Guild Wars 2

urdriel.8496:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Nike.2631:

Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 600 and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (renamed Shout Mastery)

Thank you for reading!

While I do agree that we need more revealing options, your suggestion could turn out too powerful. You reveal people up to 3 times, which is already huge. Furthermore it was been suggested multiple times, me included, that RaO and HaO should be turned into shouts. You would be able to reveal an enemy up to 5 times, which would be all their stealth they have.
Anyways, if the devs lower the damage of the pet in order to give us our damage, the pet has to be more centered around providing support. Revealing enemies would be such a support the pet could offer.

Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 600 and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (renamed Shout Mastery) 15 sec cd

Good call. I have no problem adding an internal cooldown. I’ll update the original post .

Spoj The Second.7680:

Thats not the reason they do it though. Noone enjoys do the wisp puzzle. None of the pure invironmental puzzles are fun after doing them once. Puzzles arent replayable or repeatable. And even if you somehow make them randomly generated they will still eventually become boring because theres only so many iterations that can be generated.

How is that different from the jellyfish boss? How are any of the combat encounters in fractals not wildly repetitive the 10th time? or the 50th?

I’m still enjoying guild puzzles. I think they have (a lot) more life than you’re giving them credit for.

I get it the audience is primarily smash and grab. That’s why when I initially suggested them, failure would quickly move you into another fractal at that tier. Puzzles and other far off the beaten path challenges could be introduced in a way that if you suck at jumping/hate puzzles/just wanna kill they wouldn’t bar your progress more than a couple minutes tops.

The other option remains to incorporate them as short cuts within traditional challenge structures. Imagine an update to the Snowblind fractal when upon approaching the Ice Elemental there is an alternative to harvest X trees, and a crafting station when a player with Huntsman or Artificer of at least 300 can process them and you throw the results at the elemental starting a bonfire that kills it instantly. You can fight or you can chop some lumber if there’s a suitable crafter present.

We basically already have jumping puzzles to skip parts of the Underground Facility fractal, with all the ways people work around the first two gates . Instead of putting up invisible walls in every corner, you could actually formalize it as an acceptable alternative…

Upon review I have to agree that Sigil of Torment looks like a real candidate – love the idea of punishing foes for closing with/chasing me. I’m still intrigued by Nullification, but the 10 second cooldown is harsh.

My understanding is that for Dungeons its hard to beat Sigil of Night, since the 10% damage bonus is always active there.

Nike.2631:

WAY OF THE SKIRMISHER: TIME IS ON MY SIDE

Marksmanship IV: Perfect Aim (NEW) – The damage from your attacks is not reduced by protection.

Tobias Trueflight.8350:

I don’t know if I’m keen on this being in the Adept Trait slot for being basically nullifying a common damage mitigating boon.

Part for the charm is bypassing protection without removing it or helping your allies hit harder. It’ll be interesting to see players with protection prioritizing rangers …

Marksmanship IX: Mighty Signets – Activating signets grants might and signet recharge time is reduced 20%.

This one being in Master rank makes me less unsure about it. And it might make us use signets more.

Beastmaster’s Might is too easily skipped. Combining the two should encourage a little less passive gameplay even without the grandmaster capstone.

Marksmanship X: Marksman’s Speed – Longbow and short bow attacks pierce and recharge time is reduced 20%.

Interesting, but I’m not sure if it works out for a “feel” of the trait lines so much as it is just squeezing a min/max.

I’m want to move ‘archery’ traits out of Skirmishing (and into Marksmanship) where possible to reduce the overlap with traps. I think of those as our most iconic set-up and right now you cannot build traps/short bow because they both have Skirmishing line grandmaster traits.

Skirmishing VI: Hunter’s Horn (NEW) – Horn skills also randomly remove one of Retaliation/Swiftness/Vigor from up to 5 foes in range.

Set it to remove one random Boon, why discriminate? IF that’s too powerful, cut it back to 3 targets and realize we have two horn skills we could rotate.

The limited list is mostly because broad condition stripping is not essential to skirmishing, while a couple of boons just destroy our prospects for “witling” foes down. either way, I like making ranger traited warhorn more of an “evil twin” to warrior’s traited warhorn with its condition cleanse effect .

Skirmishing X: Nature’s Venoms (NEW) – Each time you or your pet poison a foe, that foe loses regeneration.

Can . . . can we actively target one particular Boon for one Condition? Though I’d be more interested in seeing something else here instead of this. Something on the level of Toxicity? Give Vulnerability when Poisoned?

I believe the coding is possible. And while I’m in favor of more vulnerability-application as a general ranger theme, the ability to strip regeneration is even more crucial to effective skirmishing. Once you work someone down you have to have the tools to keep them down until you actually end them. Poison already helps against direct heals, stripping regeneration is simply finishing the job.

Wilderness Survival VI: Wilderness Knowledge – Using a survival skill removes a condition from both you and your pet and survival skill recharge time is reduced by 20%.

I was going to protest but then I saw the Survival skills . . . nope, this makes Lightning Reflexes less useless when Immobilized.

As a set, Survival skills have a lot of variety and potential. Having sharpening stone be a cleanse and 5 stacks of bleed gives you a reason to hold on to it ‘til it’s needed and makes it a nice swing skill as you shed a condition and hit harder for your next 5 strikes. Plus its in scale with existing “skill type becomes cleanses” benefits.

Wilderness Survival X: Martial Mastery – Critical hits with sword, greatsword, and spear attacks apply vulnerability (one stack; 5 seconds) and recharge time for these skills is reduced by 20%.

“Internal cooldown of 5 seconds.”

Good call .

Beastmastery I: Speed Training – Pets move faster and their basic skill recharge time is reduced by 20%.

Hmmm. Could be a problem if the pet skills get a face lift.

Even if they do, 20% cooldown already exists and is lacking of flavor effect.

Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 900 and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%.

Not sure about an Adept Trait being capable of this.

I’ve been thinking the range comes down. Initially I was looking to align with the axe/short bow range, but a radius of 600 will still deliver on the premise.

Beastmastery VI: Commanding Voice – Pets gain stability for 4 seconds when you press f2 and f2 skill recharge time is reduced 20%.

I like it.

I’m really pleased with that one – it would be SO NICE to be more certain my pet will actually be able to carry out my instructions…

Thanks for looking – I’m all for trimming it back anywhere and everywhere that allows the changes to deliver the cool with the minimum amount of power creep.

Aidenwolf.5964:

Some seriously good ideas here Nike. But one in particular deserves further attention and should be moved to the top of the ranger to do list (right below permastow).

Shouts remove stealth from nearby players. It’s an AOE reveal and I love that.

Thanks . As a multi-targeting PBAoE reveal, its actually intended to provide some counterplay to Mesmers with their multi-target invisibility effects along with providing a way to cope with having 1-3 thieves all up in your business.

Reasoning behind the other trait changes:
Perfect Aim is there to deal with Guardians and other long duration Protection builds – it doesn’t strip protection but it does let you partially ignore it (this benefit does not extend to your pet’s attacks as currently imagined).

Marksman’s Speed is a big buff to the power of Piercing Arrows, but A: piercing should be highly desirable for ranger bow attacks as it introduces a lot more mobile/dynamic play and B: its competing with Spotter for the 20/30 marksman slots, one of the best traits we have.

Hunter’s Horn gives you a bit of specialized boon removal tuned to help you deal with some of the things that will most hurt you as a skirmisher: retaliation wearing you down as you wear them down, swiftness letting them leave the party early, and vigor feeding their ability to dodge out of your attacks.

Nature’s Venoms gives a way to strip regeneration that works with a number of weapons, utilities, and pet skills, making sure that while the fight may be drawn out, it will eventually end, and likely in your favor.

Wilderness Knowledge addresses our dire lack of player-directed condition removal.

Martial Mastery gives more access to vulnerability as the fight goes on – providing condition depth and really feeding into the idea that a long fight with a ranger should favor the ranger.

Speed Training is just a simple combine that helps your pet’s autonomous behavior on several levels. A great adept-tier trait to splash if you want to treat your companion as “fire and forget”

Commanding Voice granting a bit of stability gives you a MUCH better chance of your pet actually doing what you told it to instead of being bounced around like a pinball when you needed it most.

WAY OF THE SKIRMISHER: TIME IS ON MY SIDE
As skirmishers, Rangers need to maintain consistent pressure over time. Recharge traits should be key to their performance but often lack secondary “flavor” effects. This is an attempt to update or combine traits to give recharge choices more flavor. New traits filling the resulting gaps are intended to enhance Ranger effectiveness as skirmishers by making it difficult to ignore or recover from pressure applied by Ranger attacks rather than increasing their raw damage. They focus on striping or countering boons that allow the enemy to endure the Ranger’s steady assault.

Marksmanship IV: Perfect Aim (NEW) – The damage from your attacks is not reduced by protection. (fills slot vacated by Signet Mastery; coding note – equivalent to +50% damage against targets with protection)

Marksmanship IX: Mighty Signets – Activating signets grants might and signet recharge time is reduced 20%. (combines Signet Mastery & Beastmaster’s Might)

Marksmanship X: Marksman’s Speed – Longbow and short bow attacks pierce and recharge time is reduced 20%. (combines Piercing Arrows & Quickdraw)

Skirmishing VI: Hunter’s Horn (NEW) – Horn skills also randomly remove one of Retaliation/Swiftness/Vigor from up to 5 foes in range. (fills slot vacated by Agility Training)

Skirmishing X: Nature’s Venoms (NEW) – Each time you or your pet poison a foe, that foe loses regeneration. (fills slot vacated by Quickdraw)

Wilderness Survival VI: Wilderness Knowledge – Using a survival skill removes a condition from both you and your pet and survival skill recharge time is reduced by 20%.

Wilderness Survival X: Martial Mastery – Critical hits with sword, greatsword, and spear attacks apply vulnerability (3 stacks; 5 seconds duration; 5 second cooldown) and recharge time for these skills is reduced by 20%.

Beastmastery I: Speed Training – Pets move faster and their basic skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (combines Agility Training and Speed Training)

Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 600 (15 second cooldown) and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (renamed Shout Mastery)

Beastmastery VI: Commanding Voice – Pets gain stability for 4 seconds when you press f2 and f2 skill recharge time is reduced 20%.

Thank you for reading!

Honestly, I don’t want more revealing. I want more shapely. I don’t need to flash any skin, so much as present a nice silhouette – something the game’s trench-coat fetish pretty much destroys. In fact my favorite Photoshop tinkering with armor appearance shows far less skin than the base it was built from~

PookieDaWombat.6209:

Seriously had 2 rangers on me with their pets, just cycling through them, and every time I got close to the ranger they knocked me back like 50 feet then went invisible. Seriously OP. You must be a god in WvW killar.

If you ran into 2 of any other profession you’d just be DEAD, not harassed by their pets for a while…

Separate cooldowns for all sigils with different names, is my understanding.

I’m actually expecting to see some changes to Purity/Generosity as part of the review. Having one just be flatly better than the other is not likely to stand.

Running Air and Fire together is amusing for random damage bursts.

The Lost Witch.7601:

Well, that’s just the thing. We get to learn every time it pops, and only until we fail.
What if I play fractals just a few times a month? Chances are I don’t see that fractal for months. I would have to resort to youtubing it, for I can’t reliably get that fractal. (I did mention that I’ve only seen the thaumanova fractal once, when it came out, right?)

I’m not sure that how often a player logs in (or doesn’t) should matter. You learn at the rate you play. If you don’t play much, you don’t learn quickly. This is true when comparing any two rates of play. If anything, infrequent players are much more highly rewarded, since they end up eligible for the daily reward every time they play, compared to someone who does 2-3 runs back to back in a single session.

Also, if I fail, I want to think about what went wrong, and then do it right next time. I absolutely love strategizing, to me it is the most fun part of the game.

Then you may be the exact sort of gamer this sinks its hooks into. “Please come back more often than you would otherwise for another try” is a lot stronger proposal than “beat your head against this till you win in a single sitting… and then never feel the need to come back…”

One-try’s are as much about the longevity of the experience as they are the thrill of a limited window of opportunity. Its like having a sale .

Not being able to retry is taking away most of the strategy here. I am most likely not visiting the same fractal with the same team, so there is no reason to discuss what went wrong/what to do right.

Having clear ‘starting line’ before pulling the trigger would give everyone a chance to talk it through before launching it. Not sure what to do? Don’t go over to where the X/5 counter is at.

At some point in time, I’ll find a teammember who knows how to do it, tells us to watch this video, which we’ll do, because we’ve only got one shot and we don’t want to make him angry by failing because we’re stubborn. We succeed and I have never had the joy of figuring it out myself.

You can either put them first or you first. Given that ‘blowing it’ ideally costs you all of 3-5 minutes, and possibly requires the expert to have failed as much as anyone else (if one wins we all win scenarios) I’d like to think we won’t have too much anticipation paralysis .

Oh, and once a strategy is figured out, we’ll use that exact one every time, because we may fail if we use another one. Making it rather dull for players that do fractals often.

And how is that different from all of them when PUGing now? One shots might not be better in this regard, but I don’t see how they are worse.

Some things are just not suited for fractals, like timed jumping puzzles. I believe we should just keep them separate.

Perhaps . But I’d like to explore more than just new coats of paint thrown over the same combat-centric expectations!

Been strolling the halls of Rata Sum and took a few screenies with my ranger Wrangler Sorjji.

Utilizing the latest in Black Lion refractorial factorization, Wrangler Sorjji returns with slightly more manageable hair!

Substance E.4852:

Bran.7425:

At this point I am thinking that it is past time for the CDI to at least move to a different phase as now vocal members of other profession communities are starting to plot generic *Well ranger needs help, but so does X". I just got caught up and saw a couple of those and it is a sign of more to come, might need to have people start flagging them simple as they do not add anything constructive.

The second I saw a necro start to complain like their class needs help I almost caved my skull in from how hard I facepalmed. Maybe they need condition help in pve but that’s hardly unique to them.

http://www.twitch.tv/gw2ascii/c/3575974

Necro “weakness” at work.

By that reasoning Ranger is just fine since they have the Spirit builds in sPvP. Just because you’re playing the dead last class doesn’t mean there isn’t somebody stuck in 7th.

Engineer, Necromancer, and Elementalist all need serious reviews and might actually benefit from theirs since its not a question of the entire class being built on crap AI. heck, even the Thief could use some improved relevance in group play – trading away some of their current strengths for team-wide benefits.

So, with the upcoming feature patch including 2-handed weapons getting a second sigil slot, how are you planning to upgrade your bows?

WvW Shortbow, I’m strongly considering rearranging to~

Sigil of Bursting (+6% condition damage)
Sigil of Nullification (on crit: 60% chance to remove boon)

Longbow being more power-based looks like maybe
Sigil of Power (+5% damage)
Sigil of Bloodlust (on kill: stacking Power buff)

Any more clever pairing come to mind?

I have to agree that the stat bonus from trait lines is bigger than it needs to be. Wee get 1400 stat points from traits. While knocking that all the way down to 140 might be excessive, I could see lowering at much as to 280 (2 points per stat, 2 stats in each line). Even just halving the current bonuses could pull the ends of the spectrum closer together.

Mesmer started off slow for me – takes a long time for their builds to gel, but once you get to 30 or so they become very pleasant to play and continue to pay off for a long time. Just expect the 10-24 level range to be strangely awful .

(I have 3 now )

The Lost Witch.7601:

Nike.2631:

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

Well, another problem with this would be that players can’t reliably learn by failing if they can’t repeat the challenge. So they would only get to learn the fractal from:

• Going with a team that knows how to do this.

or

• Watching videos on youtube.

Leaving out what in my eyes is the most interesting and rewarding type of learning:

• By trying out strategies we develop ourselves.

You get to learn every time it pops. The point on these is that they be exciting – a chance to burn through that tier (comparatively) fast if you can figure it out. People will review outside strategy sources, but you’d still have hands-on opportunity to wrestle with it, and in you fail you move on quickly and look forward to your next attempt. In many respects we have the sort of scenarios I envision in place now with the dolphin segment of the Underwater Fractal – a non-combat challenge with only one player having to cross the checkpoint to secure forward progress. If you dumped the end boss of that fractal (long and largely harmless and long… did I mention long?)and made it a ‘one-try’ that you win as soon as you clear the dolphin segment, people might actually re-roll for that instead of swamp, swamp, and more swamp .

For anything actually timed, I’d also insure there is a check built into the scenario itself. Probably use something like the Siegerazer technology where the even doesn’t start until 5/5 move close to a point a short distance form the zone-in area. You don’t want ANY timers starting while someone is still looking at a load screen .

This is mostly directed at adding some non-combat oriented challenges to the fractals menu – new flavors .

Its not problem free, but it does create a framework to introduce something different. Maybe a Crafting Fractal where you do some gathering and processing against a time limit. 1-2 players run back and forth between crafting stations and the others run around in a field bringing in raw materials…. Create elaborate multi-course feast for the King of such-and-such in under 5 minutes and you win.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I get the biggest issue seems to revolve around pets. I’ve also seen a couple others (utilities not being viable unless spec’d into them, burst vs sustain, traps, spirit clutter, etc.).

I get frustrated by the simple lack of synergy between skills. When you play a condi-necro and can dance through your buttons to put a bleed on the target & yourself with utility, then use your off-hand to move your bleed to them, then use a utility to copy all those bleed to all enemies in the area while putting conditions on yourself, then use your heal to cleanse those conditions and gain bonus healing for doing so… you know that playing those out of order or having to respond to changing circumstances will affect your performance.

Compared to that, ranger gameplay is just dull. You occasionally can stack up a few ‘on next hit’ buffs to pump a single maul, but their weapon skills and utilities mostly feel like oatmeal. There is no difference in what happens if I cast my traps in different orders. there’s no combos, no special order or special timing for many, many Ranger skills.

As a general statement there are also far too many ranger traits that reduce cooldown and nothing else – in other professions we’ve seen a steady march towards combing the 20% cooldown with a secondary flavorful effect. Rangers have good effects but they are spread out across too many traits. A little combining or making certain effcts default behavior of the class would go a long way towards injecting not just raw power, but some cool into a class that sorely needs it.

Autumn Frazee.3158:

We are currently working on the difficulty of the Assault Knight fights; I realize that sometimes its hard to get a full overflow or that there are non peak hours where server populations will be lighter. Hopefully with the difficulty changes, it will also make it easier for a good server to get ‘Six Minutes to Knightfall’.

Wow. It’s like I’ve spent months lobbying for proper scaling to the number of players actually present.

Who could possibly have guessed that fun was more about having a chance at succeeding than at hitting an arbitrary minimum population at role call…

I don’t see how waypoint availability affects zerg mentality at all… If you prefer to move with a pack (and accrue all the advantages for doing so…) you’re going to do so regardless of outside considerations.

I really don’t see any way of breaking zergs beyond making it highly advantageous to strike multiple targets simultaneously, and right now ALL the objective are independent. If we had the equivalent of the Temple/Statues technology in WvW (with much shorter windows after ‘flipping) then we might see splitting up to disable a distant ’temple’ to deactivate a statue for the team that’s poised to strike the moment it goes down. Something that reward timing and cross-map communication.

I actually think you’d be better off with unfold while idle, fold while in combat .

Then hopefully some of the watchknight idle animations can be used by players while idle…

Randulf.7614:

Nike.2631:

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

So if there were a second tier “rising lava race” and the whole party gets swallowed by lava, instead of resetting the whole encounter, you roll for a new fractal from the tier 2 list (possibly getting the lava race again?).

These could be fairly tough but also fairly short for their tier – so that you’d feel an immediate desire to complete it since you’ve been given the opportunity.

I think it would over complicate something that doesn’t need it. Fractals work as they are and this would likely frustrate players needlessly.

Perhaps at the highest of tiers where challenge is more paramount it would be viable, but even then I’m not sure if this would be something fractals would benefit from.

Well, I was thining it would allow fractals to branch into some new challenges.

Imagine a fractal that is essentially the Wintersday jump puzzle.

I will NEVER succeed on it. If its all 5 make it, we’re going back to Dessa’s lab, because I already know the outcome – failure until our eyes bleed. If the win condition is at least 1 person makes it on the first try, awesome, I can stand at the start and cheer them on. And if we all fail, no problem it automatically moves us on to a new fractal. But if it were try-try-try-again until at least one person makes it I’d probably sit there bored off my butt for a few attempts then log out/nominate a return to Deassa lab.

When you are on the second or third fractal in a run, One Try fractals give you a way of recovering gracefully from a bad roll.

((I mean really, how many people would mind the Underground Facility Fractal being ‘One Try’ for uber-rewards and re-roll if you all wipe?))

Low guard like that is a real and dangerous stance with two-handed swords – that’s not weakness, that the intent to rip your foe crotch-to-chin on the first swing…

How would people react to “One try” fractals – fractals with maybe a timer or other obvious fail condition, and if you do fail you are moved on to another fractal in the same ‘length tier’ (the failed fractal does not count towards getting three before doing a boss fractal).

So if there were a second tier “rising lava race” and the whole party gets swallowed by lava, instead of resetting the whole encounter, you roll for a new fractal from the tier 2 list (possibly getting the lava race again?).

These could be fairly tough but also fairly short for their tier – so that you’d feel an immediate desire to complete it since you’ve been given the opportunity.

I think it would be interesting to see some fractal that deliver 5 man versions of some of the Guild Puzzles. Those are some amazing maps (love the skrit maze and the cheese shaped loot box at the end) that many players don’t get to see.

The ability to search the TP for just light, medium, or heavy armor instead of all three at once.

In some ways having No Waypoints is better than having forward waypoints that never work when you need them. I’d be perfectly happy to see the Hills and Bay Waypoints removed, especially if we could have the garrison waypoint not shut down every time 1 enemy knocks on a door…

I personally like the ability to resurrect in the field both for recovering after you’ve swept the enemy from the field, and as a mid-combat tactic that provides some value outside of the moar-DEEPS! mentality that rules 95% of this game. If anything, I’d like to see the bonus for res-speed that some classes and runes provide be increase beyond the 10% added now so that specialist combat-rezzers had more impact.

Sometimes it helps to put a face to the voice. Try This.

((she’s even wearing a Norn hairstyle in that scene…))

Dark Catalyst.1028:

Coming soon for the low, low price of 800 gems.

To be fair, they seem satisfied with expanding the options in the existing makeover kits and the gems those items bring in. Maybe it can be added to the next round of hairstyles for humans.

I have a suggestion for Ranger Pet AI that could greatly enhance their performance in WvW and some boss fights.

Where Rangers currently have a toggle choice of Passive (pet does noting, lingers in immediate vicinity of Ranger) and Aggressive (pet changes targets to follow the target of the ranger’s attack unless commanded otherwise with f1) I would like to put a third mode into the rotation: Ward.

Ward: Pet remains at your side until you attack or you or the pet are attacked (the same trigger conditions as aggressive). It then attacks the red nameplate closest to you within a maximum range of your current weapon(s) [or a fixed value of 1,000 if this is not possible with current technology]. After each action/attack, it again checks for the closest enemy/red nampeplate to you and focuses its attack on that target. This behavior is overridden by a direct command to focus target via f1 until the focus target is dead or beyond pet leash range from the ranger.

Essentially the pet focuses on harassing and repelling enemies closest to you, working outwards, allowing you to attack enemies at range without your pet immediately launching itself deep into enemy territory. This logic would allow better pet behavior in complex multi-target boss fights and be an enormous boon to managing your pet in zerg vs. zerg encounters making the pet is more likely to join the line and switch intuitively to dedicated bodyguard action when opponents break through.

To keep up with the current blue & red color coding for passive/aggressive I would give ward a yellow or black/yellow (hazard warning colors) icon.

I like how the blue hologram IGNORES power-based DPS until you use conditions to knock its shield down. The Berserkers can go fight the other colors, because they’re pretty much a handicap on that corner of the triangle.

Weird. I feel like I usually complain on the boards of games I have some hope will improve. There’s plenty I’ve played and sworn off entirely.

You might try documenting the issue in This Thread as the Developer who deals with character appearance sometimes comes through there looking for bugs to squash .

I have Infinite Light. I’ll probably make a Volcanus long before I advance any further towards a legendary. None of them look that good to me and I’m not doing a great job saving up T6 mats for the Gifts while getting 500 in all the different crafts. (I have 2 precursors, I’m just not working on them)

I thought the yellow streaks made her look like a ‘husk’.

Chrispy.5641:

How about a better one then?

If Rangers were like an airplane, then Pets are the Wings. Wings are really Finicky when designing an Airplane, because you have to take into account a hundred different factors. In Order for the Wings to provide lift, you need to account for weight, drag, lift, thrust, aerodynamics, angle of attack,…all sorts of things. They all have to be spot on, or, it doesn’t work properly.

When the Wings work, The Plane will fly perfectly. When the Wing doesn’t work properly, the plane will still fly, but it will be a scary flight, and you run serious risk of crashing the plane and killing everyone on board.

…

Pets work exactly like that for a Ranger, there are a hundred different factors that must be taken into account when designing and balancing them, such as damage, the health, armor, movement, AI programming, utility, etc. It needs to be spot on, or the Ranger will be less than optimal.

When the Pet works, the Ranger is Perfect. When the Pet doesn’t work, The Ranger him/herself runs the risk of not working, and has the serious risk of failing without a trusty, working pet.

Works for me. Because it show respect for the subject.

This entire thread exists because people were shockingly uniform in their concerns. It’s like taking a time machine back to the beginning of the Living Story CDI where it took a few days to finally get the Devs to open up to the possibility that their current path might not be working. And from there Bobby and his team went on to make miraculous improvements to how the Living Story is both executed and received by players. I’m sorry the opening days of each CDI seems to always call for a bit of rough handling, but if everything were fine or near to it with the Ranger, there would be some other class up first to bat. We’ll get there with this discussion, I hope.

afoot.6932:

Can we focus on specific and tangible problems here? If there’s an issue with the suggestions Allie compiled, point it out, say why it’s an issue, and what you would do to fix it. Bickering over house metaphors isn’t going to fix the ranger profession.

Pretending they don’t have a serious problem isn’t going to fix it either.

Quite the opposite.

Bran.7425:

Allie Murdock.8152:

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?

The pet seems more like the foundation than just a simple 2X4. And at this point the house is built and has been leased. With a crumbling foundation that the owner only patches instead of rebuilds.

I’m honestly aghast at how dismissive the whole analogy is.

If 90% of the people asked thinks Rangers need attention and the problem is just a single 2×4, then imagine how awesome all the other professions must be? I guess the elementalist has a porch light that’s not screwed all the way in (not even burnt out, just loose) and the worst the Warrior can claim is someone forgot to water the lawn this week. I mean really, why would anyone be fretting over a 2×4? Why would NINETY PERCENT OF YOU be worried about a 2×4? It’s nothing. All’s just dandy with the Ranger. Move along, move along.

I’m sorry, there’s almost 50 pages of people taking it seriously.

Allie Murdock.8152:

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?

Which would be a fabulous analogy if we were talking about 1 Trait, or maybe a single broken weapon . Pets aren’t a 2×4, they are the FOUNDATION of the profession. There are pet-based traits and effects wound through every single trait line. Core capabilities hinge on a working pet at every turn. And they don’t work.

Sure it looked great back when it was just a blueprint, but then the house got built and along came the rains of real gameplay. The foundation sagged and now there’s not a single square corner or level floor anywhere in the entire building. You have two options: get in, jack up the pilings, and true the frame or tear it down and build on a new foundation that won’t buckle.

We’d all rather you fixed the pilings – when we say ‘tear it down’ it’s because to date you’ve proven either unwilling or unable to do that. The abject failure of pet AI is a real problem, and it’s going to take real work to fix it. Every time we hear assurances that its not a big problem — “a mere 2×4” — we end up jaws agape that the magnitude of the issue still hasn’t sunk in yet. Please stop sending out a guy with a board, a hammer, and can of paint telling us “I’ve got this!”

An adrenaline bar filled by strikes, with an f1 to summon Pet A, f2 to summon Pet B and the duration of the summon and the stats of the pet increase as the number of adrenaline bars increase before cashing out to summon?

Sign me up.

Gieniusz Krab.8259:

Hi,

I was farming Black Lion Keys for scraps. When I was doing this for Dreamthistle GS everything was good, but now… I spent 12 keys with no result… I know that there is small chance for scraps, but it looks like a 0% right now. I’m sure there should be more chance or something is bugged on my account. AN, do you have explanation for this?

I have an explanation: You got lucky and assumed that was normal.

Larger sample sizes suggest that the average is around 1:100 for tickets, 1:20 for scraps.

For you to get a scrap in a mere 12 tries would be unusually high.

Allie Murdock.8152:

So, it looks like some of you have already pointed out that not all the feedback was added to that summary.

Of course not. The thread’s 40+ pages, after all . Its just worrisome that the criteria for inclusion in the summary hints that its a head-count of repetitive posts instead of a reflection of what resonated for the developers.

Please read the first part of my post and note that I said this is only part of what has been going around, and not all of the information we have gotten out of this thread. We have been reading, after all.

Then I’ll just ask you to take a quick look at~

Sharing Consumables with Pets
Ascended Stats for Pets
Pets that can Dodge
Concentrating Pet Traits in the Beastmaster Line

~and see if anything there makes the grade for the next summary .

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.

And apparently the forum doesn’t help you recognize when an idea comes from only one person but gets 200 up votes .

There are obvious fixes and there are clever ones. Counting the number of echoes only helps you identify the former…

I think the intent is to put it on pause, not shut it down.

Chris Whiteside.6102:

titanlectro.5029:

Just a quick procedural question.

When will this CDI thread cycle end, and when will the next thread to discuss the CDI process start?

That a good question. I am really enjoying the current conversation and ideas so I think until at least Wednesday next week and then the process evolution will follow shortly after.

Roughly two weeks then. With CDIs a bit more in the public eye compared to over the holidays, that’s seeming more and more like a sound window of opportunity.

I am going to be afk for a few days from tomorrow morning as I will be in hospital but as soon as I start feeling better and more awake I will catch up again on the thread.

Ooof. Rest up. And as always, thank you for posting a note saying you’ll be stepping out for a bit. It helps calm our nerves .

((Don’t eat the lime Jell-O while you’re on the inside. Just don’t .))

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Nike.2631:

Since I rather enjoyed the team being turned into Charr or Asura in certain fractals, lets take it up a notch – fractals where the team is turned into once race AND assigned a specific racial elite for the duration of the fractal – with the bosses of the fractal having specific vulnerabilities to that elite.

I would like to see a Sylvari fractal, where you help the firstborn.

That would rock.

Add an encounter where everyone can drop their seed mortars and it just tears the minor critters to pieces while you beat down the main enemy.

The Norn equivalent would be the battle where Owl was lost to Jormag. If that doesn’t resonate through the souls of Norn everywhere until it is recreated in the Mists, I don’t know what would be…

I actually got the impression that the energy release was not part of the plan. I think she meant to capture it for herself, but being dead and all, she couldn’t make the fine adjustments required.