Oh come on is it that bad with rangers ?
Yes. At high levels, we can get kicked from dungeon groups unless we run one specific set, or even then, just because other classes do things better.
In pvp, we admittedly have a strong presence, but only in the form of 1 or 2 viable builds.
Our pets and traits have been bugged since beta.
It really is that bad.
Just another anecdote to add to this about pets:
Just did Crucible of Eternity Path 1. Had to kill a bunch of bomb golems. My drake just bounced around like a pinball, attacking nothing, just switching aggro over and over, and drawing aggro to itself. Ridiculous.
Sword is fine as long as you don’t need to dodge much and you don’t mind getting flung off a ledge to your death every once in a while. I personally only use it for the CoF gate control, and the first phase of the Arah p2 boss. In pretty much all other situations, Greatsword brigns more utility.
It’s got a very tight cleave, and tends to push the monster targeted.
All we bring are two damage buffs that we get from traiting that prevent us from actually playing ranged if we want to use them to support the party.
So skill-based things aside, basically what Rangers think too.
We don’t have enough pet control because of its horrendous AI, and we don’t bring enough support to a party.
Pet naming is horrible, as the names are never saved, which makes changing pets to every occasion a literal chore that people actively ignore, even though this is one of the best ways to contribute to a group.
We don’t do enough damage to justify the low amount of utility we do, and we don’t bring enough utility to justify the low amount of damage we do.
There are plenty of angles to fix ranger from. One just needs to be chosen.
Here’s one test: My friend leveled an engi to 80, picked up Rampagers exotic gear, used boon duration runes and grenade traits, and did more damage with nades than my longbow ranger using full ascended zerker with ruby orbs and 3 versatile mighty infusions, 2 mighty wvw infusions , max range.
That’s one test.
After a rash of being kicked from parties just for joining as a ranger, I’d like to ask:
Assuming all skill equal (Ruling out BowBear, non-stacking, etc),
Why would you rather take another class into a dungeon or fractal than a ranger?
We’ve had quite a few posts from Rangers saying what they believe needs to be changed. What do people who main other classes think?
No gates or walls to repair in fractals.
And in high level fractals, a movement-displacing CC might as well be downed.
Thank you though! If I run into this in WvW, I’ll know an easier way to get out of it!
I actually use River and Marsh Drakes. Too often I’ll swap pets, spam f1 to hopefully try to get the pet to attack, then press f2, after which there are 3 outcomes.
1. The pet fires off in the wrong direction, missing completely and wasting both Rampage as One and its f2 skill.
2. The pet faces the wrong direction and then fires the skill at an insane angle. This is problematic because when I see my pet charging up to fire while facing the wrong direction, I’ll end up trying to cancel the skill to avoid scenario 1.
3. The pet doesn’t respond at all and just sits by me.
To put the longbow projectile speed issue into perspective, there’s currently at least 4 ways to mitigate longbow’s low damage.
1. Moving with swiftness. If you just strafe in one direction with swiftness on, all Long-Range Shots will miss. This isn’t a matter of skill- the projectile just doesn’t move quick enough. Or, taking minimum amounts of skill, you can strafe side to side without swiftness.
2. Running through the Ranger. If you run through a Ranger when they try to Point Blank shot or Hunter’s Shot, or even Rapid Fire, the skill gets canceled automatically. Again, this isn’t a matter of skill. Rangers have very little repositioning power period.
3 and 4. Damage immunities and reflects.
Damage immunities block melee damage too, so that’s not a big deal. But reflects just compound the ways to mitigate longbow damage.
Increasing longbow projectile speed deals with 1 out of these 4.
That said, I do like the idea of a condition on long-range shot. There are many ways to approach the problem at hand.
Rangers simply do not do enough damage for how much utility they don’t take, and do not provide enough utility for sacrificing a lot more damage.
(edited by Ltomato.8649)
Why would SoR have a cap on conditions cleansed? The similar warrior signet has no cap. If it’s not OP on a warrior, it cannot be OP on us…
As if. Apparently Natural Vigor was OP for a trait, while Warriors have a signet that did and still does the same thing.
This is a really horrible bug. Happens all the time in Snowblind fractal if you try to pick up a torch just as you get teleported.
Or in Jade Maw if you try to pick up a crystal and get interrupted.
Only solution then is to get downed.
That doesn’t make me too optimistic about the future then. Geez.
Also, just a heads up- I just found this in-game:
Tthe Skirmishing 15 minor trait, furious grip actually only gives about half of what the tooltip says it should. 5 seconds of fury vs the tooltip’s 9 or 10.
Despite the tooltip of the Skirmishing minor trait “Furious Grip” stating that it gives 10 seconds of fury, it only gives 5 seconds.
Edit: Just had some guildmates confirm this.
Edit2: Apparently this has been bugged since beta.
…
(edited by Ltomato.8649)
Definitely. I run River/Marsh drake for tons of might when I use Rampage as One, but some situations prefer ranged pets or buffing pets. In those, I either just keep my pet on passive or just play sub-optimally. It’s easier than having to ask your party to wait up because you need to “re-name Mr. Snugglekins”.
I’ve never had that problem. My 2 pets retain their names when I swap them. Only time I have to rename them is when I change them for different ones.
That’s what I’m referring to. Sometimes I think “you know what, a ranged pet would be good for this fight.” But then I think “well dang, then I’ll lose my nickname and have to do that over again.”
It’s way too annoying.
“Signet of Stone
Passive: Improves toughness for you and your pet.
Active: Your pet takes no damage from attacks. "Perma active effect for ranger, seems legit…
He means that signet actives should affect the player on use by default.
Currently there are 4 signets for rangers.
Renewal
Hunt
Wild
Stone
Even with Signet of the Beastmaster, Signet of Renewal active doesn’t do anything on the player. Not that you’d want it to, since it’s Ranger’s only utility condition clear outside of Healing Spring, and drawing all the conditions to you with no other source of condition removal is suicide.
Signet of the Wild becomes a 7 or 8 second stability on a 60 second cooldown with a one second cast time. Yaaaaay. That’s almost absolutely useless considering Rampage as One gives more stability per cooldown as well as other buffs.
Signet of Stone becomes actually useful, making you immune to damage for 6 seconds.
A nice panic button. Better than “Protect Me” because it doesn’t require your pet to also stay alive. (NOTE: As with Rampage as One and Protect Me and other inter-pet buffs, if you swap pets in the middle, the effect is completely negated.)
Signet of the Hunt is decent. A 150% attack every 30 seconds isn’t too bad. Good combination with greatsword maul and bursty type pets.
Signet of the Beastmaster right now requires rangers to trait 30 points into Marksmanship to get those secondary effects. As signets are now, Renewal can be used for an emergency aoe condition clear, and Hunt is useful for run speed.
Therefore making Signet of the Beastmaster on by default would be a pretty good decision, as it would open up the overcrowded marksmanship tree to more variety.
(edited by Ltomato.8649)
If you’re a ranger and you take “Steady Focus” (+10% damage when endurance is full) you get punished for using the built in dodge. Just sayin.
On the other hand there’s at least one food that gives might on evade. So there’s that.
Then, the moment you swap it to a different pet for utility, it loses the name.
That single fact makes me have to choose the two pets that I feel will offer the most in all situations. Having to rename your pet every time you swap it out is just ridiculous.
And honestly it is good like that. You never should be able to make a build where ranged damage > melee damage and I don’t understand why so many people don’t get this. Must be the bearbow mentality.
If you’d actually read my suggestions instead of simply assuming, none of them directly increase longbow damage. Closest to that would be the permanent fury.
You never should be able to make a build where ranged damage > melee damage
Again, if you had read my post, I give an example where an engineer in sub-optimal gear does MORE damage than a ranger in optimal gear at ANY range in an AoE, versus a ranger’s single target. Melee damage also cleaves, which does do more damage total.
Having farmed CoF path one on my warrior back in the day, I know the damage potential of melee. Ranged potential, even with full might stacks and fury from Rampage as One + Drake, doesn’t even come close. 4800 crits per shot at max range, 3/4 fire speed versus 3000+ melee cleave attacks at 1/4 to 1/2 second per hit.
Some suggestions:
Increase Long-Range Shot projectile speed.
When most of our damage comes from being far away, missing and getting a confusing “Out of Range” pop up is extremely frustrating. Increasing Long-Range Shot projectile speed so that it isn’t so simple to just walk back and forth indefinitely to negate all damage would make Longbow much easier to use in long range situations.
Bring back the bugged fury on longbow
Even with permanent fury, longbow wasn’t matching up to other professions in terms of damage. Permanent fury on longbow, with my current build (55% crit chance, 108% crit damage) would result in about a 16% damage over time increase due to my high critical damage.
Lower the channel time on Rapid Fire
Currently, the four and a half second channel time is hardly rapid. It does track enemies through stealth (provided they don’t just go behind you) which is nice, but it lacks any real feeling of burst. The vulnerability is fantastic, but the channel often gets interrupted- 4.5 seconds is an extremely long time to be shooting, and with 10 shots, the damage often just gets outhealed in PvP, or simply interrupted in PvE.
Adjust Barrage
With a longbow, this is our only source of area damage unless you take piercing arrows (sacrificing 5% damage while also requiring enemies to be lined up).
Perhaps making this able to be channeled while moving, or decreasing the cast time would make it much more useful to use. In PvE, this is rarely used, as it is hard to find a safe location to cast from. In PvP, this is never used, as there is never a safe place to cast from.
Rework Steady Focus or revert the Natural Vigor change
Despite claiming to want to improve build diversity in the Dec. 10th balance patch, power based rangers received no real damage or viable utility buffs. In fact, the Natural Vigor change (from 50% (that’s half of real vigor, by the way) to 25%) meant that after dodge rolling, Ranger damage dropped 10% for twice as long as before, essentially lowering Ranger damage output.
Perhaps make Steady Focus only lose its bonus when endurance is less than half full. This would allow rangers to dodge at least once to reposition or simply to survive while maintaining damage. 10% is a lot of damage to lose out on just for using an often necessary gameplay mechanic.
Another option would be to revert the Natural Vigor change. This change seemed aimed at the PvP scene where petting zoo rangers would just constantly dodge and negate damage. The issue here is that petting zoo rangers have ways of evading built into their weapons, as well as having the option to take traits that grant 100% vigor, such as Vigorous Renewal in wilderness survival or Vigorous Training in Beastmastery.
Reverting the change would make power rangers much easier to use.
Hopefully this clarifies my current frustration with Ranger’s longbow, and provides some fair suggestions that may inspire some change in the future.
(I also hope this wasn’t toooo wall of text-y!)
Ranger Longbow Needs to be Changed for Power Rangers to be Viable in any Medium of Play
Summary:
Longbow power ranger in optimal gear is always numerically worse than alternatives.
This is due to a a lack of both utility and damage on longbow skills.
The comparison:
My equipment:
All Ascended Berserker armor (Power, prec, crit damage), with Ruby Orbs slotted.
All Ascended Berserker Trinkets, with 3 Offensive Mighty Infusions.
Ascended Berserker Longbow with 2 WvW Mighty Infusions and Superior Sigil of Force (5% damage).
My traits:
30 in Marksmanship taking Steady Focus (10% damage at full endurance) and Eagle Eye (300 range, 5% damage)
25 in Skirmishing taking Hunter’s Tactics (10% damage when flanking)
5 in Wilderness Survival (25% endurance regeneration)
10 in Nature Magic for Strength of Spirit (7% of vitality turned into power)
My boons in battle and conditions on enemy:
Approximately 7 stacks of might on myself, and fury, stability, and swiftness for 22 seconds following Rampage as one (120 second cooldown)
On enemy: consistent 5-10 vulnerability, with spikes when rapid fire is up.
My damage:
On a good day with long-range shot, over 1500 range, approximately 4800 damage critical. On a bad day ( had to dodge, no flanking, pet AI decided to kitten ), maybe 3000-3500 damage critical. All this on a single (1, one) target.
This is with the most damage boosting equipment and all of the damage boosting traits available to Ranger, also at maximum range.
My friend, the engineer:
Exotic Rampager Armor with Boon duration runes (4 altruism, 2 water).
Ascended Berserker Weapons with Sup. Sigil of Bloodlust and Sup. Sigil of Fire
Ascended Berserker trinkets.
Traited into grenade kit, getting 1500 range and the extra grenade.
The boons
Permanent Vigor (100% endurance regeneration), swiftness, and might.
The damage
At any range, starting cold, 1100 damage per grenade, for a total of 3300. But wait, there’s more! The grenades also apply a bleed that does a lot of damage per tick- the grenades can also apply burning for 500 damage per tick.
With a ramp up, grenades can do about 1700 per grenade, for a total of 5100 damage in an area of effect. Along with bleeds and 500 damage burns, and vulnerability.
Let’s compare!
Endurance
Ranger: Permanent 25% endurance regeneration, loses 10% damage after a dodge roll.
Engineer: Permanent 100% endurance regeneration.
Other Boons
Ranger: Stealth is nice. Rampage of One is good when pet AI decides to cooperate.
Engineer: Permanent Swiftness and Might.
Attacking
Ranger: Best case scenario, 4800 damage on a critical against a single target at maximum range.
Engineer: Best case scenario, 5100 damage on critical, plus tons of condition damage against multiple enemies at any range with sub-optimal gear.
I don’t mean to argue that Engineers are totally broken and strong.
I just want to use this example to show that a Ranger using a longbow does not provide enough utility for the amount of damage it does, or enough damage to compensate for its single-target damage/utility.
Suggestions in next post
(edited by Ltomato.8649)
Thats not how stealth works, you will gain tha aggro back as soon as you’re visible again.
I’ve tried this myself a couple of times.
There’s a short delay period, and your pet/allies need to be attacking.
Try it on a karka. Shoot one with your pet on aggressive, stealth, wait until the karka starts fighting your pet, and you’ll be fine. As with all stealths, channeled abilities will still hit you if you stealth after the channelling starts.
Obviously, some monster and boss AI will still switch aggro back, but it’s still a good tactic to take some heat off of you. If you open with it, you don’t take aggro, so you can use it to run past enemies as long as your pet doesn’t attack. Not only that, but if you take Remorseless, it’s a free refresh on Opening Strike, which applies 5 vuln. That’s 5% damage from your team, which is better than frost spirit’s untraited average of 3.5%.
You’ve tried it a couple times. I run 40, 50 fractals, and innumerable dungeons with this tactic. I have two rangers with world completion. It works.
I disagree that ranger longbow’s 3 skill, “Hunter Shot”s stealth is useless. It’s fantastic for transferring aggro onto a pet or allies in pve, as well as a short stealth for running past mobs.
In other words, it would be nice if, since the dev-acknowledged broken pet system isn’t going to be touched, that at least the traits and skills that interact with pets be adjusted to represent this.
Too many times in PvE do you swap pets, mash f1 in the hopes that the pet will react, then press f2, only to have your pet look in a completely wrong direction, channel their f2 skill for a second, then have it go on cooldown. It’s even worse in PvP, where simply by constantly moving, it’s fairly easy to make melee pets non-issue.
This is ridiculous!
Due to the largely unpredictable nature of pet AI, it is often a waste of a trait to use a major trait that affects the pet. A large overhaul of such traits to be either more player centric or affect both the pet and the player would make them more appealing.
Another Ranger issue is signets. Change signets to also affect the player by default and remove Signet of the Beastmaster.
Again, this is related to pets. There are some nice signet related traits in the marksmanship line, but they aren’t very appealing.
However, signet actives only affect ranger pets. As has been established, pet AI is poor. As a result, using signet actives, as with using traits, is often a waste of a utility slot.
The Signet of the Beastmaster grandmaster trait allows signet actives to affect rangers too. This is barely worth it except in occasional situations.
These are- using Signet of Stone to become immune to damage, and Signet of the Hunt to do 150% damage on your next attack.
Requiring a Grandmaster trait to make those signets somewhat useful is very limiting.
Another extremely useful, but probably difficult to add feature would be some way to easily see the boons and effects on your own pet. A secondary keybind that lets you select your pet would be great.
Even a pet spot dodge on a cooldown would help a lot for managing pets.
Right now, it’s pretty much impossible to tell what boons or conditions your pet has, which, considering how much of a Ranger’s class is centered around the pet, is very frustrating.
“We also brought up some Marksmanship and a Skirmishing trait to make power specs more appealing. We feel like rangers also currently have too much endurance regeneration through traits.”
“Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500 range by 20%.
Long Range Shot. Increased the damage at 500-1000 range by 15%.
Marksmanship V – Predator’s Instinct. Increased the threshold from 25% to 50%. Increased the Cripple Duration from 2s to 10s. Increased the cooldown from 15s to 30s.
Marksmanship VI – Beastmaster’s Bond. Decreased the cooldown from 90s to 60s.
Skirmishing XII – Moment of Clarity. Stun Duration increased from 50% to 100%.”
Neither of the “few” marksmanship traits boost ranger damage or make power rangers more appealing. In order to take those, we lose out on precious damage buffs, while other classes can do more damage and apply the same boons/condition without traiting.
The Skirmishing trait is interesting, but still not particularly useful. With only 2 stuns/dazes available, one of which is on shortbow, the 100% duration increase never really applies often. With the attack of opportunity based on interrupt as well, this trait is not worth taking due to how rare the effect procs.
Endurance regen from Natural Vigor. This was a huge slap in the face to power rangers. Steady Focus is a considerable amount of our damage output, and the nerf to Natural Vigor means that Steady Focus has even more down time than before.
I don’t understand Anet’s reasoning behind these changes. They claim to want to improve build diversity, but buff the already strong-in-pvp spirit/bunker rangers and nerf power rangers.
This is really ridiculous. My friend, an engineer, recently leveled to 80, got a set of exotic armor and weapons with boon duration runes. Using green trinkets, they had comparable damage with grenades in an aoe to my longbow’s single target, with more conditions, and more boons (essentially permanent swiftness, might, fury, and vigor. ), and two weapon sigils instead of one.
(I use all berserker ascended gear with ruby orbs slotted, 30/25/5/10 traits)
Don’t get me wrong, I have fun playing ranger. It’s just really, really, really disheartening when I see this happen.
Suggestions for improvement?
Change traits to be less pet focused.
Due to the largely unpredictable nature of pet AI, it is often a waste of a trait to use a major trait that affects the pet. A large overall of such traits to be either more player centric or affect both the pet and the player would make them more appealing.
Change signets to also affect the player by default and remove Signet of the Beastmaster.
Again, this is related to pets. There are some nice signet related traits in the marksmanship line, but they aren’t very appealing. Requiring a Grandmaster trait to make signets somewhat useful is very limiting.
Give something other than spirits and spotter that is totally unique to rangers.
Necromancers do pets better, Engineers do 1500 range better, and pretty much every other class does damage and team support better. Let us at least be faster than other classes or shoot a longbow farther than an engineer can throw a grenade. Something to balance out the lack of power/utility that comes with trying to use a power ranger build.
Because despite saying that you want to increase build diversity, build diversity has simply narrowed. And it’s frustrating.
If a large portion of the community chooses to pick unfun content with only the reward in mind, then they only have themselves to blame. You cannot force people to do the proper things.
And I like these events. They require groups to be spread more, and gasp require some degree of organization. And it might actually be a little hard. I don’t know what you’ve been playing, but there’s a good chance these events might fail— when does that ever happen in open world outside of temples?
Also, if you get killed, reviving might caused others to get downed too. Go run back, kitten . :/
Failing has no consequence. You lose one loot bag, gain 40 more. People don’t care. They make more profit out of failing.
And of course if you get killed, run back. If you’re downed though, There’s no excuse for people not to try. Especially if you’re not near any threats.
Taking those champs or nerfing that will nerf that morning run, and we’ll be back to pondering how to progress.
Re: the new influx of money— apparently they’re planning a lot of gold sinks.
The big big moneymakers of this patch weren’t zerg farming anyway, it was the ember farm and deadeye.
I’m more talking about the invasion farmers. Things like the Frostgorge Sound loop are okay. There’s enough variety and group cohesion that the playing is bearable. It’s not just the same massive group of mobs over and over and over.
Also- consider a dungeon path or two. The upgraded rewards for daily runs make it pretty profitable to run a few quick paths once per day. Unfortunately, a lot of people are being drawn to invasion farming instead.
On the other hand, I do know that there are people who enjoy this sort of mass scale farming. I just want alternatives.
I like zerg farming. I considered quitting, and so did my roomie, despite us being long-time devotees of the GW franchise, because the only real way to make gold was to run dungeons.
We can’t run dungeons very often. So for us, being able to work on legendaries and such ground to a halt. Now, we can get back to work on things. If others want, they can go do dungeons, invasions, or whatever they like— and we can farm. When we do, it’s usually early in the morning when the ‘zerg’ is 5-10 people and the champs take a while to die.
See, that IS fun. 5-10 people isn’t the massive scale I’m talking about here. I’m saying where there are so many people that the enemies are culled out and there’s no challenge at all, no feeling of accomplishment. Just another loot bag.
Other than not being fun, there are 2 main reasons why zerg farming is bad:
1: Inaccurate data feedback
2: Community erosion
Inaccurate Data Feedback:
This is my main concern. The result of all this farming means that people who do not participate will not be receiving the largest in-game income. With all of the looming future updates such as ascended gear and new legendaries, there is high pressure on many players to farm these events, even if the events themselves are not enjoyable.
This results in a large portion of the community participating in the events, despite not finding it fun in the slightest. If Arena Net only looks at the player data, then it could be incorrectly assumed that so many players are participating because they enjoy the content, resulting in more, similar content in the future.
So many guildmates and friends have completely burnt out on the zerg farming. It’s the least interactive of content, but currently the most profitable. Cries of “I’m bored” ring out all the time now, and “I’ll just hit an event and afk for end credit” is abundant.
This sort of mindless zombie farming is not fun. It’s repetitive and slow, and any individual skill means little to nothing. You’re “forced” to stay for the entire event to receive your shiny loot bags, and all you do is run/waypoint around maps and kill masses of enemies.
It was fun the first couple of times- we all thought that completing the invasion was such a big deal, and the old Aetherblade scaling made it actually difficult to complete a couple of times. There was some strategy needed, and people couldn’t just abuse scaling to farm champions.
Now, with the reduced scaling, it’s a pure farmfest. There’s no major incentive to complete the entire invasion after your daily scarlet kill, so massive groups of players running around and steamrolling champions is commonplace. This leads to the second reason why this sort of massive zerg farm is bad.
Community Erosion:
Back in the earlier days of GW2, you’d always be revived when you got downed. It was common courtesy, and it was reinforced with exp. These days, however, it’s been many a time that I’ve seen massive zergs trample over a downed player to get to the next champion with not a single person stopping. It’s really pathetic.
Arguments in map chat are rampant over whether to farm the Aetherblade events or to try to defeat Scarlet. It’s frustrating. The influx of new commanders (from the large amount of gold added) is sizable, and arguments and drama often breaks out between them. Sure, it’s humorous to watch sometimes, but things do get ugly.
The zerg farms lead to gold being the single most important thing to players, over fun, over courtesy, and over community. This is ridiculous.
Content like the Zephyr Sanctum was amazing. There was a whole new map to explore, some pvp games for people who are into that sort of thing, and incentives to do jumping puzzles or mini dungeons that you might not normally do.
This content is the complete opposite. No exploration, no alternatives, no fun.
Am I the only one who thinks that this is a problem? Am I the only one tired of zerg farming being by far the most profitable method of playing? Am I the only one who wants to actually have fun again?
No matter the cost of ascended armor, the fact remains that challenging, and in my opinion, more fun, content is less rewarding than boring mindless mob grinding.
That just doesn’t make sense, and if ArenaNet are only judging feedback by in-game collected data, then it provides a very inaccurate state of what players want.
It’s not so much the discrepancy of people with skill versus people without as the idea that if someone skilled doesn’t have much time to play, they have many options to choose from.
If they want to progress gear wise or monetary-wise, then they’ll play what is most efficient for their time rather than what is fun, creating an inaccurate picture of what players find enjoyable.
As nice as it is to receive a lot of money for low effort farming, at the same time, it casts a shadow over the future of the game. So many people are just farming money for that next skin. This is un-engaged, mindless playing, and while it caters the same experience to the most people, surely the skilled challenges can provide at least decent rewards too?
Dungeon rewards are great, but completely unbalanced. Polish these up a bit. Citadel of Flame path 1 should NOT give the same amount of daily gold as Citadel of Flame path 3.
When I consider doing Fractals or a story dungeon, I don’t want to think “Hmm. I could just farm for a while and make much more money that way”. I want to think at least “Okay, sure, Fractals has nice rewards.” or “Yea, spending 1 and a half hours in that story dungeon was totally worth it!”
Of course, the biggest risk with high risk/skill to high reward content is that it may be exploited, as seen with the Deadeye fight. But that doesn’t mean it’s not fun or should be avoided.
I like playing through dungeons and fractals. It’s fun! But the negative reinforcement of subpar rewards compared to something easier makes me want to play the content less and less.
I’m not disinterested in things like new jumping puzzles or new dynamic events, it’s just that there is more rewarding content elsewhere. I loved Zephyr Sanctum’s crystal finding challenge. At the same time, the Aetherblade retreat and Molten Wrapons Facility went un-run many times because the difficulty, while fun for the most part, was completely negated by the fact that you had a very good chance of getting completely worthless rewards. These dungeons were amazing! They were extremely fun. But they were ruined by having rewards inconsistent with their difficulty.
People like guaranteed rares. They like knowing that the effort they’re putting in, no matter how much, is being rewarded. It feels good. But balancing that reward still needs to be done.
Please consider changing the direction things have gone. Queen’s Gauntlet, Champion loot bags, and daily dungeon gold rewards were a small step in the right direction, but the Pavilion itself was a leap back.
If nothing changes soon, it will come to be expected (if not already) that the only way to make money is the next great exploit, or the next big farming area. Give us more incentives to explore! More incentives to run the difficult dungeon paths! More reasons to have fun rather than just grind.
The greatest problem facing this game right now is the imbalance between risk and reward.
Rewards for challenging, time consuming content are not satisfying enough, while rewards for easily repeatable low-skill and effort tasks are out of proportion.
For example, beating a Citadel of Flame path 1 nets you about 1.26 gold, plus sold items. A fractal reward level 38 will get you about 60 silver to a gold with the possibility of receiving a couple rares.
Citadel of Flame path one takes about 10-15 minutes with a random group, while Fractal 38 requires at least an hour and 15 minutes to two hours and a well coordinated, skilled group.
This is totally insane.
The only motivation for Fractals of the Mists then is a daily, random, chance at a fractal weapon.
Another example?
Queen’s Gauntlet versus zerg farming the pavilion.
Defeating Liadri takes skill and effort. Your reward? A miniature, and a one-time payout of 2 gold.
On the other hand, you could just spend that time running in circles with the mindless mob and make twice as much money, repeatedly.
When I beat the Gauntlet meta achievement, I seriously thought it was bugged. 2 gold for all that effort. No title (I double checked when I first beat it). Just 2 gold. It completely shut down the awesome feeling that I had for succeeding through this skilled content,
Players like being rewarded for their effort. At the same time, players are lazy and want to be efficient with the time they spend on the game. Right now, Guild Wars 2 is filled to the brim with low risk-high reward and high risk-low reward scenarios. While this means that most people will have access to the most desirable content, it also imprints that this is the most effective way of playing.
PvE zerging is not new with Crown Pavilion- it’s something that players have been doing on their own. Groups will find an exploitable event that spawns monsters infinitely and just kill them repeatedly for easy rewards. By implementing this into the game officially with such high rewards as T6 materials and lodestones, it’s sending the message that this is okay- that farming large groups of monsters is good, and should be rewarded.
Some people enjoy this sort of farming. it’s relaxing, and easy. At the same time, there is no high-risk high reward alternative for those that want to do something else. Queen’s Gauntlet gambits are a good attempt, but it still needs balance work. Deadeye’s fight, by its own mechanics, means that many of the gambits do not adjust the difficulty at all. Any of the mobility reducing gambits are rendered useless by teleporting or shadowstepping skills. The damage increasing gambit is rendered useless by blinds and reflects.
What I’d expect to see is people joining the common daily groups – 10, 20, 26, 30, etc – for progression, since it’s so much easier to find groups for, say, a 20 daily vs a 17 progression group. So those tiers will have more people looking for them, but it won’t be a huge disparity – your people on fractal level 3 might be joining a 10 group, but there’s little reason for them in a 20 group beyond it being a guild group of the like.
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Dailies? There will be a huge influx of players simply looking for 10 and 20, even 30 dailies who quite possibly aren’t ready for it.
Higher level fractals also drop better loot and more fractal relics.
It’s definitely quite possible that this will just work out fine and nothing bad will happen. I hope it will be like that. But after encountering the rage quitters of level 24 fractals, I’m very doubtful.
I understand what this change is aimed toward. At the same time, I feel that there are so many different ways that this change can turn bad. I’m not against the change- I feel that there needs to be more insurance against the potential issues.
So … people complain when it “divides the community” as it is, and now, people complain because of that ?
Anet has some courage and deserves a medal sometimes to put up with players ^^
Still, I don’t really see the problem : if guy has enough AR, he probably went far enough …
The way I see it is that it will divide the community even more than it has now. By adding another layer of liability in the form of “you haven’t completed this many fractals” it creates an easier blame game.
AR isn’t the end all in terms of skill. Plenty of groups with good AR fail miserably due to the difficulty increase in terms of the general monsters. It can really catch you off guard if you haven’t progressed that far yet.
Not only that, but AR is very much luck based on whether or not you get a ring. The way it is to be implemented, someone who’s beaten through 18 might not have any AR, but someone who’s technically on level 3 could have 10 if they got lucky. That seems to be making the problem worse than better.
And yea. The update will pretty much make odd numbered fractals obsolete. (even more so than they are now)
EDIT:
Don’t get me wrong- balancing the player base and meeting everyone’s needs is very difficult. I applaud ArenaNet for being this successful at it so far- but this seems like a step in the wrong direction without any changes.
(edited by Ltomato.8649)
They are going to fix this!
Read this!
https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/fractals-of-the-mists-dungeon-improvements/
:D
Fractals are a team dungeon. After 20, in multiple places, if two people die, it usually results in a wipe for the team.
Carrying people through is fine when it’s at an appropriate level.
When people are unaware of the damage that can be dealt at a certain level, they play very differently than when they are aware. At lower levels, it can be relatively safe to melee most bosses. But at higher levels, doing so is just asking to be defeated.
The gradual progression of fractal levels really does help to enhance a player’s skill at their class, and removing the progression seems like an odd decision.
For instance, it was because of fractals that I learned the benefits of having multiple weapon sets in my inventory, and also got me comfortable with switching out utility skills for various encounters. Simple concepts, but without progressing through all the fractals, I wouldn’t have that mindset, and would not be ready for the fractal level that I am currently on.
I also bring up the issue of odd numbered fractals being abandoned even more.
I don’t see why it’s an issue to speak up about a subject that needs talking about.
If more people want to see change or clarification, the only way to do so is to speak up.
(edited by Ltomato.8649)
It takes that much text to explain the reason we need to allow people to see each others’ fractal level.
I think it’s great that people will be able to run fractals with friends and guild members, but that shouldn’t leave those of us who run in pick ups to fend for ourselves in a rabid pit of festering rage.
Link to the Fractals update post: https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/fractals-of-the-mists-dungeon-improvements/
In my quest to get to Fractal level 26, I’ve noticed a couple issues. The future change to Fractals, namely that lower Fractal level people can join higher level groups, will make these issues worse, resulting in a detriment to the community and the experience of the game.
1. Issue number one: Odd fractals.
Barely anyone wants to run these already. People run them for progression and never look back.
The new system makes this even worse- People will simply skip them to run dailies at higher levels. No one will want to run them, so they will be a waste of space. Why run these if you can just skip them?
2. Issue number two: Rage quitters.
In my journey to level 26, from 22 through 24, I ran through a rough patch of group after group of elitist rage quitters who would disconnect come the first party wipe.
The new system, as it is, will worsen this problem by far. I occasionally run lower level fractals (1-6) to help out players starting out, pointing out tricks, and giving tips. It’s fun, and people are eager to learn. But I, and they, agreed when I described the increase in agony of 10 (in both ways, agony mechanic and difficulty), that they were not in any way prepared in terms of skill. I doubt I would be prepared had I not practiced through all the evens and odds.
In the future, with no way to determine someone’s fractal level, people who are skeptical already of pick up groups will be even more so- at the slightest mistake – “You made a really silly error, you must be inexperienced, get out, please!”
When people make mistakes, it is human to think the worst, if only for a second. However, this lowers the deep end of worst from “maybe they’re just not particularly good” to “maybe they’re not good and are at a much higher fractal level than they should be at”
Even without being a quitter, no one wants to see, after a wipe, “these hurt SO much more 10 levels higher lol” or something similar. It causes the community to break into people who got to their level “legitimately” and those who have not.
It provides more of a liability when creating pick up groups, which, with no competent built in Looking For Group system, is the last thing we want added. Everyone wants a scapegoat for their failure, and if it’s the guy who seems like he’s not on the right fractal level, then they will blame him.
This isn’t as much of an issue now (on some even fractals when people from higher come down to do dailies), because you know that someone playing that fractal level has at least had experience up to that point, if not agony resist (which often isn’t the indicator of skill). But with the coming changes, there will be likely be a lot more rage quitters and a lot fewer cheerful “gj team!” after a difficult patch.
Infused gear barely cracked the community- I ran 24 with someone who had 15 resist, but was skilled enough to not die all the time and listened to our advice, even though he knew what the problem was. We completed the fractal well, and that was that.
By amplifying the skill difference in pick up groups as planned, the infused gear/fractal levels will break the crack even wider.
This further fracturing of the community is somewhat ameliorated by allowing people to see each others’ fractal level in some way. That way, guilds or friends who want to carry fellow members or their alts to higher levels can, while pick up groups don’t suffer from being forced to guess at whether or not their party is actually ready for the level they are doing.
There’s enough gambling as it is in this game.
I really like the community in this game right now, even with its little quirks, but please, ArenaNet, do not introduce this mechanic as planned. Do not drive a spike through the community.
(edited by Ltomato.8649)