Guild Wars 2

Sebrent.3625:

(1) Don’t start praising me after you tried to state that your negativity has accomplished the same things as the positivity displayed by myself and others on the forums. You’re simply trying to deflect that part of the conversation since it is clear to all that your negativity has done nothing good and had actually accomplished some bad.

(2) The only praise I give to Robert is the fact that he actually communicates with the community; something people have been wanting the devs to do. When he does what they want, he gets flak. That flak is the thing I’ve been vocal about. If you don’t like being called out for being unreasonable, don’t be unreasonable.

(3) You guys didn’t release that video, Rekz did. Notice how the point-of-view is from Rekz’s side … unless, of course, you jumped on his computer, took his recording, and uploaded it for him, lol.

(4) Careful what you wish for as you may just get it. Xeviel was telling us a few days ago that he was trying to arrange something like that with [WAR] and [GF]. I often run with [GF] in WvW.

#1: I’m not starting anything. This is what primarily separates us Sebrent. I’m factual. I said well over a month ago that you were a very positive contibutor to this forum (and I even thanked you), but I went on to say there were problems with your approach. I’m still saying that… It also seems you have a problem with context. You’ve accomplished NOTHING more for the Ranger (in terms of fixes from ArenaNet) than I have. Your contributions to educating Rangers notwithstanding.

#2: No, you go further than that. When a forum poster starts rewriting history and openingly giving credit to a Developer for fixing something that said Developer was clueless about that’s actually beyond praise. You also defend him at every turn. Why? I’m not sure, he’s a big boy.

#3: We live streamed our side of the fight and subsequently posted it on youtube immediately afterwards. I assumed that was the one you posted (since I didn’t actually click it). This weekend I will look at it since seeing it from their perspective will be educational.

#4: He won’t have to try hard. Tell him to contact Kaedirin in game. So GF lets you ride their coattails as a PUG? That’s interesting. I run with my guild, we call it [WAR].

Sebrent.3625:

Pedra.4381:

Sebrent.3625:

You can plainly see that we have received far more buffs. Links provided so that if you don’t believe me you can look for yourselves … though I’m sure most of you on here know me by now ;-)

I’m short of time but I’ll get to this, it’s too good to pass up. In the interim though, is your position that all the items listed by ArenaNet in their patch notes (and listed here by you as buffs) are working as advertised?

No. And I saw the same ones I’m sure you have (Pet F2, for example).

However, even if we assumed that half of them not working, there are far more buffs than nerfs.

So you knew many of these “buffs” to be non-functioning and yet you posted no disclaimer. You tend to accentuate the positive to make your point, Sebrent, even when I suspect, even you know you’re getting into the whimsical.

When evaluating buffs and nerfs one must consider overall impact and resultant funtionality. And just posting them in a laundry list and then numerically comparing them does all the non-smart folks like me a great disservice. Most of us would look at your post and say “Wow, 500 buffs and only 10 nerfs, so the Ranger is in GREAT shape”. Unfortunately, not all buffs and nerfs are created equally. Nor, as has been proven, are the patch notes very believable. This is the Jon Peters view of the world that we can trick folks into believing things are balanced without really having to put effort into balancing.

And, I submit to you, that many (dare I say most) Rangers don’t give a kitten about the underwater buffs and the tooltip fixes (especially when they came at the expense of other more important things).

Sebrent.3625:

Really? I think I’ve created several threads that have benefitted several players by getting the knowledge out there. I’m actually curious to see if they used any of the information from our one big list since Robert mentioned he’d direct the class devs to look at it."

On the first part of your statement, I am in complete agreement with you, Sebrent. I think you have made positive contributions to the Ranger community (but that’s you, not ArenaNet). I say that with no detractors.

But, that was not what I was commenting on or replying to. I was saying that my “complaints” haven’t gained anymore from ArenaNet than your incessant (and in my opinion undeserved) praise of Robert Hrouda has. I truly wish that were not the case. I will be curious to see how much additional praise is given to Mr. Hrouda should any of that list be acted upon (especially in light of all the admonishments that the lack of fixes thus far are “just not his fault”).

I also think you wear blinders (for whatever reason). And you aren’t above shading the facts. Speaking of which…

You seem rather fond of that video of ours. We would not have posted it had we cared that people saw it. But, here is a challenge for you. When your guild does to us what Rekz did, post that video and we can talk about it.

Sebrent.3625:

You can plainly see that we have received far more buffs. Links provided so that if you don’t believe me you can look for yourselves … though I’m sure most of you on here know me by now ;-)

I’m short of time but I’ll get to this, it’s too good to pass up. In the interim though, is your position that all the items listed by ArenaNet in their patch notes (and listed here by you as buffs) are working as advertised?

Sebrent.3625:

Pedra: Feel free to let everyone know what being so negative has gotten you. I still see no benefits from it.

The answer is really quite simple and I don’t mind sharing. In terms of acquiring fixes for existent Ranger problems, I’ve accomplished exactly the same as those who are perpetually positive.

And that is a sad commentary.

Sebrent.3625:

Can the ranger still contribute quite a bit even with a dead pet? Yep.

I concur. A Ranger with a dead pet contributes. It does so in a fashion similar to the way a crippled horse contributes to a team pulling a wagon.

That’s to say not equally.

Bailey.6892:

Just wondering when we will see some improvements to the ranger.

Improvement? If by that you mean a net improvement (i.e., not a situation where we take one step forward but two back), then maybe never. There are certainly folks on this forum that will argue this pessimistic view, but unfortunately for them, history is on my side. And until ArenaNet proves me wrong, I’ll go with the odds.

Saw a mesmer doing this yesterday. It’s not limited to Rangers and yes, I personally think it’s a hack.

Josh Foreman.8250:

It would be like arguing someone into liking heavy metal or kimchi.

Korean mothers start them early. Less arguments.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

Like “Im With Stupid”

Faux, is your Charr a Commander?

Sebrent.3625:

For anyone who is curious, check out Pedra’s posts.

Lots of complaining. That’s the sum of it.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/members/Pedra-4381/showposts

Sebrent, all you have to do to stop my “complaints” concerning the Ranger are to factually invalidate them. I’m certain you are up to the task.

I’ll wait patiently.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Pedra, the two of your guilds may need to change acronyms to avoid this confusion in the future.

Trust me. We wish we knew how to do that. Is there a way our GL is unaware of (short of deleting the guild and starting over)?

Sebrent.3625:

I’m quite interested that you’re from [WAR]. You should’ve noticed Saturday night when Dues Ex Tree, Griddles, and I were running around with 12 others from [GF] killing you guys all night in Eternal (along with what seemed like an army of PUGs or some other guilds that follow you).

So cute. We aren’t that WAR (there are two on AR). We really dislike Keep/Tower defense.

I’m sorry to disappoint, but we spent most of our Saturday night play time GvGing Rekz. Several of your fellow GF were on the hill watching us.

P.S.: All the stuff you posted concerning Keep/Tower is offensive tactics. And here, I thought your Ranger was effective in Defense. Guess that was just more of your “agenda”.

I am on AR and fight Ebay and BP every day. It’s amazing to me to see claims here from Rangers on those servers saying that they are effective in Keep and Tower defense. Unless you guys are always playing when I’m not on, it’s just not true. I’ve yet to see an enemy Ranger in either tower or keep defense that has caused any of us concern ever. If you go on a wall, you have two choices, you either stand there and die quickly, or you dodge around and die more slowly but in either case, we’re not worried about the Ranger. I have a high healing build and use a longbow when I have to defend. But, without my pet to assist, and with 20-30 folks focus firing on anyone stupid enough to hop on the wall, I’m not effective up there (which is why when our guild is forced into defense, we spend our time getting ready to wipe you after you get in).

And as an Asura Ranger I have quite a few “inside the door” defense options. Entangle, Radiation field, LB 5, etc. But, guess what? When they get off the ram and set up Cats I have nothing to counter that (not inherently as a Ranger, not anymore). And getting them on the Cats, accomplished what exactly?

I guess the question I have for all the keep and tower defense “effective” Rangers on BP and Ebay is this: define “effective”.

Pedra-WAR

Criminal.5627:

you do know he is not responsible for ANY balance changes right?

Thank you for that insight, Criminal, but I think I have a very solid understanding of Robert Hrouda’s purpose on this forum.

Sebrent.3625:

Someone griping about ranger in a non-constructive manner {I’ve heard this before}

How’s spending your time making non-constructive posts working out for you? Resulted in anything of merit?

No? <sarcasm> That’s so surprising </sarcasm> :-p-)

You are very fond of this particular question so let me ask you one from the other side of the fence. How has your fawning over Robert Hrouda worked out for the Ranger community? Resulted in anything of merit?

Aside from him personally being responsible for “fixing” the Black Widow’s health?

Buttercup.5871:

Sorry. I no longer believe that guy.

You better believe that he thinks he can trick you into believing the Ranger is good to go in it’s current state.

Ursan.7846:

Most people in the world believed the world was flat. It was certainly far from the truth though, as mounting evidence over the centuries showed.

Precisely the example I was thinking of when I posted. There is universal truth and perceived truth. Sometimes they are vastly different. But, I submit to you that any perception that has broad general support and results in irreversible consequence is “fact” du jour. If, back in the day, someone were branded a heretic and put to death for espousing their beliefs that were contrary to the “known” facts that the Earth was flat, then it doesn’t get any more real for them.

So, if Jon Peters can set up his carefully selected streams and convince people that the Ranger is top tier, the fact that it isn’t won’t matter (not to the general player base). Will it matter to the heretics? Sure.

I’m missing the logic of the whole sustained damage argument. Even if we somehow avail ourselves of the Robert Hrouda method of optimizing pets for every WvW scenario, there are many other mitigating factors to us “sustaining” damage. How much “sustained” damage do you put out as a Ranger in Keep wall defense? With your pet dead? With folks dodging arrows? The list of mitigations is actually quite large.

Ursan.7846:

Zenith.7301:

I just think a perception can be plentiful and echoed by enough people that it becomes consensus.

And a consensus makes it true?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

Just because many people believe it, doesn’t mean it’s true. Senator McCarthy’s anti-communist actions were supported by a majority of Americans, and yet it it destroyed many, many innocent lives. Most of America believed in the guilt of the Duke Lacrosse players, and yet they were ultimately proven innocent.

Look, a tank Guardian may very well do more damage than a BM Ranger. I don’t know if that is true or false. Do a test, and and you will convince me. But saying “It’s true because people believe it” is a logical fallacy, and I repeat, not conducive to good discussion and dilutes your argument. And that is my whole point.

Perception equals reality. It’s only history that proves perception to be false.

But, Jon Peters essentially says the same thing as Zenith in that interview (quoted below).

“Jon: One thing, though, that we have been trying out recently – this just triggered, I wasn’t going to say it for sure, but you know, streaming – if you look at games that have a lot of really good streaming with their playerbase, that perception can be changed even without changing the balance sometimes.”<—-Why put effort into balance when you can make them think it already is?

I was actually saddened to see all the player optimism still extant in this thread. After perusing the many hopeful comments, I’m left with this nagging thought that P.T. Barnum was an amazingly insightful man.

And that’s all I got to say about that.

jcbroe.4329:

I don’t think anybody is going to dispute the numbers that pop up on the screen. That being said, let me ask:

-What happens when an opponent is moving, kiting, dodging, crippling, blinding, and immobilizing you, or has access to numerous stealth or escape skills?

I don’t want to take anything away from his build because I suspect it works really well in SPvP but there’s no way it’s successful in WvW. Jump into a zerg as a Ranger with that build and you ain’t coming back out.

DevonCarver.5370:

We have top people working on it! But I can’t give you anything more than that, as there is nothing more to give.

Why do I have a vision of the closing scene of Indiana Jones from Raiders of the Lost Ark?

Xirin.8593:

Neither of these issues are important enough to warrant your level of dissatisfaction.

Do you have an example of an exploit that should warrant dissatisfaction?

Frosty and Frosty Law Firm.4981:

Robert Hrouda.1327:

We’re aware that spirits need more than just skill facts – we’re working on resolving that as well.

Mind if I quote you on that?

Frosty, if ArenaNet has taught us nothing else over the last 6-7 months, it’s that they don’t mind at all if you quote them. If nothing they said comes to fruition, it’s not that they lied to us, it’s just that “the truth changed”. And in some people’s minds, you’ll find they think there’s a distinction between the two.

Faux Sheaux.6179:

He was talking about the players running in contesting

I wasn’t.

Dovgan.8605:

Nah Faux he was trolling because he got wrecked somewhere and has no other venue to express his anger.

I assume you are speaking of me. I’ve not played the game since yesterday and didn’t get much wrecked.

By the way, subtlety is wasted on you, isn’t it?

Dovgan.8605:

@Jinks You can’t solo with 2 people and if you can’t take an upgraded camp with 2 people in under a couple minutes I would strongly encourage you to rethink your trait set up. And taking a supply in that length of time strongly makes me question your ability to kill any player let alone several to the extent that it would cost near a gold in repair. Nice troll though.

Dovgan, you have to realize that there are several people on here whose best fights in WvW are on this board alone.

Wizardauz.3761:

Pedra.4381:

Tetra Bug.7134:

I mean you guys are good but i feel like you may have trouble finding hats that fit, know what I mean?

Have we wiped to GF with equal numbers? If we have, we have; I just don’t remember it.

Finally! A challenge! Would you care to fight us?

We’d love a nice 2v2, 3v3, 4v4, 5v5, 10v10. Hell we’ll even take you with the odds in your favor if you’d like!

Can i message you in game to set one up? And who are you representing?

I’m in WAR on AR. I’m in WvW every evening and we’ve run into you guys often and I’m sure will continue to.

I don’t participate in “fight clubs” or duels. But, as I’ve said, we’ll continue to run into each other, I’m certain of that.

Best of luck (sincerely).

Tetra Bug.7134:

I mean you guys are good but i feel like you may have trouble finding hats that fit, know what I mean?

Have we wiped to GF with equal numbers? If we have, we have; I just don’t remember it.

Chopps.5047:

Mr. Hrouda, thanks again for posting. Guys, go easy on the complaints. It’s very extreme. Patience and practice if you’re so passionate about ranger. No need to cut each other down, especially Hrouda since he’s coming from a completely different perspective.

Mr. Hrouda, like Mr. Peters, has now been found out. Our patience has exhausted itself and it’s not our fault. Well, actually it is…are you familiar with the fable concerning the dog and the scorpion?

misterdevious.6482:

How do you know what content you can solo unless you try? How do you know if you can solo the hard content unless you try really hard… you know… like with perserverance and stuff.

My worldview is not defined by what videos are or are not posted on youtube. I tried it. I did it. It can be done.

You are missing the point. It is totally irrelevant whether or not you can do “it”. What is important is that the Developers think that TWO Rangers shouldn’t be able to do “it” collectively. So, the fact that you’ve done “it”, just means they’ve now even more ammunition with which to shoot the Ranger.

And there you have the explanation and “stuff”.

Sebrent.3625:

So why, given that there are plenty of videos of other classes soloing content, is it a “problem” that two rangers (twice as many Rangers as other classes in those videos) are able to solo dungeon bosses?

I asked this well over a month ago. I did not receive a response from Mr. Hrouda as he doesn’t seem to like to directly address issues. But, fear not, there are several players on here that will tell you this is both sweet and right (and may even deign to explain why).

There are some Vistas that do count however. Viziers’ Tower, Broken Wall (or whatever it’s called), and the Scaffolding one. There are probably others.

Awarw.5081:

Pedra.4381:

Awarw.5081:

There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

And somewhere in Bellevue, an ArenaNet developer chuckles, smiles approvingly, and tells his cubical mates, “See? I told you”.

I’ve decided it’s time to just accept it. I’m not rerolling a different class, because honestly it’s just not fun to play through something that was dull and dragged on in the first place (1-80 kill risen for hours on end and farm the same events forever). This is where we are at and it’s not going to change significantly. If it was important to the devs it would have been fixed by now as they’ve been aware of the problems but not addressed any of them at all. I think we should try and figure out what works best for our class as it is, rather than continue complaining and getting our hopes up each month.

Awarw, please understand that I take no issue with your decision nor your desire to find a way to continue your enjoyment of this game. I wish you the best of luck.

Awarw.5081:

There’s no point complaining and hoping for a magical fix because it’s just not going to happen, let’s see what we can come up with.

And somewhere in Bellevue, an ArenaNet developer chuckles, smiles approvingly, and tells his cubical mates, “See? I told you”.

Funniest moment of my WvW career happened last night. We are roaming with about two full groups. Our scout tells us that BP is coming directly at us and there’s probably 20-25 of them. Our Commander says, no worries, we got this. About three seconds later, our Scout is yelling that the BP guys are running from the EBay zerg that is HUGE. Now, we didn’t see all of the EBay zerg but we could see the BP and the front lines of EBay and what we saw coming directly at us looked like a Tsunami. Immediately everyone is yelling “Port, Port, Port!!!”. That was the most players I’ve seen in one spot.

Robert Hrouda.1327:

I’m still here and lurking about (as is the balance team), gathering information to bring to meetings. For the first couple days after a patch, people are still figuring things out and getting used to changes.

Mr. Hrouda, that’s a whole lot of typing to essentially tell the community “yeah, we changed things, get used to it and L2P”.

How’s Jon Peters doing?

Ursan.7846:

Pedra.4381:

Well, the OP is right from the perspective that if you want ArenaNet to read what you write, it should not ever be posted in the Ranger forum.

Which is funny, because you don’t read Dev posts on this forums either.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-update-march-26/page/5#post1725233

Ursan, I stand corrected. I should have said that if you want something read and a meaningful response from ArenaNet, there is no use in posting on the Ranger forums.

I’ve read his post. I would like him to explain what Rangers are supposed to do to make up for the changes to Guard that caused us to lose substantial DPS in Keep/Tower defense. I could go on and on, but in your case, your agenda would blind you to it and in the case of ArenaNet, it would just be a bitter waste of my time.

But, I adamantly stand by my earlier claim that since Jon Peter’s post about Rangers being most in need of improvement that we’ve received more NERFS than BUFFS (discounting our swimming). I challenge anyone to disprove that statement.

Well, I’m sure there will be the usual dissenters here that will tell us Spirits are great and we just need to L2P, but here’s Jonathan Sharp’s take on Spirits.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/warrior/The-main-spvp-questions/page/2#post1726102

JonathanSharp.7094

And yes, Ranger spirits are in the same boat as Warrior banners. They were VERY powerful before ship, but after changes, they are on the lower end of the power curve right now. So they’ll be slowly adjusted over time to bring them back up as well.

Well, the OP is right from the perspective that if you want ArenaNet to read what you write, it should not ever be posted in the Ranger forum.

I’ve played DAoC, ShadowBane, StarWars Galaxies, LOTRO, SW:TOR, and a few others. I enjoyed them all or I wouldn’t have played them. But, here we are over 15 years later, and I still think original UO (pre-Trammel) was the best MMO, period. And I thought that through everything I’ve played since.

At some point though, because of economic pressures or “new ideas”, all of them have gone to kitten. GW2 is no different in that regard. It appears to be going in the wrong direction.

Crimedawg.8954:

Daoc was awesome at lunch but unbalanced as all hell. Anyone remember being able to one shot sitting targets as an archer? Smite Clerics?

Casters didn’t have to be sitting to get one-shotted by a Scout.

I loved lining up Crit Shot with Eagle Eye. Jeez, I miss that.

roachsrealm.9284:

Yeah…I don’t think I’d call this a stealth nerf. This is a stealth fix. if they said at all on the patch notes “made improvements to dungeons”, this qualifies and stating it.

Exactly, it’s not like the Ranger Shortbow Cross Fire animation glitch fix. When they do stuff that reduces your DPS they come straight out and tell you. They don’t tell you it’s just an animation fix and leave it at that.

Oh wait…on second thought, no they don’t put that sort of thing in notes either.

My bad…carry on.

Bryzy.2719

Come on, get it together for the Ranger. Can you at least let us know if and when you are planning to implement these much-needed changes?

They could but they won’t.

Here’s a radical idea. ArenaNet is absolutely stymied on how to handle the BOT problem. The vast majority of BOTs are Rangers. If they nerf Rangers enough that the non-BOTers just give up on it then they can use their metrics to say it’s an under-used class and broken anyway (and with some well stated PR speak) they can just get rid of the Ranger and solve their BOT infestation.

I’m sort of bummed on my predictions at the moment though. They’ve taken away my predicted “color buff” and called it a bug. My personal thought though is that after the fact, they decided it was too much of a buff and retracted it.

Ursan.7846:

I have a question though, anyone played around with the new QZ yet?

For me the jury is still out on QZ. Personally, if I’m in a situation where I’m stunned, I’m usually getting hammered. Preventing myself from healing for 5 seconds in that situation does not seem to me to be the best course of action (especially when the stun is going to last less).

Chopps.5047:

This is a thread for remarking on the positive changes rangers have and the builds they enable. Please, no whining or moaning on this thread—if you want to do that, go on one of the many QQ threads you can find on the forum.

Chopps, you have no right to ask that “QQers” stay out your thread when you are front and center in everyone of theirs.

Just saying…

Since the now infamous Jon Peters’ statement, Rangers have received more nerfs than buffs while many of our abilities have remained broken/useless. That is simply factually undeniable.

Ursan.7846:

Regardless, I think I’ve deviated enough from the “original” point of my point, which is to LET YOURSELF BE HEARD, not by posting in here, but actually acting in-game!

I concur with this sentiment. But, I have one final question. Don’t you think ArenaNet owes us an explanation if their view of the Ranger has substantively changed from what we were last officially told?

Ryan.8367:

“And they gave us a color “buff” on our Order of Whispers armor. Everyone, please remember I predicted a color buff this patch. If ArenaNet will publically take credit for the “buff”, my prediction will be complete and I can claim victory and die happy.”

Can you predict some actual ranger buffs that we’ve been asking for since November instead of them destroying the most important aspects of our class, month by month?

Given my current pessimism and disdain for official comments at this point (as they relate to the Ranger), I think yes; but I’d probably get banned.

Ursan.7846:

I’d be SHOCKED if they somehow couldn’t translate that into actual classes being active and being played.

Ok, I apologize for being convoluted and unclear in my request. I’ll rephrase…link please?

Please answer in light of my signature.

Edit: In response to your posted links after I had quoted you. If their metrics actually tracked things of importance then I find it AMAZING that Rangers went from class most in need of improvement to apparently overwhelmingly in need of nerfs with no substantive changes to account for that progression.

Ursan.7846:

Anet has metrics that track classes being played, I’m 100% positive.

Speaking of things tangible…link please?

And they gave us a color “buff” on our Order of Whispers armor. Everyone, please remember I predicted a color buff this patch. If ArenaNet will publically take credit for the “buff”, my prediction will be complete and I can claim victory and die happy.