Ranger should be set up the same way with pets. Ranger’s should have 100% control of their damage and the pet, while alive, should be able to deal an extra 15% damage.
If ANET decided againsts Aspects/stow ultimately, I’d like to see this approach instead. I fail to see how a pet that can barely hit would be overpowered when wielded by a charater with 100% of it’s damage out put intact.
Not seeing a damage rebalance between pet and ranger is a bit worrying. I don’t want my pet doing more damage, or scaling with me. I want my pet to be a pretty utility skill. Give me 80% of the damage and a super responsive F2 from my pet, should solve every AI issue you have.
What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.
Much needed, often requested. Please ArenaNet, many want it and you could even keep your pets.
So… you and a few others have specifically said that you love having a pet around, but at the same time, you want ANet to nerf pet damage and put more of it on to Ranger?
I mean, I’m all in favor of giving Ranger more damage, but I’m just confused why you’d want a pet in the first place if its damage is going to be even more pathetic. It’s entirely counter-intuitive.
Isolating a portion of our damage onto a separate entity that can be killed is counter productive in PvE and WvW where aoe and instagib are too rampant to expect the pet to live long enough to make any impact.
Giving the player all the damage and downgrading the pet to a walking CC/Boon Dispenser is the best option. Changing BM to a system that increases pet damage in exchange for player damage is all that is needed.
And why should they? Pet AI has no place in groups that care about razor edge performance.
The pet won’t get smarter and they won’t increase it’s power as long as PvP and PvE remain joined so the rest of us should have the option to be effective if we choose.
So, what, just toss out our entire profession mechanic in favor of a static buff? No, that’s stupid. I suppose next you’ll suggest that elementalists should get a buff if they don’t switch attunements. Or mesmers should get a buff if they don’t use clones.
Edit: I see earlier in this thread that a dev has stated they will not be doing permastowing, so that’s good.
Attunements and clones are a source of hate and hold their respective classes back? That’s news to me…
I was under the impression that those mechanics actually worked, and worked well.
I saw a beauty of a post in the CDI a day ago. The guy started the post with …“I have never played a Ranger, but here are my suggestions how to improve them”
Pretty much sums up the problem.
If you fight against rangers you know what they need ……..
Actually rangers need a skill which people were afraid of, each time people see a ranger they stomp him because they know that rangers doesnt have a real burst skill(eviscerate,mindwrack,elecombo,stealth+BS,etc).
lol yea, that makes them a real expert.
#wow
I’d trust a person who steamrolls zerk rangers in WvW every night over the people who keep trying to act like we have a burst power build because a roided Maul can one shot a distracted person (only folks with less than ~16k health) every ~45 seconds.
They might not know the class inside and out but we also have some of the most delusional, selfish players of any class in the game in our ranks. How often do you see other classes kitten that they can’t just auto range without getting kicked from dungeon parties?
When the pet is stowed, the Ranger should gain “aspect of the <pet name>” effect which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.
Please don’t do this. When I make my build and play the game, I want to select a pet and work alongside it to succeed. I don’t want to select a static buff that’s just going to sit there.
And no, it will not be “optional”. I foresee a future where rangers who use pets instead of the Aspect Of the _ will get auto-kicked from most elitist parties.
And why should they? Pet AI has no place in groups that care about razor edge performance.
The pet won’t get smarter and they won’t increase it’s power as long as PvP and PvE remain joined so the rest of us should have the option to be effective if we choose.
VII. Spotter – Should be moved to Skirmishing as Gradmaster minor.
Rework to 5% crit chance & 3% crit damage
Change VII to Hunter’s Tactics – +3% increase damage on disabled enemies (stun/daze/knockdown/fear/immob)
Not sure who suggested this but unless “Hunter’s Tactics” is also an aura like Spotter or other classes’ auras, then this is a horrible tradeoff if we are to ever be more desirable in WvW. Crit chance and damage is virtually useless to a zerg of PVT heavies whereas a damage buff on a stuned target is a HUGE buff to the hammer train meta. Rangers go from the butt of every WvW joke to almost a must have for zerg combat. It’s just that easy to fix us.
We lose 2% crit chance and have it moved up a tier and to a different tree for something that is just another highly circumstantial trait that relies on our pets to land their very short duration stuns for us.
There is little hope that the devs will fix this class, they haven’t in the 18 months since launch (and they released the game with broken pets even though in beta we told them they were broken). It seems all they intend to do balance skill power for foreseeable future and I think that’s a serious mistake.
Regardless of what you’re working on LS, expansion (ooh), or polishing the game by removing bugs, the core of this or any other MMO is the combat. This class’s core mechanic has never worked. If elementalist attunement swapping had a 3 sec delay or if thieves were unable to gain initiative these forums would be an inferno of rage, but rangers have had to learn to live with our broken core mechanic. It’s time to make rangers Work As Intended.
But that’s the thing, we are working as intended.
People don’t get it. We weren’t even supposed to be a class. We’re whats left after they scrapped 2-3 other class ideas and they just mushed it together and called it “Ranger” to lure in the GW1 oldbies and other “ranger/archer” classes knowing full well that the game was never made to support ranged combat; the very thing that most of us came here to play because that’s what the archetype is usually geared toward.
The only reason we beat the Engineer in pointless superfluousness is the fact that they needed a tech class with so much steampunk technology in the game. It would seem weird to have guns, golems, airships ect and not have some kind of gadget class.
The pale tree being a champion of Mordremoth would be a pretty awesome twist. It would also prove the Nightmare Court right in that Ventari’s tablet has turned them away from their true nature.
Not a very good champion if you needed someone to plant it and then wait ~200 years for it to mature to the point that it starts popping out minions.
A troll could have sat on it when it was a small sapling and then there goes your champion.
Dont worry, great things are coming for the Ranger in the near future…… LOL (this was sarcasm btw)
Sounds like someone needs more water combat buffs and spirits…
No, a lot of people in sPvP are complaining about spirits. This of course means we’ll have to nerf them across the board in every single game mode. But don’t worry, those water combat buffs are on their way.
I meant more like that AMAZING water spirit that no one ever uses, because it’s just soooo amazing you see…
Enemy AI and Pet AI are intertwined, but I’m pretty it’s not quite to that extent.
I mean, it’s not like wild Pigs have Forage, or pet Reef drakes have that AOE pull, or pet Moas turn around and run away when their health starts getting low.
Skill sets =/= AI.
All mobs have the same pathing and movement AI instructions. The only difference our pet has is that it doesn’t follow automated aggro rules and instead uses “first aggressor/F1 targeted” rules to tell it who to attack. 1 set of AI rules/directives that govern the overall behavior of all mobs that also includes our pets. Making our pets “smarter” isn’t really possible without writing them their own, advanced set of AI rules.
Then again, I’ve watched Anet call certain things impossible in the engines limitations of GW1 only to roll out said changes a couple years later when the game needed to look good to stir up hype for GW2, so who’s to say…
Sorry I haven’t had time to comment in here. I went through the past 10 or so pages and tried to grab some of the issues that have come up and address them. The balance team has been keeping up with the thread, but they haven’t had as much time lately to comment on specific ideas.
Re: “Shot down” ideas
The only thing we are not open to is a real permastow option that would essentially take away the pet completely (ie an option that said always stow).
We kicked around the idea of giving the ranger an “aspect of _______” which we moved to a new thread because it is elaborate and should be a single topic in itself. The idea is that it would give the pet more utility with swapping/stowing, but it wouldn’t retire the pet completely.
We want to fix issues with the pet AI and general usability before we consider doing something to this extent.
We acknowledged that Pet AI does need help, but we did not say we would not be doing this. You will see some changes in the coming feature patch that should help with the pet’s usability.
Re: Lack of participation
I apologize that I had been absent from this thread for a few days. I had to produce Ready Up last week and a number of other things came up that took priority (including getting a virus that meant I left early for the week). Also, I don’t work on the weekends.
Just because we’re not responding doesn’t mean we’re not reading.
Sometimes we just don’t get the time to respond, but we’ll try to get better about this.
Re: Fear that we will only work on pets
Don’t stress about this. We wanted to look at the class as a whole with you. We didn’t make this thread specifically to get feedback on the pets. It just happens to be one of (if not the biggest) the top issues with Ranger right now.
I didn’t read all the responses after this, so this might have been said by someone else, but why is a permanent stow option out of the question. I understand that the ranger is the pet class option in GW2, but they were also the pet class option in GW1, but didn’t require you to take a pet. It seems self limiting to impose that restriction (or rather force that aspect) on yourself in GW2.
Probably, in no small part, because it turns the Ranger into 2 different classes entirely. That means they have to balance them differently and would probably have to do a big overhaul of traits/weapons to make up for the damage/utility lost when we opt out of the pet.
While I’d opt out if it worked well, I can see this being a major hurdle that they don’t want to tackle.
This might be naivete, but I don’t see how it would be too much more difficult than balancing a MM necro or the like. It’s just a permanent add rather than a summoned one.
I think the Necro was built from the ground up with the option, but not the need for minions. You could take them, but they also have other utilities that offset the choice to no use them. We don’t currently have anything to offset not using the pet. We could have it on perma passive and never touch F1, but our dps will suffer greatly and we will lose some utility. Any pet traits will have 0 use aswell.
To make us like the necro, we would need a major overhaul of all our non-pet utilities and traits to make a non-pet ranger just as good. This runs into the problem of pet users also getting massive buffs from the changes meant to make non-pet rangers viable. Any attempt to keep the two from making each other too powerful would be a headache to say the least.
Essentially it becomes an all or nothing deal. A modular ranger class just wouldn’t work. It did in GW1 but that was an entirely different system than we have now and Anet has chosen to be on the pro-pet side.
I don’t personally agree with their choice (minion classes are pointless in games with no collision and where melee is best) but they seem to be sticking with their original vision so it becomes an issue of accept it or invest in a new game.
Sorry I haven’t had time to comment in here. I went through the past 10 or so pages and tried to grab some of the issues that have come up and address them. The balance team has been keeping up with the thread, but they haven’t had as much time lately to comment on specific ideas.
Re: “Shot down” ideas
The only thing we are not open to is a real permastow option that would essentially take away the pet completely (ie an option that said always stow).
We kicked around the idea of giving the ranger an “aspect of _______” which we moved to a new thread because it is elaborate and should be a single topic in itself. The idea is that it would give the pet more utility with swapping/stowing, but it wouldn’t retire the pet completely.
We want to fix issues with the pet AI and general usability before we consider doing something to this extent.
We acknowledged that Pet AI does need help, but we did not say we would not be doing this. You will see some changes in the coming feature patch that should help with the pet’s usability.
Re: Lack of participation
I apologize that I had been absent from this thread for a few days. I had to produce Ready Up last week and a number of other things came up that took priority (including getting a virus that meant I left early for the week). Also, I don’t work on the weekends.
Just because we’re not responding doesn’t mean we’re not reading.
Sometimes we just don’t get the time to respond, but we’ll try to get better about this.
Re: Fear that we will only work on pets
Don’t stress about this. We wanted to look at the class as a whole with you. We didn’t make this thread specifically to get feedback on the pets. It just happens to be one of (if not the biggest) the top issues with Ranger right now.
I didn’t read all the responses after this, so this might have been said by someone else, but why is a permanent stow option out of the question. I understand that the ranger is the pet class option in GW2, but they were also the pet class option in GW1, but didn’t require you to take a pet. It seems self limiting to impose that restriction (or rather force that aspect) on yourself in GW2.
Probably, in no small part, because it turns the Ranger into 2 different classes entirely. That means they have to balance them differently and would probably have to do a big overhaul of traits/weapons to make up for the damage/utility lost when we opt out of the pet.
While I’d opt out if it worked well, I can see this being a major hurdle that they don’t want to tackle.
33% Anet not just straight telling us to our face what they wanted the class to be at the start. This would have prevented a lot of confusion for the first 20 pages or so.
33% people not accepting things that won’t change (Pet’s not going away, stop asking for it.)
And 34% is just due to Anet’s asinine idea that “Sustained Damage” works on the ranger or in the game at all and that we should actually believe that they will nerf everyone else rather than buff us.
These three things basically killed the CDI before it even began. Though, the fact that they had to have us force them to do this by winning the poll in a landslide should have been a big sign of how this was going to go all along. If anet thought we honestly needed help, we would have been getting it. They wouldn’t keep nerfing us and wait for the whole community to tell them otherwise.
Also I would like to suggest that you, ANET, be better about advertising your content. It would have been nice to know back in December that no new pve zones, game play mechanics, or player generated content would be coming out until April.
Why would they do that? That would only encourage less people to play.
They’ve got until April to deliver some goods.
I’m not dealing with another year of Living Story zergfests and empty promises.
It wasn’t flooded by unique poster Proposals though. It was flooded by the same exact people adding 10-20 proposals all saying the same basic things while accomplishing NOTHING as far as naming an actual direction/theme that the ranger needed to go in.
Every little proposal was based off some personal grudge or brainfart each person has in one little specific part of the game they do the most of … which if they’re STILL actually playing ranger, is either Conquest, pointless WvW regen Roaming, or soloing Long-Bear like a bot but with slower reaction time and only slightly better environmental awareness. There might have 2 or 3 other people who ran Fractals too but that’s also a niche.
I never even got a chance to make a single formal proposal myself because of it.
If the Devs are real professionals about this, they’ll start a second round of this instead and just narrow the entire discussion down to the things they were already planning to do themselves anyway and just focus the entire discussion around that instead. And again, some flood control would be nice so that the forum-illuminatti (who post more than they actually play games) don’t bogart the entire thing.
That is what they wanted though. They specifically said they wanted short, directed ideas based around a single play aspect. They didn’t want long essays about what the ranger was missing and what we thought could be done to fix it.
I feel like we would have had a lot less spam from people expecting 20-30 overhauls of utilities if we didn’t have a strict post format.
I think they wont solve pet problem.
Who remember the I will avange you skill from gw1?
What if you gain a bonus like that if your pet is down or merge it with the rampage as one elite.
That wasn’t just for pets though, it was just famously used with pets for easy boosts
Maybe he meant something along the lines of pets having literally no value in large-scale WvW.
Let’s be fair. A singular character anywhere in large-scale WvW (i.e. “WvW zerg blobx”) isn’t of much consequence. That’s why they blob up and fight, to take advantage of having multiple targets and multiple sources of damage. That’s the whole reason zergs work against nearly every target ever since the advent of combat tactics. Throw enough people together and you can overwhelm a significantly smaller force.
There are two things of value in large-scale WvW. Strong enough defenses to stall out the enemy force by attrition inflicted by the second thing – rapid, powerful AoE damage . . . such as those of arrow carts or a few places where cannons can be of some use.
If the Ranger is made to be of “value” in large-scale WvW, there are thus two options by this conclusion. They either need to be able to dispense the large-range damage of an arrow cart, or be resilient enough to stand 1 v 10. Either case runs the incredibly likely and high risk of making them unbalanced for any other use . . . or on the other side, being so useless for small-group usage we’ll be back here in six months talking about how Rangers are always beat 1 v 1.
Utility is always nice, which is why you see Mesmers, Necros, and staff Eles. Periph killers are also utilized in some zergs, but Rangers will never be very good at that because of the damage split with their pet and their lack of burst.
If it was all about damage and durability, zergs would only be Guardians and Warriors.
The one with more guardians and warriors will always win. Periphery classes help and Mesmers can make a huge difference if they time veils right, but it’s the heavies with their boon spam and hammer train that get the job done.
I’d much rather have a zerg with too many heavies than one with too few. They both just deal waaaaaaaaaaaaay too much damage for the durability they have. No other classes can combo tank/spank in such a way for such effect.
Pretty much everyone else is there for cc spam/killing siege (Ele’s), choke spam (necros), or utility (mesmers).
Himei, Rangers do about 45% less damage with our burst than a Warrior, with near the same stats. That’s a problem right there, especially with pets having been nerfed. If we did 25% less damage, I’d be okay with it, because even then we’d be dangerous. But 45% less? If we can’t even get to the levels of burst other classes can, we’re worthless as is, especially with the pets having been nerfed so heavily, because this means all our attacks are not doing well enough to pressure anybody.
As a thief in WvW, I see a Ranger, I laugh, they aren’t going to pressure me enough for me to go defensive, not with any build they have. I see any other class, I get weary because I know they have builds that are going to make it so I’m probably going to need to play defensively.
Exactly where do you get those accurate numbers from?
What will a warrior do after the burst, run around in circles until he can burst again?
Warrior has weaknesses too.
Warriors have no weaknesses. Cleansing Ire destroyed their weakness to conditions, and Healing Signet destroyed their weakness to sustained damage. Btw, what did a warrior doing after burst have to do with anything, when you already know they’re going to continue attacking to finish off the prey, something any zerker build will do after bursting.
I just don’t get people who tout “Sustained damage” like it’s a thing that only we can do. We do it because we HAVE TO. A warrior’s auto attacks are still going to do more damage than ours even after he has blown his 100b/hammerstun burst. The same warrior will also have higher base armor, health, and our best heal skill on perma activation.
Until anet nerfs other classes so that they have to use burst as the means to kill someone alone, not just as an added injection of dps (this won’t actually happen, lets not kid ourselves) our “sustained damage” will always be inferior in virtually every environment. We won’t be useful in pve and no class fears a power built ranger for very obvious reasons.
Burst classes need to function like the Spy from TF2. You won’t kill someone by butter-knifing them in the face and a harsh breeze will take you down. However, through skilled play, you can one shot people and be a beast at it. There is no class like that now, and until there is, our “sustained dps” just isn’t going to a force to be reckoned with.
Of all the things that defined rangers in Guild Wars 1 (pets, traps. preparations, interupts, condition spreading, expertise) They had to use the most boring one as calls mechanic. Imagine Guild Wars 2 with preparations as your F1-F4 skills.
I believe you are thinking of a venom thief.
But, ya. They took all of our good stuff, gave it to other classes, and super glued us to the one mechanic no one ever used outside of a brief GvG window of time and couldn’t even manage to get it right a second time.
Agility Training could instantly be made into a usable Power Build Trait by making it just give 25% run speed to Pets and the Ranger. That’d free up Runes and possibly Signets (depending on your builds) for use.
I honesty don’t see why you use Carnivorous training…. Esp in WvW, i could possibly see a use maybe in PvE.. but there are far better traits you could use.
Now if Carnivorous Training Ate conditions off the Ranger, That’d make it useful for Power Builds.
I use carnivorous in pve to help keep the crit dispenser cats alive and it does it’s job fairly well. Agility is almost exclusively a wvw trait for me. Neither is especially amazing, but we don’t have much to play with in the Crit line if we aren’t using traps and they both make a marked improvement on the pets.
They just need to give the players a form of defiance (immunity to CC, which immobilize seems to be a part of), and this nonsense would stop.
Hum I wonder what stability is used for?
Valid point in a game where every class has equal access to stability, which isn’t this game.
The fact that Heavies fart stability only exacerbates the problem.
Why am I continuing to read about Rangers wanting Traps moved out of the Skirmishing Line?
Precision is not a bad stat for Traps, Crit Damage is..But then again, I’m not basing my spec off what Stats the line actually gets, I’m basing it off the traits…
Every time I see a Ranger say something like “Traps don’t belong in Skirmishing, they should be in Wilderness Survival” I facepalm because it shows what a complete lack of understanding a lot of Rangers have about the class.
If you move the Trap traits to Wilderness, You’re just going to nerf yourself, Because its a line you’re going to pick up anyway if you’re a Trap Ranger..Because it has all your bloody defensive traits… The only thing moving those traits will do, Is make it so you lose all your defensive traits picking up Trap Traits..
There is also nothing in the other lines that you could remotely pickup that would be as good as those defensive traits that you’d be losing..NOTHING…There is nothing in Marksman, nothing in Natures, Nothing in Beast…NOTHING….
So please for the love of god, quit making silly suggestions like that..
Traps in skirmishing should have a better direct damage option.
And most of the suggestions I saw about those traits was to move them in the condi duration line (though I don’t see traps in marksmanship in a thematic view) or to move the condi duration or condi damage to skirmishing (not saying it all makes sense, just saying there is not just one proposal about those traits).
I would personally like to have them deal more direct damage (and have increased ranged), but I know this would mean lowering their base condi-damage, thus might not be a good thing overall for condi-build. And they would still not be so good in direct damages builds, because of their conditions.
But, if they were in the condi duration branch, one would only need to go get 20% more condi duration to have the traited versions be correct control options in zergs…
Your statement “Precision is not a bad stat for Traps, Crit Damage is.” is interesting, but I really don’t see how precision works with traps? None of these two stats do anaything for traps, as far as I know…
If people’s complaint about Traps is they don’t do enough Direct Damage, Simply Change 2 of them to have more Direct Damage that scales with Power
for Example, Spike Trap, You could Increase its Direct Damage up a lot more so that it scales with Power Better. Frost Trap could be your other High Direct Damage Trap That way you could actually have Power Based Trap Damage Builds
Switching Trap Traits out of Skirmishing isn’t the Solution, Because there is nothing wrong with those Traits, the problem with Skirmishing is the fact it has More Pet Traits then Beastmaster Line does.
4 of the Traits in the line are devoted to Pets…. 4….
You have 3 Traits in that line that work with Power Builds
Honed Axes – Which is a god awful trait in the first place…Its a Crit Damage boost for a Weapon that’s primarily a Condition Weapon, not a Power Based Weapon…If you’re doing Axe Offhand, You’re not going Axe Main hand, you’re probably going to do Sword.
Quickdraw – Which nothing is wrong with this ability, It reduces 8 abilities Cooldowns…Not terrible.
and Moment of Clarity – Again, a pretty good trait.
If you want to fix Skirmishing Line, get rid of those kitten Pet Traits that are clogging it up (Move them to Beastmaster) and put in actual Traits that are fairly decent for Power builds.
The Trap Traits aren’t the problem with the line
Not unless they increase pet control and movement first. Agility training and carnivorous appetite are incredibly useful in WvW/PvE respectively and I wouldn’t give them up unless we got substantially better player traits in exchange.
Having 4 petting zoo classes is not enough ? Now we only need to make warrior’s banners float in the air and attack people and every class will be AI based .
Guardians can have the Ranger pet if they are so desperate for AI. We don’t even want ours.
We have also been discussing this internally and agree that it is awkward to be forced to take a trait in order to receive the active effects of signets. Obviously some balance work would need to be done on the signets as well as redesigning the trait. Definitely a good idea and something we are thinking about. =)
While this is good news, I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s not thrilled with the idea of having to trade a traited 6 second stone signet for an untraited ~3 second one. Same with Signet of the Wild. Not if we aren’t going to get another source of stability beyond our elite and signet.
Did you consider that Guard has a delay because it has targeting. All other shouts are simply that shouts. The character says a command makes a noise whatever and the effect happens.
Guard gives the pet a verbal command but the player must indicate where he wants the pet to guard with a physical movement (postioning the cursor) like pointing to the location.
This is why guard isn’t instant.
The pets die when we do and we can give every other command without any sort of lag. I think it’s safe to say we are bound at the soul or at least mentally. Having to manually point where we want them to stand is kind of silly.
Honest question, does longbow warrior not fit the archer-class that some people are looking for?
Since when has the “Archer Class” ever been a heavy class? And we wanted a class with a bow that was awesome, not just sort of okay, in the right situation.
The most important piece of information mentioned by any dev post in the CDI so far was actually the post about the intent to give rangers more options for condition removal outside of Empathic Bond, which is happening “soon.”
I guess you’re specifically referring to the “soon” part because it’s been said on at least one STOG months ago that I remember (pretty sure it was by a Mr. Sharp) that they were “working” on getting more active condition removal into the Ranger’s line up.
Yeah but we’re also talking about a balance team that only releases big changes quarterly, if we’re that lucky. The fact is, it’s finally a red post confirming information that will make most ranger players who do any sort of playing outside of PvE sigh with relief. at least until we see the patch notes to confirm whether any implemented change is actually a decently viable one.
All I gotta say is if the new condi removal is another “slap em on your pet!” Ability I’m going to flip every table in Anets HQ…
We’ll just spread them to our other allies instead. Too many people hate rangers because of bearbows blasting mobs with PBS. It’s high time we changed that.
ANet just boosted the dragonite drop from keep lords in WvW for some weird reason. I just drop them every time I get a stack of 250. Way too easy to farm.
It was an across the game buff to drop amount. Evidently non-wvw’ers were having a hard time getting dragonite.
I might be a bit confused… but here’s how I understand this thread so far…
1. Permastowing pets is tabled until all other options to improve the pet are exhausted.
1b. All other options does not include Pet AI improvements, as it is an issue too big to tackle.
2. Due to powercreep, suggested improvements to the profession need some severe tempering.
3. Sustained damage is the rule of the class, and is as sacrosanct as the Pet. The various game modes may not value sustained damage very much, but that is an issue with the gametypes.
4. Trap traits might not move, but instead get different stat boosts attached to the trait line to better accommodate the trap builds.
I mean… aside from the nod to Traps, this thread reads like nothing got accomplished 20 pages in, as the suggestions seem to run into philosophical differences with Anet as to what a Ranger should be/how powerful the Ranger should be, or run into logistical/technical nightmares of coding.
It has become clear that there is a wide difference in the philosophical design of the Ranger between Anet and the players (and other groups of players, and other groups of players). In order for this thread to remain productive, we really need Anet to step in with a comprehensive statement towards where they see the class going:
How does the Ranger fit into PvE groups? What should make a group want to bring a Ranger to a dungeon / fractal?
How does the Ranger fit into large WvW groups? What should make a group want to bring Rangers in their zerg?
How does the Ranger fit into small / solo WvW groups? What should make a Ranger stand-out in small scale combat?
Where and how should the Ranger excel, and how does the class-mechanic facilitate this?
Furthermore, we (the players) need input on which ideas are in tune with your design intent. I’m sure over 50% of the ideas in this thread are far outside of Anet’s vision of the class. We need direction in order to provide valuable feedback.
As to the quote above, it was made over a full day before this post, and yet the discussion has not really progressed since. Devs, please try to set some focus on this discussion during Friday’s work day so it does not devolve or die out over the weekend.
This should have been in the very first post, starting up the CDI. Not the vague, game mission statement description of the ranger we got.
The thread was dead to me at about the point where I was clicking on the names of 90% of those posters in that thread, and realizing that most of them have never made a Ranger related post before.
I’m not saying thats bad, I’m just asking, “why did 50 + of you suddenly and finally pick this week to voice your concerns for the Ranger profession and finally post ideas?”
I assume most of them were former Ranger players that learned their lesson early and rerolled, but had a shred of hope left. I’m also assuming that their hope is fully gone by now after reading the feedback.
I would still like to see anet buff pets to the point that was near the damage output in GW1 with 16 beatmastery when you put 30 points in the current rendition of the beastmastery trait line… Also if we could get a list of ideas they had taken from the thread so we knew were to focus the rest of the week it would be grand.
The people screaming to remove pets still need a slap in the back of the head cause they are kittening off people who are trying to post ideas on how to fix the pet mechanics or possible ways to fix pet mechanics.
You mean all the posts asking for better AI that will never happen or the buttload of posts that haven’t received any feedback so we have no idea what to elaborate on?
90% of the time, we don’t have what it takes to overwhelm the enemy with DoT because there is too much counterplay to it currently.
What I am saying, Ranger needs alot of work, not just on the DoT part, but also on the Resilient part. We need to be able to react and bounce back after taking high damage, or getting poked with alot of conditions. While our heals are quite good at that, nothing else is right now.
Not to nitpick, but your using that word wrong.
Counterplay only describe a situation where a mechanic is fun to use and be used on, and open up new options for both.
I think the word you were looking for was ‘counters’.
There are too many counters to DoT. Which I agree with incidentally.
Also, I think the Ranger is one of the most resilient professions out there. I just got finished doing WvW where I had at least 5 guys chasing me on low health during this battle we had, and they just could not for the life of them kill me.
We have so many evades and a lot of regeneration skills and traits, and Bark Skin is awesome. I know people love Empathetic Bond, but man is Bark Skin good. Tank mode.
I just use Melandru’s Runes and Lemongrass, conditions begone.
But yeah, we could stand to have a couple more active condition removals.
But besides that, we have the tools there if you want to use them.
If you elect not to, well that’s your fault.
Every class can use Melandru and lemongrass soup and most do in WvW. The ability to do so doesn’t mean we have good survivability or resistance to conditions.
And besides our problems with condition removal, what exactly are our so called problems with survivability?
Well that’s obviously a huge part of it in the condition heavy meta. We also have weak access to stability making us prone to hard CC while also lacking burst in power builds meaning forgoing healing/tank to deal more damage is even more kitten ing in us than other classes that don’t have this problem.
I think it’s more fair to say that we don’t have ready access to stun breaks, most being stuck on a 60 CD, half of which a tied to fairly terrible skills. And were not the only one with a lack of stability btw, Thieves also have only one source.
Our lack of burst really has nothing to do with this discussion of survivability.
Thieves also have stealth. CC only works when you actually hit them with it.
Stability and stun breaks are two different things. I’m not going to use a stun break after someone launches or pulls me but I will use it on a long knock down or ‘stun’.
“Working as intended. The thread will now be closed as the issue has been resolved”
I’m getting used to the issues, but an explanation of the choices made would be greatly appreciated. A little company-customer transparency goes a long way.
90% of the time, we don’t have what it takes to overwhelm the enemy with DoT because there is too much counterplay to it currently.
What I am saying, Ranger needs alot of work, not just on the DoT part, but also on the Resilient part. We need to be able to react and bounce back after taking high damage, or getting poked with alot of conditions. While our heals are quite good at that, nothing else is right now.
Not to nitpick, but your using that word wrong.
Counterplay only describe a situation where a mechanic is fun to use and be used on, and open up new options for both.
I think the word you were looking for was ‘counters’.
There are too many counters to DoT. Which I agree with incidentally.
Also, I think the Ranger is one of the most resilient professions out there. I just got finished doing WvW where I had at least 5 guys chasing me on low health during this battle we had, and they just could not for the life of them kill me.
We have so many evades and a lot of regeneration skills and traits, and Bark Skin is awesome. I know people love Empathetic Bond, but man is Bark Skin good. Tank mode.
I just use Melandru’s Runes and Lemongrass, conditions begone.
But yeah, we could stand to have a couple more active condition removals.
But besides that, we have the tools there if you want to use them.
If you elect not to, well that’s your fault.
Every class can use Melandru and lemongrass soup and most do in WvW. The ability to do so doesn’t mean we have good survivability or resistance to conditions.
And besides our problems with condition removal, what exactly are our so called problems with survivability?
Well that’s obviously a huge part of it in the condition heavy meta. We also have weak access to stability making us prone to hard CC while also lacking burst in power builds meaning forgoing healing/tank to deal more damage is even more kitten ing in us than other classes that don’t have this problem.
With the right pets you can get 2 to 3 kd already. You can add two more with the right weapons.
I think one of the reason that the build was popular besides the kd was that in gw one you couldn’t shoot and move (unless you timed your movement between shooting).
Giving Melee weapons a big advantage.
You could actually do pretty well with a ranged damage build if you were mindful of your snares and positioning.
Bunny thumper mostly worked because it had ridiculously good pressure capability. You didn’t put out as much damage as an Evicerate warrior, but you made any Monk’s life a living hell when you were on them and anythign that kept monks from healing their teammates was a powerful thing indeed.
I agree with you Chrispy. Tweaks. That is all that is needed to make the Ranger legit. Look what happened to Warriors. Offhand sword added torment….increased passive healing and a 3 condition wipe on full bar of adrenaline.
Class went from laughing stock under powered to laughing stock over powered.
We all complain at times about GW2 but their balance is fairly close. A couple of small, well thought out changes is all that is needed.
Not a total redesign.
….best line of the week ….. The whole thing seems more like a corporate focus meeting rapid fire idea thread that’s just as effective as our rapid fire is now.
lol
Big problem is they see what happened to the warrior and are going to be even more cautious in the future with updates. It either won’t happen to us or it will take so kitten long, it won’t even matter in the end because they will have moved other classes 2 spaces for our every 1.
90% of the time, we don’t have what it takes to overwhelm the enemy with DoT because there is too much counterplay to it currently.
What I am saying, Ranger needs alot of work, not just on the DoT part, but also on the Resilient part. We need to be able to react and bounce back after taking high damage, or getting poked with alot of conditions. While our heals are quite good at that, nothing else is right now.
Not to nitpick, but your using that word wrong.
Counterplay only describe a situation where a mechanic is fun to use and be used on, and open up new options for both.
I think the word you were looking for was ‘counters’.
There are too many counters to DoT. Which I agree with incidentally.
Also, I think the Ranger is one of the most resilient professions out there. I just got finished doing WvW where I had at least 5 guys chasing me on low health during this battle we had, and they just could not for the life of them kill me.
We have so many evades and a lot of regeneration skills and traits, and Bark Skin is awesome. I know people love Empathetic Bond, but man is Bark Skin good. Tank mode.
I just use Melandru’s Runes and Lemongrass, conditions begone.
But yeah, we could stand to have a couple more active condition removals.
But besides that, we have the tools there if you want to use them.
If you elect not to, well that’s your fault.
Every class can use Melandru and lemongrass soup and most do in WvW. The ability to do so doesn’t mean we have good survivability or resistance to conditions.
Yes, like I said about the sustained vs burst, it’s not necessarily fully functional in the game. This is one of those things that we would have to balance with bringing other classes down a bit as far as damage output. Burst damage needs to have risk involved, and we know that right now many classes don’t have that associated risk.
It’s been almost two years and we are barely better off than we were at launch. Gauging by how long it’s taking for you guys to balance down the juggernaut of a class you made the Warrior into can we reasonably expect this retool of the entire combat system and 7 other classes to take less than another two years? Three years? If the updates are going to slow down even further are we really expected to sit around and be dead last in WvW and poor in the PvE content for that whole time?
It’s annoying as hell to try to kill things as fast as I can in the new LA zone while face tanking the damage because the sword glues me to the mob, only to watch some Warrior in zerk with higher base health and armor than me instagib the foe with one application of 100blades and take no damage the whole time, or had any damage taken passively regened by Healing Signet. He’s already moved on to another mob before I’ve even finished mine. That isn’t fun and isn’t something that should happen in a game that has such obvious class ability overlap.
And forgive me if I seem skeptical, but it seems highly illogical to nerf 7 other classes than to buff just one. I get the “power creep” idea but how is the ranger becoming on par with other power classes going to suddenly break everything? That makes no sense at all. This would apply in were we actually capable of supreme survival but practically anyone who has put in the time on the class can tell you that it simply isn’t true. We have good healing ability, but only through heavy stat and skill investment, flushing our already pitiable DPS down the toilet to achieve it without conditions. Our inability to handle said condition spam is practically legendary to the point that going up against a roaming Engineer or other condition tank on a power build is basically suicide. Our “sustained damage” can’t break their tank and we can’t survive their condition dps that we have limited ability to remove.
If it’s the dodges that supposedly give us our survival then I posit that the thief is already a better evade tank since they have more of them and even they don’t need them with their stealth spam protecting them and ability to burst a target down in record time with minimal risk.
Racial skills are likely a leftover from early development when they were planning to make certain races better at things than others. Asura would be more inclined to magic classes, Norn to martial ect. They scrapped that idea and made a tiny goblin hit as hard as a 10ft NFL linebacker and we have the leftovers from their initial idea.
They probably just made then as weak as possible to maintain as much of a flavor/cosmetic only element to race choice as possible. A game that has one or more races clearly better because of exclusive racial skills is a bad game.
I like the subdued look to it, but I agree on the illogical 59 minute duration and reapplication after zoning. If the birthday booster and food duration buff can last 24 hours and persist beyond death and zone change then there’s no reason this buff can’t as well.
Rifle/Pistol on rangers is a nogo!
They are a nature (magic) based class. Not a Pew Pew Laz0rgun hunt€r/sn!p€r whatever.
The charcoal, saltpeter, sulfur, iron, lead, and wood needed to make a functional gun all come from nature, just as the iron, charcoal, and wood of a great sword come from nature.
The nature argument is pointless when we don’t use a single weapon that doesn’t need to be processed and built by hand. Bows and swords don’t fall from trees nor spring from the ground, fully formed, like potatoes.
To increase pet performance in group fights and lend more multi-target damage to the ranger.
Proposal Functionality
Enable all pets to cleave on melee autos just as the drake does. This would increase our damage potential in WvW fights where we suffer from a great lack of AoE/mutli target damage and increase pet performance in pve as well.
Associated Risks
The drake line would lose one of its unique characteristics, but it’s AoE tail swipe combined with the swamp and river bounce attack and the drake’s overall combination of good damage and tank would still lend it enough to remain unique as a pet species line.
Thanks for that. It helps all of us to understand that our opinions are “invalid”
Glad I could help! Maybe next time, you can come up with a better argument than “Its clunky!”, becuase by that logic, every skill in the game with a cast time is "clunky’
Also, bad opinions, and bad arguments are two totally different things. Everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how good or bad. But, if your argument sucks, I am going to say something!
lol, yes, like the argument that the pet having stealth and protection is so powerful that it warrants a nerf to get rid of the cast time? Will we suddenly become OP if it’s an instant? Will that 1 less second of casting catapult the regen-tank to god-like status? Will the pet become too OP? Will all the non-existent people who kill the pet first rage quit forever because it has 1 second less to wait for protection and stealth?
There needs to be a real, clear consequence to buffing it with no counter, not just some vague claim that it’s “already good”.
The problem you need to look at is, what if all skills were suddenly instant?
(example)Hey, I want Heal as One to be instant cast. Don’t mind that I can stack that healing to over 10,000 using several methods. Its not like giving you a telegraph that I’m about to use a massive heal skill means anything. Its not going to suddenly make me more powerful (despite the extremely high healing I get for no risk at all).
No one mentioned Heal as One or any other healing skills. This is entirely about shouts and the one that doesn’t conform to the norm for the skill type. If you are just going to spout pointless straw men then there’s no real discussion going on.
In any case I hope the dev in question is given a stern talking to. There is a difference between those that afk for 30 mins and those that go to grab a drink, I feel that distinction was not made.
If players sitting around isn’t intended; they should make an accelerated log-out timer for players in the event not moving for 5 to 10 minutes. It’s not some devs job to police the server leaving customers vulnerable to human error.
So getting booted by a human because you had to use the bathroom for more than 5 minutes is wrong but it happening thanks to an automated system check is okay?
I almost expect asinine arguments when dev/GM police threads pop up, but some of these are just silly.
