Guild Wars 2

Third post about the same topic. Trash have many HP, 0 strategy and the worst loot in the game, so why kill it?

Is that rhetorical, or do you actually want to know?

A higher standard for YOU maybe, but you fail to realize that some people don’t mind skipping.

If you pressed me to summarize the GW2 dungeon experience in a sentence, it would be a negative and waffling thing that begins with an involuntary click of my tongue and a melodic ‘Well…’.

I don’t particularly care about debating the elements in isolation – it’s the whole package that makes the thing so acridly cheddar. It’s the whole package from role to reward that needs to change, and it honestly doesn’t matter what happens to trash mobs in the process so long as the dungeon experience becomes something to write home about.

It’s hard to see a run nowadays and imagine this is anybody’s idea of an ideal dungeon experience.

Intention is sort of a fluffy topic, though. Do you really care at the end of the day what the intentions of something like defiant was, or do we just want to make suggestions for getting it fixed? Honestly, our efforts are better focused directing the discussion towards what we’d like to see to elevate the dungeon experience to a higher standard, and less playing developer mind reader.

Technically, Attack of Opportunity is this.
If it wasn’t so oddly dissonant with our design, and people actually liked it any.

I feel like we’re making two different points here, Rising.
What is and what we’d advise people to do.

I think Sword is one of, if not the, best way to build your Ranger for direct damage.
But I don’t think I’d advise people to use it’s current iteration either. Because at the end of the day the point of giving advice is that other people are capable of taking it, and I did just go through describing how user unfriendly the weapon is.

Ranger’s highest Direct Damage build comes from a melee weapon and a melee pet, just like everybody else.

The only reason you don’t often see Rangers wielding it is because the auto-attack chain roots you in place. Between trying to survive as a glass cannon that self-roots and keeping up a glass cannon pet that can’t dodge, there’s a very good reason you don’t see this too often. You could probably count on one hand the number of people who can hit the efficiency point of a build with such a ridiculously high skill floor.

We are relics of a bygone era, sad to say. It’s been a long time since reputation mattered enough to cause people try to and be polite.

The skeletal outline for an in-game LFG feature has been datamined in the last patch, according to reddit. So, soonish.

Most players are completely unaware of the meta, much less Rangers.
Especially in this game, since the meta isn’t about ‘completing the dungeon’ it’s about ‘one way to farm gold’. There’s really not much incentive for joe player to get involved in the whole discussion. For better or worse.

I think 30-45 minutes is expected because it’s standardized across the industry for current gen MMORPGs, but not really a commonly accepted measurement of a good or a bad run. Remember, if you have a history with MMORPGs outside the Guildwars franchise it’s entirely possible a Speedrun (especially as it’s performed in this game) can be an entirely new concept to you. Dungeons are usually fixed experiences in other games, because of mechanics like mobs never losing aggro, so there simply isn’t much variance between the time it takes one group or another to complete it. Furthermore the system of value for the entire meta revolves around other accomplishments like Ranks, Rare Armor or Achievement Firsts which may have no relationship or a tangential relationship with dungeon completion speed. Especially when you start to consider the existence of of things like raid timers and multiple-branch dungeon mechanics that effectively make dungeon ‘completion’ last a week or more.

To other demographics of players the time it takes to complete a dungeon is something they seem to feel entirely neutral about, because it’s not usual for that to matter.

It does. An inexperienced group of 5 rangers/conditionnecros won’t be able to pass some dps checks like AC Path 1 burrowevent or pre-patch simin.

My position is that lacking a defined overarching structure this value system is not universal. The counter-argument would be trying to prove that this value system is universal. We can certainly have a difference of opinion related to the ‘Why?’, and while that’s interesting it’s ultimately tangential because it doesn’t prove or disprove universal acceptance. This is about people having various perspectives, not passing judgement on those perspectives.

You know, every-time the whole combo field Spirits idea comes up all I end up thinking about is how super weird it is that there isn’t an Earth Field in this game. I mean, that’s like elemental rock-paper-scissors 101.

@ Nikaido
That’s still operating from the perspective of having a certain sense of success or failure beyond merely completing the dungeon. You’d start to see this whole ‘classes competing for slots’ dialogue on a universal level if choosing classes had an impact on the ability of your group to complete a dungeon. (ex; pre-‘bring the player not the class’ era WoW). But it really doesn’t, so people just aren’t as invested.

@Broadicea
Well, maybe. Endgame PvE lacking a defined overarching performance-based structure (of some kind) could very well be a bad thing. It’s definitely an interesting area of discussion, at any rate.

Let me try this same point from another angle.

The only metric of success and failure represented in the actual game proper is failing or succeeding to complete the dungeon. That’s the only thing that’s actually sitting in the code on somebody’s computer at Arenanet. The additional measures of success or failure you abide by is purely a social construct. It is not something that is actually sitting in the code on somebody’s computer at Arenanet. These are a system of values you and several other people who share your goals have defined amongst yourselves.

So, you’re correct, I am just saying these classes can go through the content. But I’m also saying that’s all it has to be for some people. There just isn’t any sense of success or failure beyond that, or their sense of success or failure is based in an entirely different system that can’t be measured by factors of time and deeps.

I’d almost prefer they would achieve the effect by changing Empathy from an increase in pet stats to a decrease in F-skill casting times.

That’s a balance headache that’s been putting non-BM specs on the losing end of pet survivability in PvE for months, because it’s always felt as though encounters were designed with fully invested pets in mind. It’d be nice if they were able to focus on bringing the survivability of the uninvested pet up to snuff without having to agonize about making the invested pet OP.

Also, a universal damage hit across the board isn’t really all that favorable because it might bring uninvested pets at a level where the effort of manipulating them doesn’t yield much reward. Which is a pretty reasonable concern considering the effort to reward ratio is already pretty daunting.

Basically, that.

Additionally, the endgame in this game is more about the goals you set for yourself, not making progress within a defined overarching structure like a Gear Treadmill or a Ranking system. I think carving out your character’s Aesthetic Identity is a fine goal (even if I have a million little criticisms about how the long-term goals play out on a practical level). But that’s no more objectively sanctified than running dungeons to advance along the skill curve, explore character building options, or just an activity you do on your downtime.

But, this really shouldn’t be the sort of thing that needs to be described in detail. It should be pretty clear from how often we get the ‘skipping’ thread, that players are not seeing eye to eye on a pretty fundamental level. So when I mention that speedrunner values and standards aren’t universally accepted, is that really so surprising?

But you’re proving that point, with speedrunner examples and values.
This simply doesn’t resonate universally.

Trying to argue a class is better at speedrunning ergo people who are not interested in speedrunning should pay it some special mind, is like extolling the virtues of bacon based on it’s superior aerodynamic properties.

It’s not about if it is or isn’t, it’s that we just don’t care. You’re trying to convince somebody with a different value system, that what you’re insisting is true based on what is or isn’t valuable in your system. That line of discussion will never go anywhere. The things that are intensely valuable and important to you, just aren’t for us.

Those sound more like Roles than Tactics.

But I get your point.
My only real beef with trying to create Roles with Environmental Weapons (NULL bomb diffusal) or with Environmental Objects (Detha’s path Spike Trap chain pulling) is that performance is not impacted by character building. It’s an RPG, my character building choices can land somewhere on a sliding scale between ‘good’ and ‘bad’ for any given situation, but they shouldn’t be sidestepped completely and rendered meaningless.

Group coordinated positioning already happens in fights like the Wraithlord or the Gate Controller. Actually, I’m mostly okay with these because they do reflect character building options better than the above does, although they can stand to push it farther.

Ultimately, while these things can certainly make encounters more distinguished, I tend to think the lackluster linearity of combat is a core problem and the above are adding attractive alterations to the surface. Control and Support are whole huge swaths of character building that could be interjecting a great deal of variety and teamplay to fights, but it’s rotting on the vine right now. I’d really rather see than fixed first and foremost.

You know, in most other games people with different goals co-habitate just fine because the dungeon experience is universal and fixed across all runs.

Coming to this game from that really makes all this divisive drama seem astoundingly unnecessary and even a bit silly. Drawing a line down the center of the looking for group pool and proclaiming that both halves stay on their own side isn’t exactly ideal conflict resolution.

The skipping part does get mentioned alot.
That’s expected, it’s a controversial topic. I know it’s annoying to keep hearing about it, but that’s just what controversial topics tend to do.

But OP did say something else that really doesn’t get alot of play.
Which is taking forever and a dog’s year to daintily plink away at bosses from afar as opposed to wiping the floor with them up close and personal. I have to agree, and I have a tendency to encourage my groups to try it the quicker way first. It hasn’t come back to haunt me yet.

If I can do 3 paths of a dungeon in the time it takes for a random pug that doesn’t discriminate against classes/builds to do one path, why should I opt for doing only one path ?

You shouldn’t.
You’re free to set your own goals and work towards them with like-minded people.

But that doesn’t matter to the rest of us.
Not everyone is interested in the growing their character aesthetically or they may continue to run dungeons long past the point of solidifying their visual identity. For some people running a dungeon is a social experience, for others it’s how they climb the skill curve or explore the character building options. Endgame is open-ended in this game, and we’re free to set our goals as we please. With different goals come different value systems, and values dissonance when you try to hold the behavior from one system to the standards of another.

For example;
I’d never even think to ask myself that question in the first place. It’s got nothing to do with my goal, so it simply doesn’t cross my mind. Likewise, I’m sure you must find all those people who start threads talking about preferring to fight trash mobs utterly baffling. That’s got nothing to do with your goal, so it’s not something you’re interested in.

There is no combination of anything that can’t complete a dungeon.
Dungeons just aren’t that hard at the end of the day.

Where you see class favoritism is specifically in the subset of people who are farming CoF path 1 for hours on end for a legendary. That’s objectively a pretty niche segment of the game’s population, but there’s two factors that tend to make their value system appear more prolific than their numbers would suggest. One being the simple fact that while they’re a small segment of people they make up a larger percentage of the actual runs; because the nature of what they’re doing requires repetition. The other being an overwhelming representation on forums because demographically the populations seem to intersect.

I think really think you should just go play the game with whatever class you want instead of worrying about what forum people will say.

You can certainly ask this question if you want, but the forum just isn’t a representative slice of the general population. If you really find the meta’s whole silly flavor of the month business so bothersome, just avoid CoF Path 1. For the most part that whole scene is concentrated on that path, and you can have a grand old time running dungeons anywhere else.

The glorious part about making Control and Support roles more relevant, is that they would have value on their own merits apart from how they can be used to burst something down. It’s no surprise that you’d find the control (and support) capabilities of classes that have ended up being very good at the fulfilling the current meta’s "burst everything down with direct damage’ strategy, would in fact still be very good at fullfilling that strategy.

The endgoal here is not to change that, but to introduce fights that force completely different overarching meta-strategies which will give other classes chances to shine in even quantities. Fights where rounding things up, locking them in place, and bursting them down is The Wrong Thing To Do.

That just sounds like more compelling evidence for why Defiant really isn’t working as a core concept and further establish how much help Control roles need.

At the end of the day, if the vast majority of the player base is ignoring the role to the extent an entire third of the game’s character building is rotting on the vine, it’s time to roll back the ole sleeves and go back to the drawing board.

Less pointing fingers, more elbow grease.

bloomhunger

Now there’s a Spirit herder.
Nuts to this point blank circle AOE business, I want laser beams all the way.

I always appreciate the positivity, as this forum has a bad case of buying into it’s own negative PR.

But, trying to use a Spirit solely for the passives by sticking them in hidey holes is only using half a Utility. How can half the effect of a Utility ever hope to compete with a Utility that gets to use it’s whole effect?

You’re talking about something different there, I think.

I’m talking about making a gold-based goal attainable by gold-less methods so imbalances between incurring risk and obtaining gold can still exist but are less important to one of the endgame experiences. You’re talking about lacking an endgame goal entirely.

Someone remember the names of those professions?

Marksman + bits of Warden and Beastmaster plucked from the cutting room floor, if you go by what the Wiki says their ‘Making Of’ book states.

I don’t think you’re missing anything OP. There’s quite a few traits flying around that are headscratchers, and I tend to think this is one of them.

I think I’d prefer to downplay the current ‘Gold as endgame’ ideal by introducing other sources of obtaining Precursors, than try to pitt the ability of the developer to balance risk versus reward for all possible sources of gold in the game vs. the collective intelligence and laziness of the player-base.

What’s the status on that open world scavenger hunt?
Would be nice if all those CoF path 1 fanatics were out and about populating zones instead of warping the class balance for dungeonplay beyond all recognition.

Thread?
Are we actually measuring human performance in seconds?
You’ve got to be kidding me with that.

There is no way you’re getting five actual human beings to work with the kind of clockwork precision that they finish each run at the very same second over a two hour period, much less any random collection of five actual human beings that don’t even know eachother.

Let’s back to the land of reality, where people take bathroom breaks, aren’t as good as they think they are, and occasionally like to blink.

Ehh, let’s not go crazy here.
While we can talk about how valuable certain statistics are relative to eachother, at the end of the day this is not a gear-check game. Certain statistics are better choices than others for a number of wonky content reasons and a couple character building kinks, but they’ll never truly be important.

What the heck are Thieves doing lately that have caused so many different ‘anti-stealth’ suggestions to appear recently?

It’s an extension of a larger problem.

Currently dungeons lean in favor of direct damage, and that ends up boiling down a fairly diverse array of character building options into a surprisingly shallow handful.

And that’s a problem, not just because RPGs are about character building and anything that limits that is generally speaking pretty bad news. But in that there just isn’t enough depth of execution (manual aiming, skillshots, etc) in the combat system to support playing a direct damage build 24/7. This game seems more built around letting you choose various ways to play with different small and medium-sized skill curves to explore, instead of limiting the ways you can play and giving you one skillcurve that’s really big. So if we limit our choices to just one way to play, it isn’t long before we master things and start getting bored.

I can sympathize that the routes for gaining a legendary are few in number, and the only one that gives you any feeling of steady progress is a gold-based grind. But this can’t stay this way.

I think this is a really reasonable suggestion that I’d like to see as well.

You’d think this whole thing would go down like;

Support Ranger + Glass Cannon Pet = Glass Cannon on other classes
Glass Cannon Ranger + Support Pet = Glass Cannon on other classes

But it’s more like;

Glass Cannon Ranger + Glass Cannon Pet = Glass Cannon on other classes

So if you’re into direct damage, you don’t get to choose what your ratio is.
And if playing glass cannon for two wasn’t hard enough, one of those cannons self-immobilizes every x seconds and the other one is incapable of dodging. Is it really any surprise glass cannon rangers react they way they do, when that’s the kind of thing they have to put up with?

Hunt often but with specific pets,
Stone sometimes,
Wild never.

It’s an approximation. It kind of has to be, because different build and pet choices lead to different ratios.

That is the question.

Generally speaking, I don’t think you’re going to experience a drastic difference in pet survivability with a Ranged pet versus a Melee pet.

In an odd sort of way Melee or Ranged Pet vs. Cleave kind of balances itself out in the end. A Ranged pet naturally gets surprisingly close to the action compared to it’s potential range limit, and unlike the recent addition to melee pets they don’t have any AI to tell them to get out of harm’s way when being cleaved.

Melee or Ranged Pet vs. AOE still favors Ranged a bit, but not as much as you might think. AOE in this game operates on bullet hell shooter logic; it’s not so much about dodging a small dangerous area in a wide expanse of safe area, it’s a wide expanse of dangerous area and you have to find the small bit of safe area or dodge it entirely. So a ranged pet isn’t much safer from AOE, because nowhere is safe from AOE.

So I kind of think you should choose your pets to supplement your build or to suit the specific fight, and don’t take ranged or melee on the basis of general pet survivability.

I think you’re alright when it comes to Stacking, though. Part of the logic of Stacking is that somebody is always nearby to resurrect you. So while it’s standard assumption in dungeons that your own survivability is on your shoulders, that tactic in particular doesn’t require much of it.

I am happy sPvP/tPvP Rangers are having such good experiences. This is a good thing for our class. But in your enthusiasm to reinforce Ranger’s good position in format, you might be overreaching a bit and glossing over some valid concerns in another.

I kind of agree with the overall sentiment of some posts here.

There really isn’t one broad sweeping overarching conclusion you can draw about the state of a class, you really need to draw at least four separate conclusions examining the class in the four major gamemodes independently.

The axe offhand would be useful if it worked like the chieftain (that brings the enemy to you on the way back)

God I like that idea.

Ranger is among the bottom of the barrel in dungeonplay for a number of reasons.

Largely because dungeons lean toward direct damage and other classes do (and should) specialize in that better. Additionally, Ranger’s damage specs are mucked up with fragile pets creating a unfortunately high skill floor, our highest damaging weapon being amazingly user unfriendly, and Unshakeable reducing the impact of our Power traitline’s entire theme by 50%.

….but, the barrel’s basically ankle deep in this game so being at the bottom of it just doesn’t amount to much at the end of the day.

A Tier-based Meta is an exhausting mentality to buy into.
It’s all about putting greater than or lesser than signs between things, but it rarely asks itself how much of an impact it all has. So professions are put into this endless rotation of tops and bottoms that breeds constant dissatisfaction and hysteria for half the classes in the game, no matter how good or bad things actually are. The sort of people who take classism that seriously, are the sort of people who’ve bought themselves lifetime passes to that pointless emotional rollercoaster, and as far I’m concerned they go have fun with it.

Far, far, away from me.

I tend to think it’s the HP mechanic that’s killing the range, not that the range itself that is lacking. I’m pretty sure 900 is the biggest range AOE buffs have.

I don’t think responding to that last one is going to lead to a very productive line of discussion. Now we’re getting levels of coordination and it’s relationship to the theoretical impact of small ground targeted area of effects, there’s no way that’s going to end pretty. But, that’s fine. Because, ultimately, that’s not quite where I was I was going with that train of thought anyway.

The value of contributing swiftness being lesser once you’ve hit permanent up-time is one thing, what I’m calling attention to is the way it seemed as though the value of contributing swiftness was considered lesser simply by virtue of it being applied by a Ranger. It’s like Ranger swiftness options are terrible not because of any particular limitation but just because we should be permanently operating on the assumption Joe Groupmate already called dibbs.

Don’t get me wrong. I see the benefits of spirits. I just feel they they don’t have as good of a risk/reward in their use as other utilities … both those of Rangers and of other classes.

Indeed, and I agree.
I’m pretty much saying that last line myself in my previous post on the first page.

And then other classes will probably provide enough swiftness to make the Spirit completely useless to begin with.

I’m sure you didn’t mean that how I’m taking it.
But that sounds like…just because you’re a Ranger any contribution you may have to offer gets counted ‘last’. I mean, I get where the general note of caution is coming from; the Bleed Cap. But buffs don’t have any amplification stats that can cause inferior instances to block superior instances from having an effect, all instances of swiftness are indistinguishable from eachother.

Storm Spirit’s buff has decent uptime, but honestly I think the real satisfaction from the thing comes when you get warhorn in on action.

All by itself the swiftness is in fits and spurts, and it dies off after combat which is partially when you’d want swiftness. But with warhorn providing a swiftness that closes the gap between applications the buff starts to build as it stacks duration. You not only get smooth perma swiftness in combat, but you can end it with a minute plus still on the timer whose rate of decay can be made slower still with additional warhorn applications outside of combat.

Storm Spirit gets alot of flak for it’s passive, but honestly I think it’s up there with Frost Spirit on how well it works. It’s rewarding to pull off in a way that’s highly visual to not only yourself but others. It synergizes well with other obvious support-related build options. It has clear feedback when you’re doing it right and clear feedback when you’re doing it wrong. It performs well in fights that require kiting movement, and of course that isn’t every fight but where it is relevant it has a solid handle.

Then you get Storm Spirit popped in an instant when you inched it five centimeters closer to the epic AOE beatdown the boss is giving, because you want to be sure you’re hitting everybody or you’d like to make some use of the world’s most vanilla active effect ever. And suddenly you want beat your head against a wall all over again.

Hmmm.

A pet can’t just be 30% of your damage that can die, it needs to bring something to the table that’s beneficial or it’s just not a proper profession mechanic. Pets being the only weapon in the game that can hit something above 1500 units away is one of the few pros we have to counterbalance a long agonizing list of cons. If we want to take that off the table, I think it’s a fair discussion point; but there’s got to be an equivalent exchange.

Pet mechanics just don’t have very many functions they can serve in PvP games. It’s prettymuch either Chasing or Area Denial. So which is a more frightening prospect; a pet that can come after you from 2,800 units away and chase you up to 5,000 units but can be outrun, or a pet restricted to 1,200 units that will hit you absolutely without question?

Actually, if you want a replacement for BM passive bonuses, why not lower the recharge and let your old pet persist for x amount of time after the swap? Then you have two pets mauling things for a few seconds. Actually, that two pet thing would probably fit better as a grandmaster trait. But, I think 5 out of the 8 classes have a recharge built into the mechanic specific trait line. Warrior gets bonus burst damage, and necro gets the increased life force.

That’s probably too overpowered for a stat, but I’m still in love with the idea of both pets out at once and have been since the days of beta and Alpha Strike. I think if that would go anywhere, it probably would be an Elite.

I think you’re onto something there, using other classes as a guideline.

Shredding Recharge Rate reduces the cooldown on Shatters up to 30%,
Burst Damage increases the damage on Burst skill up to 3%,
Virtue Recharge Rate reduces the cooldown on Virtues up to 30%,
Toolbelt Recharge Rate reduces the cooldown on Toolbelt up to 30%,
Steal Recharge Rate reduces the cooldown of Steal up to 30%,
Life Force Pool increases the size of the Lifeforce pool up to 30%,
Attunement Recharge Rate reduces the cooldown of Attunement up to 60%,

So if we wanted to follow the theme; Pet Attribute Bonus should be reducing Swap and F2 cooldowns up to 30%. Pretty kitten close to Durzlla’s suggestion. That would certainly be valuable, but not ‘everybody needs 30 points in BM for the profession mechanic to work in higher end content’ valuable. Just need to create replacements for Commanding Voice and Loud Whistle.

I’ll agree with that plan of action.

I don’t think Empathy should be our profession mechanic based stat. It’s much too good. They can’t possibly balance without taking it into consideration…which is just a nice way of saying balancing takes it for granted. (or at least, it feels that way)

It’s not like our traits couldn’t use a massive overhaul anyway. May as well pull that weed while they’re in there.

But what would you replace it with?

Spirits largely have Passives that are Support and the Actives that are Control.

So inevitably you make comparisons with Banners and find the Support lacking, or our other Control-base utilities and find the Control lacking. It’s easy to not think that much of something, when you’re only thinking of half of it! And normally I’d just kind of chock that up to people being people, comparing apples and oranges in the vacuum of forum theory….

But the way the HP mechanic is working out in practice, these are fair comparisons.
You use Spirits for one effect or the other, not both at the same time. If you want to maximize the Support, you take Spiritual Knowledge and stuff it away in some hidey hole and limit the Control applications. If you want to use it as Control you take Nature’s Vengeance and kamikaze the poor things before their Support has much of a chance to do any good.

So at the end of the day; using Spirits is a choice between having a pale imitation of your utilities or having a pale imitation of other people’s utilities.

And that sucks.

I’m not sure who told you that about Molten Facility. But, moving on.

There’s nothing wrong with pet survivability when you spec for it.
That’s the whole problem. We’ll never conquer our issues with build diversity if there are unspoken build requirements to keep our profession mechanic from shattering into pieces all over the dungeon floor.

Guildwars 2 is a little…unusual.
In that people stress out over doing the easiest content the fastest for money, instead of stressing out over completing the hardest content for prestige. The unfortunate downside of this is that newbie dungeoneers and old jaded grizzled vets are rubbing elbows and the new player experience is…not the most flattering representation of the dungeon scene.