They should’ve been able to use rifles, yes. Rifles don’t fit the “nature” theme? Tell any outdoorsman that and watch them laugh. Rangers are hunters, and hunters have used longbarrel guns for as long as they’ve existed. It’s stupid that rangers can’t. I’ve thought so since the beginning. Doesn’t matter now, of course.
Tell that outdoorsman that i have a bow and arrow that has infinite arrows, fires at a longer range than a rifle, does about the same damage as his rifle, with the same accuracy, and can literally rain down arrows over a wide area. I think he will change his mind.
Are you trying to compare real life to fiction?
Also, nothing in GW lore says rangers are strictly hunters. In fact, in guild wars 2, the norn opening pretty much means that every single class can be a hunter. Does that mean every single class should be able to use a rifle?
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I’m not sure why people feel the need to debate the logic of X class having X weapon. We use a spear GUN don’t we? The rifles in this game are little more then muskets, simple mechanical parts, a tube of metal to project shot. That’s the same level of mechanical parts we would find in our spear gun, and our spike trap, though i suppose we could argue that the traps are magical, but then i could argue that my gun is actually just a log that shoots because i think it should. Woo magic..
There is no logical reason we don’t have access to Rifles or hammers, or maces, crossbows or offhand swords. Its just not in the game yet, and i fully expect the game to expand outwards with new weapons for each class, rather then upwards into higher levels.
So please stop trying to use logic, we are not all born with the ability and there is no need to strain yourself trying to understand simple things. Id avoid common sense, too, that’s a tough one for some i hear.
All right then. Tell me this, why should we have a gun? Why add a pointless new weapon that will make balancing much harder?
Of course there’s a logical reason. Classes get a set amount of weapons that each do a specific task to help that class.. The devs pick a weapon that will match the classes theme and put the weapon on it. Needlessly adding a new weapon just because “i think it’s cool” is a stupid idea and will make balance harder.
Do you think devs will add new weapons to completely mess up the balance of a class, or just add a new class for expansions that will be much easier to balance?
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I didn’t know bows were so natural. Is there some mystical bow tree were they all grow from like fruit? Bows are tech just like guns are tech. Bows are made out of wood and metal, just like rifles. I don’t see the difference.
Are we going to start an argument about the definition of what’s natural and what’s technology? Because that argument will never get anywhere.
I’m just going off the idea that bows are far more simpler than guns. Easier to make from its natural parts without any manufacturing.
Is there a different one? All I see is they prefer long ranged attack, and their weapon of CHOICE is a bow. so with this lore logic, a rifle would make more sense than a greatsword, axe. right?
Focus on the nature part. Rangers have a theme of being very natural and druidic.
Bows, swords, axes, torches, and horns all fall into being simple natural weapons.
Rifles are technology, and don’t fit into the rangers theme.
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uuh what?
I’m using the Ranger from guild wars lore. The half druid, half warrior that can tame pets.
this ranger
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Ranger
and this ranger
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/the-game/professions/ranger/
But it’s not a hunter. It’s a Ranger. There’s nothing about hunting in ranger lore.
Ranger -
1) a soldier specially trained in the techniques of guerrilla warfare, especially in jungle terrain
2) someone who ranges.
range (verb)
to pass over or through (an area or region) in all directions, as in exploring or searching.
Also, ranger is supposed to be a nature type. A rifle, which is a machine, doesn’t fit into the classes theme.
This forum seems to be divided on whether pets should be as reliant on pets as they are now, so i’m going to chip in here.
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Before i start though, i want to make a preemptive counter to anyone thinking “if you don’t like pets, play another class”. There are more reasons to play ranger than just pets. The whole class is stylistically awesome, with it’s evade heavy acrobatic movements. Some people like nature magic. Some people love the idea of playing a ranger (a soldier specially trained in the techniques of guerrilla warfare, especially in jungle terrain – dictionary.com). Other people want to be Legolas. Not all of these people want pets.
Also, hitboxes vs hitscan. A hitbox is a programming tool used for showing when an attack actually hits. For example, you get hit with a warriors GS autoattack. The attack hitbox of the greatsword makes contact with your characters hitbox, and the game knows that you’ve been hit. Often used in action games and very important in fighting games. Hitscan just means that damage is calculated instantly. Pick a target, press the button, and the game instantly does the skills effects on a target. Most classic MMO’s use this for single target skills. Call of duty uses this too.
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Pets. They’re AI. AI is inherently unreliable. The necromancer’s summoner class has shown this, and so have the rangers turrets. The only reason Mesmers aren’t horrible is because their AI is incredibly simple and is designed around the fact that they will die quickly.
I want to bring WoW into this, specifically the hunter. WoW is a different type of game. It’s a classic MMO where auto attacking someone with your sword hits only them, hitboxes aren’t incorporated into basic attacks, and there is no way to avoid attacks manually. The pets in that game work great. Why? Because the base game is such that an AI pet isn’t much of a problem. Your cat running up to the enemy and attacking isn’t mechanically different from a warrior running up to the enemy and doing his damage rotation. Pets don’t miss because their attacks aren’t about hitboxes. If you’re in range when the animation starts, the attack hits.
GW2 isn’t like that. This game takes in a lot of action elements. Attacks have defined hitboxes and your survivability is in your hands, not in the hands of the RNG. Here a warrior can’t run up to an enemy and just start auto attacking. If you don’t dodge and if you don’t keep out of heavy enemy AOE, you die. A warrior wielding a greatsword can hit multiple targets in an autoattack, and every single class has some way of raining hell down on an area instead of a single target. Our pets are concepts from WoW jammed into a game where they don’t belong.
Also, as a fun fact, in WoW hunters are less reliant on their pets. They can take skills that reduce their pets contribution to as low as 10% or as high as 50%. Basically, we are stuck with the WoW beastmasters pet system.
Why are we so reliant on pets? They’re unreliable because of flaws with this games AI. They die quickly, they aren’t good at hitting things, and unless they do massive damage by themselves to make up for all the attacks they’ll miss and from all the downtime when they die from AOE, they will be a net loss in DPS. If they get that massive damage we’ll be OP against slow classes or in 1v1 situations. Giving them large HP and letting them always hit their targets means they turn into nothing. Our class mechanic becomes an annoying pointless extra button press between us attacking the enemy, and them taking full damage.
Anet said they want to make GW2 an esport, but what kind of esport has characters that relies so much on AI? They take the skill out of the players hands and give it to a computer.
My suggestion?
1) make pets only 10% of our damage, but give them far more CC options. Give them more HP, the ability to attack while moving, and give us access to multiple skills like stuns, blinds, immobilizes, etc from them. This way the pet isn’t an unreliable part of your damage, it’s a little CC/support that you have a lot of control over.
and with that in effect
2) Let us stow pets. When we stow pets, we lose all of their CC except one skill, and we get a stat buff depending on which pet we stow. This gives us more reliability at the cost of less pet skills.
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So the only viable ranger build is a sub-par bunker that drags around a paper tiger?
I know exactly what you mean OP.
Everyone! put on your hats and leather coats. Arm your chihuahuas, train your budgerigars, unleash your goldfish.
Today we march on
checks google
10020 Main St # 164, Bellevue, Washington 98004
CHAARGE!
Why not just sue the third part sites that allow botting in Guild Wars 2. How hard is that. After all, they have the money to afford it.
Or you know buff some of the other shortbow skill to balance it out. Or do that thing they do where they only decrease damage in one part of the game and not the other.
Sick em is bad.
Guardian hammers are unkillable.
Ravens you just have to learn to control well, you don’t just leave them on targets.It is a tougher spec, all given, so yeah it won’t have near the ‘excellent’ factor that things like 100-blade warriors do or instagib thieves.
(since you don’t have to play as well to play them well)
Yeah but it’s the only utility skill i have that’s decent other than QZ and lightning reflexes. I’m not condition spec so traps aren’t great and the extra pet damage is nice
Guardian hammers are unkillable? Man that’s going to be annoying if it ever catches on in the meta.
How am i supposed to control ravens? Pull them back? I’m using a GS, which means i’m in melee range. The pets don’t respond well enough to dodge out of large AOE with me. Don’t forget, AOE isn’t just an ele dropping a giant fiery rock. A lot of melee weapons have AOE on their attacks that hit pets for full damage. Even if i dodge the pet will still take damage. I have with me a slow attack speed glass cannon thief that doesn’t evade at all.
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I just played around with the GS build
The damage for the GS itself is still pretty bad. Surviveability is pretty meh too. Not better than kiting with SB. You have to rely a lot on pet damage, and i did. My raven did great damage. Unfortunately he almost never hit and died almost instantly. I tried to sick him on a guardians wisdom hammer, but the hammer was still around swinging away with no problem after a while. I had to switch to my inferior damage wolf all the time.
I tried to make a little burst with the 5 skill and the ravens f2, combined with “sick em”, but it almost never worked. The cast time on 5 is too long for it to be reliable, the burst damage is not that good, and the raven is dead most of the time anyway.
The changes to 4 are better, but it’s still not a very good skill. The knockback takes too long to pull off, and throw still roots you.
And all of this was in 5v5. The pet raven dies from even a little AOE. He couldn’t handle a guardian putting down a sigil and swinging his sword.
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until there is match making and separation of pugs/premades in tournies im stickign to pve. have fun.
They added 5v5 mode to sPVP so there’s that.
Embolism.8106
All Phantasms except Berserker (and maybe Disenchanter) were always negated by Blind and Invulnerability. It amuses me people cite this as a HUGE NERF when it has in fact been the case for most Phantasms already.No….you could still summon the illusion…the illusion’s attacks were interrupted, yes, but not the actual generation of the illusion. I think they should be treated like pets and not like attacks. You can’t block necros, rangers, and theives from generating their pets why are mesmers blocked from doing so?
1) Thief pets have large cooldowns, low durations, and are easy to kill
2) Same with necro pets, except for the added fact that necro pets have godawful AI.
3) Rangers keep their pets out constantly and they rely on these pets for 45% of their damage. They don’t teleport to their targets, instead they have to chase them down and hope they stand still (ranger pets can’t hit moving targets).
Mesmers had these nerfs coming.
That’s really bad that for thieves their weapon skills are all “utility skills”
Every other class does the bulk of their damage via their weapon skills.
We do the bulk of it through auto attack.
Really? You mean to say you have it worse than rangers, who’s only viable weapon is pretty much the shortbow autoattack?
It’s an utility skill. It’s made to cripple. Before, thieves could pull off ridiculous damage AND cripple up to 3 enemies constantly with a single skill. Do you know what other class can do that? Mesmer, if he manages to pull out 3 berserkers and keep them alive, and even then not nearly as well.
Every other class has a fairly large cooldown on their cripple and the damage isn’t anything amazing.
Get used to this feeling. It’s the feeling of having a skill in your weapons that doesn’t do great damage. Every other class has skills like this. You don’t get a spammable skill that does massive damage and cripples.
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Never fear the trap nerf was a fair trade for our underwater might the dev gods granted us in return. After all no one needs flame traps where we’re going.
I figure we rangers will own the seas and will harvest much seafood. Which in turn will enable us as a profession to become economically superior by opening a seafood fast food chain in every city! Soon gems will line our harpoon guns and spears! “Quaggan Cuisine” it’ll be included in the next content patch!
I can see it now. A new ranger skill
“kittenload of animals”
Release the hundreds of feral and rabid animals you hired some poor people to collect with your obscene wealth.
Cooldown depends on how many quaggan burgers were sold in the last quarter.
A few reasons
The greatsword buff isn’t much. The damage is still really bad and i can’t see it outdamaging shortbow autoattack. The buffs to the harpoon gun are useless for PVP unless you only play capricorn and just hang around in the ruins. Even then the thief shadow assault skill hasn’t been fixed so that’s useless. The spirits still die instantly, and they still have an internal cooldown.
And now, worst of all, traps are bugged. CD’s for them are stuck at 30 seconds and don’t get decreased by 20% from the trait. THis means that shouts suck, signets suck, and now traps suck.
On the ranger side of things, this was very dissapointing.
We got a buff for our speargun which is the most useful weapon in the game, our greatsword got a slight damage boost but is still the most kitten weapon in our arsenal, and now our traps are bugged making the only viable ranger build useless.
Oh goody! Our only good utility skills got nerfed!
Well at least all our utility skills are ‘balanced’ now… they all suck equally! Hooray!
No. Survival skills are still useable.
Next patch, QZ now gives 4s swiftness instead of quickness, muddy terrain gives all enemies might, and lightning reflexes now stuns you as you go into a fetal position and cry pathetically while your pet runs around aimlessly in circles.
Flame Trap was mysteriously ninja nerfed in the Nov 15th patch. The tooltip shows a 15 second cooldown, or 12 second cooldown if using the Trap Potency trait, but in reality the cooldown has increased to 24 or 25 seconds. That said, the Trap Potency trait doesn’t seem to be affecting this newly increased cooldown either. Bug or intended feature?
Wow you’re right. Flame trap is now 30 seconds CD untraited. Did they decide that trap condition rangers were so OP we absolutely needed a nerf?
Also, spike trap is now 30 seconds CD when the tooltip says 25.
Snake trap is 30 seconds too, when it says 20.
At least frost trap is consistently 30 seconds.
The 20% CD reduction doesn’t work on them too.
kitten? I’m going to pretend that this patch is all one big fever dream.
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At least greatsword got a decent boost. A short CD block that stops ranged attacks entirely and a 40% damage boost to maul is good.
On the other hand traits still blow chunks, and pets probably don’t work. dissapointed.
I’m going to have to disagree with you here.
This game is not meant to be this fast paced. This isn’t counter strike where the powerful one hit kills take pure skill to use and the instant death is justified by how easy it is to avoid being hit.
This is a half action game. Everyone gets 2 dodges and that’s it. From then on, unless you use a high cooldown move on a defensive weapon, you’re getting hit. If combat happens too fast, it’s no longer a game about skill. It’s more about who sees who first.
I like to play action MMO’s and they don’t have combat as fast as GW2. Even the strongest class needs a decently long combo to take the enemy out, and in most games you have ways of getting out of combos. Modern fighting games, like street fighter 4 for example, add diminishing returns so a fight isn’t decided by who can set their combo up first.
Fast combat isn’t fun unless you’re playing a FPS.
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1) Honestly the only thing “new” in this game are the “dynamic” quests and having them non-instanced. Clever little implementation. Non-instanced environment however, are features that should be standard in 2012, I am not impressed at all. Other than that, GW2 smells like every other game on the market.
GW1 til this date has the most revolutionary/in depth skill/spell system in my opinion. It’s a fun game, GW2’s auto-pilot attacking is not.
2) “Guild Wars” is just lore? Are you kidding me? Is this a loltroll? You’re saying Anet totally dropped the core bread and butter of what they’re known for only to release a “F2P PvE WoW”? I’m sick and tired of hearing “F2P” used as some excuse/rationale, you honestly can’t even pay me to play this boring game.
I played GW1 6+ years since DAY 1, it was F2P and NEVER felt like I should “leave and come back months later”. Anet dropped the ball here, it’s plain and clear for everyone to see.
1) Mechanics wise its different. It’s not a classic MMO battle system anymore, it’s now a half action game. Things like dodging and actual hit detection are in the game. There’s also the removal of healers and the many mechanics that are in the game because of that. Skills are now based more on weapons than stat building too. These changes are major when properly balancing a game.
2)
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/The_Guild_Wars
So yeah. The title isn’t about your guild fighting some other guys guild. It’s about the different factions duking it out in the first game.
I agree that Anet dropped the ball for PVP, but they still have plenty of time to pick it up and keep running. The idea is that if you don’t like the game now, but you think it can get better, there’s no harm in waiting.
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people say it took GW1 years for these other PVP game types to come out…buuuttt…this is GW2…why would we have to wait forever again for new PVP game types that they (the ANet PVP Team) should already be experienced with and should not have a hard time making in GW2 since they have years of experience with GW1.
Just an observation.
it’s because GW1 and GW2 are only similar in setting. This is a whole new game with lots of new things to it that a lot of MMOs have never tried before. I understand if they’re a little weary and taking it slowly.
Look at class balance now. Imagine how bad it would be across multiple game modes.
Also to address the OP. I’m pretty sure it’s called guild wars for lore reasons, not because player guilds can fight each other.
…I’m a tPvPer, an ele at 100% and I’ve got simply one thing to say : “stop whining and l2p”
I’ve seen countless videos of people getting owned by thieves and in every instance all I see are clueless players which simply try to stay there and tank dmg, many people got no concept of active dodging at all.
My best defense tactic is: DODGE, with that I can live way longer than people who rely on “Lol mist form” and similar skills.
When a battle start, you may want to check the amount of thieves present in the enemy team, their style and how long you spend trying to kill somebody including the resources used
….if you see a fight is taking too long, realize that a thief is on his way to backstab you, so have your defenses ready
…..dmg is increased while the thief is behind you, so if he goes stealth where do you think he’ll try to go?…exactly
…stop fighting inside caltrips..pls just stop it
…just go and have fun, if you get killed, chances are you’ve been outclassed.
…if you get constantly killed by the same tactic over and over again, well that’s your problem stop complaining.
First of all having one class that’s much harder to beat than others isn’t a good thing. It means people who are new to the game will be overly intimidated and most people will play thief because they want to easily faceroll everybody.
Second, i can dodge. I dodge thieves all the time. Of course if i run out of stamina they usually have enough initiative to do large damage, especially if i’m in a large battle and a thief tries to surprise me with heartseeker spam when i’m at 50% HP. Two dodges isn’t enough to avoid a constant barrage of 4k damage.
Third, if any decent thief thinks that he can’t win against me, he will just run away. Missed backstab? C&D the enemy (or use some other stealth skill) , switch to shortbow, and teleport way. Low HP? run away. another enemy comes? Run away.
This isn’t street fighter. You can’t win by pure skill. This game is based more on stats, luck, and class balance than it is on skill. Just because you get a dodge with a high cooldown doesn’t mean balance doesn’t matter anymore.
100000% this. I get my kicks from bringing a teammate on the brink of death back to full life, not seeing how many people I can get to ragequit by combo chaining an instakill nuke. If that’s not how you’re wired then that’s fine, there’s plenty of killing for you to do, but don’t shaft those of us who want to love this game but just can’t find a niche they truly enjoy, and for the love of God don’t claim that you’ve invented something wholly new and epic when you simply nerfed an entire category of class into non-existence.
Problem is though that you can’t just add healers without affecting the game in any way. If you put a healer in, people will want healers, but most people don’t want to be healers. That means that a lot of people will be forced into healing. If you get your kicks from healing, fine. Go play a game where healers are incorporated into it. This game wasn’t made with them in mind. Just adding healers now would make balancing even more of a disaster than it already is.
To fix the problem of burst and bunker, the solution is to nerf burst, buff sustained damage, and nerf some of the defensive skills.
Oh boy.
You really think those poor 16 bullet points will be the homecoming of jesus for ranger right? I hope you realize it’s some minor bugfixes. You really think they will “fix” the pet? That’s near impossible if you’d actually understand anything about game engines or programming. They’d have to remodel the whole pathfinding.
The pets damage is just as bad as the rangers (if it would hit for once), the traits are 90% clusterf. and there are bugs (obstructed, invulnerable) bigger than it could get fixed in months.
Keep on hoping son, my mesmer just hit 60.
Don’t forget, ranger was OP in beta. If it was strong then, it can certainly be fixed now.
Take it easy. If you understand something in the calculation of damage, you would know such a thing as a cycle and rotation. Ranger have not got it. He has only one ability. Thief with guns holding permanent 10% vulnerabiliti (causing it with abilities with 2k damage) nearly every ~10 sec deals 5-8k damage in 1.3/4 sec. And only between these use autoattack. Ranger spam only “one”. So from here, the double difference.
Are you saying that just because thief can use two skills in a rotation he does twice as much damage?
Because that’s very very very wrong.
Something no-one has pointed out is LB crits harder, ergo, harder hitting in less time, ie. higher burst.
Also, thieves sb has a draw time, unlike ranger.
Crits harder? What do you mean by that? LB has higher crit damage? Because that’s wrong. They both do 200% damage on crit.
Also, thief sb homes in on the enemy, bounces, and actually has damaging skills.
Wrong build mb?
try 15 30 0 0 25
With that build, using all of the damage boosts, i can’t go past 1.35k damage.
If i count in all the situational damage boosters the ranger has, i can outDPS that even 1.5k. With my situational boosts (10% from full endurance, 10% from flanking), and with my attack speed tests, the thief would have to fire 50% slower than me to match my dps. The thief fires 60% slower than me, so i outDPS him with 1k crits.
Proved by logic and elementary mathematics. You fierce hater of thieves? A thief with 2 pistols have autoattack for 1.5K with 100% bleed (not only from back). Speed ??1/2 sec (2 per sec). Total 3k per second. "2"ability with 2k crit plus 5 stacks vulner (can do 22 per minute). “3” with 5000-8000 damage ( can spam 14 times per minute.)
Total max damage to consider:
1 – 90000p/m = 1500dps
2 – 44000p/m = 733dps
3 – 112000p/m = 1866dpsAnd ranger can’t do more than 1.1k damage with any shortbow ability. So count. Speed nearly same.
Nope. You made some mistakes.
First of all a thief pistol doesn’t fire that fast. that 1/2 second is the casting time, and there’s a delay between casts. In a quick test my pistol fired 35 times in 30 seconds, meaning attack speed is .857 seconds, compared with the ranger shortbows .52 seconds (fired 57 times in 30 seconds).
Second of all where did you get that 1.5k damage? In the mists with all power gear, berserker amulet, the 5% pistol damage trait, and the superior sigil of force, i could only hit the lightest golem for 550 damage with 1.1k crit, even with the 5 stacks of vuln. With the same setup on my ranger, i did 450 damage and about 900 crit.
Third, and i may have misread your post, but you did factor in that when you’re using one skill you can’t use others right? and that initiative exists?
From my tests with a combination of pistol autoattack and unload, p/p does about 12% more DPS than shortbow autoattack. This means that p/p pistols need a damage boost. Why? If pets worked properly, and they actually dealt 45% of our main damage like the devs said, that means we would do 2x the damage of a p/p thief working as hard as he can.
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My experience with PVP has always been “Once the QQ nerfs begin the game starts dieing.” There are several classes that hit just as hard as a thief and some with better survivability.
I am all for justified balance, but balance means ALL classes not just one or two.
Name one that can hit as hard as thief and keep the same amount of surviveability.
No, let’s start slow. name one class that match thief burst.
i love my ranger, and honestly i love to struggle (i’m just weird that way) for everything i get. every kill i earn is because i put time and effort, and because i had much better situational awareness and timing then your easy-mode thief, or a full set up mesmer.
i’ll stick with my ranger, because i feel the need to master it before starting a new one.
If this game was 100% skill i would do that too. Right now all i can think is how bad it will be when i hit the skill ceiling.
Well, it’s obvious they won’t buff ranger to that level (not anytime soon) because it would become OP, it’s common sense. And if what thieves say is right, they are pretty much going to balance the game to make PvP last for a while instead of pressing two skills to kill someone.
They said where you could expect future changes for ranger class, none of them were about buffing ranger damage but to rework some traits/signets and spirits.
I could get a big surprise and maybe they go crazy and buff ranger damage, but if that’s not the case i won’t be dissapointed.
We probably won’t be buffed to thieves level, but you also mentioned warriors. Anet has mentioned that warriors are where they want them to be, and we are nowhere close to warriors even if we go 100% glass cannon. If we spec glass cannon, with full berserkers, we (us and our pets combined) should be able to match the damage of a warrior who does the same.
-Spirit effect chance reduced to 15% base.
-Greatsword and longbow damage reduced by 5%
-Pet AI “improved”
- sword autoattack tooltip changed to properly reflect not being able to dodge while attacking.
- “Guard” now no longer gives your pets temporary stealth
- the f1 key has been removed. Now to attack a specific target with your pet you must use “sick ’em”
- “sick ’em” no longer gives swiftness and might to your pet
- Signet of stone, signet of the wild cooldown increased by 20%.
Thiefs, Guardians and warriors hardly will make more DPS than rangers in lupicus, the only comparable one is warriors. The rest are ranged classes, so what are you talking about anyways?
Ranger won’t have huge damage boost, if you don’t like the design then reroll to another class…easy fix.
You say that like you know exactly what the developers had in mind when they created the ranger. Show me the quote where developers say that rangers can’t do high damage.
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Just because they’re different classes doesn’t mean they aren’t 100% incomparable. A sword/dagger thief has a lot of similarities to a sword/dagger hunter, with both of them being dodge based highly mobile weapon sets where most of the damage is in the autoattack. Thief is a lot better at it of course, but still the idea of both weapon sets is the same. Comparing Ranger longbow to Warrior longbow is bad because they serve a different purpose (straight up damage and fire combo fields respectively).
If pets are supposed to synergise somehow with rangers then i’m not getting it. Because their F2 skills are largely unresponsive, and that we have no control over any of their other skills, i can’t find a use for my pet other than a furry DoT. I can tell they made efforts to add synergy, but there’s nothing to justify taking out 45% of our damage and putting it on an AI.
I don’t agree that the ranger is based on the class mechanic other than pure DPS.
Taking your sword example, the cripple is not there to help the pet. It’s to help you keep up a constant autoattack without having to chase the enemy as much. Thief has the same cripple on the 3rd strike of their 1h sword. The only thing really making it a pet based weapon is the 5s might buff it gives pets on the 3rd attack, and that can simply be removed for more damage or something like that.
Maybe this is one of the problems i have with pets, but i don’t see how the ranger class is built upon them. They feel more artificially added on and unneeded, sometimes actually hindering instead of helping.
The sword has that slight synergy from that might buff, but both the sword and the GS also have a large dissonance with your pet. Because you’re using melee, your pet will die faster. The sword has a great dodge with a large invulnerability time that can easily roll through AOE but your pet will still get hit. The same problem exists with greatsword. With that you get one of the best blocks in the game to defend yourself and an auto dodge, but your pet will still get hit. The only solution to this is to get a ranged pet, but they are base damage and precision pets with high HP and toughness meaning you can’t be high damage melee.
I just can’t see how ranger is built on the pet. To me it feels more like it was added on for the sake of it. Most skills don’t do anything special for pet teamwork and the ones that do aren’t that impressive. If i could control my pet to do a single high damage attack, and then use hilt bash to boost their damage 50% for a pseudo-backstab thief effect, that would be great, but there are no such skills to work with on pets. Both the ranger and the pet seem to act as independently as possible.
(edited by Division.9618)
Longbow is pretty bad in sPVP. The maps are way too small to use its range and it’s damage isn’t better than the shortbow.
Personally i just ignore it. The damage is too low and it doesn’t really have a large amount of redeeming factors to it other than pure range, which i said is pretty useless in sPVP.
@Cheshire
I find the SB interrupt to be a better one. While LB has 10 seconds less CD (7 if traited), it also has a large cast time making it pretty difficult to actually interrupt something.
/blink.
I can’t see any connection between what you quoted from me and what you wrote under it, Division. It’s alright you don’t agree that profession mechanics and skills go hand-in-hand, but it’s kind of confusing if you don’t say as much.
You’re saying that rangers are balanced around pets and changing it could cause problems right? I’m saying that Anet should rebalance skills so we aren’t reliant on pets and can implement the stowed pet buff idea. I don’t like the idea of being so reliant on an AI, especially in a game that relies so much on being able to dodge and move out of attacks rather than tanking hits and being healed by healers.
AI in this game does not fare very well in PVP. Engineers turrets and Necromancers minions are considered the worst builds of their class. The only reason most Ele’s use summons for their elite is because it’s a slightly better alternative to their other two horrible elites. Mesmers get away with it because their AI is incredibly simple, easily replaceable, and half the time is made for suicide bombing. I doubt that Anet can fix this problem without either making pets either OP or UP. The best solution for rangers would be to make pets more of a support role rather than almost half our damage.
(edited by Division.9618)
Well… i know the perfect rune for my shortbow hunter.
Skills aren’t randomly constructed without any regard to the profession mechanic. It’s not some happy accident Mesmer gets shatter and also gets all of these things to use shatter on.
You have access to such a wide spread of boons and conditions because you’re working with a partner whose toes you don’t want to step on, you have such easy access to movement manipulation because being outmaneuvered is one of your weaknesses and being in two places at once is your strength. If you change Ranger into a Guardian who gets to customize their Virtues, not only do you no longer need these things, it’s probably not balanced to allow you to keep them.
That’s what we’re asking Anet to do. Balance it so we don’t have to rely on our pets. Like i said a few pages ago, we rely way too much on our class mechanic. Babysitting the AI is annoying and we don’t have any way to reliably control it. People want the option to get rid of their pets and enjoy all the other aspects of rangers.
Crab, just because i want a little crab scuttling along beside me. Skelks and Skales would be great too. I would take a crab and a skelk and make underwater puns every time i kill someone.
So many salty tears.
Bears have far superior tank stats to Moa’s. If your pet dies from AOE use a spider, they’re long range and have good skills.
People only discuss weak points, what about spirit of nature with it’s mass rez? Turned a battle last night in WvWvW. What aboyt 6 seconds of invun? What about the longest range in the game. Piercing arrows.
Again people say we have no escape lol, 7 seconds frost trap, knock backs, propel ourselves backwards, aoe root, 6 second invun, lightning reflexes, ranged traps, muddy ground, stabilty, pets absorb root, stealth on knockdown….
Why even think a 10% speed buff is meant for PvP escape? when you know other classes have ranged and closers and speed buffs.
Sorry but some of you have no clue as to what is even available, I will leave you to you woes.
I’ll add to everyone else who’s against you.
6 second invuln is only when you’re 30 points in marksmanship, which is the 2nd most useless tree in the hunter traits.
Longest range doesn’t matter when it doesn’t hit. Ignoring the fact that large range is useless in sPVP, even in WvWvW arrows from far away can miss because of some weird bug.
We don’t have escapes against snares and immobilizes. If we get immobilized we’re pretty much done for. We have no way to break it and snares actually slow down our escape skills. It isn’t saying much when our only reliable escape is a 120 sec CD elite, and even then it’s not that great against thieves that have already immobilized you with devourer venom and are already behind you for a backstab.
10% movement speed is horrible. Why waste a slot on it? A thief can have 30% movement speed increase, and even then most thieves don’t find it useful. The only thief class i know that actively uses the boost is sword/dagger thieves that rely on the autoattack and need to stay next to the enemy constantly.
If i had a choice between that 10% movement speed signet and a spirit, i would pick the spirit.
You know what else can mass rez? The warrior. They get a battle standard that can’t be killed, provides great buffs (including stability), revives players, and they can carry it around without having to put 30 points into the #1 useless trait tree.
It’s already been stated but a ranger without a pet is like a mesmer without clones. You are free to want but you want, but if ranger pet is such a problem you should just reroll as something else.
A mesmers class mechanic is shatters, not illusions.
A pet is not the only reason people like rangers. It’s a great class in general and neither the warrior or the thief give off the same feeling.
Depth is when you come across these moments while you’re playing where you have to choose between two or more equally appealing options, it’s not just being presented with any two options at all that have associated pros and cons which rationally dictates their situational usefulness. It’s in the act of making Choices, it’s not just granted by virtue of Options existing.
And that still doesn’t address that a stow-buff is a Non-mechanic. You’re not managing a resource, you don’t have overarching circumstances that frame the combat experience specific to your class, your not constantly actively thinking of something in particular in the middle of a fight. There’s no actual gameplay in this mode, it’s just a blank numbers increase.
Well here’s my suggestion.
First, reveal all of the pets skills to us. Instead of just an F2 skill, give us all the special skills for a pet to use on command. If i get a spider and he has an AOE poison attack, i want to be able to control it instead of him just doing it randomly.
Second, let us stow our pets, but allow us to use all those special skills. Give us a buff depending on what pet we stow. If we stow a bear, for example, we get more health and defense, but if we stow a bird we get more precision.
This way you can make a choice as a ranger. You can either keep a separate entity that can CC and damage others independently from you and can help you in your downed state, or stow the pet for more reliability.
Yep. Rangers are the most underrepresented class in tPVP. high lvl tPVP is only about 2% ranger.
@Swagger.1372
Stowing pets and it giving you a stat increase??
No, just no. Why would you undermine the whole class mechanic? that would be like a mesmer saying “no I don’t want clones or phantasms…just give me all the raw damage”
Have your pet on passive and only send it out smartly/ redraw it using swap/F3. I’ve not ran into aggro problems of any kind even when doing dungeons, you just have to play/control smart and not treat the pet like some automatic robot. I do agree the pet’s animation(inability to attack on the go) needs a little work, but once that gets fixed rangers will be perfectly fine.
@Shilian.5873
People won’t support it because the ranger is a pet class. A ranger is not called a sniper for good reasons. You want a ranged class with no pets, roll a warrior. They can use rifles and snipe.
No, it would be like a mesmer saying “No i don’t want to use shatters”, because that’s the mesmers class mechanic. Shatters. Clones and phantasms are summoning skills.
Someone on this forum said it the best i think. We are the only class so heavily reliant on our class mechanic. A warrior can still be good without adrenaline. An engineer can still work without his tool belt. A mesmer has builds that don’t shatter. An ele can work by staying in one attunement. A guardian works perfectly fine without touching his virtues outside of the small passives. The only thing death shroud does for a necromancer is gives them a quick second HP bar and they don’t need to rely on it constantly.
That leaves us and thieves. Thieves get a steal mechanic that they don’t really need to use, an initiative system that makes them OP and allows great versatility, and different skills for dual wielding which is awesome.
We get a clunky AI partner that’s barely effective, hard to control, dies quickly unless we micromanage him constantly, has numerous pathing issues, and is supposed to deal 45% of our damage making us horribly weak if we lose them.
Also, telling other people that if they don’t like pets they should play another class would be fine if pets were the only thing attractive about the ranger class. There are far more reasons to play a ranger. It’s simply an awesome class with great ideas behind it. It’s unique from the other classes and gives off a feeling of agility that thieves don’t have. Right now there are plenty of people out there who love the feel of the class and can’t find it in any of the other classes, but think that the pet is annoying.