My guess you meant to have (I) in slot one of Alchemy.. But that is very similar to my build. I had 30 in Explosives so I could get the extra grenade, which vastly increases the DPS (50% extra damage from grenades due to going from 2→3 grenades). So I only have 10 in firearms to give me the extra 5pts.
The global cooldown.
The effects needed tweaking (although I do believe some are too weak atm, mostly because of the very short durations), but adding a global 20 seconds cooldown to a merely ok proc is extremely harsh if you compare it to almost anything similar in GW2.They should have definitely moved the trait up the tree; the Grandmaster and even most Master traits in Tools are very poor tbh.
Considering it was such a staple in some very focused and unique builds this could have forced some interesting choices, instead they just removed the choice altogether.Where is engineer versatility supposed to come from?
In my mind Kits mostly, well this trait actively motivated you to expand your choices by carrying multiple kits and/or switching freely between them.
Now it doesn’t.
Yeah I wouldn’t have minded the cooldown being brought in line with the Ele cooldown. 3s Global (to stop you spamming them all on top of each other) with a 12-15s individual cooldown.
I also would not have minded it being moved up the tree. It would have made the Tools line desirable
I also wouldn’t have minded too much the removal of our best Condition removal, though it would have been a pain.
I also wouldn’t have minded the removal of our biggest burst in the Grenade Proc.
THE PROBLEM, they nerfed almost every bit of it at the same time. They put a global cooldown which is horrifically restrictive compared to the Ele’s, they removed everything that made KR worthwhile. And though some of the replacements are not bad, they are not worth the effort it now takes to use them, especially as a lot of them proc in situations where you wouldn’t want them, eg. Grenades are a mid-long range weapon that drops a mine which the enemy may run into, but probably won’t. Before you could plan around them, use them in reaction. Make a conscious decision whether you swap to SE or wait to save you KR cooldown. That’s all gone, it’s random procs, which you can’t really plan for.
I used the old KR for the extra condition removal, and healing, I made me feel useful in teams. My damage couldn’t compete with a lot of classes but at least I could be helping the team by putting down a bit of extra healing to make up for it. Also in a Multi-kit build it gave me a bit of fast condition removal which you don’t really have in the build.
The change in KR, not only made it horribly hard to get the proc you need at any given time, due to the internal cooldown. It also meant that I needed to go elsewhere for the condition removal for the build. In other words it meant I pulled mostly out of tools and moving the points into Alchemy. Leading to a situation which I couldn’t afford KR even if I wanted it.
KR was great fun. it never felt over the top. Even the 1000Nades was almost impossible to set up, and in dungeons or PvE roaming where you could set it up easily all it meant was a bit more damage to a Veteran where it would hardly be noticed, or allow you to kill a few mobs faster in PvE, where killing is not really a problem.
In other words
a) It removed most of a Trait line (Tools) from my build. I really can’t see why anyone would touch this Trait line now, beyond 10pts for Speedy Kits. I don’t know why they didn’t make KR a build defining 30pt. I would have paid it.
b) It reduced the fun of playing the engineer a lot. And to be honest I play computer games for fun. Fun for me was not 1 shotting in PvP, it was thinking ahead to get the most out the procs.
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To be brutally honest, I actually really like my Ranger in Dungeons, there are a lot of places it really does shine. It is not as good DPS Warrior yep, but Zerker Warrior really only work well in a few Dungeons. I’ve seen a lot of Zerker Warriors in T. Arbor, and it’s never pleasent. Hell we had a Warrior join a group only a couple of days ago, say “wait a moment while I get my Dungeon Armor” and then spend 90% of every fight on the floor.
Ranger can put out an awful lot of bleeds with a shortbow and QZ. Team up with a Necro and suddenly rooms of mobs just melt.
They have good team healing if you go close range, which is where I like to be with my Ranger, if your close it’s easier to remain behind your target and get in Piercing shots against extra mobe. If teamed up with a Hammer Guardian your team survivability just shoots up.
Pets can be used to great effect to pull in things like Ascalonian Warriors and Nightmare Court Wardens that have Leaps that can down a lot of classes. With a decent level in BM they can also have really good tanking ability, especially if you back them up with decent healing. I’ve had pets tank the Cave Troll in AC without dying quite a few times.
I’m not claiming they are the best class, but I feel a lot of the issues come with the people you team with. I’m SO used to people only thinking your pet grabs agro and you do less damage than Warriors. Having played 7 classes now, I actually see what the Rangers do well, and I get a lot of advantages teaming with a good one. As I said if I’m playing my Necro and see a Shortbow/Condition Ranger I celebrate.
Problem is, they’re addressing the wrong things. Even if turrets could destroy entire cities, they are still useless if you can obliterate them in a couple hits. Especially in dungeons, where enemies have got AOE and such things (and control is severely limited by defiant stacks).
Not to talk about fractals.
Agreed, I feel Cooldown should be based on when you place them not when they are destroyed at least
Saying that there are 2 types of people on forums. I do some game design using Playtesters and you see two types of post.
1. People pushing up their class, or in my case faction.
2. People that have actual issues, or places where they think things could be improved.
It’s the job of a designer to split the 80% type 1, from the 20% type 2.
I would say people that moan about no longer having silly spike damage from Grenade KR are type 1. People that are saying that KR is no longer as fun to play because it now feels more trouble than it’s worth, that Multi-kit are now a bit feels a bit light on condition removal, or people discussing how to fill the gaps in their build, IE moving away from Tools and into Alchemy, all probably fit into class 2.
TBH. It’s not a bad thing for someone to say.
What is the point of this. I don’t think he’s trying to force you not to talk about things. It’s more if you just post bugs here, nothing will be done. IF we want our bugs fixed, make sure you post in the bugs forum too.
I see those statues on the map but is there a secret on getting to the ones not contested?
Try around 7pm in the evening, Most servers will have a lot open at those times. Also friends might be able to help you get to them on other servers.
SE armor looks great on an Asura and very techy, but I would probably use the cutural for the helm
OK I was running 30points in tools with 50% endurance recharge, speedy kits and KR
I’ve dropped down to 10points in Tools, taking Speedy Kits.
The other 20points I’ve moved into Alchemy, Invigorating Speed for my 10, so gaining Vigor on Swiftness as my 10pt. Which with kit switching means it is up most of the time. Then Cleansing 406 for my second.
Then I swapped out MedKit for Elixir H, which gives me 2 more cleanses with 406. When in low Condition enviroments I can swap 406 for Backpack Regenerator.
heh….if you compare kit refinement to our other 10 pt traits, you’ll notice a lot of other ones that are MUCH less desireable than this one. If ya want these all on seperate cd’s it needs to be a 30 pt master trait (and you could stick that stupid retaliation every 25 seconds off crit trait and swap it out….wtf is that a master trait?). But, no matter how broken other professions are, balancing across the engineers choices, its still a lot better off than others.
TBH you compare it to other 10pt, there are a lot more desirable ones too.
I’ve more or less swapped out of the Tools tree now.
I do enjoy my Pistol/Shield Grenade/Bomb/Elixir.
I love teasing Guardians with it. As I can lay down 9 stacks of Mights to the group faster and more often than he can with his Staff, all the time damaging the enemy.
Big ’Ol Bomb, Flame Bomb, Pistol Shot (because you can fit in an Auto Attack before the Flame Bomb goes off), Shield 4, pop Shield 4, EG Acid Bomb.
Looks wonderful, as you run into where the your team are meleeing a boss, do a mad bomb dance, then fly away at high velocity, leaving destruction and 9 stacks of might in your wake
Summon Shadow Fiend
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Summon_Shadow_Fiend
Almost low damage, scarce tankyness, melee range, relatively poor activated effect, repulsive look, i cry everytime i see a Necromancer bringing it.
I was with you up until you said “repulsive look”, I mean the thing is so cute and fuzzy looking, I have the Mini-pet so I don’t have to equip the Utility to get the little black ball of joy.
and now you only have to track one 20 sec timer instead of 2-3 (or more!) timers each 10 or 20 seconds long.
it is a QoL buff for YOU not the kit.
But it really isn’t.
Before when swapping to a kit all you needed to ask yourself was when did I last use this kit.
Now you have to ask exactly when was the last proc, what if I didn’t spot it as there was other stuff going on, etc.
It was FAR easier to keep track of before.
TBH.. If the KR either a 5s global cooldown, or a 15s individual cooldown I would have been fine with the change, it is a 10pt trait. However as a Multi-kit user with a 20s Global it’s entirely pointless.
TBH.. If the KR either a 5s global cooldown, or a 15s individual cooldown I would have been fine with the change, it is a 10pt trait. However as a Multi-kit user with a 20s Global it’s entirely pointless.So I’ve changed to Static Discharge. Extra Damage roughly every 10s is never a bad thing, compared with a random ability every 20s which most of the time will not be something you can’t use.
TBH.. If the KR either a 5s global cooldown, or a 15s individual cooldown I would have been fine with the change, it is a 10pt trait. However as a Multi-kit user with a 20s Global it’s entirely pointless.So I’ve changed to Static Discharge. Extra Damage roughly every 10s is never a bad thing, compared with a random ability every 20s which most of the time will not be something you can’t use.This is a real shame as the old KR used to be great fun to play around with. I personally wish they had went the other way, pushed it up to a Build defining Grandmaster trait and buffed the bad Kit’s refinements.
Quickness wasnt a real class nerf, just weakening one build (that was unviable either way; outside of hotjoins), Engies got better turrets, stronger base power on kits, insane utility with that swap trait and grenades no longer need LoS.
The Kit Swap trait is all but unusable for Multi-Kit Engineers after the patch, it has nice utility, but due to the new 20s Global Cooldown it’s almost impossible to trigger them when you need them, meaning about 90% of the time it will be on Cooldown and when it triggers it’s not likely to be useful.
From what I can see Grenades still need to have a path to the target, they just don’t need to target a piece of ground you can see. Which means you can curve them over things, which is nice I agree.
But overall the Engineer updates left me kindof cold, I don’t think my build really gained anything much in most situations, and I lost quite a lot of utility and healing from the changes to the kit swap trait.
So overall, yes lots of changes, but quite a few Engineers feel they were a bit rushed.
As for the Necro, I’ve been playing on mine a bit today and the UI change makes a lot of difference, it would be nice if we could see our Utility/Healing Cooldowns even if they were greyed out. A lot of the time I am on low health and really want to know whether I can heal the moment I come out of DS.
But otherwise it doesn’t feel like many changes at all. But on the plus side, Necros never had much in the way of Quickness so in a way we have just got better relative to most other classes, which have had the Quickness part of some of their more powerful Builds nerfed, and less used stuff buffed.
Does anyone have pictures or video of Final Rest on the Necro since they fixed the Shadow Scythe from Necro skills?
One thing that may be useful to note is that Healing Seeds can no longer be used in Dungeons. We might be more welcome when every player in the game can’t bring something akin to our Healing Springs.
Very similar to my suggestion,
Mine was I believe 4s, 40 cooldown, stunbreak, 50% heal.
but even without no healing, it would be a step in the right direction. I don’t use QZ for spike so much as to help apply lots of Bleeding when in the right position with my Ranger so this would work fine.
What I would like is no change to the time on Quickening Zephyr (keep it 5s), a moderate reduction on the cooldown (About 2/3 of what it is at the moment), so you could have it up more often, and maybe a change to 50% healing debuff (which could stack with Poison for 25%).
This would remove the Spike of the original (As we know too much Spike is a bad thing), cut off a bit of the downside, and allow us to be a bit more reactive in it’s use, as it’s not on Cooldown as often. I love being able to use it when I get round the back of mobs with my Ranger for the bleed stacks.
Precision/Crit is based off the base damage of the weapon, the base damage of Ranger Weapons are low because our damage is split with our pet. Therefore you get less out of Precision/Crit than any other class.
Conditions don’t have this issue, so bang for buck they give you more than Precision Crit. A Condition Ranger may not quite do as much DPS than a full Bezerker (though it’s close), but they will have FAR more survivability and can bring useful things to the table like healing, as they are not using as many stats to get the same DPS results.
Since leveling a Ranger, I’m more interested in different build. I had teamed with a lot of bad Rangers before and I was wondering what the issue most Rangers had was. It feels like the Condition ones seem to be giving more to the team than the Power ones. But this might be due to mind set rather than anything else. The Power ones definitely seem to die more.
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Look at the Engineer Changes this patch…They received in this one patch then we’ve received in the entire time since release.
Yeah just look at the changes Euck. I feel sorry for my poor kit refinements, they horrifically mangled one of my favorite traits to the point were I don’t believe it is even worth taking anymore.
On the Ranger thing, I feel Quickness needed the Nerf. It will fix a lot of major issues in the game. However it really hurts Rangers, especially seeing as it doesn’t seem to have actually had the duration increased at all on Quickening Zephyr and the Pet Change quickness isn’t even going to be changed.
Other than that, they fixed AR and some pet health issues which were 2 things Robert said he had approached them about. I wasn’t expecting much more as even if Robert did bring stuff to them that would help a lot it might not have had the time to get into the Patch. So extreme Warrior burst has been heavily dulled, Time Warp has been slowed down, but might make it easier for other classes to get a look in on things like CoF.
Agreed with the people above, I enjoyed running a kit build, procing Kit Refinement at the right time was an important part of this. You just can’t do this now. You can’t keep your Elixir gun for when you need to immobilise, as swapping to your grenade kit will put it on cooldown. You can’t use your magnet bomb when you need it because changing kit to get speed on the way in will put it on cooldown.
GLOBAL COOLDOWN sucks for intelligent play. please change back to individual cooldowns, preferably a bit shorter than 20secs. I don’t care if it moves up the tree to 20 points. I do care that all that has happened is that playing an Engineer has been dumbed down.
For all those people that say you can just count to 20sec. Yes you can. But it means you have to use your proc at 20sec, rather than when you need it. Like when you need to run away.
Think about your current idea, Ratty. Aggro is going to have what affect on AOE attacks? Cleave attacks?
Some but very little. Cleaves will be less likely to hit them if the enemy is not facing them.
But you note that the threads I copied were about pets agroing mobs in dungeon and how well they aggroed. I do definitely feel that pets should not agro when in passive mode. It would get rid of a lot of the really bad pathing issues dragging extra mobs it.
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In my opinion this can be achieved by decreasing the aggro pets draw while toughening up their health and damage reduction. This way the rangers pet could be very resilient without creating situations where they could hold the attention of and tank enemies.
In addition, a pet attacking should not make NPCs considered to be in combat. This way players cannot send in their pets alone to take down an enemy; a player needs to be fighting the NPC as well otherwise the NPC will gain health recovery.
This would break my game. I hate it when pets can’t hold aggro, and the idea of a mob getting to recover while I’m down but my pet is still attacking is awful. I see why someone would like your ideas, but I’d have to quit playing.
I think there is no reason why both sides can’t be satisfied here. Have an Agro value for each pet type, so maybe Moas and Birds have low Agro, Bears have high Agro. Therefore you can choose whether you want your pet to tank, or for you to have to kite.
Look for “Strong” prefix rare armor on the TP. There are several 3-stat permutations, including rabid.
As for weapons & jewelry, I’d probably just stick with rare Rampagers/Carrion, since its pretty quick to get from your current level to 80.
Hmm.. OK. I can’t find any Strong Prefix below 80 on the TP with Rabid stats.
The use of deathly swarm and putrid mark is to get conditions off you, most of the time enemies will take care of applying them for you.
Up until level 43 I’ve not been getting many conditions placed on me by enemies. I know this will change, but even then there will be enemies that don’t place them. They do however turn the downside of Corruption into an advantage. Allowing you to double stack the bleed from Blood is Power. 4 stacks of Bleed and 10 Might is never a bad thing.
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I must admit, I took a Necro up to about level 10, got bored of it.. Deleted it to make a Ranger. Now I have 6 completed toons I have come back to the Necro, powerleveled it to 30 using crafting and once you have some skills unlocked and decent armor it really much more fun. I don’t think it will replace my Engineer as my main any time soon, but it’s not that bad.
After 6 characters I can say one of the worst bits of this game is the first 25-30 levels. When you have very few skills unlocked (made worse by the fact you have to unlock tiers of skills to get the ones you need), very few Utility slots, no traits. You really can’t get the feel for a class until around 35 when your Elite is unlocked and you have enough SP to get some of the tier 3 skills. For example, what use is Deathly Swarm/Putrid Mark when you have no way to get conditions onto yourself.
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OK for 210 TA tokens you can get a level 55 set of rare Rabid armor. To use when leveling your Necro.
Is there any way to get decent Rabid gear to bridge the gap between level 55 and 80 (rare preferably so I don’t have to change my equipment so often). Somewhere around the 65-70 mark.
Also what can you do for jewelery weapons between 55-80, am I stuck with Rampagers or Carrion gear?
I would rather they moved Kit Refinement up the tree. I agree it’s very strong, but not compared with most 30s. So why not make it the XII trait and move the rest down. Then maybe rebalance a bit. I don’t feel the Blast from grenades is that bad, due to the amount of setup it need, but if it’s the burst that is an issue, lower the damage or number of grenades and then lower the internal cooldown so it gives a bit more sustained damage, rather than one off burst. The Healing Kits ability is a bit wierd, it should be something like a condition cleanse or a healing kit drop, a blast makes no sense. The Bomb also feel a bit tacked on, seeing as you get the same on a dodge.
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PRECISION RATIO:
Some thoughts on ratios. I think one of the things that gimps Rangers a bit is ratios on Precision/Crit. What do I mean by this. Well Rangers damage is split between pet and ranger. This means that points spent in Precision/Crit do less for Rangers than they do for other classes. Because the amount of additional damage done by a Crit is based on the base damage your doing which is less.
EG. 50% extra damage on a Crit from an attack that does 100 damage would be 150.
with a rangers attack of 60, it is only getting 90 damage for it’s 50% in Crit.
[Please Note: these are not actual numbers, they are just there to try and explain the issue]
This could be fixed by altering the ratio of Crit Chance based on stats put into it. IE you get more Crit Chance for putting 30 points in Precision, than a Warrior doing the same, so they do a similar amount of extra damage for their 30 points.
but get into your typical dungeon situation with lots of mobs and other players present, and the return command shows significant lag, and it is often impossible to even see you pet to know when to tell it to dodge.
Do we need a Paw Icon over our own pets to help see them in giant dynamic events, crazy dungeon fights, and zerg warfare? It seems to work with Commanders.
There could be a toggle button on the pet management window if you wanted to turn it off.
I wouldn’t say no to that. It would make it easier to keep track of them.
SHOUTS BRAINSTORM
As all Shouts affect pets and lose all effectiveness when pet is dead, I can see why they are not used often. What about having a second skill on each Shout. A Vengeance Shout, where the Ranger can get a buff/give out a buff to Avenge it’s fallen pet. It would mean you wouldn’t have a useless skill on your bar during fights where your pet gets 1 shotted as soon as you throw him at a boss.
Don’t suppose you’ll make Pigs F2 ability work like Steal from Thieves, as in you use it, they search for something, and their F2 ability becomes that ability.
Right now pigs see very little use because their mechanic is incredibly cumbersome and frankly annoying.
Which is sad, because their F2 forage items I think are suppose to make up for some of the vast short comings our class has.
Can I second this idea, it makes a lot more sense, and makes them much more usable. Also it would fix the issue that you are loathed to use them in PvP as the enemy can apparently pick up your buff and use it against you.
turn auto-attack off (Ctrl+Right Click), and then just hit 1 to continue attack chain.. if you need to dodge stop hitting 1.
With auto-attack on you can find yourself glued to the opponent.
I think City of Heroes Masterminds dealt with this slightly differently, when in offensive mode the pet attacked, therefore giving you additional DPS, when in Defensive mode it buffed the Masterminds defenses. In this game it would probably be a passive toughness buff based on the pets toughness, or sharing a percentage of damage a Ranger takes with it’s pet.
This might not be a bad way to deal with things, it would mean low DPS, tough pets would give Rangers good defense when Passive, but lower DPS when Active, whereas things like cats would give good DPS when Active but less defense when Passive.
It might also add more depth to the Ranger, things are going bad, do you leave your pet attacking to clear mobs faster, or pull your pet back to give you a bit more time for your healing cooldowns to come up.
On a side note:
I’m not sure if anyone has brought this up, but this might be one of the reasons many rangers have been kicked off of fractal runs. The Jade maw has this infatuation with firing his beam of hyper death face roll at pets even if they are downed.I’ve never got this argument, the majority of the damage is done by killing the tentacles, most higher level players I know don’t even bother with the crystals and just dodge as it’s safer, you are not going to see the slide by and fail to pick up bug, and your not going to have to go looking for a crystal. If the Maw is targeting the pet, then good, it means that people can concentrate on DPSing tentacles rather than dodging/finding crystals.
Well the thing about that it, it makes it take alot longer, I’ve had instances where the thing has shot my pet three times in a row, getting to the point where I just stand around not attacking so my pet doesn’t get unstowed since the tentacles will 2-4 hit any melee pet.
But as I just said it Skulling you pet is not actually an issue. the amount of damage taken from throwing a crystal is fairly negligible compared to the damage done by killing tentacles. If your pet is constantly being targeted it should just mean your team can kill tentacles faster as they are not having to dodge. This more than makes up for the loss of thrown crystals in most cases. I think the issue is people not understanding that fight dynamics more than the pet. I’ve heard people say multiple times that only the crystals do damage. Which is not only incorrect but actually almost the opposite of the truth.
On a side note:
I’m not sure if anyone has brought this up, but this might be one of the reasons many rangers have been kicked off of fractal runs. The Jade maw has this infatuation with firing his beam of hyper death face roll at pets even if they are downed.
I’ve never got this argument, the majority of the damage is done by killing the tentacles, most higher level players I know don’t even bother with the crystals and just dodge as it’s safer, you are not going to see the slide by and fail to pick up bug, and your not going to have to go looking for a crystal. If the Maw is targeting the pet, then good, it means that people can concentrate on DPSing tentacles rather than dodging/finding crystals.
Also Mesmers have it far worse as they have 3 clones up most of the time rather than 1 pet so it’s going to target them more often.
I get why people ask for the stowing of pets. The main issue is pets randomly agroing enemies due to pathing issues when passive. If this was dealt with I think people would have less of an issue. You could always swap to a Raven in jumping puzzles, it’s not like they will block the camera too bad.
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I think that having better pet control is vital to the success for rangers but I don’t see it making much of a difference on why we get denied pug in dungeons.
I don’t know about this. The major complaints I see in guild is pets pulling extra agro, causing issues with certain mobs bosses. I do think if we could get to a stage where the pets don’t grab random agro when Passive we would be much more welcome.
I mean I’ve had situations where my pet was on passive. I’ve run forward to join my group, the pet has continued on an extra 20ft and agro’d mobs. or you jump off a rock the pet goes around the rock picking up 10 extra mobs.
I think it is important that after a pet has returned to you, after you have it Passive. (I’m not talking about the return journey from the enemy, but after it has come to heal after you have set it to Passive) it should not gain extra agro and drag in new mobs due to bad pathing until you set it to Aggresive again or make it attack.
I don’t for a second expect AI pathing to always be 100% correct or sensible, I don’t expect the pet to always stick to you like glue. I’m a realist. But if it is meant to be sticking to you like glue and doesn’t, you and your group shouldn’t be penalised for it.
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I don’t like the idea of getting a buff other than invulnerability+prevent the pet from attacking while the buff is active with a cool-down to it;
Because I think it can get overpowered if the buff stays, since we’ll just call it back to buff the pet with swiftness or aegis for example then send it back.
Unless it’s dungeon exclusive there might be a balance issue.
This is why I suggested the Heel dynamic in my previous post. The pet only gets it when Passive and returned entirely to you. It disappears as soon as you attack, or it leaves you to use an F2 ability.
My main issue with this setup is lets say you pet runs off at an enemy and you want it to return, you have no real way to do this but to switch stance, and I’m not even sure whether it would even return to you in this case?
What about some kind of automatic stance change.
F1 – Attacks your current target and places the pet into Aggresive mode, once it has killed target it will move to the next target.
F2- Pet uses special skill, if in Passive mode it will return to you immediately after casting.
F3- Pet current action is interrupted, it immediately makes a dodge towards you and then sets itself to Passive mode, returning to you. Once in Passive mode and the pet has reached you it will go onto Heel (No longer gaining any enemy agro, possibly become immune to AOE once in a Heeled state)
F4- Swap Pets.
What this would allow you to make it perform a dodge by hitting F3 and then return it to your target by immediately hitting F1. It would give you complete control on 4 buttons, retiring the Stance Change button. And stop pets running past you 20ft and agroing mobs, because once at Heal they no longer Agro.
Note: by Heel, I mean coming to Heel, next to Ranger in Passive state (I realise I mispelled it Heal originally.)
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Here’s a thought I just had.
What if we made f3 use a defensive dodge skill instead of returning to the player, and we re-did the “Guard” and “Avoid Combat” button to better serve the function of “return and Heel” and “Attack and be aggro”
So it would be f1 to attack target, f2 to use special skill, f3 to use defensive ‘dodge’ skill, and our stance button would then be tweaked.
It’s looking closer to a viable system, even better if we could have stance swap keymapped to F4, Pet Change F5. So we have a way of returning our pet when we need to without clicking on the screen.
How would the pet behave when different commands are stacked. Eg. Would it work thus
Passive F1 – Pet attacks target, keeping at range if it has ranged attacks, if target is killed it returns to you and will not agro another target.
Aggresive F1 – Pet will engage target, If target is killed it moves onto next nearest enemy mob.
Similarly, If the pet is not attack an enemy, you are passive, would F2 cause it to move into range of your current enemy cast it’s F2 then return?
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- Different color (yellow, red?) for the bar that represents my pet is dead but is healing or something. Being a slightly darker shade of green has made me misjudge whether my pet is alive or not a number of times (and has made me failcast Search and Rescue, putting me in the 85 sec cool down)
I agree this is a minor thing but simply changing the bar to Red when my pet was dead would make a hell of a difference while playing, so often have I looked at my health bar thinking my pet was on 25% health only to notice it limping 4 or 5 secs later.
Following up on that it would be really helpful have our pet panel open. So we can see it’s status when we are downed. We have 0 way of knowing whether our pet is alive or dead to use Lick Wounds on us. This is minor, not nearly as important as the healthbar issue.
Ideally, you would be able to remove the recall button and combine it with the pet attack button removing one more obstacle in the way of player control too. By making it so if we tell the pet to attack a target it’s already attacking, it will retreat but if you tell it to attack a target it isn’t actively targetting, it switches targets, we can remove one of the pet functions and the controls would still be intuitive and easy to use.
This doesn’t quite work as you currently can use the Attack to make it change targets when it already is in combat. Also I would prefer not to have a situation where I’m not sure whether my pet is going to run forward or back when I hit a button.
i think they all just play the game at a much lower level than most of us. like, Robert seems satisfied gimping his group by running some sort of evasion tank condition ranger, which to me is an indication that actual players need to be consulted more.
This is very much how I play my Ranger, and it works fairly well. We have low base power, due to the fact our damage is split with our pet, Precision/Crit therefore gives less back than a lot of other professions. Condition Damage however gives better scaling and as you only increasing one stat rather than 2 you can then use the last stat to make sure you rarely go down or add survivability to the group.
It does have issues, with conditions having a stack cap (I wish they would fix this) you can have issues when on a team with multiple condition champs. But this is the same issue Necros have every day.
But on the other hand with your healing buffed you can keep down regen a fair amount of the time, and your pet will die much less often, this means that you don’t lose that part of your DPS. Overall I think it’s the best build currently for doing Dungeons, and probably gives the best sustained damage.
Saying that shouldn’t multiple builds be viable.
PET DODGE A dodge on F3 Callback, with some kind of internal cooldown (possibly modified by vigor) to stop spamming might well be a good way of dealing with the issue. We are already used to using callback defensively to attempt to get our pets out of circles (though due to it waiting for the current attack to finish makes it less than optimal), so having it do a dodge would feel natural to Rangers. It would work very cleanly in the framework laid out. (IE. No new key to learn etc.)
Note: I’m not saying you shouldn’t be able to F3 Callback while it’s on cooldown, just you wouldn’t get the Dodge component if you did.
STOWING PETS If you were going to alter Stow, I feel the easiest solution would be to stop the pet popping out when you take damage if it’s set to passive (blue dove icon). But have it act as it currently does (popping out when you take damage) if set to aggressive (red icon).
LACK OF KEYBINDING I would also love to be able to keybind the Change Mode and Stow on my pet. It’s a real pain trying to hit a tiny icon on the screen when you need it, especially as nothing else needs you to click on screen.
RELIABILITY Currently certain skills like Lick Wounds & Search and Rescue are fairly unreliable in dungeons, I don’t even use S&R on my bar any more, as your pet will rush off and heal NPCs, or just fail to do anything due to rough ground.
In a team situation having some of our best team support so unreliable makes us much less desirable.
POOR SUPPORT A similar issue is present with Spirits which are generally seen to be poorer than other classes team support like Shouts (not our Shouts as they are pet buffs more than anything else), As they generally die very fast and don’t give significant buffs while they are out. This leads to them being rarely used in Dungeons at all.
(edited by Ratty.5176)
Anyways Robert, I’m assuming there’s just technical limitations with the program when trying to apply AR to your pet? Or do you not want to do that. If so, may I ask why?
I’m of the opinion that your pet and summon should share the master’s AR. That seems like the simplest most straight-forward solution. We all agree the AR is a problem that has potential fixes, it’s just figuring out how best to fix it and making sure whatever we choose works.
AR RESIST It should probably be 5-10 AR higher than the Masters as pets/minions can’t choose to actively heal through the damage like players can. But I agree it should be linked to the Masters AR.
(edited by Ratty.5176)
I’m not sure AC actually will take longer when people know it in a couple of weeks.
You can skip all the fights you could before. In fact you can even skip the Gravelings in the trap corridor after the Spider fight (which most people didn’t do before) as without the Scavengers they are far less dangerous.
So then you look at the fights.
All Paths The Spider Queen I feel has less HP, but she’s much more dangerous due to the cone immobilize, when people do her right she is actually quite a bit harder.
Kohler and Troll can still be skipped to it doesn’t matter really how hard they are now.
Path 1, Hodkins room and collecting scepters are almost identical to before. So no real change there.
Howling King. Once people know they have to kite adds into fire circles the actual fight doesn’t take that long. If anything it’s shorter, just a tiny bit more deadly and you are more likely to wipe. Saying that, there are much harder fights in the game that people get the hang of and can do without wiping. Therefore I feel that this fight will make much difference in to run time in the end. It’s just much more fun
Path 2, Other than FPS issues on the spikes, they are compatible to before. The Ghost fight as Dethra makes turrets is almost identical to before.
Ghost Eater. OK when we did it correctly and he didn’t bug out it took only 3 traps to finish him. TBH we were only a tiny bit short of 2 traps (and our team wasn’t all 80s or DPS). The thing that slows down this fight is bad communication and the actual fight bugging (Ghost Eater, stopping to have his dinner. Traps not firing correctly). My general feeling is when the bugs are fixed this fight will be much faster than before with a group that has done it a few times before.
Path 3. Collectors are actually much easier than before. I’ve never had a situation before the patch where we were sitting around with no gravelings waiting for the next burrow to spawn.
the four extra burrows are interesting, They seem to be about the same as before, but you can end up with spam spawning if you get to the stage where DPS is lacking (Due to players being down, I ended up with 60+ Hatchling chasing me around the last burrow as the rest of the team was dead). Best plan is to make sure your team collects up and hits the burrow at the same time rather than running in piecemeal.
Boss fight. OK this can be much harder than before with the wrong team composition. However with a team spamming healing and stability on the Warmaster Grast it’s perfectly fine and the boss again seems to have less HP than before. If the interrupt works now like they claim you might not even need as much healing and stability.
So Overall I feel the lack of speed on AC is down to people not knowing the fights rather than it being much longer. In fact most of the time HP has been lowered on bosses. So if you can avoid dying they should go down faster.
(edited by Ratty.5176)