You can see in the attached picture that the hand positioning seems a bit high up on the handle and the top hand clips through the hammer.
Yep I have noticed that. It’s definitely a bug. It doesn’t happen with every race tho, I’ve seen asuras or norns wielding the hammer in game and they looked fine.
Phantasm mesmer is passive. Every other mesmer build is one of the most active playstyles in the game…. Def not spamming one, def no cheese builds out side of phantasm…. And also not fitting into the stupid condi meta atm.
I was talking about phanstasm builds ofc. That’s true for rangers as well, it’s not like every ranger build relies on autoatt spamming. Shatter builds are actually quite active. Still the class mechanic contributes a lot to the screen cluttering and most mesmer animations are really annoying in teamfights. Also about the auto spamming, the gs is really spam friendly. I see lots of mesmers spamming ss. Some streams are actually very entertaining…
mesmer player (spamming ss like a baws): “lol look at that ranger spamming 1 all the time” 1,1,1,1,1,1,berz,random dodge,1,1,1
I remember even xeph said gs auto deals too much dmg.
Anyway this is OT.
It’s also still one of the top tier professions in tPvP.
More precisely the ranger has one top tier build which relies on autoattack spamming and screen cluttering.
You can win 3v1 with every profession if your opponents are upleveled players in wvw or lvl1 players in spvp. But ye if you meant “bm regen bunker is strong in duels” i’m sure we all agree. Most passive builds in this game are strong 1v1.
those who say they are fine don’t really have anything to add.
I think this pretty much sums everything up. Now guess who’s right, the ones saying the pet mechanic is kitten or the idiots saying the ranger is perfect and anet did an awesome job designing the class.
As for in-depth explanations…i think the thread Castaliea posted is significant.
just interesting how all of you forum masters have problems with max 4 spirits but at same time nobody of you cry about the mesmer illus :P
Mesmer mechanic is terribad just like the ranger one. I can not stand that class. Dunno why must be those pink butterflies. Ranger is just as passive as the mesmer, but spirit build is nonsense. The op is correct, builds like that (spirit build) should not exist in this game. It’s too late and the devs don’t really realize how bad this issue is. We don’t need a way to make targeting easier, I don’t give a kitten about targeting if there are tons of ai-controlled pets, minions and other crap around plus tons of effects cluttering the screen. That’s not fixing the problem, that’s avoiding it.
I doubt this will work tbh. They should totally rework the pet mechanic, this is not going to happen. After all it’s their stupid class philosophy and we have a dev posting philosophy bullkitten in every thread he answers.
Nice reply Tribio I expected a boring and foregone answer but you definitely managed to surprise me. Now, that’s ofc my perception of wvw, since i don’t really play wvw. I used to roam quite a lot in the past with my old bm ranger spec but, you know, small scale is what the bm ranger excels at, since all you have to do is randomly evade while the pet is killing targets for you.
I’m not saying you can’t play well as a ranger by positioning yourself smartly. I can stay at 1500 with my lb and use a ranged pet, that’s correct. But, let’s be honest, that’s not as effective as an additional guardian or hammer warrior is it?. That’s my impression. Also you would be the only one targetting something, since in most wvw videos i see no one is even picking a target, everyone is just spamming around as much as possible. I am not talking about small scale fights ofc. Why are they spamming? Cos they are bad? That’s a possibility but, most likely, there are two reasons: 1)It’s extremely effective, and 2)You can’t really understand wtf is going on.
I might be wrong ofc, you could make a video to show us how amazing the ranger is in NUMERICALLY BALANCED wvw fights (like gvg fights), how it’s effective at supporting your group and how you can easily keep your pet alive in that mess without losing your effectiveness. I’m not trolling nor i want to “get into a heated discussion”, I am sincerely curious. I might change my view of wvw.
I play spvp only ye, sometimes pve (mostly dgs) and rarely wvw (that game mode is a mess, only real pro commanders like yourself could appreciate that).
Once again: If your pet is on passive and it’s still getting hit by AoE, have you tried getting out of the AoE circle yourself?
Do you even play pvp? If you are the only one on a point and you are defending it, if you move out of that point you will lose it. What you suggested is not always possible.
In wvw every time i see a video of one of those “hardcore wvw guilds” playing gvg or just zerging around all i see are aoe effects cluttering the screen (lol it’s not like tpvp is any different tbh). This while the idiot of the moment aka commander aka mobile blue mark is running around screaming. So in a scenario like this how is the poor ranger supposed to keep the stupid pet alive? “sry oh my commander can i retreat for a moment from the fight cos my pet is getting slaughtered by all the aoe spam?”. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UYrQMoOBqaI http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b372p4e9fRM
Are you serious?
“micromanagement is a management style whereby a manager closely observes or controls the work of subordinates or employees”
You are such a smart guy aren’t you? I know what “micro-bullkitten” means. The devs like using complicated words to describe the ideal game that exists only in their heads.
Errmm.. There is micro-management actually.. Or are you a ranger that only uses F2?
(I will recall (F3) my pet to me when I see it getting hit hard (by AoE or whatever) and I can’t swap. Once it’s regenerated, I’ll send it back in (F1).. ==> Micro-management)
Yes mr.pro commander I basically only use f2 and pet swap and sometimes f3 since in pvp (the only game mode i play) you are forced to play on points or close to them. I can keep my stupid pet alive just by swapping it or, if I have to defend or contest a point and the aoe is extreme, my pet is dead even if I keep it passive. In pve and wvw is a bit different and ye I call back my pet more often, still this is not micromanagement and there is basically no skill at all behind that. Lol I can’t even keybind my active/passive button.
Also mr. commander when i play wvw kitten (usually on my guardian cos I can spam things and aoe even better as a guardian) the aoe and zerg is often so massive the stupid ranger pet would be dead even if kept passive.
You are just trying to see micromanagement (wtf is this? It reminds me of some economy bullkitten) and active play where there is just passive play and spam.
In addition, the only company who know what a ranger/archer profession/job is, is Square Enix.
As a former ffxi fanboy, i can tell you how solid and well rooted this class is and with ff14 reborn, they are going to optimize this profession to a whole new level.
By the way, Square Enix didn’t choose the route as Arena.net; ranger with “pets”; (i’m sure they’ve seen how worthless our companions are; pets and now spirits) but instead, gave the full control and power to the ranger/archer.
Why drag a dead companion pet and spirit with you?
Who’s also responsible for your own deaths?
I’m also on the verge of leaning toward the true ranger class- ff14 Realm Beyond.
Why be on a ‘suicide trip’ with a suicidal pets system?
Man that game looks amazing and the archer seems really well made. Thanks for those videos.
You can do every dg as a ranger. I’ve killed lupi tons of times on my ranger, and I’m not even a pve player, actually I hate pve. The only problem is our stupid broken pet mechanic, but that’s something we have to live with. After all, like those not-so-smart anet fanboys always say “you can kill the boss anyway even if your pet is dead, so the class is perfect”.
Crying? Lol man i don’t give a kitten about spirits “nerf”. I’ve always hated playing that spec i wish they reworked the whole spirits mechanic. I’m still playing the build with no changes and still spamming skills like a baws since this game encourages me to do that. But hey other players can now actively react to our passive effects lol.
Everyone saying the ranger is perfectly balanced or designed is nothing but a fool in my eyes.
All the top tier rangers would still play with pets because positioning the pet and yourself can give you better spike damage, overall damage is better, you get pet F2 skills …
But a lot of rangers would find this trait interesting because they are not on the same level of micromanaging their pet as the top ones … so this would greatly enhanced their gameplay
There’s no micromanagement in this stupid pet mechanic we are forced into. You have got just one broken f2 ability. Most of the times you can literally forget about your pet while the f2 is on cd. If you are on a point defending or attacking your stupid pet is going to die anyway with all the aoe spammed around. That’s why they implemented this absurd pet swapping thing. They realized this pet mechanic doesn’t work at all in a game like this but, instead of fixing/reworking/removing this kitten they just tried to clumsily modify it.
Pets are okay. Spirits are also okay.
The ranger is perfectly balanced now imo.
Thanks for your elaborated post.
You posted 6 times on this forum in the last 8 months. All of your posts are pretty much one line long.
It’s quite curious how these pro guys defending this terribly designed class aka “king of passive play” never support their pointless and absurd statements with adequate elaboration or explanation.
I dunno Chopps. I have the feeling those changes have made the build not viable at all, but it’s probably too early to speak. Still, spirit ranger was extremely boring to play and, more important, was simply harmful for gw2 tpvp. Something had to be made.
What i don’t really like about anet is they design things poorly and then they have to nerf and fix them. This happened with our pets (dmg) and now with our spirits. It’s clearly too hard for them to redesign things properly, nerfing them is soooo much easier.
As a ranger player i’m glad they nerfed the spec a bit. Tbh it was bad for the game and boring to play. I don’t really know if these changes have made the spec not viable, we will see.
No more autoattack spam (And yeah some stuns, but it’s already on an uber master level of skills and it’s not for everyone) while op spirits do the job? So sad…
The autoattack spam is a shortbow related problem, it has nothing to do with spirits. Spirits simply made the spam more effective.
On a side note, all this hate towards the ranger class is really sad and depressing. It seems like rangers are the only ones spamming, while other classes require so much skillZ.
They forgot to add them. They care about the class, it’s obvious. Or maybe they made those videos back when the ranger class was not forced into this pathetic pet mechanic. Then one smart dev came up with this stupid pema pet idea (whoever you are, smart dev, you ruined this class, thanks), so they had to remove the videos. We will never know.
I hear rangers saying this skill is useless and that skill is terrible. Not all skill are optimal for everything but each skill has it’s use. Some of them not so obvious. I you the ranger don’t full understand and appreciate the range and strength of your abilities how are the other classes to know what we are capable of.
Bs. Lots of skills are totally useless and others are situational. It’s not like “it’s not obvious”. And this can be applied to every class, not only the ranger.
We don’t have a cheesy OP mechanism that we abuse. We don’t spam terror or confusion or retaliation or stun lock people. For the most part when a ranger beats someone its because the ranger beat you and not some Op cheesy mechanic.
What? Really? I agree we don’t have an “OP” mechanic, since our mechanic is the worst designed in this game but the ranger class is the king of passive play, spirit ranger in particular. You can disagree as much as you want, you can make useless arguments like “you can tell the difference between a good spirit ranger and a bad one”. There are differences, but you can play poorly and still be effective, that’s how it is. Every experienced ranger playing a spirit build knows this deep inside. Atm rangers spam just as much as necros. The shortbow is comical. I was spectating a hotjoin match yesterday and there was a spirit ranger (not really low rank) who was literally just spamming one all the time. It was verging on the absurd, but it worked. It’s effective.
Bm bunker used to be pretty much the same.
That’s not true for every spec ofc, like glass berz builds. The problem is these builds are harder to play and, at the end, not as effective as the spam ones.
Yeah, some of their mechanics just don’t take the ranger pet into account—probably because it’s so much extra work. ANET is a small company
That’s the most stupid excuse you could ever come with. They ruined this class with a stupid and poorly implemented pet mechanic and after 1 year nothing has been done about that. I don’t give a kitten if their company is small.
Uh, thrown axes are pretty common in fantasy RPGs, all in all?
I mean, we have re-appearing ammo (without having a quiver where to draw it from, the arrow just magically appears on the bow!), we have players using Greatswords as if they were fencing swords, we have pets appearing and disappearing from thin air, we teleport without even a disappearing animation, and this is a “realism” concern? :P
Yea all the things you mentioned are in fact absurd. Luckily they added quivers (probably the best thing they have ever done for this game). Pet mechanic is plain stupid (the pet swap is just weird cos, as you said, we have pets appearing and disappearing from thin air). But, for some reason, the axe animation looks really disturbing to me. Dunno why, it’s probably due to the back disappearing every time i throw a kittening axe. Apparently this bug is way too hard for them to fix.
Is it too hard to understand? There’s no way to perfectly balance classes anymore. They can nerf a spec, the result is nobody will play that spec anymore. They will find something else and, for thieves, that “something else” will be something to spam. Unless ofc a class is so badly nerfed to become not viable (or considered not viable). In this case a balance patch will probably overbuff that class, like happened for necros.
Their stupid “class philosophy” has been broken since the beginning. They balanced classes around what looked cool, that’s why we have so many AI based kitten and so many flashy animations.
Freya: Which of the professions has been the team’s favourite to design and implement, and which aspects/stages of the design process for professions do you find most enjoyable or rewarding? (i.e. initial concepts, skill design, the reveal, first demo play of a new profession etc…)
Jon P: I’m going to say thief because it was super easy. For whatever reason we came up with the initiative mechanic, we were like “this is cool, put it on thief!” Design thief skills: “Oh yeah, they should have these dual skills!” We put them in the game, people played them and were instantly like “thieves are the most fun thing in the game now!”
I laugh every time i read this. This is super c0000l!!!!11
So, the Ranger doesn’t work very well, but there are Ranger builds that are really strong? That doesn’t make any sens at all. If the Ranger has effective builds, there is no reason for other “professions” to talk bad about the Ranger. That’s the point. Why would other players care about how the Ranger is designed?
It depends entirely on what you mean by “the ranger works well”. If that means “the class is terribly designed but very strong in tpvp”, ye i agree with you. It’s like a guy who lifts a huge weight with terrible form, he’s strong no doubt, still his form is bad.
actually I can see options how to give more control over pet to player but….
it requires deleting “pet-swap” as an option (to release F4 button)
Ye would be cool. Tbh i think the “pet-swap” kitten is simply stupid and unrealistic. I suppose they realized how bad pets were and how easy they were to kill, so they introduced this “swap” mechanic. As another player said in a different thread, anet made pets almost expendable, that’s probably what i hate the most. They want the pet to be “part of the identity of the player”, but really pets in this game are like consumables.
I find it funny that charr ranger NPC rox doesn’t have a “backup” pet in case her devourer dies…
There have been some calls for perma-stowed pets, and while I have said this in other areas I will say it again here. I don’t think we will let you perma-stow pets – the main reason being we want the player to be interacting with the pet, and the pet to be part of the identity of the player. The role of ranger is to to have a pet in our game, and with that comes a bit of extra micromanagement that comes with the package. Right now the micromanage is difficult and more tools are desired, and I honestly feel that once we make micromanaging pets easier, more responsive, and better in general that players won’t mind that they don’t have perma-stow capabilities.
I expecially love the last part, about the “more responsive” pets. Pls notice his post is 5 months old. I mean they WANT us to micromanage our pets, but i don’t really see much “micromanagement” here, just a plain stupid AI and some f2 skills.
But, there are already Ranger builds like that dismantle enemy balls. It’s just only players who play sPvP who seem to have gotten the memo, while almost everyone ells keeps repeating the same message over and over. The Ranger works very well, most just plain out refuse to believe it.
The ranger doesn’t work very well at all. It’s really strong in spvp (some builds), but this doesn’t mean the class is well designed. Take the spirit build everyone is now playing in tpvp, it’s a strong build, expecially in this stupid meta. But can we say it’s a well designed and fun to play build? No. Used to be the same with the bm bunker.
but seriously I see nothing wrong with rangers class mechanics skills – NOTHING. it just need a little skill to make full potential.
I was going to write something sharp, but unfortunately it looked way too offensive.
Guys you have yet to master the….pet f2. Pressing a key is hard you know. The mechanic is perfect, anet I love you <3
Lord you should defo apply for a job at anet, it’s crystal clear you comply with their standards.
It’s just weird that the ranger throws his magically reappearing axe, which also bounces around.
Axe autoattack animation looks just weird. I hate it. It makes no sense at all. Plus is bugged since your back disappears while you are throwing the stupid axe.
I like axes but seriously i laugh every time i use it or i see a ranger using it. The second skill looks even worse “5 axes appear in your hands and you throw them all towards your target”. This every 6 secs or so. Ofc every time you do this your axe reappears magically so you can throw it again…and again.
I don’t really understand how someone could have designed a weapon like this. I know realism is pretty much non existent in this game, but really…
Our axe looks like many other things related to our class: poorly designed, half-finished and unrealistic…you know like the pet-swap kitten or your bear following you underwater.
But yea they should make the axe a melee condi weapon.
I used to use black and white ravens as beastmaster. As spirit-buttons-spammer ranger i use wolf and dog. For power zerker builds cats or birds. Pve and wvw…i prefer playing something else tbh.
Nope it’s against their stupid class philosophy, the devs will never allow us to perma stow pets. I wish the devs balanced this game instead of philosophizing.
Also tbh i’m not really against pets, i only want a decent mechanic which does not promote passive play.
The pet mechanic works really good in pvp they just need to make the mechanic better for pve and wvw but to remove it that would be crazy.
Mmm pet mechanic doesn’t work that well in pvp tbh, has no depth at all, you have little control over your pet and it promotes passive play. But yea in pvp at least is decent.
The problem is so much more deeply seeded than that and a shallow solution like a damage buff wont fix it.
I agree. This isn’t going to fix anything. Also most of our traits and skills are too close linked to our pet. The problem is actually so complex i really doubt it will ever be fixed.
Ps. I won’t let you guys separate me and my trusty Sir-Pawns-Alot !
I too don’t want the mechanic to go away, but it needs a major design overhaul.
There would be no reason to remove the mechanic if the mechanic worked well. I don’t think many rangers want the pet to go away completely. The problem with the pet mechanic is it looks like a half-finished thing. I mean there’s no depth at all, we have little control over our pets. It seems the devs implemented pets without enough testing. Passive play is not a big problem in pve i suppose, but it is in pvp, expecially in a competitive environment (which the devs are trying to promote). That’s why rangers are often considered an easymode class; for some ranger specs that’s not true at all, but bm regen bunkers were hated for a reason. Now it’s the same with spirit rangers.
I remember in warhammer online (just an example) the white lion (a pet class) could send the pet to the target and then pull the enemy towards him. That’s a good example of synergy between the pet and the player. Also the lion grew up as the player gained new levels, a thing like this is not really needed, but it’s a nice addition. And in that game the pet AI was far from perfect, but still better than in gw2.
