role the class is designed to perform in and is lackluster in all other aspects of the game. This is the same source of complaints from scrubs in tPvP thinking that because thieves are better solo roamers than mesmers and eles, they need to be nerfed. It has to do with the meta and the role the player is trying to perform more than the class having numbers that are too high.
Final point, and this one is completely valid and not me venting my frustration – Thieves have all the tools to completely destroy all other glass/zerker builds and are basically driving glassy PvP builds to extinction. Big thread about it:
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/sPvP-Thieves-driving-away-damage-dealers/first
So basically because glass builds are afraid to die, it makes thief OP?
I don’t understand. The whole point of building an assassin in any game is to deny the opponents’ DPS. Most of this “drive away” has to do with offhand pistol blind field and less with stealth, seeing as in sPvP thief burst damage is just straight up bad because crit damage caps at 60% as opposed to 122% in WvW. The blind field simply prevents easy retaliation and allows for HS-permastealth. I need to keep iterating this in every thief QQ thread I see, because the hate is misdirected. The counter to DPS is to assassinate them. What does this mean? The thief if matched up against a player of equal skill will be at a stark disadvantage of the opponent isn’t a GC because they lack the burst to kill them efficiently and the staying power to actually deal sufficient damage to finish off a tankier foe.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Perhaps, but what people were suggesting was a rebalance of the class to make up for the current state of pet AI. In essence, that would mean tweaking the numbers of all Ranger traits and skills to account for the lack of pet. However, that would not be fair to the players that still want to play pets, as we would essentially be talking about completely removing the pet at that point.
What we won’t do is remove the pet from the class completely.
Does that make sense or is it still confusing?
Very much correct in these assertions. I would like to mention, however, that simply running the numbers to account for the lack of scaling with the pet removed is probably one of the easiest fixes to account for. Simply, based upon the tendencies of the class, applying a +40% modifier to damage output while the pet is stowed best accommodates for the 30% reduction we face. These percentile modifiers already exist in the game as various forms of +5/10/20% modifiers and are calling the same methods (in the game’s code) to apply these effects. Simply allowing for a conditional modifier to be applied based upon pet status would be very easy from a coding standpoint and would fairly easily address a lot of these concerns in the immediate future.
A 40% modifier is necessary (rather than 30%) because it would be a damage modifier after considering the 30% reduction.
So if say damage normalization would be at 100, the ranger hits for 70. Ergo to compensate for this reduction, 70 needs to be multiplied by a value (x) to equal 100.
So 70x = 100
x = 1.4285, or approximate 43%.
That’s not to say ranger doesn’t need a rework in general. This, however, is a modular fix which should be implemented first such that future trait/skill redesigns can incorporate this new style of play. Reworking the current mechanics to then down the road have plans to scrap them to then re-do them all over again just seems silly and a waste of time, meanwhile appeasing a large portion of players. I got pretty inspired by Nike’s suggestions in that I believe a lot can be done with this class, and am also working on a total redesign for future posting. I do agree that such changes need to be made first, as mentioned above, to allow for a better, easier, and smoother development cycle.
And meanwhile, after some basic skill changes and this new implementation, which are also simple to do (pet hitbox resizing, minor trait changes, etc.), should this be considered a game-changing fix, development efforts can concentrate on another class while these changes settle in and players adjust, allowing for mass groups of players to be happy while then more time can be further allocated to the ranger after other necessary adjustments are made to say, the second-place class in the CDI vote. Address these big mechanics changes first across the board, then tweak balance, because at the moment, the game is really imbalanced by the current strategy and will not improve any time in the future until these adjustments are made. Might as well get them over with earlier to at the very least make people happy with the class they play.
Would be better to just allow the transmutation stones to cross armor types rather than allow classes to wear all types of armor. Heavy armor actually has more defense than light, so everyone would just use heavy armor in the end, kind of defeating the purpose.
Pretty much anything more substantial to replace LS is a bonus. The current sorry excuse for game updates we’re getting feel so meaningless and insignificant that I just stopped bothering. I’d much rather see mechanics updates and real thought going into class changes/updates than the blather we get bi-weekly.
And not to mention how quickly they move so they do not fit well with a tight schedule.
Lol. Downloaded and saved for later :P
Power AND Condition damage in the same line on a class with built-in bleeds to a rapid-fire autoattack? o.O
I think that’ll give condi builds a little bit too much DPS.
I too tried it – and it felt so wrong. No one has enough condition removal to keep up with what that build dishes out.
And on principle, I won’t play it. Hell, D/D glassy gives people more of a chance.
Stop blaming build and start blaming perplexity runes and dire gear. Ever wondered why it wasn’t added in sPvP? because its incredibly OP. And I have no clue why it was added to PvE (adding it to wvw same time since it uses same gear) since conditions has no place there either. So only use for Dire and perplexity became wvw and its very broken there.
Exactly. Has very little to do with the build but more or less the gear and general condition damage problems.
If you die to P/W, you’re not playing well. I hate to be so blunt, but that’s just reality. That skill is so pathetically easy to dodge the damage of and it leaves the thief heavily out of initiative, probably with utilities blown, and no stealth.
I’d like to mention I’ve been extensively playing thief since beta, have built every viable build, and currently possess two of them maxed out. I would like to mention however, that I agree there are some traits and offhand pistol which could be validly stated are broken. That said, the damage is far from OP.
My D/D stab thief has 4800 attack and 112% crit chance without food when I initiate someone, running a full line of bonus damage WvW bonus skills and offensive infusions and a 25/30/0/015 build. I to this day still cannot come even close to one-shotting hambow warriors, good necros who can use shroud in time, a smart mesmer who knows to dodge, a good ele who can mist form properly/drop a good field, hp/toughness rangers, and even guards with good reflexes and aegis spamming.
This burst damage is far from 100% reliable and frankly, I find the class to only really perform well against people who simply don’t know how to deal with a thief or simply bad players. Ultimately, such builds excel at killing single target entities which are caught off guard or do not have the defenses to take that kind of damage. Consequently, that’s exactly what a thief building in such a way is, and frankly, has less ways of taking damage than every other class in the game.
And the saddest part is that our damage isn’t even the best burst in the game. Warriors, mesmers, guardians (yep), necromancers, and elementalists actually have better burst throughput.
This is a learn to play issue not a warrior being OP issue.
While I’ll definitely agree with the first part of your statement, Hammer Warrior is almost undeniably the strongest build in the game, followed by PU mesmer (in WvW).
As an avid MTG player, not only am I going to mention that LD decks are often very ineffective in the competitive scene due to their slow pace and few win conditions, but simply put denial is part of any given game.
Stealth really isn’t that overpowered. It moreso has to deal with pistol offhand. Stab damage is high, but lower than a lot of other burst skills in the game, such as eviscerate. Additionally, stab damage only ever proves to be very high when the thief builds signets, and that’s an all-in build which cannot simply “stake out” a target while stealthed, for SR is then not accessible.
Pistol offhand is pretty much the biggest issue due to the fact the stealth skill is so accessible through smoke blast field with Heartseeker’s stealth finisher. This makes stealth uptime very easy to come across for thieves running D/P. D/D, however, is an extremely fair build and has significantly lower stealth uptime when built for burst damage. It has more to do with the weapon and less to do with the mechanic.
Regarding CC, it’s fine to have some, however again, I think this is mostly a case with weapons. Simply, hammer offers too much, and other weaponsets too little. Not enough utility skills involve CC for those classes which can’t build hammer, and the durations and helplessness aspects of them are simply just too high due to further limited access to counters like stability.
I’m in massive support of redesigning damage equations for I will agree that tankier builds, and notably condi builds, simply deal too much damage as opposed to ones which invest everything in offensive. Obviously it should be possible for a tank to kill a GC, and vice versa, however offtank builds seem to get the best of both worlds in many cases. I personally know a friend of mine playing a guardian running defensive stats has more attack than my equally-geared berserker/valk thief and ranger. DPS, yes, he’s got less, however his staying power is way better, and of course, he has access to quite a bit of CC which is effectively free hits.
Anet has defined classes based off of several core abilities, Ranger’s being the pet. Anet decided to define Tyria’s rangers (at least in this installment) as pet wielding classes. Many people have expressed feeling that this forces them to play a beast-master rather than a ranger (any of interpretation of the thematic idea) and suggest permastowing to allow them to play the other roles. There are often other cries that no other class is forced to play with their class mechanic and none are punished by its existence. I have several problems with this train of thought:
First, permastowing is a band-aid solution, it ignores the problems of the pet and hides them under the rug. Also it allows a class to ignore its class mechanic,the aspect the makes each class unique. Some suggestions to remove the pet and make it an option redefines the classes identity (forcing Anet to give it a new class mechanic) this would force beastmasters into a role similar to mm necros.For the notion of being punished by our class mechanic, every class is more or less. Thieves are squishy because their mechanic promotes a more mobile game play (with a free guaranteed gap closer) and both the engi and ele lose a weapon set if they ignore their class mechanic. The engi’s weapons lack support because they get it through some kits and toolbelt skills. The only exception is the warrior, if talented the warrior can be rewarded for ignoring his class mechanic (this is a different problem for a different day). The problem with the pet is the amount we are punished. A 70:30 split will not be solved (while following Anet’s design) with permastowing. The key is for the base pet to deal less damage (still it will need to be tankier than it is now, an unspec’ed pet should still have uses). This means that the beast master line should increase the effectiveness of the pet exponentially. The 70:30 or even 60:40 split should be the goal of 100% damage beastmaster split where as a mm, skirmisher should look more like 90:10 (maybe 95:5). This also would mean that going into beast master line should greatly increase (through major traits so its either or not both) support, control, and damage. This means that a non beast master would be free to choose a cat for top dps or a support moa and see his numbers waver only a couple percent (3-5%). Where as the beastmaster specced should see much bigger dps from a cat and much better support from a moa. This would be accomplished through the base stats, inheritance of stats from ranger, and the best master line’s special stat. Since Allie has stated that she did bring this up to the dev’s (the stat inheritance), I believe if done effectively it would allow for the multiple archetypes of the rangers to exist.
I’d suggest you look into this post of mine which briefly outlines this problem many, many pages ago. Most people suggesting for perma-stow are implying that BM potential increases to counteract this, and nobody is arguing against better pet hitboxes/responsiveness. People simply want more options, and forcing that, especially when it’s one which defines styles of play, not just flavor or cool bonuses, but actual styles of play (archer/skirmisher versus beastmaster are two immensely different roles in which immensely different players perform/enjoy such roles. I want to also make it clear that suggestions regarding perma-stow are not the same as total removal of the mechanic. Both types of play styles should be encouraged but due to their immense difference must be kept separate.
This is where I began posting, and I believe about six pages back Allie seemed to clearly read another one of my posts explaining this phenomenon and mentioned that more options for archers in the game do need to be considered as the game does not fill that role:
Again, it’s not about people just getting desperate as much as it is people simply wanting to pursue alternatives in order to play the archer role. The reason why the demand is so high for permastowing is because it resolves the archer problem totally and in the best way possible while at least providing a band-aid fix for beastmasters while the Beastmastery, Nature Magic, and Wilderness Survival lines are reworked to better allow for more supportive pet-oriented builds.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Right. A pistol is a concealable, lightweight, and simply less-loud firearm also aimed at being used when skirmishing/playing well with the highly mobile thug/bandit role.
Rifle doesn’t really do much aside from the whole “stealthy sniper” thing, however Thieves are designed to also be very mobile in fights, something a large rifle is just not made to do well with in most cases historically, practically, and in many instances of fantasy.
Not to mention the longbow solves the archer problem and doesn’t detract from another medium armor rifle-wielder which both has access to stealth and is designed to not be mobile which deserves a weapon rework.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Unfortunately there’s nothing really out there to make this class viable outside of spirit bunker. Hopefully progress is made in the CDI to get things where they need to be, but it may take some time.
This is the build I use, running full berserker gear. Opening Strike + RoA + QZ + Signet of the Wild on Rapid Shot stacks might well for your pet before it engages while also stacking quite a bit of vuln and dealing solid damage for an additional few hits (make sure you proc opening strike on your end), and a well-timed Signet of the Hunt on an auto just before your bird arrives will net you a pretty nice post-combo spike damage yield.
http://gw2skills.net/editor/?vMAQFATjMqUyaFLGsw1iAY9gw+GsVgTOjDZ0LokJ0F-w
It’s attempting to overcome the failing burst damage of the class and does so with moderate success. The major problem is the cooldowns, though.
It has less to do with the class and more to do with pistol offhand. This is arguably one of the only aspects of thief where QQ is justified.
The complaints which mention permastealth, blinds, spamming, and burst damage from stab are almost exclusively tied to D/P. D/D is one of the most fair, and arguably one of the weaker builds in the game.
Got bursted by D/D? Learn to predict engages. He was stealthed at the start of the fight? He’s not building real burst and you’re exaggerating and are running a glass cannon build out on the open and were not prepared for combat despite the fact you should have been.
S/P is a pubstomp build. If you die to Pistol Whip, seriously, L2P.
P/P killed you? Lolwut?
S/D killed you? Should have probably considered the downsides to running a build dependent entirely on boons. Nice try at min-maxing.
P/D killed you? Okay, don’t spam gap closes and instead just beat them with ranged. Clear their torment stacks. Condis are already on the OP side for all classes, anyways.
There’s nothing really broken or overpowered about this class as there are massive exploits pertaining to some of its build paths.
If the skills didn’t include anything for stealth/leap finishers, I don’t think there would be any balance problems.
A longbow would fix the whole lack of the archer role thing, and frankly, the only justification behind rifle flavor-wise is the predator :P
Such a clunky and loud weapon (not to mention inaccurate if you go by black powder standards) falls more into warrior than it does thief. Actually, I think it even makes more sense on Elementalist than thief :P
Also, Azureflame > predator ^^
Sure, the ranger is designed to have a pet. That doesn’t mean it should be a constant requirement. Having so many utility skills and traits tied to the pet makes the class unique. Whether or not players wish to really explore this option for damage augmentation should be on them. Just like Warrior’s Adrenaline and Thief’s Steal mechanics, those can be built around, are always available, but are not REQUIRED. A 30% damage penalty at the cost of something players may not wish to build around is simply too strict, and honestly, is just bad design. This is especially because there are no alternatives to an archer. Longbow warrior/shortbow thief are simply inadequate archers from many perspectives and this leads into another fallacy.
A massive source of complaints revolves around the fact that there exists no viable archer role in the game, and has nothing to do with the pet dependency. Simply, the pet is a style of play and a flavor addition, just as is being a heavy warrior with a big weapon, a nimble assassin, a mage, or in this case an ARCHER. Yes, the issues with pets can be resolved by potential updating, but it doesn’t solve the inherent design flaw which forces a style of play upon players while denying them another. Pets being optional resolves both conflicts, especially if they are buffed such that beastmasters and pet users/pets in general retain their usefulness/utility while blatantly denying dedicated archer/DPS roles. The reason why pet removal has so much support is a combination of the notions that rangers in general want more viability/consistency, and players wanting to play a dedicated archer (or light/medium armor skirmisher in fewer cases).
I hope this helps explain the origins behind why so many players want the option to remove the pet. Simply, the alternative play styles need to be considered somewhere in the game, and that either means reworking thief to allow for a longbow/new weapon implementation while also reworking ranger to fix pets, or simply re-working the ranger class (which is obviously less work than both classes) to make literally everyone happy and resolve all of the current class problems.
Thanks for your dedication and I hope you take this post more seriously when trying to evaluate the credibility of the insight regarding pet removal/stowing.
All fair points. It seems a lot of people feel the same way. I have made sure, and will continue to, point out that the community wants a class that is like Ranger (archer) without pets, or even with more reliable pets.
I get the biggest issue seems to revolve around pets. I’ve also seen a couple others (utilities not being viable unless spec’d into them, burst vs sustain, traps, spirit clutter, etc.).
Awesome. Getting this point across I believe is the most important part of actually resolving the conflicts with the class. As you mentioned earlier, I think the devs saw the pet complaints regarding removal more as means of a band-aid fix to make the class simply a little more viable instead of one which actually inhibits a lot of stylistic choices while also preventing better class tweaks. With this ideology in mind, we can definitely make progress collectively to better this class, or rather, the game in general. The biggest obstacle I believe has now been overcome in that such discussion stems largely from style and not simply number-crunching and class viability discussions.
If this message is accepted and understood by the team to require a larger-scale rework, another CDI thread may be in line, such that the developers (or you posting on the behalf of the developers) can state their updated vision of the class expecting a rework, and we can discuss more of the specific changes necessary to individual traits/skills to truly make the class way more successful. As it stands, little needs major overhauls in the Power/Precision lines for this to be successful, and the real discussion would come in the form of the beastmasters’ opinions on how to make such build paths both fun to play and extremely deadly.
(Post content trimmed for character limit preservation)
You’re fairly correct in the current player perspective, but simply improving stats can only go so far. The pet, being dumb, is only going to deal damage to/actually have an effect on gameplay only when the target is just as dumb. This is a major problem for PvP/WvW, and of course it can only deal such damage when it is alive.
Now, if you make the pet’s stats too high, then it becomes indestructible/nigh unkillable. Now you can just send it to attack someone from far away and laugh as they struggle to deal with an aggressor. Even skilled players will need to consciously avoid such a monster.
And of course, that does nothing to improve gameplay but make rangers even more passive and simply, less fun.
More control is cool, but at what cost? Should a ranger be forced into controlling two players at once just to reach the same damage levels other classes have while having fewer tools to do so? That seems like a lot of skill/work for literally no gain.
As it stands, damage cannot be calculated on the assumption you survive for that full minute (forty seconds). We’re playing a game where bursting is how one wins. Not only does the sustained damage model not work, but without a pet (when it’s even dead) the ranger loses most if its good utilities and trait effectiveness. Simply put, you’re going to lose the fight unless you build bunker.
The ranger should retain its 100% damage, and the pet should get increases based upon whether or not the ranger delves into beastmastery. A ranger trying to maximize “potential raw damage throughput as represented by a percentage opposed to the norm” (AKA trying to build over 100% normal damage) will put 30 in Marksmanship and 30 in BM. Problem is, power isn’t really effective without precision, so compared to a power/precision ranger, the net damage equivalent will remain the same. Bottom line is that the pet just becomes more potent/durable and thus his utilities more reliable.
Of course, this requires BM trait reworks/buffs to make it worthwhile. That’s the big kerfuffle. There’s no way to make a pet actually functional without overhauling the BM/Nature Magic/Survival lines to really increase pet and ranger durability and pet damage to compensate. Thus, at that point, why not just implement aspects or make the pet totally optional if the ranger decides to build solo-style and the pet just becomes a visual liability/extra target for bounce effects/idle animations which may give away player position/add extra size to the player object?
The sad reality is that there’s no real way to fix the class without making the pet optional and just really delving into the latter 3 trait lines to make the concept of the beastmaster truly viable via extensive buffs/grandmaster trait synergy.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
I wanted to stop by and say thanks for the feedback. We do feel that the celestial stat set will be hit the hardest with the upcoming critical damage changes, so we are looking at possibly boosting the overall stats by a small amount.
Also the celestial stat set in PvP is using a much lower stat multipliers than the PvE versions so we will be looking at changing this as well. Nothing is set in stone, but I wanted to let guys know this is something we are discussing.
PLEASE examine this thread as well. I go as far to demonstrate that this change does exactly the opposite of what it’s intended to do and ultimately hurts everyone else a lot harder than intended.
I stand fairly neutral on this entire subject but would like to point out the critical suggestion that this option, if any, should only be accessible out of combat.
Such a change should not make the game Menu-Navigation-Speed Wars 2.
Frankly I’d prefer it if ANet doesn’t fix the ranger in a way where they deal halfway-decent ranged DPS with a longbow, but that’s pretty unlikely.
Longbow and rifle both make sense and don’t make sense. Longbow is less flavorful but much more practical for a thief/assassin, whereas a rifle is certainly more flavorful but is indeed not mobile, quite clunky and heavy, difficult/slow to shoot, and not at all really a “good match” for the thief. I’d much rather see rifle be reworked for engi so that the weapon isn’t just trash-tier and can perform the sniper role well.
At the very least, it gives players the option to be ranged DPS/archer, something which the ranger is incapable of and the warrior is just nothing like seeing as it’s a heavy that uses a bow to shoot exploding fireballs (who seriously came up with that idea?).
I quite like my stealth rework proposal which really only hurts builds which exploit it.
A new timer is implemented which is a pre-cast of the revealed debuff. It has a non-stacking duration which cannot be overridden which is equal to the first-used stealth skill by the character.
The revealed debuff goes into effect after your first stealth skill duration ends or you leave stealth, and removes all active stealth effects from the player. This means stealth-stacking and chain stealth are no longer possible. As compensation, baseline stealth skill durations are increased slightly (like 20%) to allow for more accessible engaging/disengaging on one skill.
This prevents offhand pistol permastealth/blind exploitation by thieves and PU mesmer permastealth by forcing both classes into being revealed after each instance of stealth.
Sure, the ranger is designed to have a pet. That doesn’t mean it should be a constant requirement. Having so many utility skills and traits tied to the pet makes the class unique. Whether or not players wish to really explore this option for damage augmentation should be on them. Just like Warrior’s Adrenaline and Thief’s Steal mechanics, those can be built around, are always available, but are not REQUIRED. A 30% damage penalty at the cost of something players may not wish to build around is simply too strict, and honestly, is just bad design. This is especially because there are no alternatives to an archer. Longbow warrior/shortbow thief are simply inadequate archers from many perspectives and this leads into another fallacy.
A massive source of complaints revolves around the fact that there exists no viable archer role in the game, and has nothing to do with the pet dependency. Simply, the pet is a style of play and a flavor addition, just as is being a heavy warrior with a big weapon, a nimble assassin, a mage, or in this case an ARCHER. Yes, the issues with pets can be resolved by potential updating, but it doesn’t solve the inherent design flaw which forces a style of play upon players while denying them another. Pets being optional resolves both conflicts, especially if they are buffed such that beastmasters and pet users/pets in general retain their usefulness/utility while blatantly denying dedicated archer/DPS roles. The reason why pet removal has so much support is a combination of the notions that rangers in general want more viability/consistency, and players wanting to play a dedicated archer (or light/medium armor skirmisher in fewer cases).
I hope this helps explain the origins behind why so many players want the option to remove the pet. Simply, the alternative play styles need to be considered somewhere in the game, and that either means reworking thief to allow for a longbow/new weapon implementation while also reworking ranger to fix pets, or simply re-working the ranger class (which is obviously less work than both classes) to make literally everyone happy and resolve all of the current class problems.
Thanks for your dedication and I hope you take this post more seriously when trying to evaluate the credibility of the insight regarding pet removal/stowing.
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.
The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?
The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.
Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?
What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.
I’m going to have to disagree with a lot of what what said here, unfortunately. I’m not trying to be be rude here, but I’m going to simply be blunt.
First and foremost, the ranger is currently in a position where the class is disputed due to its awkward foundation. Frankly, anything but a rework or massive overhauls isn’t going to actually resolve these problems long-term. Low-hanging fruit fixes are nice, but the bottom line is that GW2 has been released for over a year and a half and the developers have done nothing except address low-hanging fruit fixes. Many MMO’s do not even make it this far into the industry simply due to the lack of publicity/development funding. This is a triple-A game with tons of awards. Those who made this game are skilled employees and should be putting forth their effort to fix the MAJOR problems plaguing the game, such as the ranger dynamic, rather than still insisting on low-hanging-fruit fixes. Polish is something you do after you’ve made everyone happy with core systems. A majority of players are unsatisfied with the core systems in place. These need re-designs, which albeit require a lot of initial work, require less maintenance in the long run. Making the move from sterling silver silverware to stainless steel might cost you an investment, but ultimately you’re going to save a ton of time and money down the road when not needing to buff it and buy chemicals for treatment. This is what the CDI should be about and why the demand for fixing ranger is so immense. Regarding your house example, the problems don’t lay on the scale of a broken 2×4. Currently your 2×4 is breaking not from poor attachment methods but because your entire house is perched upon it. Do you just keep placing new 2×4′s until you find the perfect near-indestructible plank due to its grain/wood type just to make the house stay still, or do you address your design flaws and make the smarter decision to go back to the drawing board so that further additions are guaranteed to be successful?
(My post is too long and will be continued immediately).
(edited by DeceiverX.8361)
Hey all,
Sorry I haven’t had time to comment in here. I went through the past 10 or so pages and tried to grab some of the issues that have come up and address them. The balance team has been keeping up with the thread, but they haven’t had as much time lately to comment on specific ideas.
Re: “Shot down” ideas
- The only thing we are not open to is a real permastow option that would essentially take away the pet completely (ie an option that said always stow).
- We kicked around the idea of giving the ranger an “aspect of _______” which we moved to a new thread because it is elaborate and should be a single topic in itself. The idea is that it would give the pet more utility with swapping/stowing, but it wouldn’t retire the pet completely.
- We want to fix issues with the pet AI and general usability before we consider doing something to this extent.
- We acknowledged that Pet AI does need help, but we did not say we would not be doing this. You will see some changes in the coming feature patch that should help with the pet’s usability.
Re: Lack of participation
- I apologize that I had been absent from this thread for a few days. I had to produce Ready Up last week and a number of other things came up that took priority (including getting a virus that meant I left early for the week). Also, I don’t work on the weekends.
- Just because we’re not responding doesn’t mean we’re not reading.
- Sometimes we just don’t get the time to respond, but we’ll try to get better about this.
Re: Fear that we will only work on pets
- Don’t stress about this. We wanted to look at the class as a whole with you. We didn’t make this thread specifically to get feedback on the pets. It just happens to be one of (if not the biggest) the top issues with Ranger right now.
I didn’t read all the responses after this, so this might have been said by someone else, but why is a permanent stow option out of the question. I understand that the ranger is the pet class option in GW2, but they were also the pet class option in GW1, but didn’t require you to take a pet. It seems self limiting to impose that restriction (or rather force that aspect) on yourself in GW2.
Probably, in no small part, because it turns the Ranger into 2 different classes entirely. That means they have to balance them differently and would probably have to do a big overhaul of traits/weapons to make up for the damage/utility lost when we opt out of the pet.
While I’d opt out if it worked well, I can see this being a major hurdle that they don’t want to tackle.
Precisely why they should just add on longbow to thief (as it already has a below-average number of weapon combinations) and let the working, modular traitlines of the single-target DPS class work its wonders on those looking for conventional archers, seeing as they’re totally unwilling to fix the ranger.
I have no beef in re-rolling another character if they’re willing to actually make single-target DPS archer a valid role.
I would still like to see anet buff pets to the point that was near the damage output in GW1 with 16 beatmastery when you put 30 points in the current rendition of the beastmastery trait line… Also if we could get a list of ideas they had taken from the thread so we knew were to focus the rest of the week it would be grand.
The people screaming to remove pets still need a slap in the back of the head cause they are kittening off people who are trying to post ideas on how to fix the pet mechanics or possible ways to fix pet mechanics.
It’s not so much that people want the option to get rid of the pet to be more viable as it is people just wanting to not have a pet period and play an archer. Warrior/Thief is simply not a substitute. The fact is there exists no accommodation for a given style of play, and a lot of people just get upset about it. I’ve mained ranged DPS in every game I’ve played since Runescape Classic and attempted to in GW2. Simply, the game just has no option for something that feels like it available. Bow warrior and shortbow condi thief are good builds, but they’re far from the archer role.
Frankly, the blatant dismissal of the option to remove pets is really dejecting, as I find people get really defensive about the option to stow them for damage augmentation. When you consider just how much utility the pet provides, and how doing so allows for further expansion for exclusively-beastmaster builds, the fix seems very appropriate and comes at quite the cost. People simply asking for the same potency without the pet/gaining all utility without it are of course just in the wrong, though.
There are just a lot of people, myself included, who fail to have any connection with the classes in the game, notably just because of the dependency on pets which forces ranger from being a proper ranged/archer DPS class, and the lack of options to pursue that is just frustrating and really detrimental to the whole experience.
I am not understanding how the warrior (or thief for that matter) while wielding a bow not an archer to you. Is it the traits they have (or lack) concerning the bow? Just kind of confused about the thoughts on this.
If it is the lower damage potential of ranged combat then that isn’t so solely a problem with ranger, but with the entire PvE side of the game.
Aside from them wielding a bow, there’s almost nothing there which pertains to the archer role, sadly.
Longbow Warrior is honestly just an elementalist. The only attacks which actually shoot arrows and not fireballs are 1 and 2, which are awful, not to mention the inherent lack of mobility you have, clunky kit, slow attack animations, heavy armor/poor flavor/immersion, and overall inadequacies of maining a bow present.
Thief upholds almost all of the flavor, however the shortbow also lacks an archer element. Skills 2, 3, 4, and 5 do not utilize arrows, and 1 is an AOE with mediocre damage coefficients. You improvise a bomb on an arrow to travel slowly and deal and explosion, teleport around, and dodge. While #3 is fine as a dodge, nothing else in the kit (and none of the utilities) actually make the class feel like an archer. That’s also not to mention the reduced range on thief shortbow and forced AOE attacks which can really ruin the purpose of using ranged combat strategies at all.
Op, you made some good points. But to be fair, you have to look and see how many folks posted over and over.
For example, early on in that CDI one particular poster spam commented over and over again with what amounted to no more than, “pets sux, pets sux, we need more dps, we need more dps”. He would make ridiculous assertions about the pet is 100% useless, it hurts more than it helps, it dies from a breeze ect … (yes pets need work, but obviously exaggerated negative claims repeated endlessly are not constructive suggestions, but are no more than a forum temper-tantrum). Then somewhere inside his endless tantrums he actually made a semi-plausible suggestion, and Allie made the mistake of actually quoting him. Oh God, then he really never shut up … it became impossible to post any pet suggestion that was not “perma-stow, and give me 30% more dps” without his trolling you that your suggestion was garbage, and the ONLY solution to Ranger is a no-pet option with lots and lots of MORE DPS, MORE DPS.
It was obvious by his posts that what this player wanted was an ultra high-damage long ranged sniper style WvW toon, and everyone else be kitten ed. And there were a few others like this as well, jumping in with exaggerated claims of Ranger being “completely useless”, “totally 100% broken” and so forth. As a result, a CDI created to help a class profession that is in fact in need of some Dev attention and mechanics tweaks, ends up flooded with dooms-day melodramatic nonsense.
So don’t let the 39 pages of “suggestions” fool ya, because a good half of that was spam posting by a small group of people with a singular agenda.
Don’t get me wrong, and being someone who made posts regarding the fact I wished to be able to play heavy ranged DPS, there were many other suggestions, such as even the re-tooled BM options to help improve the pet state in order to appease both crowds. Frankly, the ranger community is really, really divided on the issue, and believe me, there are quite a few players who don’t frequent the forums and feel the same way. Try dropping the conversation in map chat somewhere and see what you find ^^. Either way, simply ignoring a large chunk of players is just poor practice, especially when the whole point is to try and work with said feedback.
@Player mentioning statistics/my data being invalid:
While you’re going to have people more likely complaining about a given class in a CDI than those supporting it, it’s important to keep in mind that the whole purpose of the CDI and a given rework is to improve standards of play for those who have reason to complain. You’re not going to really find people who are pleased with the ranger class as it stands in the CDI. Be it either through sheer naivety of late-game standards or just total bliss with how they feel the class should be, Rangers won the rework by a landslide for a reason, so obviously you’re going to have a lot of people upset.
Forum populations are of course lower than the in-game player base, so your forum population is only representative of say, 15% of the population (or whatever figure you make up). That does’t mean the other 85% feels differently, though. Often times you’ll see direct correlations between the views of those on the boards with those in-game. I think you’re getting confused with senseless QQ by inexperienced players regarding game balance and people simply expressing their lack of interest/disapproval of core mechanics which can be adjusted to remain balanced but appeal to more people conceptually. Balance discussion requires professional analysis, a large sample size, and a lot of number crunching and experience, whereas simply discussing an opinion about how a class plays and why or why not that should be changed are totally subjective and don’t require such immense investments. Again, take a look in map chat/guild members/experienced ranger or ex-ranger players and ask for their opinions in-game. They’re likely going to pick a side (my discussions have demonstrated more people in-game still favor the non-pet archer), and will likely have similar reasoning behind some of the good stuff you saw in the CDI.
So if input is given, and then down the road more posts on the same subject are made, albeit more in-depth and more explanatory, does that not verify the previous claims?
The bottom line is that ANet asked for feedback, and it was given to them. It still makes little sense that they wouldn’t even try to work with such feedback for the sole reason of “because we said so.”
HS spam is really avoidable, especially so as an ele.
Drop a daze field, mist form, any immob, chill, cripple, or really anything which inhibits movement speed will cut down on HS range. Weakness makes the skillspam next to worthless especially when dropped in tandom with other skills like chill/cripple.
HS spam is a pubstomp ability. It pretty much destroys anyone who doesn’t learn how to beat it, but it’s totally worthless against foes who do. Arguably HS D/P is only potent because of the blind field and not so much the actual damage throughput.
While I’m not stating the skill is fine as it is (as someone who has/mains two level 80 thieves), it’s really preventable and I don’t think backtalk is going to get you anywhere, OP.
Reality is that you just need some more practice or are playing the wrong class if you expect to be able to tank damage upfront, especially with only 2500 toughness.
I’m just trying to grasp the purpose of why these exist.
ArenaNet creates a poll for which class they want to perform a major rework on, Rangers win by a landslide.
The thread gets created and is totally dominated by pet reworks/stow pet options, beastmastery buffs with the pet removal option available, and AI update requests – everything which has been asked for for a very long time which was nicely compiled and discussed as intended, with plenty of proper reasoning provided.
And the developers formally dismiss all requests as not aligning with their vision of what the class should be like.
If there is overwhelming support for certain changes, why are these ignored when feedback was asked for to begin with? Why waste everyone’s time if the community’s opinions do not matter regardless of their magnitude and merit?
Anyone feel like possibly explaining this absurd behavior?
@OP:
I wouldn’t recommend 30 precision on a power/crit build, honestly. The XI and XII skills are pretty bad there and I don’t believe they are offset by the bonus to precision and critical damage. Putting 25 there is nice, though.
@Fluff:
I think it speaks volumes about what so many rangers want – the option to simply not have the pet and keep the freshness of the skill kits, etc. Consequently, spirit bunker and condi builds are just strictly better than pet variants in all forms of PvP/WvW, so there’s little purpose in pet investment due to the real lack of good pets which interact with conditions or spirit bunker builds. Through a combination of style and simple system inadequacy (AI, control scheme, hit reliability, etc.), the pet’s simply just not something people even want to try and work with in a more competitive environment.
I would still like to see anet buff pets to the point that was near the damage output in GW1 with 16 beatmastery when you put 30 points in the current rendition of the beastmastery trait line… Also if we could get a list of ideas they had taken from the thread so we knew were to focus the rest of the week it would be grand.
The people screaming to remove pets still need a slap in the back of the head cause they are kittening off people who are trying to post ideas on how to fix the pet mechanics or possible ways to fix pet mechanics.
It’s not so much that people want the option to get rid of the pet to be more viable as it is people just wanting to not have a pet period and play an archer. Warrior/Thief is simply not a substitute. The fact is there exists no accommodation for a given style of play, and a lot of people just get upset about it. I’ve mained ranged DPS in every game I’ve played since Runescape Classic and attempted to in GW2. Simply, the game just has no option for something that feels like it available. Bow warrior and shortbow condi thief are good builds, but they’re far from the archer role.
Frankly, the blatant dismissal of the option to remove pets is really dejecting, as I find people get really defensive about the option to stow them for damage augmentation. When you consider just how much utility the pet provides, and how doing so allows for further expansion for exclusively-beastmaster builds, the fix seems very appropriate and comes at quite the cost. People simply asking for the same potency without the pet/gaining all utility without it are of course just in the wrong, though.
There are just a lot of people, myself included, who fail to have any connection with the classes in the game, notably just because of the dependency on pets which forces ranger from being a proper ranged/archer DPS class, and the lack of options to pursue that is just frustrating and really detrimental to the whole experience.
DR’s are level-based. There is no point of stat acquisition when you’ll start getting less per stat if you keep your level constant.
That’s the point, Black. People literally just want better/more reliable damage throughput and could care less about the utility. I’d even go as far to say that I’d rather have better 1-5 and have my utilities – including even my heal – locked up and unusable (as long as I retained the mobility bonus).
But there’s not much anyone can do now except find a different class or another game. Rangers clearly are not meant to be a class with much diversity.
The fact I can name my raven Draven The Raven.
That I can use a longbow with 25% mobility and shoot arrows instead of fireballs.
That’s everything. Otherwise I hate the class/forced pet dynamic, lack of damage, you get the picture.
I do believe it does, seeing as such boosts would need to be negligible in order to prevent the ranger from just being blatantly OP.
Welp it’s now confirmed that permanent pet stowing is NOT going to happen.
Gooooooodbye ranger!
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