Guild Wars 2

AEFA.9035:

The CDI is now, meaning the chance for a change is now and half of the thread are people arguing. I wish I have that much time in my life to demoralize people online.

Ahem.

AEFA.9035:

Everyone This is a good example of players who shouldn’t have the right to post in CDI threads like these and should roll another class. Waste of time and Dev’s resources reading unproductive posts like these. Do yourself a favour and save a minute of your life from reading this.

I couldn’t resist.

Prysin.8542:

xallever.1874:

Besides, Mesmers bring something else to the table boon strip, stealth, portal.

In WvW, Rangers can’t seem to fill any roles because others can do better.

Fixed that top line for you.

In WvW, people refuse to believe ranger can do anything, therefore it “automatically” are outperformed by all professions. It is false information spread by a vocal minority that eventually turned into bandwagon “truth” effect as the ranger community and players did not rise up to prove anyone wrong.
The whole “others do it better” is really only a “until proven otherwise” scenario.

However others can do similar stuff with less effort, that is true, in certain scenarios.

Please explain to me what a Ranger can provide his or her group that another profession cannot do better.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Can you imagine every new player starting GW2 for the first time picking a new class, they go through their options, “Oooh, clones! Wait, Stealth mechanic?? Attunements and summoned weapons!! Huh whats this, Ranger, wait whats its specialty/class mechanic?” Hops on ranger forums and asks community what makes it special, gets the answer of “5 people wanted there mechanic gone to do more damage”…..

I know poorly written, its lunch time…

This is relevant.

ItIsFinished.9462:

urdriel.8496:

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

Allie Murdock.8152:

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.

Hi Allie, and thank you for your replies.

—i wrote a very long post—

You are misunderstanding the conscept of other professions; If they do not use their mechanics, they will not be able to achieve 100% potential. Saying a warrior can do 115% is absurd, because the rapid bursts is what produces those “15%”. Without bursts, a warrior’s damage is quite mediocre unless you built it to gain damage from some other mechanic, such as banner-buffs.
If you look at a warriors weapons, and the burst options, you see that certain weapons have lower base damage then you may expect, related directly to the damage that the burst can do. Axe mainhand is a good example of this. Its AA has lower damage then weapons of equal damage stats but since eviscerate does so much damage it makes up for the loss.

OMG, are you saying than Warrior Axe AA have less damage than other skills??
Warrior Axe AA autoattack is probably the best dps in this game for an AA, and eviscerate is a “if your opponent have 50% hp or less press f1 to win”.

You are either being ignorant on pourpose or simply misreading what he is saying. I’ll put it in lazy man terms:

If each of these classes lost the ability to use their Class mechanic, here are the estimated results:

• Class mechanic/F1-F4 not used in all aspects of the game per class(% decreased)
  • Engineer 30%
  • Gaurdian 20%
  • Warrior 35%
  • Elementalist 65%
  • Mesmer 25%
  • Thief 40%
  • Necro 20%
  • Ranger 30%

Ranger isn’t in such a bad position if their pet dies compared to some of the other classes.

Those numbers are hilarious.

Prysin.8542:

You get to “choose” between massive amounts of pet types. Your pets are not limited to brown bear, jaguar, lynx, jungle stalker, wolf and hyena. It ranges way beyond that. Each pet has it’s own usage, its own function. Each pet family has its own role.

A mesmer can choose to go shatterer or phantasm. That is two choices, but one way or the other it got to chose one of two to remain competitive.
A necromancer can choose to use minions, build around DS or marks/wells, it has to choose one or two of three to remain competitive.
A warrior can choose its function through choosing the right weapons.
A thief can choose to build around stealing, stealth or not.

We can choose between a DPS power Pet (Jaguar, Raven) or a DPS condition pet (Lynx, Marsh Drake) or a tanky DPS power pet (Drakes), a support pet (moas, pigs) or a CC pet (dogs). We also got the same choices of roles in ranged pets, however this option is a whole lot more limited.
In short, depending on what you need, our mechanic has the greatest choice of build diversity avaliable. We can spec full damage player side, only go for self sustain, and still get a considerable amount of party support from pets alone, on the opposite end we can build around strong party support player side, and pure DPS from pets.

The pet mechanic, as it is now, is hindering us from fully utilizing this, if F2 “accuracy” is improved, pet hit ratio is improved and pet survivability is improved then it would be a big step in the right direction, allowing us to capitalize on our mechanic instead of keeping it alive with a whole lot of effort.

And no matter what pet I pick, it’s still going to be hindered by terrible AI, sluggish timing, and poor survivability.

Why is Ranger the only class that has to make such a sacrifice? The longer I think about the 70:30 damage split, the more I’m against it. ANet would have to make significant improvements to the pet AI for it to be justified in my eyes, and even then, pets would still suffer in WvW.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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.

Maybe that’s the point.

urdriel.8496:

Allie Murdock.8152:

phys.7689:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

this is completely false, all classes are balanced with their class mechanics in mind.
A mesmer isnt doing high level dmg competitive with other dps classes without phantasms or conditions without its clones. Necro base power on skills is lower even on its dps skills because they consider condition/minions in their max dps. Elementalists skills are tied to swapping elements, and they specifically place finishers and AOE in different places to promote swapping. Theif inititative totally changes how and what skills get dmg, and its generally balanced around initiative costs. Every classes mechanic is figured into their DPS.

Also, what this guy said ^

All other classes can choose, a mesmer can choose a phantasm build or not, a Necro can choose a minion build or not, we cant choose, we have an AI controlled pet that is a dps lost and we must bear with it each second we play GW2.

Ofc, we are frustrated, more than 1 year with a pet that is a debuff instead of a buff, the best fix that ranger class could have would be a “good pet” , but instead of that, Anet nerfed pet leash range,pet attack range and we have a severe damage handicap when we attack or defend a keep.

I agree.

No other class has to work around their class mechanic; it is always beneficial. Our pet is just a drawback and a huge drain on traits that could be utilized elsewhere.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

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.

One major concern I have is how pets currently work in WvW. Even if you buff up their numbers and improve the AI, I still feel like pets will be a complete burden.

I’d also like to know if there are any ideas to flesh out Ranger’s role in large-scale WvW, seeing as they currently do not have one.

Nausicca.6038:

I think it’s 9/ league

9×3 = 24 servers.

9×3 is 27.

DevonCarver.5370:

We’ve been discussing this a lot recently and we agree that something needs to change. When we have a change that we are ready to talk about we’ll make sure to make it known to everyone.

Best news I’ve heard all week.

Free transfers are up there as well.

It’s about time.

This will definitely shake things up.

OmaiGodman.2098:

PVP seems to have most of the cool armors I hope eventually they’ll also come to PvE.

What.

The fact that people believe this and have up-voted it blows my mind.

Skye Marin.3250:

I like the idea of having an anti-stealth trait. Either tied to a weapon or beastmastery – your pets can still detect and attack foes under stealth, and if they hit, those foes are unstealthed and revealed for 5 seconds.

It makes sense for Rangers to have a “tracking” skill of some sort.

This is a friendly reminder that no one likes reading walls of text.

I understand that everyone wants to provide feedback as to what they think about the summary list, but a three-section post is excessive, especially when you take into account that this thread is 46 pages long and ANet is trying to read all of our comments.

Are there any plans to give Ranger a CC/utility weapon so that we can actually support groups that we play with (WvW zergs immediately come to mind)? We are missing a weapon that provides AoE and support functionality and it’s a glaring design flaw.

I’d love to see Rangers be allowed to use staffs, seeing as we have a trait line that is literally called Nature Magic and ANet has not really tapped into the Druid role.

Ision.3207:

Thanks, as I’m sure your compliment was given in an honest and mature spirit.

I was a hardcore WoW and Lotro WvW soloer/small group roamer for years. So I came to Gw2 to get away from having to grind/PvE for max stat gear over and over gain … and then … LOL

;-)

However, I despise the WvW zergball though, it reminds me so much of the mindless no-skill PvE zerg play. But to each his own, and everyone should most certainly be able play as they want.

I was being completely genuine; it bothers me that ANet has deviated from a lot of GW2’s founding principles and I’m always happy to see that other players feel the same way.

As to your comment about zergball, I agree with you for the most part. I, like you, prefer roaming and havoc groups, but I think a good zerg-busting session every now and then can be a lot of fun. Nevertheless, I personally think that all professions should be 100% viable in every aspect of the game, so I’d love to see Ranger gain some increased capabilities in large-scale WvW since they are easily the most unwanted class.

I think the stale meta stems from two main issues:

1). Infrequent balance updates
2). Shallow pool of utility/elite skills

Builds have become stagnant because ANet isn’t doing their job in nurturing change and increased depth. Hopefully the feature patch that is coming up will address this problem.

Ision.3207:

snip

I just wanted to let you know what I adore your signature.

Ision.3207:

AEFA.9035:

Ltomato.8649:

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Potential Longbow Skill Changes (non-overhaul)

Goal of Proposal
Many players feel that the Longbow is an underwhelming weapon. I am offering some non-overhaul skill tweaks, since I (as someone who has put waaaay too much time into longbow ranger) believe that the basic design mechanics of the longbow are sound, unique, and engaging.

Proposal Functionality
s1- Long Range Shot: Increase projectile speed to allow more reliable hits against enemies, as this is a targeted skill and very easy to walk out of the way of at > 1200 range. Doesn’t need to be undodge-able, just more reliable.
: Alternatively- Decrease channel time. The skill would feel more reactive and less “clunky”.

s2- Rapid Fire: Decrease channel time by 1 second while maintaining the damage output. This would make the skill a bit more of a burst of damage, as well as maintaining a higher concentration of vulnerability. (Low cooldown and still comparatively long channel time to damage still allows this to be considered “sustained damage”)

s3-Hunter’s Shot: In addition to current functionality, add 1/2 second of evade on use. This would give the skill more of a use of an escape, providing a better feeling of reactionary dodging.
: Alternatively- In addition to current functionality, add Apply Revealed on target on hit. This would allow Rangers to effectively counter stealth.

s4- Point Blank Shot: Unblockable/Unreflectable. Makes this skill more of a failsafe, and actually effective against enemies that are looming in upon the ranger that may be reflecting projectiles or have some sort of block. Cooldown could be increased to 15 seconds to counteract a very powerful skill.
:Alternatively- Increase base range to 1200. Makes a little less sense since it’s no longer “point-blank”, but maintains the range as other longbow attacks, making it less clunky to use.

s5- Barrage: Buff into more of a projectile storm than an AoE, ala Ice Bow’s skill 4. This would increase damage and enemies affected, which seems fitting for its long cooldown and rooted channel.
:Alternatively- Allow movement while channeling. Evens out the risk/reward balance for using the skill.
:Alternatively- Immobilizes enemies hit by the first barrage or entering the AoE for 1 second. Makes the skill more useful even if the entire channel isn’t launched.

Associated Risks
The skill additions I’m suggesting are very strong. The Longbow is currently still underestimated, and too much tweaking could easily push it over the edge. Just two or three of these suggested skill additions would improve longbow ranger quality of life greatly.

All of them might be a bit much, but very, very fun.

These would also impact PvP and WvW, especially s3 alternative and my suggestions for s5.

I like this guy. Most of these Rangers posts under the impression that the class is just pure useless when they post in CDI. Been reading your post, good stuff. Though LB 4 CD increased to compensate I dont agree on, this is our only gap increaser in game. If LB auto is changed sure. Was thinking ANet should lower CD from this skill actually. I love point blank, using this after your auto animation is just too good plus the the knock back. I do agree this should be on a 1200 range though. Good stuff

I like this guy too.

Ltomato’s proposed changes are far simpler and direct than most of the “re-invent the wheel” suggestions regarding LB. And btw, to me, the whole, “more damage the farther you are concept” is IMO nuts.

LB 1 does not need (or should have) an added CC component, but rather, and as suggested, a slightly faster reliable-consistent-and flat damage component. Also, the much maligned LB 2 is actually near perfect – it does not need to be re-invented, the problem is the channel time and CD.

Great suggestions Ltomato, +1

Some weapons need to change if Ranger is ever going to be able to contribute in large-scale WvW. It’s just a fact.

I know some people are attached to Longbow, but I personally feel like Longbow and Greatsword are our most awkward, ill-defined weapons. I’d also love to see ANet cut out some more succinct differences between MH Axe and Shortbow, but Allie has already commented on that in the summary.

The people who are defending spirits are also a mystery to me; it’s well-known in the sPvP community that spirits are ridiculously strong, and the fact that Rangers have such a powerful build available to us is holding the class back from reaching its true potential since ANet is scared to mess with it.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Ltomato.8649:

EDIT:
I may be alone in this, but I really enjoy the longbow kit as it is- I don’t feel that the skills need any major changes as they are. Stealth+knockback+opening strike is really fun to use, and while Rapid Fire isn’t as bursty as I’d like, it’s still pretty cool. The proposed changes turn it into some sort of long-range power-based shortbow. I disagree with those changes 100%. Should they be implemented, I’d likely quit ranger altogether, as Longbow is currently my favorite weapon and shortbow my least favorite.

As you may have noticed, the LB is dealing its(his? *) full damage only at max. range.
In WvW or PvP the ranger isn’t capable of holding his distance to utilising the LB.
In structured PvE, the meta is “stacking and zerging”, so we aren’t able to use the LB either. That’s a maldevelopment we are trying to solve. While I don’t agree with many proposals made so far, I do agree that the LB needs help.
_ * I’m not native english speaking, help me with that one_

English doesn’t assign genders to objects like other languages do; the longbow would just be an it.

You were originally correct

Ltomato.8649:

I may be alone in this…

I honestly think you are.

Longbow is currently super clunky and doesn’t really do that great of a job of fulfilling its niche; the proposed changes would help address these issues.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

insanemaniac.2456:

immature as in not thoroughly discussed…?

Yes, but I’ve stated also, that I would like to keep the spirits.

Why?

I’m genuinely curious. You’ve said that you haven’t played a single sPvP game, so in all fairness, you have no idea of how toxic they are in that game-mode.

Substance E.4852:

Flytrap.8075:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

McWolfy.5924:

Warriors have +15% dmg and crit trait if not using the adrenalin skill. We losing dmg because the pet…

Akisame.9508:

Ranger should be set up the same way with pets. Ranger’s should have 100% control of their damage and the pet, while alive, should be able to deal an extra 15% damage.

SkiTz.4590:

Give rangers 100% of the damage, not this useless 70:30 split with our pet

wolfyrik.2017:

If ANET decided againsts Aspects/stow ultimately, I’d like to see this approach instead. I fail to see how a pet that can barely hit would be overpowered when wielded by a charater with 100% of it’s damage out put intact.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I would like to say;
100% Ranger DMG, X% Pet dmg ABOVE it. Control it well for effectiveness!

Gotejjeken.1267:

Not seeing a damage rebalance between pet and ranger is a bit worrying. I don’t want my pet doing more damage, or scaling with me. I want my pet to be a pretty utility skill. Give me 80% of the damage and a super responsive F2 from my pet, should solve every AI issue you have.

Tryxtr.6295:

1. The damage split is supposedly 70% / 30% between ranger and pet. Change that to 85% / 15%

Aidenwolf.5964:

What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

Much needed, often requested. Please ArenaNet, many want it and you could even keep your pets.

So… you and a few others have specifically said that you love having a pet around, but at the same time, you want ANet to nerf pet damage and put more of it on to Ranger?

I mean, I’m all in favor of giving Ranger more damage, but I’m just confused why you’d want a pet in the first place if its damage is going to be even more pathetic. It’s entirely counter-intuitive.

Isolating a portion of our damage onto a separate entity that can be killed is counter productive in PvE and WvW where aoe and instagib are too rampant to expect the pet to live long enough to make any impact.

Giving the player all the damage and downgrading the pet to a walking CC/Boon Dispenser is the best option. Changing BM to a system that increases pet damage in exchange for player damage is all that is needed.

Good suggestions, I definitely agree.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

McWolfy.5924:

Warriors have +15% dmg and crit trait if not using the adrenalin skill. We losing dmg because the pet…

Akisame.9508:

Ranger should be set up the same way with pets. Ranger’s should have 100% control of their damage and the pet, while alive, should be able to deal an extra 15% damage.

SkiTz.4590:

Give rangers 100% of the damage, not this useless 70:30 split with our pet

wolfyrik.2017:

If ANET decided againsts Aspects/stow ultimately, I’d like to see this approach instead. I fail to see how a pet that can barely hit would be overpowered when wielded by a charater with 100% of it’s damage out put intact.

RoyalPredator.9163:

I would like to say;
100% Ranger DMG, X% Pet dmg ABOVE it. Control it well for effectiveness!

Gotejjeken.1267:

Not seeing a damage rebalance between pet and ranger is a bit worrying. I don’t want my pet doing more damage, or scaling with me. I want my pet to be a pretty utility skill. Give me 80% of the damage and a super responsive F2 from my pet, should solve every AI issue you have.

Tryxtr.6295:

1. The damage split is supposedly 70% / 30% between ranger and pet. Change that to 85% / 15%

Aidenwolf.5964:

What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

Much needed, often requested. Please ArenaNet, many want it and you could even keep your pets.

So… you and a few others have specifically said that you love having a pet around, but at the same time, you want ANet to nerf pet damage and put more of it on to Ranger?

I mean, I’m all in favor of giving Ranger more damage, but I’m just confused why you’d want a pet in the first place if its damage is going to be even more pathetic. It’s entirely counter-intuitive.

I just think it’s hilarious that self-proclaimed pet supporters are looking to move the pet’s damage onto the Ranger.

Substance E.4852:

And why should they? Pet AI has no place in groups that care about razor edge performance.

The pet won’t get smarter and they won’t increase it’s power as long as PvP and PvE remain joined so the rest of us should have the option to be effective if we choose.

I personally agree with this post.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

Thanks for the summary post Allie.

Do you have any input as to what the devs would like to see discussed more or what direction they plan on taking the Ranger?

Mark Katzbach.9084:

We also haven’t provided the person who is running that account with any information. Anything they post, that isn’t something that we’ve already announced, is pure speculation.

“Pure speculation” in the past has proven to be quite true.

And now we wait.

Mirta.5029:

Enokitake.1742:

Campaigns:
Guild Wars Prophecies (April 2005)
Guild Wars Factions (April 2006)
Guild Wars Nightfall (October 2006)

Expansions:
Guild Wars Eye of the North (August 2007)

1. Not an MMO
2. Campaigns were being developed by separate teams at the same time because they all wanted to get their vision in there
3. After Eye of the North the waiting period was full 5 years. Meaning that spacing of the games wasn’t completely right.

…how is Guild Wars not an MMO?

Norn, without a doubt.

Peetee.9406:

Here’s the problem,

All the speed runners, min/maxers, and zerker heavy onlys have chased the casual player base away from the dungeons.

ANet looks at their metrics and sees no one in the dungeons. They see that the TA:Aetherblade update was unsuccessful. Most players like myself did it once and will never do it again or simply passed on it. Meanwhile they look at Lion’s Arch and there’s 10k people doing it. You have an update that interests 10000 people at any given moment or one that interests maybe 50 people in total a day. Its not a very hard decision as to what’s better for business.

Not pointing the finger at you or anyone in particular but its the price that gets paid for being an kitten. Hardcore WvW guilds push players away, ANet stops doing WvW updates. sPvP players rip on people that play ele in tournies and rage quit on skyham, ANet stops doing PvP updates. In this case, the same is true for dungeons.

I don’t want to play a game where the vast majority of new content consists of PvE zerg fights and Gem Store updates.

Beldin.5498:

I’m quite happy that i don’t really see a reason to get ascended armor and don’t really want reasons that makes me feel that i now HAVE to get some.

As someone who has multiple level 80’s and only plays WvW and sPvP, I second this.

Azreell.1568:

The problem isn’t the grind.

The problem is the complete lack of any real reward for your grind and thus the reason the OP’s asking to change ascended to be more appealing.

The grind is most certainly the problem.

Making the grind “more appealing” is essentially just another way of saying that you’d like to make having all Ascended gear become mandatory. I don’t play this game to grind gear out; if I wanted to do that, I’d go play WoW or some Korean RPG.

One of this game’s founding principles was that all players at level 80 would be on equal footing, whether you’ve had that character at 80 for a year or for just five minutes. Improving Ascended gear in any fashion that is not purely cosmetic defeats that philosophy and would be a make-it-or-break-it deal for me unless they made it a lot easier to acquire said Ascended items.

Phenn.5167:

Flytrap.8075:

I’m of the mind that Ranger needs a design overhaul, but I’m not sure how realistic that is at this point.

It does. As do many of the Necro traitlines, and the Engi’s turrets, et cetera.

But like the above, ANet has historically refused to engage in any real dialogue on the issue beyond, “We know it’s a problem. We’re looking into it.”

So why I ever believed a collaborative development initiative for the Ranger would turn out well, I don’t know.

This CDI has failed in every way the Devs originally sold it.

There has been next to no collaboration. Red Posts saying, “Good idea. We’ll look into it.” Or, “We’re aware of this problem. We’ll look into it.” don’t count. Collaboration by definition (and as it was billed in the original iteration of the initiative) necessitates a continuous stream of dialogue that massages a crazy vision into a practical reality. It takes both parties to accomplish a collaborative task.

So far, one party has been conspicuously absent.

There has been next to no development. Many of the ideas presented here and throughout the Ranger subform have been well-thought-out. They’d work. They’re practical. Yet because the Devs (or the Devs’ management) refuses to be flexible on their “vision” for the class, no real development can take place.

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: The Devs cannot balance a class around a vision that cannot exist in the present iteration of the game, and neither can they balance a class in the present game around a possible future.

Finally, there has been no real initiative. Well, that’s not entirely true. The Ranger community has demonstrated an immense amount of initiative in this project, and for that they should be commended. But the initiative as it was primarily sold to us was a two-way street. So long as those who can make things happen remain absent from the conversation, it communicates a distinct lack of initiative.

Let me be clear. I appreciate the spirit of the CDI project. I greatly appreciate the input that Allie has provided thus far. But it’s not enough.

GW2 has so much potential. Let’s actualize it.

Please.

Slow clap.

SkiTz.4590:

RyuDragnier.9476:

SkiTz.4590:

Agreed.
I see posts in other CDIs daily but here? nah

At this point, it looks awful on Allie now.
She has even turned her attention to some pistol whip thread about theives lol

Ironically enough, she has pistol whipped this Ranger CDI…

I wouldn’t blame Allie since she seems to be a community talker (meaning she’s PR agent), I would blame the devs for not taking responsibility for making a single class the worst in the game, and then repeatedly MAKING IT WORSE THROUGH ACROSS THE BOARD NERFS.

Anet, unfortunately you’ve reached the point where the hard route is the only route to fix this. I understand this is an undertaking to fix pet AI or even work something else into us as a class mechanic (or even adjusting the ranger:pet damage ratio), but considering Ranger is the worst class in the game and is seen by 80% of the community as the worst class, you probably have no other choice.

Well no doubt devs are to blame but last time I checked, Allie is the person in charge of this thread.

I see all other CDI’s getting posts by their respective CDI manager, I don’t see that here.

No offense to Allie, but at this point, she has to get some blame (now if Devs are giving her no feedback period and see comes out and says so, than this entire CDI will erupt with backlash because than it will be officially obvious that they don’t give a kitten about this class or CDI (right now, this is only unofficially true lol)

CDI has been up like 10 days now? She has posted a couple times every 2-3 days…. thats embarassingly low amount of interaction with the most important CDI that is currently on the forums.

I still however put more blame into Anet and the developers. It’s completely obvious Allie needs some more support here and by the looks of it, Anet could care less about this.

Keep in mind that it’s currently only ~8:30 AM in ANet’s time. I’m hoping that we get some dev feedback later today.

Forzani.2584:

Tryxtr.6295:

If they’re hesitant, or unwilling, to spend the time reworking a dozen different skills, why don’t they just do 2 things and see what happens:

1. The damage split is supposedly 70% / 30% between ranger and pet. Change that to 85% / 15%
2. Increase base health to Ranger by 3,000

Will increase damage and survivability and then the community can test it out and see if it works.

I agree that the class needs a complete overhaul, but Anet will probably tell us that would take 6 months to a year to do. This is simple, could be done tomorrow by changing a few numbers, and could be implemented into the game for the players to test.

Bottom line is they need to do something and do it quickly to show they acknowledge there’s an issue, and that they care.

Bingo.

That’s exactly what they did for Warriors who went from an under performing class to some say over powered. all it takes is a couple of tweaks like the ones you suggested. No redesign needed.

I think that this would definitely help in PvE/sPvP, but it would fall short of addressing any of the issues that Ranger suffers from in WvW.

I’m of the mind that Ranger needs a design overhaul, but I’m not sure how realistic that is at this point.

arkealia.2713:

The CDI thread about fractal is pretty active compared to this or the wvw one.

And this thread is twice the size of the Fractal thread; clearly the community has spoken.

EDIT: Re-read all of the red posts and I feel that some of us have been a bit too inflammatory in our demands/accusations, myself included. I’m going to attempt to patiently wait for our next dev post.

SkiTz.4590:

Flytrap.8075:

If we don’t get a summary post today or at least some sort of guidance from ANet, I’m giving up on this cause.

I understand that Allie and Co. are busy people, but we’re forty-plus pages into this thread and still have not received a single summary post. I thought the whole point of these CDI’s was to facilitate interaction between the devs and the community to help come up with something great, but right now this thread has devolved into people spit-balling random ideas and hoping that something sticks.

We’ve talked the pet to death. We’ve talked about clunky weapon sets and how a lot of our skills (both weapon and utility) lack impact or “uumph”. We’ve talked about how Ranger is typically a selfish class and doesn’t really provide that much to his or her team. We’ve talked about awkward/terrible (both really) trait lines. We’ve talked about ANet’s vision of the Ranger and the whole sustained damage debacle. We’ve talked about how Ranger suffers in all aspects of WvW aside from roaming.

Please, tell us where we currently stand on these issues and what we can do to move forward. The ball is entirely in your court, ANet.

Agreed.
I see posts in other CDIs daily but here? nah

At this point, it looks awful on Allie now.
She has even turned her attention to some pistol whip thread about theives lol

Ironically enough, she has pistol whipped this Ranger CDI…

The main problem that I have is that we have no idea as to the extent that ANet is willing to change the Ranger profession.

Is this going to be a massive rework, or are they just looking to change some numbers and move some traits around? Will weapon skills be altered, or is that pretty much set in stone? How are they looking into adjusting the pet mechanic, and is implementing a new mechanic completely off the table? Are we sticking to ANet’s original vision of the Ranger, or are things going to change?

In my opinion, it’s pretty hard to provide valuable feedback at this point because we have no idea what ANet has in mind.

If we don’t get a summary post today or at least some sort of guidance from ANet, I’m giving up on this cause.

I understand that Allie and Co. are busy people, but we’re forty-plus pages into this thread and still have not received a single summary post. I thought the whole point of these CDI’s was to facilitate interaction between the devs and the community to help come up with something great, but right now this thread has devolved into people spit-balling random ideas and hoping that something sticks.

We’ve talked the pet to death. We’ve talked about clunky weapon sets and how a lot of our skills (both weapon and utility) lack impact or “uumph”. We’ve talked about how Ranger is typically a selfish class and doesn’t really provide that much to his or her team. We’ve talked about awkward/terrible (both really) trait lines. We’ve talked about ANet’s vision of the Ranger and the whole sustained damage debacle. We’ve talked about how Ranger suffers in all aspects of WvW aside from roaming.

Please, tell us where we currently stand on these issues and what we can do to move forward. The ball is entirely in your court, ANet.

will de grijze jager.6594:

i still think that ranger need more aoe like the longbow only 1 skill is aoe.

I believe most people would agree with you.

It’s a glaring flaw, especially when running in a zerg in WvW. Other people have also previously mentioned how Ranger tends to be a selfish class and doesn’t really offer much to the groups they play with, which is also something that needs to be remedied.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Flytrap.8075:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Flytrap.8075:

I feel that other professions pull this way better than Ranger currently does.

A lot of the weapon sets available to Ranger are either awkward/clunky or don’t have a clearly established niche.

I don’t even think that weapons have to fill a niche, they just have to serve a clear purpose. If the LB was designed to deal high, long-range damage, I would say yes, the LB is capable of doing so but he is highly unreliable since his damage falls of if the target comes closer. At the same time the LB has no real countermeasures to prevent an enemy to come closer. Furthermore the arrows are a hit-n-miss gamble at long range.

“Fitting a niche” and “serving a clear purpose” are the same thing in my eyes.

The problem with “Fitting a niche” vs. “serving a clear purpose” is that the niche implies that the gameplay feels totally different from other weapons, beeing unique. I don’t have a problem with the MH axe serving the same purpose as the SB does, just both weapons have to excel at one point. SB as example should be the always kiting, persistent damage dealing weapon while the MH axe could be somewhat more bursty but less kiting.

I think you’re just arguing semantics, but your last tidbit did get more to the heart of my point.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Flytrap.8075:

I feel that other professions pull this way better than Ranger currently does.

A lot of the weapon sets available to Ranger are either awkward/clunky or don’t have a clearly established niche.

I don’t even think that weapons have to fill a niche, they just have to serve a clear purpose. If the LB was designed to deal high, long-range damage, I would say yes, the LB is capable of doing so but he is highly unreliable since his damage falls of if the target comes closer. At the same time the LB has no real countermeasures to prevent an enemy to come closer. Furthermore the arrows are a hit-n-miss gamble at long range.

“Fitting a niche” and “serving a clear purpose” are the same thing in my eyes.

EX: Guardian staff is the quintessential Support weapon; it was clearly designed with that in mind.

Jocksy.3415:

urdriel.8496:

misterdevious.6482:

When people simply say “the pet,” I wonder how much was invested in that pet.

The default pets have 0 traits, 0 bonus stats, 0 condition damage, 0 movement speed buff, 0 regen, 0 pet utility skills, and 0 support from the ranger or the ranger’s gear.

The most powerful pets benefit from most of the ranger’s traits, up to 4100 bonus stats (Beastmastery 300×4, Master’s Bond 200×4, Might 875×2, Trait 350×1), up to 1225 condition damage, +50% condition duration, 25-40% movement speed buff, massive regen, 3 pet-related utility skills, and full support from the ranger, and the ranger’s healing, precision, and boon duration gear. (Giving the pet 25 stacks of might can be done with a single key using the right build.)

I can keep pets alive in 30v30 zerg fights (map-blob vs map-blob is another story), but it requires building specifically for that purpose (a bit different from the most lethal pet) and making a compromise with my own safety. With the upcoming change to F2 activation, I may play this way more often.

• Should there be less difference between the min and max pets?
• Should it be easier to spec for a good pet?
• Should pets have more utility by default that isn’t heavily dependent on their stats?

Thieves and mesmer will laugh hard at your pet , all other classes will kite it until the end of the fight

phys.7689:

urdriel.8496:

Aioros.4862:

Now we are skirmishers, not archers. I think it’s a “Go melee or get out” thingy.

Yes, common sense, we will give you Shortbow and Longbow but you must go melee…….

they also gave you daggers swords greatswords and axes.

this game isnt designed where one of a professions weaponsets is supposed to better than others, each set is supposed to serve different needs.
ranger is meant to be able to go in and out of range, and have good options from any range. They actually did that fairly decently, my main beef is LB/SB is boring. I wouldnt mind aimed shots and charged attacks, but i dont know if thats what yall want

Oh yes, without traits, max LB range 1200 SB 900, gap closers have 600-1200 range, you hit 1 time and in 1 second your enemy is at melee distance, it is really stupid, on the other side a warrior can hit like a truck and run like the roadrunner ( WITH HEAVY ARMOR…)

LB/SB are boring because the best dps is always the AutoAttack, this is a DESIGN FLAW.

SB is supposed to be a condition weapon.

And LB is supposed to be a Power weapon, but DOESNT HAVE a real burst skill.

Not a design flaw…
This is what I like about ranger, that secondary attacks are situational (except for gs#2)
It’s not a “I spam all my attacks in a certain order, then wait for CD”, it’s a “I AA until the situation calls for another attack”.
I do agree power weapons should have burst skills, but I think they should also keep the situational attacks of our weapons…

I have to disagree on this one.

Compared to the other professions’ weapon sets, the ones available to Ranger feel way more spammy. In my opinion, this is because a lot of the Ranger’s weapons are incredibly clunky/awkward; Sword, Greatsword, and Longbow stand out to me.

I also think that some weapons don’t have a clearly established niche available to them (Shortbow vs. MH-Axe, Sword vs. Greatsword, etc.). When you look at other classes and their weapon sets, it is obvious that each weapon was designed with a specific role in mind, whereas a lot of Ranger weapons are suffering from an identity crisis.

I wouldn’t mind Gem Store skins if ANet actually implemented some new armor / weapon skins that you can earn through playing the game itself.

I mean, they have said repeatedly that “cosmetics” are a major part of the end-game, but I can’t help but feel that this area has been severely neglected when you ignore Gem Store updates.

How many full armor sets has ANet introduced since the release of this game? Weapons? How about other random cosmetic items? Aside from Ascended crafting and meta achievements in the Living Story updates, they haven’t done very much.

I’m still shocked at the massive disparity between PvE skins (Fractals, dungeons, etc.) and those earned in WvW or sPvP. I’m crossing my fingers that this will be addressed in the next feature update, but I’m not going to hold my breath.

Atherakhia.4086:

xallever.1874:

Arghore.8340:

Power-Creep Nerf and Balancing

I’m guessing another difficulty they’re facing is the power-creep nerf direction. Seems like that one has a higher priority. So, let’s nerf the damage of all classes first, and let’s see how far behind the Ranger still is and then pick up from there.

If that’s the case, what can they expect from a CDI placed in such an awkward timeframe?

This is my biggest concern with this whole CDI thread.

We now know why all the changes the class has received up until this point have been such a failure… apparently the vision for this class that ANet’s using for the Ranger simply doesn’t work in the game they’ve created.

So instead of trying to reallign their vision to one that would actually fit into the game they’ve made, they’re going to try and bring the other classes down and wait and see how the class fairs then? Effectively resolving nothing? Which will take another year at best?

And where will that leave us? A sustained DPS model will never work in a PvP setting so the power builds for this class are still a non-factor. We still haven’t even begun to discuss why this class is such a failure in WvW that no one in their right mind wants anything to do with us… so that will still likely be an issue. Pet responsiveness seems to be a big deal with some improvements coming, but we still haven’t discussed why the pet simply doesn’t work in WvW at all, so we’ll still be faced with that.

It’s not fair to expect Rangers to sit, sidelined for another 1.5 years waiting for 7 other classes to be toned down only to be faced with the same problems regardless.

I’d rather have Ranger brought up to their level instead of bringing the other seven professions down.

I can only hope that ANet has realized that this isn’t going to be an easy fix, but it’s hard to tell where we stand at this point since we haven’t gotten any directional updates.

Prysin.8542:

Akisame.9508:

I love this game and don’t really want to leave but if they do not either fix pets or give ranger’s 100% of their damage back, I’m gone on 4/4.

Well, if you think they can implement any of these suggestions, including balancing, testing, bug testing and effect/animation changes/improvements within 4/4 then you are sorely wrong.

So, goodbye for now, and i’d also use this opportunity to wager that you will be back on this game within the end of july.

To be honest, I’m of a similar train of thought.

If the next feature patch doesn’t contain anything interesting, I’m probably moving on from this game. Ranger obviously is going to take some time to fix, but my concerns are with the game in general; it’s grown so stale and none of the issues that stand out to me have been properly addressed.

Xillllix.3485:

1- Removal of Matchup forum decreased most people’s interest
2- Matchups are too long, all the good you may do in one day has little impact over the weekly score
3- Lack of a true GvG system (with guild ranks and halls) means less and less people are interested in GW2 overall
4- WvW relies on reward because it is lacking a sense of accomplishment like GvG in GW1 had
5- Pve is too easy, lack of new zones (with new music, skills and challenges) and hard zones makes the overall community bored
6- EOTM showed us how WvW could be so much better, but at the same time has no impact on score, which in turn left most of the community confused about what Anet is trying to do with WvW
7- New skills that aren’t worth using, lack of promised content (like new traps), static maps, bugs (like getting stuck after Blink or Lightning Flash) amongst other problems also do not help

In my opinion only GvG and PvE expansions with many super-hard zones can save GW2 in the long run. Anet has amazing game mechanics (best I’ve seen for a mmo) but seems not to capitalize on them.

Love this post.

Zypher.7609:

Nage.1520:

I’d like an expansion….if it could be produced while also producing the more frequent content updates.

We will receive expansion type content, that is part of an update. Not a box you have to go out and buy and install. It will just be a large free update to the game.

I’ll believe it when I see it.

I’d give it a 5/10.

I thought the Zephyr Sanctum patch was pretty cool, but I was disappointed by the flood of zerg content that followed.

I’d love to see some sort of summary post from ANet in the near future.

Verificus.4320:

tbh id rather give them 60 bucks to make a new and mindblowingly awesome expansion then i would care for suboptimal free content. Free content does not work.. they cannot provide a true expansion like how blizzard does for instance and not charge money, never gonna happen. The business model now will always mean small updates like the LS system. I still cant understand why they chose this format. Im pretty kitten sure they’d sell a couple million expansions just as they did the original game.

I think a lot of people are starting to lean that way.

It’s also frustrating because the whole “cosmetic end-game” essentially revolves around the gem store.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

Flytrap.8075:

Maybe he meant something along the lines of pets having literally no value in large-scale WvW.

Let’s be fair. A singular character anywhere in large-scale WvW (i.e. “WvW zerg blobx”) isn’t of much consequence. That’s why they blob up and fight, to take advantage of having multiple targets and multiple sources of damage. That’s the whole reason zergs work against nearly every target ever since the advent of combat tactics. Throw enough people together and you can overwhelm a significantly smaller force.

There are two things of value in large-scale WvW. Strong enough defenses to stall out the enemy force by attrition inflicted by the second thing – rapid, powerful AoE damage . . . such as those of arrow carts or a few places where cannons can be of some use.

If the Ranger is made to be of “value” in large-scale WvW, there are thus two options by this conclusion. They either need to be able to dispense the large-range damage of an arrow cart, or be resilient enough to stand 1 v 10. Either case runs the incredibly likely and high risk of making them unbalanced for any other use . . . or on the other side, being so useless for small-group usage we’ll be back here in six months talking about how Rangers are always beat 1 v 1.

Utility is always nice, which is why you see Mesmers, Necros, and staff Eles. Periph killers are also utilized in some zergs, but Rangers will never be very good at that because of the damage split with their pet and their lack of burst.

If it was all about damage and durability, zergs would only be Guardians and Warriors.

xallever.1874:

Yoh.8469:

Atherakhia.4086:

xallever.1874:

Tryxtr.6295:

General question to progress this discussion further:

In PvE, the pets do not generally die that quickly, except for in dungeons when stacking. Pets can tank mobs pretty well.

In WvW pets almost insta-die and can be easily ignored (ran past) due to the fact that they can’t hit a moving target.

How can Anet fix this issue to make it work in both game modes?

Can’t make the pet way tankier (for WvW survivability) because then they’d be basically OP in PvE and Anet doesn’t want to separate WvW from PvE. Could make them a little bit tankier, but that doesn’t really help WvW since they need a huge boost to keep them alive.

Maybe a pet’s vitality and toughness could scale with the number of enemies around them. Not sure if that would fix the issue.

How do you guys visualize the pet ought to perform in WvW?

In a zerg encounter for instance, what do you expect the pet ought to do for you?

The arguably better archers like thieves or warriors also don’t bring too much into the table during such encounters. The thieves can put a poison field, but also die quite easily if they are targeted.

The thing is that if the Rangers are meant for single encounters, they are better suited as roamers. Just that at this juncture, thieves and mesmers (and arguably eles too) perform much better than rangers.

I don’t see it problematic that certain professions bring more to the table in a zerg situations such as guardians, warriors and eles. Just that currently every other profession can do what the Ranger can do better.

There are 2 scenarios that work…

You either make pets highly survivable but remove the swap mechanic so players aren’t overwhelmed. Or you scale back the focus of the pet and make it an inconsequential part of the game overall.

The first would be ideal and simply making the pet take 75% less damage from AE’s that don’t have the pet targetted would solve almost all of the survivability issues. They aren’t like phantasms and clones that can be replaced almost immediately. Plus if you remove the swap mechanic from the game, players can choose to kill the pet quickly and the Ranger is then stuck with a 30% dps loss.

The alternate scenario is you just reduce the impact the pet has and you effectively turn it into a class specific DOT. All pets do the same damage, that damage is about what a 6 stack of bleed is capable of, and you call it a day. You then increase the Ranger’s damage and coefficients up to a competetive level and make the F2 functions spawn ‘sprites’ that do their pet specific abilities instead of worrying about the pet being alive or dead at the time of activation.

Neither is ideal, but both methods solve the problems players have with the pets.

Actually I can think of a third option.
A great deal of the problems with pets stem from the fact that they are both always on and non-optional. We don’t have these problems with Mesmer Illusions, even thou they are non-optional, but we do have similar problems with Necromancer Minions that are always on.

So what if the pet wasn’t always on, but rater a summon?
You summon them, they do their thing while also giving you a pet skill, then they go away. Sort of like a Phantasm that can change targets, and a great deal tougher.
You could have up to 4 pets this way bound to each of the F1-F4 keys, and once summoned the bar changes to what we have now, with F4 recalling your pet and putting it on cooldown so you can summon another pet.

Then the Power and Effectiveness of the Ranger vs the pets can be reworked, you can have pets that are very powerful, but don’t last long. And the Ranger isn’t as required to have a chunk of their power go towards having the pet around at all times.
They could share a similar relationship between a Mesmer and their Illusions.

This way they wouldn’t have to survive an AOE encounter, as they could be traited for on death effects, and you would have enough backup pets to fall back on, some of which might be better for dealing with that situation.
It would solve a whole lot of problems, and I think it’s a good compromise between permastow and not.

I actually rather like this idea too. Plus, it suits the beastmaster theme to it. You can have an array of animals that serve you that you can command at will.

That idea definitely has potential.

Hopefully ANet takes notice

Vol.7601:

Savoy.6824:

Also I would like to suggest that you, ANET, be better about advertising your content. It would have been nice to know back in December that no new pve zones, game play mechanics, or player generated content would be coming out until April.

Why would they do that? That would only encourage less people to play.

They’ve got until April to deliver some goods.

I’m not dealing with another year of Living Story zergfests and empty promises.