As the title. The Balthazar event chain is bugged on Northern Shiver Peaks
The chain didn’t properly end last night and the karma vendor never toggled to “vendor” mode after the risen priest of Balth was killed.
This morning the NPCs are invincible (health regens instantly) and beset by a horde of infinitely spawning risen. There is a sufficient number of them for culling of enemy mobs to occur.
If you were to introduce a 3rd land pet in your rotation, names would start to be forgotten.
Had this happen several times as well. There is a thread in the bugs forum. No acknowledgement.
C’mon now, you can’t call Guardian scepter the most broken autoattack in the game when Ranger 1H sword exists.
This.
We’ve heard the sweet words of Mr. Peters before, 6 months and counting for ranger weapon fixes. I think I might actually really cry if this gets fixed before any of the ranger weapons.
This time it happened to me, completed the guild rush, when I went through the last gate the counter did not increment and I didnt get a reward. Need some attention on this issue. It’s a factor for guild engagement in these missions.
What about looking into the invisible AoE lag stuff?
The class design is pretty loud and clear in that there is no intent to trivialize the pet’s contribution; when you play a Ranger you’re taking the Ranger and the pet as an assumption of every build option. You’re not playing “either or” in the same sense that no matter how much one of your Elementalist’s elements is specced into, you’re not able to make it defining. You’re still tied to the responsibility of all four elements to play any build capably.
I agree that this is what is evident, I am saying that if you want build diversity, this is the wrong way to go.
I know this has been brought up several times before, but it is a travesty that the game client doesn’t remember ranger pet names.
This is a core concept. You want the player to identify with their menagerie.
The game encourages you to swap between multiple pet setups to match up to each situation. If you do that you lose pet names every time.
If the data database cant/wont handle all that extra data, per character/account, just please make the pet naming happen client side.
This is such a fundamental class quality of life issue, please make it happen.
Well it comes down to a basic question, when you are playing ranger class, are you the ranger or are you the pet? The more they buff the pet, the more the pet is the class and the more the ranger is supporting the pet. You are not a ranger with a pet, you are a pet with a ranger.
The problem with “fixing” pets first is that it skews heavily how they will fix the “player” after.
If you wanted build diversity, the effectiveness ranger for the pet should be heavily gated by the BM trait line. At 0 BM, the ranger pet should be about as useful as a mid range necro minion (maybe with some utility that you can pop 1-2 times per combat). At 30 BM, the pet should be beast mode beatdown kinda like the BM/Bunker builds we are seeing now. Likewise a ranger who doesnt spec into BM shouldnt just outright be functioning at 70% efficiency because they didnt want to pay the pet trait point tax.
sPvP != PvE & WvW
Buffing pets like they did is bad for both. By all accounts rangers are an outstanding skirmish class and they have just been made stronger.
They could have left the pets with the crappy AI and lower stats if they had bothered to fix the trait lines and weapons instead. Rather than address those they buffed the pet… when they do get around to fixing those they will need to nerf the pet. Or they’ll never fix traits and rangers will continue to be a mess.
That’s how it was in GW1, you’re not the first to bring it up. ANet doesnt want to hear it.
I think that what was happening last night was a bad case of instanced server lag.
Where for some reason lag would cause attacks not to spawn initially and they would trigger at later points within a queue / window. I dont know how the stuff works.
Okay so after restarting and getting into the boss fight, about half way through I start taking huge damage from some kind of AOE with NO indication, and NO visible effect at all. I can see the fire fields, and the shockwaves, but this just comes out of nowhere and I can’t do anything to counter it, nor outheal it.
Is there some kind of hard limit on the game rendering AOE effects? I have the highest possible settings…
I can confirm this, it happened to me and several of my party members. It was extremely obvious at one point, i was standing at the opposite side of the platform from both of them, well out of range of the waves, and i just dropped dead from 2/3 health.
The changes are bad because they are the wrong direction. Any change that buffs the pet increases the proportion of the ranger’s effectiveness that relies on poor AI and PvE kludges (e.g., ignoring normal targeting rules, strange AoE invuln, or whatever other fix might come up) to keep the class on par with others.
The more things go this way the more “The Pet” is the class. It’s no longer a pet class it’s a pet delivery system. Buffing the pet actually reduces the number of builds, once the pet becomes strong enough you essentially go BM or go home, everything else that you do becomes sub-optimal.
Also not a ranger buff but a signet buff that incidentally happened to hit rangers.
If you want to have vulnerable spirits with placement that their range needs to be 2x-3x what it is now, that way tactical placement is meaningful and still helpful. Similar to the old Rit/Ra spirits of GW1.
Well right now spirits have several problems…
1) they die if you sneeze at them
2) you cant place them
3) their effects are random, unreliable, internal cooldown / whatever
at least 2 of those issues need to go away for me to even think of using them.
1. Make them target-able, just like Warrior Banners.
2. Make Spirits stay right on top of you when summoned, instead of sliding in a random direction.
Hush now… both of you, what you suggest might make actually give ANet a clue about the “right” way to go with spirits.
Boon hate could have been a nice way to give rangers at least some DPS against certain classes.
It’s just a little odd.
The way ANet is approaching this, ranger is a pet class… literally.
When you play a ranger, you are the pet. The actual player is becoming more and more just a vehicle to puppeteer a powerful pet around. It’s just really odd and out of proportion.
I’m still of the opinion that Spirits need a flat out redesign, Putting Duck Tape on a failing building is not going to fix the problem
Duct tape has been their #1 tool for fixing the ranger all this time.
It’s not as though they dont know how to fix trait lines, I mean… just look at the Warrior. They clearly know how to do it.
They also said we’d be getting fixes for longbow. I think we can expect to see more balance fixes going forwards, but anyone’s guess is as good as mine. Personally, I reckon rangers are better off after this patch then they’ve ever been since launch. Considering how we seem to get nerfed every patch, I wouldn’t complain if they drew the line here frankly.
remember this?
JonPeters.5630:While we work hard to keep updates going on all professions, not very build us going to contain fixes for everyone due to the nature of software development. One problem with rangers is the lack of build diversity created by a number of sub par utility skills. Many signets, a shout or two, and spirits are all a bit lackluster. That is the first place to expect improvements. Second is trying to improve the feel/ pacing on some weapons.
That was 6 months ago in reference to a patch that had no ranger fixes at all.
Also… it’s a complete CRIME that at this point pets dont remember their names when you swap. That should be basic and it completely ruins the feel of the class.
ANet continues to not understand why spirits and pets are bad or is clearly unwilling to address the issues.
pets move behind enemies; thats certainly a start (… well the better hitting on moving targets was a start… but w/e)
… i agree with you about them not seeming to understand why spirits are bad (though clearly they are trying to adress the issue)
The problem is that there are things that are fundamentally wrong with the ranger class and its trait lines, utilities design, etc. The issues with these items will not be resolved without fundamental changes. They will NOT be resolved with the current approach which is focused on keeping everything the same and fiddling with a few knobs hoping to find the sweet spot. There is no sweet spot under the current ranger paradigm… you would need to boost everything until it’s OP, at which point it’s still bad but for different reasons.
To fix the ranger some utilities need to be tossed, some trait lines need to be tossed and re-done.
What “hopeful” rangers seem to fail to understand was this this patch is the final patch of their first balance pass. There is nothing else coming down the pipe except minor tweaks for several months. As far as ANet is concerned this is a good final state for the ranger which means, spirit still suck (banners still put spirits to shame) and pets still suck for non-PvP/skirmish stuff, none of the issues with weapons that people have been raising since the beginning have been addressed (or even mentioned).
This patch is terrible because it is all buffs but still fails. This speaks to a fundamental misalignment between ANet’s core philosophy for the ranger and where the ideal ranger fits in non-PvP/Skirmish roles.
(edited by Tyops.5894)
ANet continues to not understand why spirits and pets are bad or is clearly unwilling to address the issues.
Actually if we look at how ANet has been trying to fix the ranger class… it seems that you are the pet, and that the ranger is the companion.
Group 1: “rangers have serious issues in WvW and late game PvE”
Group 2: “you guys are nuts, look at how great the ranger is in PvP”
yawn how many times do we have to do this one.
Edit: yes… WvW skirmishes are essentially PvP.
(edited by Tyops.5894)
I’ve had this happen to several of my guild members, on the devourer guild rush and on the southsun one.
They complete the guild rush but the counter does not increment and they get no personal reward. I had the log out and back in, still no reward after completing a second time. Neither had participated in an earlier guild rush.
Could be, but in this vid, the ele did nothing to you and you did essentially nothing to her.
In that video you pompt us to look at your health bar, did yo take a moment to look at theirs? It’s nice how much you survive but you didnt seem to overly inconvenience either of them either. Call it a wash.
@Tyops: take a look at other classes’ subforums. I think you’d be surprised by how many Warriors, Thieves, etc. run builds with no ranged weapons. Including in WvW and dungeons. Some of these builds are extremely effective and known as good builds for their respective areas.
Also, Mesmers and elementalists can get away with taking only ranged weapons due to the fact that they have non-projectile ranged attacks (Mesmer Greatsword and Elementalist Scepter).
I agree with you there, but if these builds are good its because they have ways of not being mitigated as described in the post above. If they were, they wouldnt be good builds. It’s a little circular but it doesnt change the core point I’m trying to make, there’s no point in talking about rangers as a good “sustained damage” class because this is something that is pretty trivial to achieve for pretty much every class.
A melee warrior being kited is not maintaining sustained damage. Same for anyone whose damage is being mitigated. This does include bow/axe-only rangers when they face someone with good ant-projectile skills.
If the issue is endgame PvE and WvW, players who don’t bring both a ranged and a mele-ish option are probably better off not contributing to a discussion of how useful a class can be. Can’t really speak to sPvP.
Sustained damage != condition damage. You’re conflating two things that sometimes overlap. Sustained damage can be consistent direct damage (it often is).
I don’t understand people commenting that the Ranger deals “sustained damage”? I was always under the impression, that the general rule to all profession is; direct damage is meant for burst damage, and condition damage is meant for sustained damage. The fact that I don’t feel like I can deal any real burst damage, with my longbow/greatsword Ranger, is exactly why I don’t enjoy playing Ranger in PvP. It doesn’t feel like it’s intended, it feels like my weapons are broken.
The “sustained” damage thing is a copout. Every class deals sustained damage, this is what happens when other classes dont pop all their cooldowns in the first five seconds of a fight, or when pretty much any class that isnt specced 100% for support simply auto attacks the target with their #1 skill.
Rangers do sustained damage because EVERYONE DOES SUSTAINED DAMAGE.
Hello Robert,
It is nothing personal, although a lot if not the majority of the ranger comunity is frustrated.Every forum acts frustrated, its nothing special or unexpected, if anything it seems a bit nicer around here.
That’s because everybody left.
At this point there are three types of people who cling to the Ranger, people who play sPvP where the ranger is mostly OK, people who are into the ranger for the flavour…. they would keep playing the ranger no matter what and believe everything is fine, and people who have crazy skills and would be successful no matter the class they play.
The for WvW and end game PvE the ranger has been terrible for so long that I would wager most people have either moved on or levelled another character.
By terrible I mean the following, if you have an L80 ranger and any other L80 character, there is no reason why you take the ranger if you want to bring something to the team and give them any kind of advantage. You CAN complete any and all of that content with the ranger, but you’re not contributing as much as you would with essentially any other class (assuming constant playskill). The only reason to bring a ranger is if you just really like your ranger.
I want a reason for people on my server to say in Teamspeak, “can anyone switch over to their Ranger? We need …” I don’t ever hear this. Elementalists hear it. Mesmers hear it. etc.
This.
There is never ever a time where the ranger class fills a need.
The common retort to this concern is that the ranger is a hybrid, jack-of-all-trades class that excels at helping a bit here and a bit there. However, as a side effect of how all the classes are designed, all of the classes are jacken-of-trades and pretty much all of them are better at it than rangers. Being a hybrid class that can do a little of everything and apply sustained damage is not the proper of the ranger, every single other class can do this.
Add on to this the fact that the ranger pet mechanic actually discourages the inclusion of rangers from some types of play makes the ranger a terrible choice as a main class.
Part of the problem is the design philosophy that the pet is always there and accounts for a significant percentage of the ranger’s total output (lets face it, DPS and ending fights earlier is for the moment one of the best way to support your group). The problem with that is that this leaves a significant portion of the ranger’s effectiveness in the hands of some pretty terrible AI. The problem with that is that no matter how much development is put into it, the AI will never be good enough for highly skilled play (in PvE, WvW, and sPvP).
Rather than resolving this issue with a wonky control scheme and pre-school AI, the issue should be addressed by giving players 100% control of the the pet’s movement. This is how the majority of MOBA games handle their pet classes for high-skilled play. These pet classes are some of the more difficult to play well and they bring a lot to a team when played by a highly skilled individual. If players wish they could turn their pet’s movement AI on/off (mainly for people who just want to run around the world map). AI movement will never be sufficient for the demands of top tier play.
For people who actually want to use their pet skillfully you need to have a zero cooldown ground-targeted pet position skill (that can be placed on a hot key). This skill could have a 1200/1500 range. If rangers are supposed to be masters at commanding pets, please actually make it so you can command them properly. The rest of the auto attacks can most likely be left as is.
Once the ranger pet problems are addressed with “proper” position control, you may see that the ranger class’ potential will be far more appreciated and there may be some demand for rangers in group play.
Just wanted to through some ideas into the hat on the topics of ranger pets and having better control of their actions.
I like some of the ideas that have been tossed around of various added functions to the F1-F4 keys.
In addition, I think that rangers as true pet masters, should have perfect (or near perfect) control of pet positioning within a certain range. This could be achieved by giving the ranger an ability (possibly on one of the F keys) to dictate the pet’s position using ground targeting. Dodging isn’t the only issue during dungeon fights, many AoE you’re just supposed to walk/run out of and save your dodge/block for the really nasty ones. The attack/recall mechanic doesn’t do that very well. Positioning via ground targeting could make interaction with the pet more intricate and raise the skill ceiling in a way that doesn’t feel as “clunky” as simply having toggles.
nvm… I’m pretty sure the irregularity I noticed has to do with how the weapon damage is included in the “Attack” value.
Move along…. nothing to see here.
I can put something together, if necessary.
But i tested this with several scepter/foci that I bought with the trading post and was getting the same result. Just throwing it out there, has anyone else noticed this?
Posted this to the bug forum and this got essentially no attention.
Playing as a Guardian I noticed that when I have a sceptre/focus combo equiped the stats are not contributing to my reported attack value. When I swap between my sceptre/focus and staff I see my Attack value drop by about 100pts even though both weapon sets cumulatively have the same stats.
This happens with transmuted and non-transmuted for what it’s worth.
Not sure if this is only a display bug or if this is having an actual effect in game.
Friends dont let friends create new rangers. Roll something else, play a ranger if they ever fix it.
dont hold your breath.
I welcome this patch but this does just about zero to increase the number of viable builds. if anything it reduces it. You either go beastmaster or bust.
In addition the design philosophy of balancing with a pet will perpetually reduce the effectiveness of the ranger. If by design 20-30% (just guessing) of the class’s intended max DPS is tied to the AI, this produces irrecoverable issues. The AI is easy to handle in PvP, and will pretty much always be subpar in “endgame” PvE (aka. dungeons/fractals).
Pets:
- If we are supposed to always have a pet with us, we need our pets to deal better with AoE. Pets simply die to easily in dungeons or wherever AoE is abundant. This is a massive flaw in the pet mechanism. There are many posts in the forum with suggestions and ideas of how to fix this. Something needs to be done with it! And I am not accepting suggestions from players who say that you can call the pet back. This is not a valid fix. The pet will still die from all the AoE on its way back to ranger anyway. And using a skill slot like Signet of the stone for 6 sec immunity with a cooldown of 120 sec is just ridiculous. A major system flaw can not and should not be compensated with the use of other skills!
This especially.
Because of this rangers are nigh useless in dungeons.
Playing as a Guardian I noticed that when I have a sceptre/focus combo equiped the stats are not contributing to my reported attack value. When I swap between my sceptre/focus and staff I see my Attack value drop by about 100pts even though both weapon sets cumulatively have the same stats.
This happens with transmuted and non-transmuted for what it’s worth.
Not sure if this is only a display bug or if this is having an actual effect in game.
Well that’s the issue.
The ANet devs said they had addressed the issue of bad (i.e. low) drop rates on champs and vets. It seems to have worked on regular champs and vents but not these two.
I think the issue is that these mobs essentially die twice, but what do I know. Would be nice to get that looked at.
It’s possible that “maybe” we werent supposed to get drops from them during the event. But I guess that we should be getting some now. Is anyone getting drops from them?
I get no drops from the big veteran and champion karkas. Is there a bug or is this a constant decision. I “think” the issue is that I get XP when their shell breaks but not when they actually die.
Seriously, I’ve done all the events in the new zone, and spent a fair amount of time there between and have never had any loot from one of the bigger karkas.
I will just chip in with a few comments. I’m certain I’m not the first to make them.
I appreciate the scope and difficulty you aimed for, and I think the reward level was at a good point for the event. The event had highs and lows (reinforcement waves very low), but some interesting elements (steam vents).
That being said you must find a solution for the draw distance of mobs and players in events like this. Too often huge swathes of players would get killed by “invisible” champions.
We need to be able to see stuff around us beyond a 600-900 unit radius consistently. If that aspect of the event were smoother, I suspect a lot more people would enjoy it.
These patch notes are a cruel jape. So glad I jumped ship and made a different level 80 character.
Over the past week about half of the bots I had been keeping track of have become continuously offline (I block before I report so I report more easily and keep tabs). The problem is that I was reporting every day for up to two weeks before I saw any change.