And after this month, the rewards for that path are supposedly going back down to ‘normal’ levels. That will guarantee that the path will be run by few. If they’re lucky, it will be more popular than the TA F/U path they removed. My guess is that it will not be. It’ll still most likely become the least run TA path.
After 2 weeks, not month. You can’t blame anet though, they designed story mode dungeon with temporal explorable mode rewards.
Are you sure it’s only two weeks? The release notes state that the higher rewards will remain during the duration of the Twilight Assault LS. Typically the first LS each month lasts the entire month, with the second lasting only two weeks.
Only thing I want from this patch is that they won’t “fix” the frost spirits icd to 10 seconds as it’s listed. That alone would destroy the little usage that rangers see in higher class dungeon running.
I think we all hope that. Honestly there should be no ICD on any of them.
Exactly why in order to appeal to everyone, a whole rework is in fact necessary. Put pet stuff into the BM line and allow the power/precision lines to buff direct bow damage further while also allowing players to store their pets for further bonuses such that they can achieve significantly more ranged damage. When you’re at range and doing it right, there’s no need to have a pet charge into battle.
The problem, again, is that by giving bonuses for not using the class mechanic, you are giving little reason to use the class mechanic outside of certain game modes such as PvP or roaming WvW. I can think of little reason for a PvE or zerg WvW ranger to ever use a pet if they could do 100% damage themselves without having one.
Sorry. My feeling on the ranger is that it should stay true to ArenaNet’s vision of the ranger, which is a combination of a beastmaster and a marksman. Not to what everyone in the community thinks the ranger should be. The ranger has too many potential archetypes to be easily described by all as the same thing.
Buff the bows and you end up with bow warriors/shortbow thieves getting quite a hefty boost. As it stands, bow warrior is already a pretty solid build, too, and poison seeing increased damage would be nuts.
I’m talking of reversing that melee>range paradigm for rangers only. We are supposed to be ‘unparalled archers’, no?
Again, pop reflect and the bow archer is nothing, as you mentioned. The beastmaster or skirmisher is still functioning fairly well, as the bow archer would have no feats in pets and the BM would.
Yes. That is true. It would be a counter to us. As would forcing us into melee. But right now there is no reason for us to not be in melee as melee does far more damage than our bows do.
Also has Anet EVER confirmed this 40% of damage is the pet, or are you just saying it because you saw the number somewhere?
Yes it has. 30-40% of our damage is calculated at the design level as coming from our pet. That’s why our attacks are so comparatively low to all the other classes.
— snip —
The problem here, as I see it, is that if they had a ‘petless’ option, then they’d need to return our damage coefficient back to 100% otherwise we’d be patently weaker than all other classes. As a result if that became an option, why would you run a pet at all? Why would you again weaken yourself and lower your own damage output to re-link a percentage of your damage to a not-fully-controllable AI that cannot avoid many of the game’s damage sources? That is unless running a pet would have our overall damage between you and your pet to over 100%. And then we’d be accused, and rightly so, of being OP as we’d be capable of more damage output than any other class.
Now to make rangers feel more archery oriented I had a novel thought. Make our damage work backwards from the other classes. Make our bows deal more damage than our melee weapons. Then we’d want to stay at range.
I don’t think you’ll have to worry about elitist later on. I just finished all the AP and really have no reason to go back, the time/reward structure of this dungeon is horrible.
And after this month, the rewards for that path are supposedly going back down to ‘normal’ levels. That will guarantee that the path will be run by few. If they’re lucky, it will be more popular than the TA F/U path they removed. My guess is that it will not be. It’ll still most likely become the least run TA path.
i like how some people actually defend something that is just bad. Are they just trolling or are they just bad at seeing stuffs that are bad. Im confused.
I think some are just so used to defending from accusations that the class is complete and utter kitten, which it is not, that they just have trouble separating the valid complaints from the invalid ones.
Half these changes are broken and overpowered.
Like this, “Signet of the Beastmaster – Effect changed to, Signets active effects now affect nearby allies.”
Really?
So,
Cure all conditions on yourself, your pet, and all allies, 60 second CD
You, your pet, and all nearby allies are immune to damage for 6 seconds, 80 second CD
You, your pet, and all nearby allies deal 25% additional damage and gains stability for 8 seconds, 60 second CDNope, don’t see a problem with any of that.
Signet of the Hunt would actually be a great one because of the cross-class synergy, but the rest of them are just glaringly broken.
Yeah. Some of those are blatantly OP. That’s how we can all tell that they’re not all going to happen. But, as a whole, there are some very good ideas in there that should be considered.
Again, yes it is the “pet” class because it’s the only one which gets a pet. But if we went by class features, the warrior shouldn’t have access to a longbow due to the armor it wears, not to mention the fact it shoots fire arrows and casts fire effects like a magic class. Yet it does. Why? Because it can, and because it allows for people to play in other ways if they want to.
The only time I find my pet alive is exploring the surface map. WvW, target cricles from bosses, dungeons, etc. wipe the floor with my pet. I’m not pet-friendly because I perform on a higher level of skill than my pet is capable if performing at. I like PvE’ing against 10 mobs at a time and pushing myself to the limit in kiting mobs/people and avoiding damage. It’s being so vulnerable but also so capable that makes ranged classes so much fun. When you try to play at that level, the pet becomes a total liability and completely interferes in basically every way possible.
Frankly the pet management tool isn’t exactly responsive or particularly good for microing, either (see the many threads regarding pet management being kitty). I wouldn’t call attack/defend/return microing. Starcraft and Meepo from Dota are examples of microing. The pet is an excuse for a new mechanic which wasn’t fully developed imho and detracts from possible build varieties.
And that’s the thing. What is there to lose by making such a change? It doesn’t affect pet users (except they could strategically ditch pets during WvW and whatnot)? I just don’t see any real reason to argue against it or a reason for why it shouldn’t be implemented.
I’m more a proponent of a major revamp/update to the pet system rather than an even optional abandonment of it. It’s definitely got some pretty massive issues, but I think the class would be a lot better if they fixed the issues rather than making the pet optional. All that would do is make the pet unused in most game modes (except maybe roaming WvW and PvP where the pet isn’t a liability.
One of the biggest problems with making the pet optional is that it isn’t just one of the rangers random mechanics. It’s our primary mechanic. Many of our skills and traits are build specifically around our pet. It would be a massive, massive rebuild of the class from the ground up. Fixing the pet’s issues would be comparatively easy to basically having to build an entire new class from scratch.
I think it might have been better for ArenaNet to have named the ranger ‘Beastmaster’ as that is much closer to what the class is than any other ranger archetype and it would keep down the “that isn’t a ranger” complaints, despite it being GW2’s portrayal of a ranger.
As I said, I have respect for people who want to play differently, and for game studios who wish to make accommodations for newer playstyles.
Fact of the matter is that it shouldn’t come at the cost of forcing people to change the way they want to play just because its a “fresh spin on things” or a “defining factor” from other games.
That’s why I proposed the idea that I did. Nowhere does it take away the experience from people wanting to use the pets. Defaulting the player with one definitely encourages this, and I think that’s all that’s needed to get players to at least sample this playstyle.
The problem with removing the pets or making them optional is that they are the ranger’s primary class mechanic. You cannot remove any other class’s primary mechanic. Why should the ranger be unique in being able to?
I’m not hating against originality or changing things up, but I’m hating against the notion that change is required for everyone, even if not desired.
And frankly, a ton of the ranger frustration threads come up from people who feel exactly the same way I do. I won’t argue there are people who are happy with the way rangers play. It’s just that a lot of people aren’t happy there isn’t an archer or any kind of alternative for the archetype.
It’s what makes our arguments equally valid, and why I like the idea. Nowhere do numbers have to be changed, nowhere do major overhauls need to be done. Just provide an irremovable boon to players not using the pet which compensates for the lost damage. They therefore miss out on the utility the pet brings such as soaking aggro/buffing players/etc., but are at least allowed to play the build they choose to.
Again, it’s going by ANet’s policy here that they wanted to create a game where people got to play anything how they want to. Frankly, the archer ranger just doesn’t exist, and a lot of people are upset about it. Nobody’s asking for ratio increases or perfect AI, but people simply wish to play differently and be considered/allowed to play differently without such awful penalties.
As much as I would love a ‘ranged-only’ option for GW2, that … isn’t really feasible in the game. I should probably clarify why, right?
ArenaNet, to reward those for going into the ‘greater dangers’ in melee, has decided that ranged attacks should be inferior to melee due to being in ‘less danger’. They also added ranged-only punishing mechanics like reflect when no melee-only variants exist (retaliation affects melee and ranged). In addition, all melee classes have good gap closers preventing ranged classes from remaining ranged.
So as much as a good ranged class would be, the mechanics of the game are set up to punish us for choosing such a playstyle. Melee is the meta of the game. It is the sad and unfortunate truth.
— snip —
I’m sorry, but despite the name the GW2 ranger is a pet class.
the ranger is in a bad position, mostly because 40 percent of your dmg is dead crawling in your legs 90 percent of the time (the other 10 is inmobile after pet swap) also all our traits are garbage for that dead pet and the rest are just nonsense that requirse you be half dead to trigger, on top of that nerfed weapons…. we have nothing to support a zerg. Icould go on all day long but Im tired and currently leveling my warrior permastun with 4kdmg without dimishing returns inmune to conditions with endure pain invulnerability
Ok. The ranger pet is in a bad place, but it’s not that bad. If your pet is down 90% of the time then you might want to micromanage your pet a bit more. Now 100% uptime is very hard to impossible to do. But only 10% is … pretty bad. Unless your talking of WvW zergs. Then yes, you may be right.
The ooze in the Sparki and Slick encounter takes 0 damage from all sources.
Or was that what you meant too?
You can hurt and even kill that ooze. Did it the first time when none of us knew the encounter. You know … when noone knew it. That was … a mistake. >.<
Everyone is annoyed by this. If you’re gonna use the sword then you want to turn off auto-attack and manually trigger each separate attack. You won’t really be able to strafe and attack like you can with any other weapon, but you’ll have a larger ability to dodge so long as you’re not just mashing 1.
It takes practice to get used to using the sword and you’ll still occasionally kitten up and not be able to dodge due to the root, but the massively increased DPS capability will make it worth it. Most of the time.
I wish. /15 char
Yes. You can. Not everyone is loaded with reflects and stability, though. Rangers only get it on an elite. Some professions don’t get it at all.
With the right group comp, Slick may be faster. For random groups? Sparki.
Sparki’s attacks can’t be reflected (sadly), only blocked with skills like Shield of Absorption or Smoke Screen (yes, thieves. USE IT)
Eh. S’what I meant. Not like rangers have a good block for that and our only real reflect would just kill the ooze.
Rangers themselves are good, objectively speaking. It’s just that 99% of rangers are garbage and do literally everything wrong, so no one wants to take their chances with them.
Depends on where you are talking about. Objectively good in PvP and roaming WvW, yes, but I’d only call rangers ‘barely and grudgingly acceptable’ in late-game PvE and zerg WvW.
I noticed a lot of you are wondering why I didn’t list a Sylvari. I do agree, they are probably the most fitting choice, my last character was a Sylvari mesmer so I was looking to play a different race this time.
As you’re not looking for Sylvari, Norn definitely seems most fitting lore-wise.
I would also say that our pets are unique. Yes there are other pets/minions among the classes, but only the ranger has any real modicum of control over their mechanic.
Look, I’m not a completionist and I don’t give two squats about achivements, so for me I understand on certain mindsets I’m unorthodox for an MMO. But if I can’t get a group of people like friends or guildies to run difficult content, then I simply don’t do it or postpone it.
That’s not the case with plenty of people, and I get that, but when people come here and complain about quitters it just makes me laugh. They put themselves into that situation, they decided to take that gamble and lost.
Don’t laugh at those that are kittened by bad members of the community. Commiserate with them. Encourage them not to give up and let the bad players destroy our community.
I understand that friends and guildies are how you play, but that isn’t how everyone plays. Some may want to do content, but either have few friends/guildies that play the game or few that do that kind of content. They should not be gated out of that content due to a few bad eggs in the community and we should not tell them that that is what they should expect and laugh at them when it happens. It does not always happen and not all randoms are bad.
I like Scarlet other than the fact that she’s a Sylvari. Seriously stop trying to force these plants down our throats like mom tried to when we wouldn’t eat our vegetables. Human, Charr, and Norn, would have been amazing.
Your attempts to make people like the Sylvari more is very transparent.
It actually makes people attribute the questionable character design to the Sylvari as a whole, causing people to like them less. And that is unfortunate as the Sylvari are the only truly unique race to Guild Wars.
No it’s not elitist to tell people that it’s more fun to do things with people you know and not strangers without any sort of social accountability. But hey if you wish to drag your forehead across gravel, more power to you.
You didn’t say that it’s more fun to do things with friends and guildies. To that I will agree. You said that PUGs are only good for COF, which I find to be patently untrue.
You can complete any dungeon path with a PUG. Will it be as fast, fun, and reliable as a friend/guild run. Doubtful. But perhaps people don’t have friends or a guild that are willing to do the content? PUGs are still an option. I, personally, only completed Arah with PUGs as my guild hated it and wouldn’t go back after a few failed attempts.
You should also remember that sometimes friend or guild groups are one or two members short for a dungeon. Are they then supposed to not do the content? Or should they grab a few randoms. To the guild/friend group, the group is still ‘people you know’. To the randoms who join, the group might as well be a PUG group.
That’s what you get for pugging, the only thing they’re good for is running Cof 1&2 paths and nothing NOTHING more. Do not do this content unless with friends and/or guilds.
It’s attitudes like that that get you labeled as ‘elitist’ and bring down the community. You should not be forced to join a guild or drag friends into the game to complete content. You should, and can, complete the content with PUGs. Telling anyone otherwise is just wrong.
Now yes, guildies and friends can make things much easier and are oftentimes, though not always, more reliable. But not all that PUG are these terribad players that many love accusing them of being.
One of the biggest problems is our pets and their susceptibility to death. No other class in the game can have their entire class mechanic, and 20-40% of their damage output, disabled for a full minute.
Guess it helps being a guard, can ignore all of sparkis mechanics during slick kill
Yes. You can. Not everyone is loaded with reflects and stability, though. Rangers only get it on an elite. Some professions don’t get it at all.
With the right group comp, Slick may be faster. For random groups? Sparki.
Kill SLick, the hell you killing sparki first for? he does almost no damage and you dont have to deal with ooze kiting
(slick is the oil dude, spark is the robot)
Slick is tankier and takes longer to take down. Also Sparki loves to pull you from meleeing slick, making it take longer, as well as attacking with some pretty heavy damage ranged attacks. If you melee Sparki down first, Slicks ranged attacks can be practically ignored.
Then there is both of their ‘enrage’ effects. Slick’s is to put down more oil fields. If your ooze kiter is decent, then that’s not a problem. Sparki’s is to damage you if you don’t move, which limits some classes abilities to melee and forces some into ranged or lower damage weapons.
Now if your group has excessively high DPS, then it doesn’t matter. But if they don’t Sparki is the safer and more reliable one to take down first.
I don’t claim the “casual tag”.
I play just about whenever I can. In a good group, I can handle all the other dungeons without too much trouble(with the exception of Arah and a few paths like CoF P3, TA f/u, SE P2, etc.) And even when things go get messy, we don’t die over ten times in a row at the exact same fight over and over!
Except of course, Frizz in the Aetherblade Retreat. And now this. With the Super Adventure Box packed up, and Tequatl basically unbeatable with a small group now, there’s nothing else the Living Story has for me.
But of course, that’s clearly my fault, right? That’s what they’ll say…
Despite what some may say, I put this new dungeon path as harder than any other current path short of Arah. If a group is refusing to learn from the encounter, then try to help them get better or politely bow out and find a group that will learn the encounter.
First time I fought those two I damaged/broke most of my gear at least once. Second time I did, with myself being the only one who had encountered it before, there were only 3-4 ‘learning’ party-wipes. Third time with a random group and that number was down to 2.
No, it’s not your fault per se. But it is the fault of the group as a whole.
Note: My offer to assist still stands.
It is sad that the majority of the players go off of Dulfy’s guide. (which says hit slick first).
IMHO Killing Sparki first is the safest. When you are focusing sparki she wont ignite the oil pools and whoever has the aggro of the ooze can easily do their job.
Slick may have been better for them due to the fact that the group she did the dungeon with had crazy-high DPS. Far more DPS than you can reasonably expect outside of a well-organized guild run. For random groups, it is far safer and more reliable to take down Sparki first.
You can always keep RP and WvW seperate. RPers won’t see your trinkets and you can transmute your weapons and armor, or even have an RP set and a WvW set.
Just as you don’t want your WvW to affect your RP, why are you letting your RP hold you back in WvW?
Yes. 250 gems for a one use. Roughly 12.5 gold on the gem exchange at the current rates.
Pretty sure Seven Star Stalker.1740 was talking about the Permanent Self-Style Hair Kit (Permanent Hair Stylist Contract on the TP), which is free to use at your command after obtaining it.
Ah yes. The item that would cost a veritable fortune in or out of game to obtain.
Having to pay real money each time you want to switch between hairstyles, even if you’ve used those hairstyles before, is what we wish we didn’t need to do. It seems a bit … high.
Do you have to pay for it? .-. I’ve never actually used one. I have bad RNG luck and it’s too expensive on the TP.
Yes. 250 gems for a one use. Roughly 12.5 gold on the gem exchange at the current rates.
There’s a Hairchanger contract item, just FYI.
Having to pay real money each time you want to switch between hairstyles, even if you’ve used those hairstyles before, is what we wish we didn’t need to do. It seems a bit … high.
Everyone in the last group was willing to learn and try to figure out the mechanics, had a great deal of patience and perseverance and it made no difference. We still lost. After that, I don’t feel like ever going into Twilight Arbor again. And even if I did succeed, I’ll never want to do it ever again, so no point in trying to learn/remember it for later.
It’s just no good.
Ah. Don’t give up. The dungeon, although quite difficult, is still doable for most groups that are willing to learn. I have found that it helps greatly to have at least one person that has some experience in the party for tips and tricks and so that that others can follow their lead.
It looks like you were having trouble on the Slick/Sparki fight. That fight, although not trivial, is decently easy if you have one person properly kiting the ooze and the rest DPSing the bosses one at a time. It took my first group … too many tries to get past them. I lost many, many silver to repairs on my first run. But once you figure it out the first time, subsequent runs are much, much easier.
There are many people around here that would not mind helping you out, myself included. I believe a few a bit further up offered as well.
It wouldn’t feel the same. I’d basically have to be carried. I hate that so much. I’d hate having to put “experienced only, want to see the story” and being an utter liability the whole time, as even one or two people messing up can reduce the whole teams effort to nothing.
Correction: only one offered any help..and they were from EU, so no dice. The others are just more “hardcore” jerks who come here just to put people like me down even further.
It’s not worth it at all to go back there, since from what I’ve read, we don’t even get any good story, just more pointless hints. Sigh.. Living Story is dead on arrival again.
Nah. It isn’t being carried. It’s going with a group that teaches as you go. Yesterday I ran with a group in which I was the only one that knew it. I described each encounter as we got to each. A couple hours later we successfully completed it with comparatively minimal issues.
In any decent group, so long as at least one person is willing to teach and the others willing to listen and learn then this dungeon is able to be completed.
So long as you let the others in a good group know that you don’t know it, they should be able to help you complete it so you carry your own weight and so you all can complete it successfully.
Sylvari! Seriously they are better looking as ranger than any other class. I really wished I can re-create my ranger as Sylvari but I am too lazy to re run as lvl 1 ranger again.
Yeah silvari are the most “natural” choice, my ranger is one.
I’d personally say Sylvari as well, but that wasn’t one of the options that Divine was considering.
Many people are too impatient to lead and teach the encounters to newer players. They instead give terrible directiosn, grow impatient too quickly, then rage quit or kick players. It is unfortunate and it’s terrible for the community.
Just don’t enter the room until your party is ready.
Ranger pets shouldn’t attack it unless the ranger unleashes their pet, which they should not do. Mesmer illusions shouldn’t attack it unless the mesmer tells them to as they attack the target the mesmer was targeting when they are summoned and disappear when that target dies. Necro minions might, but who runs necro minions?
10k auto with longbow? WTF are you smoking?
You can spike that high by using multiple utilities with long cooldowns. If your high-damage arrow misses then you’re SOL on that damage spike for at least a minute, IIRC.
I wonder if the writers are thinking “Hmmm, where did we go wrong? why doesn’t everyone like her, people think the Joker is a good villain”
Probably don’t realize that they made her seemingly too smart to be believable.
The oozes can be challenging, but they’re not too difficult with basic teamwork. You don’t even need specific gear or anything. Set one person each to kite the oozes and the other three pull the elementals and keep them from attacking the oozes. May take a few times and reflects do help if you have them, but any random group should be capable of this encounter if they’re willing to learn and work as a team.
There are many people around here that would not mind helping you out, myself included. I believe a few a bit further up offered as well.
No. It’s still based on who entered first. Just got kicked at boss because the ‘leader’ ragequit. >.<
Back to entering the dungeon myself every time, I guess.
Yeah. Ele’s Mist Form makes this trivial. Thank for the tip! Now back to running the dungeon with my main.
GW1 mechanics are very different than than GW2, the same principles wouldn’t necessarily work. Even so, there’s a reason you didn’t see many rangers with pets in the elite areas of GW1. Just saying…
The mechanics may be different but there is no reason for such sub-par shouts with how useful some of the GW1 pet oriented shouts were. No, you didn’t see many in the elite areas. That’s because the meta in GW1 for rangers was splinter barrage, burning arrow, or SoS/SoGM.
You don’t need to be a master of all games modes, but a simple understanding of W3 is required for a solution to the pet. As it stands, I don’t see any viable way the pet can produce results like other classes can there. It’s just the way that game-mode plays out.
I have a simple understanding of WvW. I know where the downsides of the pet are in all game modes. just because I don’t actively play there now doesn’t mean I am unaware of what transpires.
- immune pets would be OP and not acceptable.
- true, but doesn’t address the real issue at all.
- true, but doesn’t address the real issue at all.
- true, dodging alone isn’t nearly enough to make them viable. It’s a one trick pony, and maintaining 2 separate dodge-bars only adds to the micromanagement.
- making the pet stay on your kitten would mean a lot of RP’ers complaining that they can’t “see” their pet because it’s in your legs. Also, it means your pet will get hit whenever you do. Darned if you do, darned if you don’t.
- A reduced damage return is interesting, but unfair in W3. Why should your pet get to soak more damage when a player is actively targeting it?
- auto-maneuvering out of AoE circles would be OP in W3.
- attacking while moving…that is an extremely hard thing to balance for an AI when against a human player. The attack range would probably have to shrink to make up for it, thusly nerfing your own damage yet again.
- more micromanaging…wonderful
- this one I agree with, but still doesn’t address the real issue.
- good idea, but still doesn’t affect the real issue.
- What’s the difference between an immune pet that gives a buff and no pet at all, hmm?
- Yes dodging alone isn’t enough. But it is more to help. And as to needing more micro? I think that an ‘automatic’ system would be superior.
- I RP. I want that pet closer to me, kitten it! As for it getting hit when you do? When it’s passive then it generally gets hit when you do anyways, in addition to getting hit by things you’re able to walk away from while your pet just stands there like a kitten .
- That would only be short term when retreating and with an internal cooldown to prevent abuse.
- Auto-maneuvering out of red rings would also cause the pet to do less damage as it would be moving out of the circle instead of attacking. And it’s no more OP than a player able to see and avoid AoE circles. If a player can avoid AoE by moving, then a pet should as well. Perhaps have AoE avoidance on a toggle?
- Why should pets not be able to attack while moving? We’re not rooted on all attacks. Why should our pets be?
Now I know that none of these alone will fix the issue with the ranger. But a combination of fixes should. There is no one true fix that will make this all better. But fixing the smaller issues here and there should fix the larger issue as a whole.
Pets do have more issues in zerg WvW. They get the worst of both worlds between PvE and PvP. There, at least, power may not be what you want to run. I honestly don’t know. I retired my ranger from zerg WvW duties nearly a year ago. In fact I retired entirely from WvW nearly a year ago.
…
Then you shouldn’t be posting here if W3 is not a part of your solution. End of story.
There are many solutions that would help in WvW. I’m sorry, but one doesn’t need to be a master of all game modes to understand and discuss the issues. Just because I don’t play the current zerg WvW meta doesn’t mean I am incapable of discussing the class.
The GW1 pet required very little micromanaging. Oh wait, that’s because the pet didn’t nerf the Ranger’s damage when it died…
True. The GW1 implementation was superior to the GW2 implementation for many reasons, some of which I listed here. They could learn something from themselves.
But in most end-game group encounters in PvE, the pet can survive quite well if you’re skilled at micromanagement.
Then ANet needs to inform players that Rangers require a high degree of micromanagement before getting to the area’s where it is required. Nothing before Orr, the dungeons, W3, or PvP requires micromanagement.
Very true, though I hold more that rangers should be updated to require less micromanagement. Though expecting a pet class not not require a decent amount of micro is a bit … naive …
I have to strongly disagree with you here. A good ranger in melee with a pet can output very high damage. I believe that record CoF speed-clears have been with these rangers. And although the pet can’t currently survive everywhere, it can survive in most places outside of a few boss encounters.
…if the pet consistently hits, which it doesn’t in W3, and if the pet doesn’t die fast, which it does in W3 and end-game encounters. Those two are the entire reason for this thread.
Pets do have more issues in zerg WvW. They get the worst of both worlds between PvE and PvP. There, at least, power may not be what you want to run. I honestly don’t know. I retired my ranger from zerg WvW duties nearly a year ago. In fact I retired entirely from WvW nearly a year ago.
But in most end-game group encounters in PvE, the pet can survive quite well if you’re skilled at micromanagement.
It’s still highly played because it’s a casual game, and doesn’t require you to engage hard content to enjoy it.
A fix necessitates removal when it has been clearly shown to be untenable. Again, there’s little reason to think so given the mechanics of the game.
-“seemed…seemed…seemed…should…”_ ..that’s a lot of maybe’s for having such a strong position. I’d rather like to have something I can count on instead of blind hope.
You have a lot of supposition in thinking that a majority of the rangers are casuals. Without hard numbers, which I know you cannot provide, we cannot know the balance of rangers between pure casual players and the more ‘hardcore’ or ‘elitist’ players.
Yes, a fix may necessitate removal when proven untenable. But it has not yet been proven untenable. Only the current implementation of pets has.
Yes. I did throw in those words alot. I say them because it’s based off of how I feel about the game, my critical observations of the game, and my discussions with game devs at PAX. Because it’s not cold-hard fact. Because little of either of our opinions are facts and I wish to properly present my opinions without being accused of presenting them as facts.
Dear ArenaNet,
PLEASE BRING BACK THE FORWARD/UP PATH OF TWILIGHT ARBOR. There was no reason to remove it. You removed it because it was unpopular. It was unpopular because it was imbalanced to insanely difficult levels, and only at the boss. If you just fixed the boss instead of removing the whole path, the path would be run on a regular basis. I can promise that.
Besides, of all Twilight Arbor paths prior to this update, F/U was the most interesting (excluding the boss fight). You got to fight alongside Laurant, possibly even save him – there was a rumor I heard that if you did save him in the fight against Vevina, you’d get a special extra dialogue; sadly, I never saw this and there’s no documentation of this known (to me). This is also the one and only place that connected Torrential Husks and Flametouched Husks to the Nightmare Court – the only place they’re seen in the entire game is Crucible of Eternity. Furthermore, The Defiler uses a unique model shared with the Evolved Husk of Crucible of Eternity and the Avatars of Blight in Wychmire Swamp – both implied tied to an Elder Dragon. The lore implications this one Twilight Arbor path that you removed gave were huge compared to the others. And even excluding the plot and lore potential and implications, you had the most interesting mechanics out of all paths – the invisible nectar and the insta-kill bees, a simple yet also challenging thing befitting an explorable dungeon path.
And the one and only problem with this path was the boss fight. Yet you removed the whole thing.
Why?
Because you were too lazy to fix an easy-to-fix boss fight? Because you wanted to make “one path” to the Nightmare Tree (okay, that can be done… by having the choices going to the Nightmare Tree all possible within a single dungeon path, which would make it the most fascinating dungeon path of all since it wouldn’t be so linear)? There was no real need to remove it, not after it had existed. If you wanted there to be “one story” for how the Nightmare Tree is fought and destroyed, why make the extra two in the first place?
Personally, I want to see F/U path returned with a fixed boss fight. You only need to reduce the spawns, and it is fixed. It could be made better, of course, but it needn’t be just to make it popular again.
+1. I completely agree with this.
Prior to that fated AC revamp which had the misfortune of overbuffing the boss encounter this was my favorite TA path and the second-most run path in the dungeon. The fact that that one change forced it to be the most rarely run path in the game doesn’t say anything bad about the dungeon. Just about the seemingly ill-thought change to the boss encounter. I can practically guarantee that if the path was brought back with a fix to the boss that it would become as popular as the F/F path again.
That path had some of the more unique mechanics in the dungeon. It had the previously stated boss fight where Leurant is an ally. It was always a fun game to try to keep him alive as long as possible. ^.^ It had the deadly bees invisibility section which, while not always successful, was an interesting and unique mechanic that I did enjoy. It had the Defiler and it’s bees DoT, which is used practically nowhere else. And it had Courtier lore.
I can understand and support revamping a path like was done in AC. I can understand and support adding new dungeons and dungeon paths. I can understand wanting to not expand too much to spread out the player base, but I can neither understand nor support removing long-term content from the game to do so. Especially in instanced content. Looking back at the past and early content is always a fun thing to do. But the precedent set here says that we won’t be able to do that and that anything could go on a whim. And that is quite frightening for people that want to experience everything in the game.
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