Guild Wars 2

Reyck.4508:

WatchTheShow.7203:

I was there when the dev. officially responded to this. He said the names were stored server side and it would take almost an entire server on its own to store every single characters’ pets’ names. They didn’t comment any further on it after that.

Wow, that’s a load of bull. I’m sorry, but storing millions of names doesn’t take a full server. Yes, it takes up some storage. This is from a quick search:
http://www.wisegeek.org/how-much-text-is-in-a-kilobyte-or-megabyte.htm

One gig is 500,000 pages of text.

I’d love to actually read that quote from a developer just to be able to soundly refute such nonsense. Names of the pets vanishing is an oversight by the developers. It is FAR from an impossible fix. Yes, it takes data. Lets say that they expand GW2 to allow for 100 pets per person. Lets say that they plan for 10 million players. That would eat up around 25-30 gigs in a database depending on the overhead of the database. The actual name data (with 20 characters) should be 20gigs.

If you expand and allow for a full character set though, that could be doubled. But lets go crazy. Lets say that 100gigs on the server for potential pet names.

However the best suggestion I’ve seen is store the pet names on the player’s computer. Do a check for formatting each time they are uploaded to the game again (to ensure compliance) and let the players store all that. And even let them change the pet names offline. Yes, when a pet is swapped, the name will have to be approved each time, but that could be spun off on a low priority process and the name could just take a little while to update. Since you can’t change pets in combat anyway, it isn’t a huge thing if it takes a couple seconds for the new name to register when choosing a new pet.

That isn’t what the devs said exactly, he was paraphrasing. The devs said it would take an entire server for the amount of functions it would take for all of the ranger players calling their pets with unique pet names and storing them.

I wish I had the exact quote, but the thread is buried deep in the ranger forums at this point. Paraphrasing, the devs said that you would have to communicate with the server and have the server communicate back with you, and this would have to happen almost instantly on a players screen for the player to happen, and that then you have to think of every single ranger player trying to communicate with the server at once and execute the function the gets the name at once.

In short, it has next to nothing to do with actual storage space.

Well I thought I had typed up a reply to bump this after the CDI, but I got some sort of crazy error, so here it goes again:

With the Ranger CDI coming to a close, I feel that quite a few of the issues we discussed in this topic previously were addressed or acknowledged in some way through the CDI. Even though I believe that the CDI could have been handled differently so that more in-depth discussion would have occurred, or even some philosophical discussions regarding the future direction of the ranger class, I think that the CDI was an overall positive because, for the most part, rangers and players are now on the same page about issues.

However, I would like to know what everybody else thinks. Was there anything in this topic that wasn’t addressed in the CDI at all, even in a general manner?

I think that the F2 responsiveness and additional source of condition removal are big stepping stones for the class in the upcoming patch, but that ranger power builds will still lack boon removal on their power builds to make them the best in slot option compared to classes like mesmers (shatter) or thieves (sleight of hand) who can both perform very similar roles to how the ranger power build would perform as a team role, but rangers don’t bring the same type of tools that provide that level of support as a team role, which overall makes the power builds less desirable than other classes on a team comp. That is mainly a PvP perspective however, so there is another side to it, I’m sure.

So, what do you guys think?

Terravos.4059:

I think a lot of people overestimate Survival of the Fittest, and think you’ll still be able to get by without Empathetic Bond

Unless you’re planning on running Anti Condition runes, in which case you’re going to be running Signet of the Hunt most likely, you’re really going to only have room for Lightning Reflex (Since SoR will take your last spot) ..which means you’re trading 3 conditions removed every 10 seconds for 2 conditions removed every 32 seconds.

You can never have to much condition removal in this game.

True. But I was thinking more along the lines of Muddy Terrain, Lightning Reflexes, and either Signet of the Hunt with the new iteration of the cleansing sigil on the weapon, or a Movement Speed increasing Rune with SoR. Combine that with Healing Spring and rangers still have some of the highest access to condition removal in the game.

I’m not saying I disagree with you though, Empathic Bond is still a better cleanse, plain and simple. But the draw to Survival of the Fittest shouldn’t just be the cleansing, unless the fury duration isn’t good, which would immediately change the entire value of the trait imo and make it not nearly as desirable.

The real trick is going to be combining Empathic Bond with Survival of the Fittest, which I’m not sure whether or not it has been mentioned in this thread or not. A 10/0/30/30/0 build should be just about the most difficult build to kill with conditions outside of an Engineer who knows how to abuse Automated Response.

What’s nice about Survival of the Fittest, for power builds, is the fact that they are placed in the Nature Magic line.

I already use Survival skills on my power builds personally, because I don’t like investing everything into signets as that particular build feels much too “one trick pony” or “burn my cooldowns and hope what I’m attacking dies” to me.

So now, instead of power builds going for Empathic Bond if they want cleansing outside of SoR (I would think you would), you can actually spec for a traitline the benefits both the damage and survival of a power build, instead of having 300 points of condition damage that rarely ever gets utilized, if at all, in a power build.

But with Nature Magic, you can go with Strength of Spirit, 2-Handed Training if you use Greatsword, or Nature’s Protection to help defend against your typical instagib builds like thieves run, or even Nature’s Bounty for some more regen from Healing Spring if that’s what you’re running. Not to mention that the fury gained from Survival of the Fittest could potentially be a decent duration, coupled with other boons we can gain, and Bountiful Hunter, there is the potential to have a near constant increase of 5% damage output, especially with the new runesets that could allow us to maintain fury, or some other boon.

With the traits mentioned, that’s a 5% increase, which can be combined with 5% on the greatsword, and 5% on Eagle Eye if you build into Marksmanship and take it, plus vulnerability, not to mention 3k more health and 30% more boon duration.

Sure, Signets are going to definitely remain the burst option, but a more sustained damage build like this definitely has it’s place, and may offer our power builds a much, much better skirmishing capability than what they currently have.

Also, the ability to switch builds on the fly means you can keep your power build gear, but switch between Signets and Survival on the fly based on the role you are about to enter, like if you are in WvW and were roaming or being part of a small group but decide to jump into a zerg or defend a tower really quickly.

sigh

I think that some people are just looking at the new traits (not just rangers, the whole community) from the wrong perspective. The traits weren’t introduced to replace current build options or be better than the core traits. They were introduced to make certain combinations or builds that didn’t previously exist more viable.

We have a choice of condition removal now, and it’s actually a pretty decent option, as survival skills lend themselves to most builds in some way. We have a choice of grandmaster traits in Marksmanship now that isn’t just “Signets or make Opening Strikes worthwhile.” Heck, even the Beastmaster “bunker” might make a comeback, but instead of having scary damage output, they could be one of the most annoying builds to try to kill in the game.

Truthfully though, getting worked up or arguing about anything isn’t worthwhile until we know a few more things:

• Seeing firsthand the effect the Read the Wind has on arrows. Not only will they miss less due to range complications, but there is a chance that with the movement speed increase, the arrows become very difficult to react to because of the reduced flight time. Or, it could have a very minimal effect outside of long ranges and not be as worth taking as more damage increasing combinations.

• Witnessing first hand how valuable Poison Master could potentially be. Sure, we can do the math to see how much damage gets added to the poison, but what that doesn’t necessarily account for is the effect it lets us have against all of the passive healing in the game, since increased DoT obviously helps surpress Healing over Time on top of the 33% decrease in healing effectiveness. Does it help against classes that can regen stack or have passive healing by making our condition builds potent enough that fights no longer end up being endless tanky vs tanky fights. Or is it truly weak and not worthwhile to slot?

• Survival of the Fittest. Short and sweet on this one, what is the duration of the fury provided by the skill.

• Invigorating Bond. How much does it heal for, and are F2s really completely on demand now?

Sube Dai.8496:

jcbroe.4329:

HOWEVER, survival of the fittest is great, and creates a lot of build diversity within builds that aren’t spirits/traps/active spirits, like power builds that previously took Empathic Bond for cleansing, and of course our Beastmaster based builds that now don’t have to kill that pet they are empowering with Empathic Bond.

Not sure about that. It looks hard to take enough damage or enough toughness if you go 30 points into NM.

Honestly, it will be largely dependent on the fury duration, but you’re right, it isn’t a certainty for sure. However, the gearing options do exist where, if the build can obtain enough fury uptime, that some precision can be sacrificed to stack more power/crit damage, while still maintaining enough armor/health.

I’ll be playing with numbers A LOT when the patch drops to see if I can’t theorycraft up a working build around the idea though. Especially if there’s some particularly nice runes that add some synergy to a build like this.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Read the Wind is going to be quite decent when combined with Eagle Eye. Min/Max’ers are going to complain about not being able to maximize damage and long distance accuracy, but it allows longbow users to obtain a niche role not currently present in the game, especially at the 1500 range distance.

Eh, let’s not go crazy here.
1200 versus 1500 is, in all honesty, a pretty trivial distance. It’s the distance of a single dodge, to put things into perspective. It’s nice and all, but I can’t imagine what role actually exists in that small space. Is there a wall somewhere you can stand on top of where it’s possible to hit something vitally important 1400 units away?

From what I recall, isn’t the “actual” range with Eagle Eye somewhere around 1800 range? I’m talking the distance that you can still hit a target out to the point where you finally get an “out of range” indicator, on a level surface.

The 300 range isn’t that valuable, you’re right. But the 600 potential range beyond every other classes reach except the mesmer greatsword autoattack seems like a pretty decent advantage to me.

I would love to see an in-depth thread of somebody actually evaluating Eagle Eye though. I mean, with all of the number crunchers that have come through our community, I’m surprised we never took the time to establish some solid figures on the actual range provided by Eagle Eye and then weighed that range plus the 5% damage against Spotter and Piercing Arrows to determine its overall “slot” value.

Sadly, that’s a discussion for a different thread entirely.

AEFA.9035:

jcbroe.4329:

Kolisch.4691:

Why is it that when I read the new traits and changes for other classes I go “drooolll…” and when I look at Rangers, I go “it’s OK, we’re used to this” (I has a sad.jpg)

I don’t think that’s entirely true, but that’s just my opinion. Like for instance, I’d say that nothing that the elementalist is receiving really looks all that interesting or even build changing, unless I guess you really want to try that hard to force yourself into a healing role that the game just isn’t designed to handle in the same manner that holy trinity games work.

Outside of that, Engineers only get Bunker Down really, and Guardians would be giving up more than they gain for every one of their new traits outside of Amplified Wrath. Thieves don’t really gain anything that’s worth giving up something they already have either.

The three classes that do stand to gain a slew of useful traits are Warriors with Burst Precision, Dual Wield Agility, and Phalanx Strength, Necros with Parasitic Contagion, Path of Corruption, Unholy Santuary, AND Unholy Martyr, and of course Mesmers with Power Block, Triumphant Distortion (only in PvE though), and Bountiful Disillusionment.

However, Rangers get some neat tricks too. Read the Wind is going to be quite decent when combined with Eagle Eye. Min/Max’ers are going to complain about not being able to maximize damage and long distance accuracy, but it allows longbow users to obtain a niche role not currently present in the game, especially at the 1500 range distance.

Poison Master looks interesting, but competes with Empathic Bond, which means you lose condition removal in any build not going for the new Survival of the Fittest, so it’s hard to tell how valuable the trait will be versus it’s tradeoffs.

HOWEVER, survival of the fittest is great, and creates a lot of build diversity within builds that aren’t spirits/traps/active spirits, like power builds that previously took Empathic Bond for cleansing, and of course our Beastmaster based builds that now don’t have to kill that pet they are empowering with Empathic Bond.

Also, depending on how strong the heal is, Invigorating Bond has the potential to be strong as well, and could possibly be used to create pretty much unkillable builds, if the heal is strong enough.

Shouts on the ranger will never be used again now, but hey, that’s a design issue.

good observation. in my opinion, like you said as well, a lot of ranger players are convinced that rangers got it rough again this patch with our new GM. In reality is, out of the 5 new traits that we got, in my opinion only 2 are not worth taking. Marksmanship: Read the Wind and Skirmishing: Strider’s Defense. Like you mentioned as well, I can tell you play or are familiar with other classes and how they are built.

Thief, Guardian, Engineer, and Warrior’s new traits wouldn’t be worth taking with the current meta right now in my opinion, cause there are so much better traits right now that they could take that would be more effective than what is being given. Besides Warrior’s Phalanx Strength which is REALLY good specially in WVW and Thieves Bewildering Ambush for condition build roamers.

Like you said as well, other professions like Mesmer… OOOHHHH… can’t wait for a good Mesmer to see that Power Block trait being put to use! are something to look out for. (But im glad GW2 Mesmer’s are turning into GW1 Mesmer)

MAN I miss interrupt builds lol. I’m sad to see that I will probably never get to play an interrupt ranger in Guild Wars 2 and feel that same sense of excitement and involvement as landing Distracting Shot on a Word of Healing, but I’m super excited that Mesmers are on their way to being able to perform like a Guild Wars 1 Domination mesmer (pBlock being my favorite mesmer build ever).

But yeah, I can definitely see the dispute over how useful Read the Wind is going to be lol. I mean, for me personally, I’ve always mixed my longbow build with survival skills, so the reality is that running a 30/0/10/30/0 build already looks appetizing to me, and the tradeoff from not going for signets or for piercing arrows/spotter and eagle eye is sure to be present in certain situations.

Honestly, I need to see it in action to see how avoidable our arrows end up being before I can make an honestly judgement call. I’m assuming there is going to be a certain distance that gets created by Read the Wind where the arrows move so quickly that they are near impossible to react to and dodge, and I want to see how far out the “difficult to dodge/avoid” range gets extended by the range before I make my own, personal final judgement call. If that makes sense.

Awesome to see some GW1 vets are still around though! and yeah, I have leveled and geared out every class except an elementalist at this point lol.

If I had to take a guess, it’s because pets aren’t persistent objects. What I mean is that every pet swap seems to create a new pet object. Those pet names aren’t getting put directly into the code for the pet object, meaning that when it would go to use a player created pet name, it would have to have a function the retrieves that petname from elsewhere and then apply it to that new pet object, every time a pet object is created.

I mean, at the end of the day, that’s a lot to be asking for just to be able to do something that is purely cosmetic.

Why Guild Wars 1 could store pet names? Probably because only one pet object was created per instance (per player using a pet, obviously), and the game was instanced, and coded differently than Guild Wars 2 really. Even if the names were stored server side in Guild Wars 1, it would take a lot less processing to only have to have the pet object call and get a player created name once per instance than in a persistent world where the pets can be swapped between 2 “active” pets and have the active species changed whenever you feel like it out of battle.

Obviously that’s all just speculation and assumptions. It’s my theory though.

Kolisch.4691:

Why is it that when I read the new traits and changes for other classes I go “drooolll…” and when I look at Rangers, I go “it’s OK, we’re used to this” (I has a sad.jpg)

I don’t think that’s entirely true, but that’s just my opinion. Like for instance, I’d say that nothing that the elementalist is receiving really looks all that interesting or even build changing, unless I guess you really want to try that hard to force yourself into a healing role that the game just isn’t designed to handle in the same manner that holy trinity games work.

Outside of that, Engineers only get Bunker Down really, and Guardians would be giving up more than they gain for every one of their new traits outside of Amplified Wrath. Thieves don’t really gain anything that’s worth giving up something they already have either.

The three classes that do stand to gain a slew of useful traits are Warriors with Burst Precision, Dual Wield Agility, and Phalanx Strength, Necros with Parasitic Contagion, Path of Corruption, Unholy Santuary, AND Unholy Martyr, and of course Mesmers with Power Block, Triumphant Distortion (only in PvE though), and Bountiful Disillusionment.

However, Rangers get some neat tricks too. Read the Wind is going to be quite decent when combined with Eagle Eye. Min/Max’ers are going to complain about not being able to maximize damage and long distance accuracy, but it allows longbow users to obtain a niche role not currently present in the game, especially at the 1500 range distance.

Poison Master looks interesting, but competes with Empathic Bond, which means you lose condition removal in any build not going for the new Survival of the Fittest, so it’s hard to tell how valuable the trait will be versus it’s tradeoffs.

HOWEVER, survival of the fittest is great, and creates a lot of build diversity within builds that aren’t spirits/traps/active spirits, like power builds that previously took Empathic Bond for cleansing, and of course our Beastmaster based builds that now don’t have to kill that pet they are empowering with Empathic Bond.

Also, depending on how strong the heal is, Invigorating Bond has the potential to be strong as well, and could possibly be used to create pretty much unkillable builds, if the heal is strong enough.

Shouts on the ranger will never be used again now, but hey, that’s a design issue.

I would say a 30/0/10/30/0 would synergize fairly well, for a longbow build, but the longbow is still, well, the longbow, so its about knowing your role at that point and making a weapon with mediocre functionality less mediocre.

Really the framework is x/x/10/30/x I’d say. If the beastmaster trait is a decent heal and the pets are actually reliable, it might prove to be a very decent survival/support based build, though ultimately x/x/30/30/x is going to be the best anti-condi build available.

Still, PvP has taken a shift away from lots of condi heavy builds, so on that front, only one or the other may be needed, so right now its a wait and see type of thing for me personally, although I wish I could add more to the theorycrafting

Nineaxis.1826:

jcbroe.4329:

So go hotjoin and level up?

Yes, experienced players don’t want to Solo Que with or Team Que with players they feel have less experience than them. It’s a competitive atmosphere and people queuing expect everybody to carry their weight, it shouldn’t be considered an atmosphere for entirely new players.

So then it comes down to hotjoins, and hotjoins are just a mishmash of experience levels and attitudes which would ultimately get described as a pub (public match, pubstomping, etc, you know), and that is the place for new players to gain some experience and have a place to gain the resources to unlock new things.

There shouldn’t be any hate, but there does need to be barriers of entry that distinguish the different tiers of competition within the game.

This can, and should, be handled by the matchmaking system for arena queues. The game should recognize that new players are of lower skill, their base ELO/MMR should reflect that, and they should not be getting put in matches with high skill players. As they improve, so should their ELO/MRR, and they should be placed in a higher skill tier naturally.

Artificially limiting skills and traits available to players in unnecessary and detrimental to what PvP should be. New players should be encouraged to queue. New players should be encouraged to read guides about their profession, its skills, and its role in the game. New players should be given everything upfront, told to experiment, and matchmaking should sort them appropriately.

Progression should be about skill. In low level matches, they can learn their skills. In mid-level matches, they can refine their game senses and teamplay. They should not reach high-level matches unless their skill reflects that that is the level at which they should be playing. But at no point should the game say “no, you can not play this. You are not allowed to use this. You need to do this number of things just to obtain full functionality for your chosen profession”.

Optimally, we would get ranked solo, ranked team, and unranked queues, with a rank requirement before you can join either of the ranked queues. This is a clean solution: a new player is not limited from playing whatever they want. They can participate in arena matchmaking. Completely new players will be separated from those competing for leaderboard positions until they have a decent amount of experience.

This is how real, competitive, successful pvp games such as Dota 2 handle it. They don’t prohibit access to gameplay, just to ranked queues. No skills or traits locked away. No treating PvP as if it requires PvE progression. You learn the game, you gain skill, you move up based on skill. Purely based on skill.

As it should be.

I completely agree with you, but it isn’t as though we can change the decision they are going to implement. I’m not arguing that ANets way of doing it (essentially using a Call of Duty model, or something similar) is the best way, but I am saying that it is an attempt and that I understand the drive to do so.

Ultimately, it will only truly effect players entirely new to the game, and I do not envy them, but making them experience the game a little before they have access to everything is definitely one way to handle the situation, and could just be serving as framework to build upon in the future.

So yes, I agree that there are better ways to handle creating a competitive community. I just don’t think people understand how truly little this is going to effect players who have already played the game for a decent amount of time.

I just want to leave this here in case people are unaware of how exactly the system to work. Not an accusation or anything, just an information post:

Roy Cronacher.1576:

Donari.5237:

I feel quite positive about the changes, albeit with some reservations about the delay in getting to the traits. I’m at 12 80’s now, and nearly 40 on my 3rd Mesmer, because I always want to have someone I’m leveling in order to get that feeling of progress. So far I’ve managed different weapon/trait builds for each one … anyway! Question: You didn’t say pre-existing 80’s get all traits unlocked, you said pre-existing characters. So my new Mesmer, assuming he doesn’t hit 80 by Apr 15, does he get all traits, or just some? How does this work for characters created before Apr 15 but not yet 80 as of the patch?

Any character that was created before the feature pack build will be grandfathered into the system; meaning that they will have traits 1 through 12 of each line unlocked. The new 13 traits will need to be unlocked by everyone. Any character created after the build will be required to unlock all of their traits via content or purchasing trait guides.

Everyone in PvP will have access to traits 1 through 12, even on new characters. New traits will be initially locked in PvP and require an unlock similar to when we added the new healing skills. Once a trait is unlocked it is unlocked for all game modes. Hope that clears it up a bit.

somsom.5201:

jcbroe.4329:

So let me get this straight.

Players who have been playing the game and winning gold from PvP should have the resources to be able to purchase any new traits and the intellect and experience to know whether or not any build they would want to play will even need the trait.

New players will log in, see that there is some sort of progression to be able to use everything, and psychologically be encouraged to play a few hotjoins to earn the resources to unlock the traits and experiment with them so that instead of logging in, seeing everything unlocked and ready to go, and then immediately queuing into Solo Que or even Team Que, they are encouraged to and feel as though they need to play a few games to unlock everything they are going to want to use, while gaining more experience in the process, and therefore aren’t queuing into a game and potentially hindering a more competitive game mode.

It seems like this should be everything that the competitive community has been asking for, discouraging new players from “ruining” more competitive game modes through some sort of need to make it through an introductory phase of PvP, while players who currently have experience should have all the resources they need to continue to play the game completely unhindered.

It’s the same model that many video games that are successful have implemented and the outrage against it seems completely unjustified. Yes, sometimes companies have to change their business models, and if that’s what’s bugging you, then tough, but it’s something that needs to happen sometimes in order for a company to be more successful.

If anything, this will make it WORSE, as new players won’t have access to those traits, which further puts them into a position of lower standing/obvious “new player”-ness. You’d think ANet would want to DECREASE the hateorade around here, but nope, they go and make it even worse.

So go hotjoin and level up?

Yes, experienced players don’t want to Solo Que with or Team Que with players they feel have less experience than them. It’s a competitive atmosphere and people queuing expect everybody to carry their weight, it shouldn’t be considered an atmosphere for entirely new players.

So then it comes down to hotjoins, and hotjoins are just a mishmash of experience levels and attitudes which would ultimately get described as a pub (public match, pubstomping, etc, you know), and that is the place for new players to gain some experience and have a place to gain the resources to unlock new things.

There shouldn’t be any hate, but there does need to be barriers of entry that distinguish the different tiers of competition within the game.

So let me get this straight.

Players who have been playing the game and winning gold from PvP should have the resources to be able to purchase any new traits and the intellect and experience to know whether or not any build they would want to play will even need the trait.

New players will log in, see that there is some sort of progression to be able to use everything, and psychologically be encouraged to play a few hotjoins to earn the resources to unlock the traits and experiment with them so that instead of logging in, seeing everything unlocked and ready to go, and then immediately queuing into Solo Que or even Team Que, they are encouraged to and feel as though they need to play a few games to unlock everything they are going to want to use, while gaining more experience in the process, and therefore aren’t queuing into a game and potentially hindering a more competitive game mode.

It seems like this should be everything that the competitive community has been asking for, discouraging new players from “ruining” more competitive game modes through some sort of need to make it through an introductory phase of PvP, while players who currently have experience should have all the resources they need to continue to play the game completely unhindered.

It’s the same model that many video games that are successful have implemented and the outrage against it seems completely unjustified. Yes, sometimes companies have to change their business models, and if that’s what’s bugging you, then tough, but it’s something that needs to happen sometimes in order for a company to be more successful.

Compare Read the Wind to the other Grandmaster traits in Marksmanship.

Versus Signet of the Beastmaster: SotBM should be inherent to begin with, and I much prefer running with a mix of survival skills on my bar then dedication my utilities to signets and a trait that in all honesty is just a poor development choice, that I’d only be taking to give me a reason to activate my signets.

Verdict: I would choose Read the Wind over Signet of the Beastmaster anyday.

Versus Remorseless: I actually like remorseless, however, I think that overall, Read the Wind is going to be more valuable by making the arrows we shoot much more difficult to evade across all ranges, and I would speculate that the DPS lost at ranges where arrows don’t track well and are easily avoidable is more worthwhile to gain through Read the Wind than reapplying Opening Strikes, unless Opening Strikes gets some new, additional mechanic built into it that actually helps power builds (like boon removal).

Verdict: I choose Read the Wind over Remorseless any day.

For me, that makes it the best in slot option when evaluating it against its other grandmaster alternatives alone. Is it always the best choice? Well, that just depends on the build preferences. I wouldn’t be choosing Spotter over it, because I’d rather land my arrows than make my more inconsistent arrows do slightly more RNG chance damage, and I already choose Spotter over Piercing Arrows because I prefer random damage boosts to random arrow pierce cleave.

So yeah, I’d probably end up with Read the Wind on my bar for a few of my different builds.

However, please remember everybody that this is just an announcement of a new grandmaster trait. There are still potential trait and weapon balances, 4 more grandmaster traits, and an entire rune and weapon sigil rework.

Judging based off the smallest glimpse of the big picture and getting frustrated is just a waste of energy at this point. Wait until we know more information before we start grabbing the torches and pitchforks.

Every 3-4 months, yeah. Guild Wars 1 was the same way though, so I personally didn’t expect much different, but I agree that it is totally frustrating especially when the outcry for necessary balance changes is completely and totally warranted.

Smart money says the 2nd Tuesday in April. Balance devs said there would be a break period for them after the first season of the living world ends (it ends on the 18th), and the Friday Ready Up schedule has been changes to have one every Friday until the first week of April (the 4th) and then not having the next one until the 18th of April.

Could be sooner than that, but it would be highly unexpected and unlikely. As far was we know, the 18th is just glory removal and bug fixes, and the only other information we have about the date of the next “feature” build (aka balance patch) is that it’s happening before June.

I think it’s a combination of different things that make Carrion much better than Rabid, which like you mentioned, plays off of the shortbow because of the constant pressure, not to mention that the shortbow’s poison is more invaluable than splitblade, although they function mechanically the same.

But right now, a huge driving factor is Carrion+Forge runes, +30% more boon duration from the Nature Magic line from the Spirit setup. We have protection on dodge roll, which essentially makes up for the toughness lost by not picking a different amulet, and really, there is only Sharpened Edges that would benefit from picking up a Rabid Amulet, outside of Companions Might.

The more I though about it though, thinking about the trap build I could make with your changes would end up looking something like 10/25/30/5/0 for:
Marksmanship:
Keen Edge

Skirmishing:
Primal Reflexes
Trapper’s Expertise

Wilderness Survival:
Empathic Bond
Shared Anguish
Trap Potency

Shortbow and either sword/dagger or sword/torch. Picking up 25 in Skirmishing because you would do more damage when flanking, and the shortbow’s main goal is to flank, so that seems like a fairly decent choice with a Carrion/Forge setup, and the last 5 going to Nature Magic because there wasn’t a better place I could find to put it.

It’s between that and a 20/20/30/0/0 build with Piercing Arrows. They both have their uses, and I think that it would actually give some versatility to the Trap Build and let players vary their build more for the role they are meant to be playing on their team.

So the tl;dr version is that after thinking about it some more, I would like your trait changes specific to a Trap build better than what’s currently in place because it ends up opening up more options.

infantrydiv.1620:

jcbroe.4329:

No problem!

Yeah, the Trap Potency idea isn’t even a bad switch, it’s just hard to speculate how build would change without sitting in front of a build editor and seeing possible build combinations.

Like, with your changes, a trap build would become x/20/30/x/x with Trapper’s Expertise, Trap Potency, and Empathic Bond, and either Offhand Training or Shared Anguish, which is a new tough decision that I didn’t previously have to make. That leaves me with 20 points to spend, and I can honestly say I have no idea what I would spend them on. Because of the range on traps,

I’d be tempted to go 30 points into Skirmishing anyways to pick up Honed Axes for that much more CC lockdown to keep people I’m attacking in traps while doing more consistent damage combined with a Rabid Amulet, and then the last 10 in Either Marksmanship or Nature Magic I guess.

But that’s just off the top of my head theorycrafting. I would probably end up testing lots of different variations before I could even begin to give a solid opinion.

Well for example you could go 20 into marksmanship for piercing arrows and sharpening stone to play traps with more team fight capability or you could put it into beastmastery and run with a shaman’s amulet for tanky trap Beastmaster type spec

Yeah, but I’m thinking at that point, with the damage increase on the Axe plus Rabid plus potentially Sharpened Edges (bleed on crit) and the chance to cripple, the axe might end up being the overall better team fight utility.

Entirely up to preference though, you would still have to get point blank to create bleed stacks which would probably discourage the axe from team fights a lot, and being forced into Rabid isn’t really the most enjoyable thing in the world.

Ehhhh, just semantics lol. Overall, again, I don’t seen anything wrong with any of your suggestions, so nitpicking over theorycrafting preferences is like, for the sake of doing it at that point hahaha.

No problem!

Yeah, the Trap Potency idea isn’t even a bad switch, it’s just hard to speculate how build would change without sitting in front of a build editor and seeing possible build combinations.

Like, with your changes, a trap build would become x/20/30/x/x with Trapper’s Expertise, Trap Potency, and Empathic Bond, and either Offhand Training or Shared Anguish, which is a new tough decision that I didn’t previously have to make. That leaves me with 20 points to spend, and I can honestly say I have no idea what I would spend them on. Because of the range on traps,

I’d be tempted to go 30 points into Skirmishing anyways to pick up Honed Axes for that much more CC lockdown to keep people I’m attacking in traps while doing more consistent damage combined with a Rabid Amulet, and then the last 10 in Either Marksmanship or Nature Magic I guess.

But that’s just off the top of my head theorycrafting. I would probably end up testing lots of different variations before I could even begin to give a solid opinion.

Honestly I don’t see how the stun lasts long enough for the damage to be so detrimental that the skill is broken.

The only real problem I see with it, is that unless I’m mistaken, it still allows you to capture points in PvP, which doesn’t seem to stay consistent, if this is true, with skills like blurred frenzy to compare it to.

I don’t really main a Thief (I have an 80 I roam around with in WvW for a direct damage variant roamer), and I can definitely see where the “spam to win” opinion comes from, but I also think that it’s a hard skill to make changes to without hurting the weaponset too much.

Maybe some tweaking of aftercasts, and a more obvious wind up animation? (I think it’s pretty darn obvious, and very easy to anticipate a pistol whip).

I mean, it might be a bit of a forgiving weaponset due to the amount of evasion on pistol whip, but at least the weaponset itself promotes battles of positioning and anticipation, and overall is more fun from my perspective to play against than any sort of weapon setup that utilizes steath (D/P specifically).

I see what you’re trying to accomplish, and while I don’t disagree with the idea on most of the changes you’re proposing, I also am having issues with some of them, but mostly because of the “it wouldn’t really be how I would do it, or what I would prefer.”

Nothing too serious though. For the traits:
Remorseless: Vulnerability is already very maintainable, so I personally think that, while Remorseless is a good place to make changes, more vulnerability doesn’t really seem like the most beneficial change. I think that I would prefer to see Remorseless cause Opening Strikes to either remove a boon from an enemy, or to remove a condition from you (my preference is for boon removal because of how immensely better power builds have the potential to be with that simple change, and how easily it would be to add more condition removal elsewhere).

Trap Potency: because Trapper’s Expertise remains in the Skirmishing line, I don’t think that further spreading the traits out between different lines, even with the Empathic Bond change, would be the most beneficial change that could be made. It would probably be fine as far as balance goes, however.

Personally though, I think that with Skirmishing, Traps can be left in the line, though I would prefer to see Spike Trap turned into a pulse (pulses after initial hit only pulse a lower duration cripple and single bleed stack), Frost Trap have a 25 second cooldown and have damage per pulse, and then see the base damage of the traps increase so that on crit they hit around 300-400 per pulse each (assuming of course 30 in skirmishing only, with no power investment). Then, merge/remove traits from Skirmishing and introduce more “on interrupt” traits that have more synergy with Moment of Clarity.

Of course, there is no right or wrong, and my preconceived vision of what I’d like to see doesn’t make your suggestions any worse or less good, they’re just different, and I’m only trying to introduce perspective so that you can understand my view to see where I’m coming from.

For Beastmastery, I would suggest just removing the pet type limitation on traits entirely, so that while there are optimal and suboptimal choices, pet selection doesn’t entirely force you into a particular trait and you could still benefit from the other options.

Really, nothing to big if you ask me, as far as traits go.

For the weapons, I only have minor adjustments, like, keeping your greatsword changes, but giving Maul a decent duration cripple, and adding the vulnerability lost from Maul to swoop, on top of your suggestion for swoop. That way, there is a nice soft CC option that doesn’t perma cripple, so that Mainhand Sword remains unique, but that allows the Greatsword more of a close range sustain role that punishes players that get hit by Maul with more than just a big damage hit.

Also, instead of torment on Dagger 4, I’d prefer to see it on Sword 3, to keep with the whole “punish movement and soft CC” lockdown theme.

I don’t really have anything else to offer. Just some friendly insight on places that I think we differ, and I don’t think that I truly disagree with any of the suggested changes, but rather, already have bias based on what my preferences are.

Chrispy.5641:

Yeah….after reading the CDI thread, its just plain out of control, and I would prefer the company of a seasick crocodile over trying to post my ideas in that mess….but I will anyways, as well as posting my ideas here, incase anyone wants to read them and discuss them, because in the other thread, they are very likely to get lost in a sea of other suggestions before you get the chance.

Changing Healing Skills and Elite Skills for more synergy

• The Purpose of this idea(proposal) is to make Healing Skills benefit more from traits, like the healing skills of other professions do. Our healing skills are some of the best in the game, yes, but, the inability to make them stronger through traits actually makes them weaker than other healing skills in the long run.

Changes and Benefits
- Heal as One and Rampage as One should be changed into Shout skills, so they can benefit from the following ::

• Shout Mastery - Reduce Cooldown. (make skills faster to access)
• Nature’s Voice - Regen and Swiftness. (makes skills less selfish and Ranger/Pet only)
• Superior Rune of the Soldier - Shouts remove a Condition. (More chances for condition removal, which the Ranger badly needs anyways)

- Healing Spring should be changed into a Trap Skill, so it benefits from the Follwoing ::

• Trapper’s Expertise - Ground targeting and increased Radius. (Ability to affect a greater number of allies.)
• Trap Potency - decreased Cooldown. (Make skill faster to access)(increased condition duration would not affect this obviously, maybe increase boon duration as well?)

- Troll Unguent should be changed into a Survival Skill, so it benefits from this ::

• Wilderness Knowledge - Reduced Cooldown. (Faster Access and more healing uptime)

Risks

• There is a possibility that healing skills would be too dependent on trait investment.
• After investing into traits, skills could be too powerful and unbalanced.

Discussion

• I had the idea for the ‘As One and healing spring skills, because those are the two skill types they most closely match. While shouts aren’t exactly in the best spot right now because of how pets work, I think those changes would go a long way.
• For Troll Unguent, I figured that making it a Wilderness survival skill made the most sense, but, its up for debate if anyone’s willing.

• This also ties directly into a future idea I will be posting that involves expanding the Wilderness Survival traits and Shout traits we have access to, to atleast 3 of each, (I will link this post since the two are related)

I +1’d these. I think they are extremely good changes that promote trait synergy, and in some cases, actually make you reconsider what the “best in slot” option would be for certain trait slots (10 points in WS for instance).

There is only 1 particular combination I would be weary of, and that would be Heal as One with 30 points in Nature’s Magic, Nature’s Bounty, Nature’s Voice, and 10 points in Beastmastery for Shout Mastery. That would give permanent regen on Heal as One without any runes.

Not that I would complain about being able to run this, and it isn’t like we can’t already do that with Guard, but it seems like this combination really has the potential to outshine the other heals.

Of course, to the best of my knowledge, rangers wouldn’t be the only class capable of achieving this, and I still +1’d because I like all of the suggestions still, I was just bringing this to attention lol.

Does anyone know when this CDI ends because I feel like we haven’t accomplished anything in the past 10 pages.

It looks like a bust to me at this point. The developer presence in this CDI versus the others that are going on is just really lacking. They can take from that what they will, this isn’t a “shots fired” comment, I’m just stating facts.

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

Burst/Spike damage and DPS are very different things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_per_second

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spike_damage

For instance, when a thief sets up and uses backstab, more than likely, they would have achieved the same damage output by just autoattacking for sustained DPS during the time frame it takes to stealth, position, and then actually land backstab, not to mention that backstab is a much more avoidable skill than sustained, zero cooldown autoattacks.

Again, burst skills are large damage values that are done in a given instant that do not increase DPS, due to burst skills having positional requirements, setup requirements, activation times, channel times, and aftercasts. During this instant, burst is going to do more damage, but over a time interval (DPS is calculated over time, and is not a calculation of instantaneous damage), the damage outputs are going to end up equal (let’s take a dagger/pistol thief, and assume that setting up a backstab combo takes 5 seconds. The combo will do 5k damage at the 5th second plus the damage of the pistol shot, where as autoattacking will be doing approximately 1k damage per second
for 5 seconds).

Allie explicitly stated that any offenders that break this philosophy are going to be rebalanced to reflect it, and that currently, the game is not a good position where the classes are balanced to reflect this, which results in the perception that everybody should have the option to build for “spam to win.”

I have no idea what’s going on… I think we’re just arguing over semantics here.

The 2 scenarios you mention have the same DPS. The backstab scenario is better though because no one is doing just backstab. They frontload the backstab and follow it up with their auto-attack combo twice, then C&D and backstab again. So this does basically 5k damage + 10k damage + 2k damage over 4 seconds. This is much better than the Ranger’s alternative of auto attack + rapid fire and repeat.

Now of course the Thief scenario above is exactly what’s wrong with this game in ANet’s eyes. That kind of damage is out of control (and is very real). But it’s the kind of damage a Ranger should do (minus the obligatory 30% our dead pet accounts for).

Does it add to the problem? Of course it does… but it at least puts the Ranger on the same playing field as the other classes and ANet could then hit all of the classes the same way. Something as simple as dividing the power formula in half for example.

I’d much rather see the Ranger class brought up to the other class’ level now than wallow in the mud for another 2 years waiting for ANet to being all the other classes down and STILL be in the same situation because even at half the damage, burst and AE will still be all that matters.

From an enjoyment value I 100% agree with you, I really do. But I’m also split because as a programmer I totally understand ANet’s side of it as well, and how they would rather get the game where they want it to go without sidetracking progress because they believe the end result is worth the wait.

It’s a tough call, it really is. Do they appeal to the current playerbase and balance for enjoyment value, or do they persist with their vision of the perfect quality game hoping that when it hits the mark they hope it hits that enough players are patient enough to continue playing, as ANet can start trying to draw more players again from that point?

All I can say is that I wouldn’t want to be the one making those calls, and if I was one of the developers, I can’t imagine having to sacrifice my ideals and the things that drive me and that I take pride in as a programmer to please a playerbase. Just like as a player, I don’t understand why the goal isn’t to go out of the way to make as many current players as happy as possible with the game so that the playerbase doesn’t shrink and we can continue getting enjoyment out of the game.

Such a tough spot to be in lol.

Atherakhia.4086:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

I have some problems with this…

For starters, if you use a move that doesn’t increase your DPS it isn’t a burst skill. To deal burst literally means to increase your DPS for a short period of time. Setting up the burst is what takes skill, and you set it up by finding an openning to deliver your burst.

That’s the problem… to create an openning for birst, the easiest thing to do is use another burst skill. This way they avoid the first one, but have nothing left to avoid the second. You can also shut down the target, which is why CC is so valuable.

Even if DPS is a problem and ANet cut all damage across the board down to what a Ranger is capable of, burst and AE is still all that’s going to matter. It just won’t be as effective as it is today. It won’t magically make burstless, single target sustained damage more valuable.

Now as for ‘whiffing’ an attack… there’s nothing about sustained damage to ‘whiff’. It’s predictable damage that the opponent can plan for ahead of time because it’s unchanging. When sustained damage ‘whiffs’ it’s because the opponent decided to use a heal or a dodge skill, but unlike in the case of burst, they use these skills on their own terms whereas with burst you’re using these skills on the bursting player’s terms.

And with all of this, we’re still not taking into consideration that the time frame for a fight is finite. The class simply isn’t given the tools to prolong a fight to the point their damage would ever catch up. Even if you doubled the cooldown on every other skill in the game, single target sustained damage would never amount to anything. It just doesn’t apply enough pressure for anyone to take notice.

And thus why no one has taken notice of this class in WvW.

Burst/Spike damage and DPS are very different things:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Damage_per_second

http://guildwars.wikia.com/wiki/Spike_damage

For instance, when a thief sets up and uses backstab, more than likely, they would have achieved the same damage output by just autoattacking for sustained DPS during the time frame it takes to stealth, position, and then actually land backstab, not to mention that backstab is a much more avoidable skill than sustained, zero cooldown autoattacks.

Again, burst skills are large damage values that are done in a given instant that do not increase DPS, due to burst skills having positional requirements, setup requirements, activation times, channel times, and aftercasts. During this instant, burst is going to do more damage, but over a time interval (DPS is calculated over time, and is not a calculation of instantaneous damage), the damage outputs are going to end up equal (let’s take a dagger/pistol thief, and assume that setting up a backstab combo takes 5 seconds. The combo will do 5k damage at the 5th second plus the damage of the pistol shot, where as autoattacking will be doing approximately 1k damage per second
for 5 seconds).

Allie explicitly stated that any offenders that break this philosophy are going to be rebalanced to reflect it, and that currently, the game is not a good position where the classes are balanced to reflect this, which results in the perception that everybody should have the option to build for “spam to win.”

Durzlla.6295:

jcbroe.4329:

thefantasticg.3984:

jcbroe.4329:

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…

Especially when there’s this really potentially amazing trait called “Evasive Purity” that could be very easily altered lol.

Akisame.9508:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

I do not believe ANet is following that philosophy, because if they where, they wouldn’t be nerfing us continuously as they have been. They would be leaving us alone and nerfing everyone around us instead. But if you look at their prior patch history, ranger’s continue to get nerfed on their damage and survivability.

I haven’t ever seen anything that was nerfed unnecessarily, and for the most part, this a perception that is shared by people who play every other single class.

So if every class is getting nerfed every patch, since that would be the overall perspective you would find if you took the opinions of every profession and combined them together, it seems like overall, ANet is slowly pushing the game in a different direction by changing things they don’t like for every class.

Also, they are only human, they can make mistakes too. They can over-nerf and over-buff things but when there is an actual goal, or baseline in mind that they are balancing towards, those are the things that will get corrected and ironed out along the way.

Am I personally happy with the ranger class and some of the changes that have occurred? Absolutely not at all. But I am happy to know that there is an idea in mind for the class, and that these changes aren’t just shots in the dark trying to hit a target.

And, just in general, not directed at any particular person, I don’t think that is fair to make demands and then be unhappy when things don’t happen immediately. Not only does developing and balancing a game take time and the efforts of multiple development teams when the changes call for it, but there is also bureaucratic red tape and procedures that have to be met, along with a fair amount of QA, and then having to make the decision of whether or not it is a healthy time to introduce something into the game, or whether it would be too much of a kneejerk change that would end up hurting more than fixing at that time.

Chrispy.5641:

jcbroe.4329:

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” and attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

Everything you said sounds about right….IF it works. I think we’re still a long ways off before we see that kind of balance in this game.

That’s probably very true. But ANet has to start laying down the groundwork somewhere because that type of balance would be much too “kneejerk” to drop on the game all at once, since it would change a very large number of skills and builds, and even playstyles, across pretty much every class.

But if it’s what we’re working towards, I think that it’s definitely something that deserves support, even if most people won’t have the patience to see the transition through all the way to the very end.

thefantasticg.3984:

jcbroe.4329:

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.

In the realm of risk/reward balancing, it only makes sense to have to sacrifice DPS for burst. Burst shouldn’t be a mechanic that increases DPS on top of what you’re sustaining, it should take the damage that is typically done in a given time frame, and with some setup the equates to “skilled” gameplay, condense it into a smaller time frame that’s harder to recover from for an opponent.

Burst should never be a “limit break,” and I think that what Allie is trying to say is that the intent and the direction that the balance team is attempting to take the game is to make certain current damage options that are too strong for how often and easily they are able to be used and reduce their capabilities and “spam” ability, and in that sense, once all of the details are ironed out, rangers will theoretically be able to do the same damage as any other class in a given time frame, but have less “instantaneous” damage, so that the damage is output consistently as opposed to in chunks.

With that philosophy in mind, it makes it so that “whiffing” any attack on rangers is going to be less punishing than whiffing a burst skill that can’t be spammed on other classes, because where rangers will be able to recover and pick up where they left off, so to speak, other classes are going to be made much more vulnerable when they expend their burst options, which means that during fights, rangers will have lots more opportunity to gain momentum and control fights due to how rangers output their damage.

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.”

That’s a huge piece of information since every “top” build since launch has incorporated Empathic Bond into it.

The vision that the devs have for rangers in guild wars 2 as far as sustained damage output is the exact way the ranger played in guild wars 1, so it’s no surprise that the goal of the class is to incorporate how the class felt in guild wars 1 into this game. The trouble I have envisioning this is that in guild wars 1, conditions were very long lasting, rangers had interrupts as support tools, and stances as defensive mechanisms.

So from my perspective, I don’t quite fully understand where the devs intend to incorporate the “survive and sustain” into guild wars 2 mechanics, and whether it will be evade heavy or if we are going to get more soft CC options to control our opponents to be able to kite and sustain better, or etc. I’m sure it’s probably something they don’t even have a 100% set in stone idea for either though, so I’m probably jumping the gun on the process.

Wondrouswall.7169:

No, it’s not perplexing at all. This quote sums it up pretty much. It’s more-or-less a brainstorming thread, but with devs involved.

Allie Murdock.8152:

To those asking how far we would redesign – I can’t really comment on this specifically, but I can say that you should share your ideas because sometimes they inspire things to happen. Does that make sense?

That’s not what I mean, I mean that the way the OP makes the CDI seem like it should be organized versus the way random (but important) conversations are happening in the middle of a sea of suggestions is very disorganized, and makes it harder to hold a conversation about something that may be important to continue discussing, but because of the separation due to the sea of ideas, the conversation ends up ending prematurely.

Just saying that the organization of the thread doesn’t currently promote a very productive environment for thoroughly discussion specific ideas.

Allie Murdock.8152:

We’re seeing that power creep is a big problem in the game right now, so bringing the Ranger up to snuff would only exacerbate that. When we do balance patches, we like to look at every class and where they are at so we can balance appropriately throughout.

Of course, it can be hard to account for certain things when doing these patches, which is why we’re trying to do the patches less frequently so we can properly gauge what needs to be done (that’s not to say that we won’t hotfix any major issues that arise).

So, quarterly, like in Guild Wars 1? Or is it going to more than likely be bi-yearly? Not looking for a set in stone promise, just a projection. Since obviously if the “feature” patch isn’t going to be in March (only confirmed as not being on the 18th by you so speculation here), you might as say a fair projection is 4-6 months.

Some sort of projection like that would give people a better idea on how long it takes for changes to be implemented is all, and it might get the community’s foot a little bit off of the developers necks when it comes to pressing for changes now, since projected time frames would allow the community to know not to expect balances every two weeks just because there are living story updates.

Food for thought.

So is anybody else perplexed by how we’re supposed to present proposals, yet the devs insist on having conversations about different ideas they could possible implement and asking the community their opinion on them, which comes off as contradicting to the CDI and how it was made to seem to be a “present your suggestions in this format” thread?

It seems like the constant flooding of ideas is diluting the conversations that people are trying to have is all. Not to say that they should have more conversations about all of the suggestions, but maybe it should be split into segments where we submit suggestions, they review them and then summarize the general idea of the things we are asking for and then tell us how they see it and how their ideas compare with ours, and then further discussion about how we can bridge any potential gaps between our views and theirs.

Just a thought, because I’m uncertain what exactly they are looking for at this point. More suggestions, or more discussion about topics they have tried to bring up? I like what the devs are discussing and saying, I guess I would just prefer to see some more organization of the thread.

Xaylin.1860:

I’m a bit perplexed when reading this thread. Regardless of how the CDI thread is supervised and how much you dis/agree with suggestions people make I do not understand the attitude of sitting it out and judging other peoples suggestions while some of you don’t even participate in the CDI yourself.

Don’t get me wrong, the Ranger thread is awesome. But why does that justify not participating in the CDI thread? If you actually care you should be willing to make the effort and make proposals. What is the point of expressing your opinion here and not in the CDI thread?

I do not main Ranger and I therefore might not be the most qualified person to make proposals for this class. I’m sure quite a few people disagree with ideas I have. Still, I do care enough about my Ranger to contribute proposals and discuss ideas from my point of view. How do you guys expect a satisfying result if you don’t even try to make a difference?

People are only expressing their jaded attitudes, and while it does add an element of negativity, we’re all only human, so I don’t think it’s fair to expect 100% perfect attitudes out of everybody for every waking moment.

That being said, I don’t think the existence of the one thread justifies the other, but I do think it would have been handled better by taking all of the prior work and effort done by the ranger community that devs have taken notes on, from any of the threads in the past, and put them together to at least state to us where the current stance is on the class and some things that have been noted along the way up until this point.

Now, that isn’t to say that they haven’t been listening, as I’m personally 100% certain they have, but I do believe that other people as human beings have a right to feel like their efforts have been ignored or invalidated when the developers don’t appear to “visibly” acknowledge peoples prior efforts.

That being said, you are absolutely right that it is not a good excuse at all to not participate, and that there is truthfully no excuse to not participate. because as community members I think we should be doing everything we can to make the game better, so that at the end of the day, if the devs drop the ball, it isn’t because we didn’t try to give them input or help them figure out solutions to existing problems, or provide perceptions to things that may not have existed internally within the development team.

Those of us that are making generic comments about the quality of the suggestions aren’t doing it to be spiteful, but because it worries us that in a sea of suggestions, the wrong one could be picked by the developers and it would end up being negative progress, which is of course opinion based reasoning, but is just a way of expressing concern. However, at the end of the day, all we can do is trust the development team, and based on their responses so far, I feel I can have faith that they are picking the right suggestions and will move forward with things that I personally believe will help the class.

Again, it’s just a result of people being human. I doubt that anybody is trying to truthfully be hurtful. These are just mechanisms we use to express concerns, opinions, and emotions.

I do hope that people will take the time to put their best efforts into the CDI, and I think that the devs will ultimately go with the right decisions that will benefit the class, but that we do need to at least try to take the CDI as seriously as possible so that the devs will give us the same in return.

Fenrir.6183:

jcbroe.4329:

People already offer up that same complaint about spirits in WvW. It isn’t a bad idea when trying to reduce the amount of screen clutter, as it would reduce the amount of things on screen while offering the same effects that spirits currently have, minus having to trait for Spirits Unbound.

Pet’s only have a survival issue in large fights in WvW anyhow, where a lot of the game mechanics that were more than likely designed around smaller skirmishes don’t translate well.

Maybe that’s just a general performance issue for pets in WvW that needs to be handled, since it is a fairly global issue that affects much more than just the ranger class is all.

Problem is, most of wvw is large fights as roaming around makes no sense. I’ll give you small groups (capping camps, ninjaing towers and escorting dollies/scouting), but your idea does not solve anything anyway…instead of having to kill the spirits, they’ll just focus kill the pet in 1 second and you lose both some damage and your buffs. It would be even worse.

It actually is a solution that’s PvP based (remember, Battosai, top PvP player, sent this to me for the CDI if I so chose to bring it up). It would reduce lots of the screen clutter, and the pet is fairly hard to kill in a PvP environment as long as you don’t let it sit in AoE or get focused.

I agree that is isn’t a solution for WvW, just like it wouldn’t be a solution, and might even create more problems, for any situation where pets are extremely vulnerable to death and 1-shot mechanics, like in certain open world PvE or dungeon instances.

thefantasticg.3984:

Take a look at the Fractal CDI thread, jc. I’m pretty sure thats what you envisioned for the Ranger CDI thread. Sadly, it didn’t go that way as the people running the prospective threads are just different.

Allie is trying but she just doesn’t play a Ranger… If she does I’d put my left hand on bets that she has less than 100 hours on one.

I know, I’ve been watching the dev tracker wondering why the fractal CDI, and even the leaderboard/PvP CDI have to have so much of the “actual” conversations. I mean, granted, Allie is trying, she really is, but right now, my biggest issues actually come from other community members who try to tell me my ideas are bad because they don’t fall in line with the vision of “bearbow sniper pew pew,” or don’t think about the scope of the things they are suggesting or disagreeing with.

I need to ask Durz something, I hope he get’s on soon lol.

Fenrir.6183:

jcbroe.4329:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Atherakhia.4086:

Proposal Overview
By now everyone is familiar with the word ‘Zoo’ and how it relates to the Ranger class. While the screen clutter is still there, the strategic value of all the minions has lessened because of the changes to tab targeting. Body blocking is still a large issue though and I am proposing we remove the spirits from the game.

snip

Removing Spirits would be a pretty big change to the class. Additionally, they are part of the “spirit” (sorry, had to) of the Ranger. I do think the idea to add it to the pet is interesting, though I’m not sure how it really makes sense (the pets aren’t the ones drawing from nature, it’s the Ranger).

Do you have any thoughts or ideas that wouldn’t necessarily remove them, but maybe help to lessen the body blocking as you said?

Battosai discussed with me the idea of turning the spirits into auras that are applied to your pet, and then the range of the effects are based on the location of your pet.

The same pet that dies in 1/10 of a second in wvw ?
We don’t need another skillset tied to the pets, we already have too much based on them as it is…

People already offer up that same complaint about spirits in WvW. It isn’t a bad idea when trying to reduce the amount of screen clutter, as it would reduce the amount of things on screen while offering the same effects that spirits currently have, minus having to trait for Spirits Unbound.

Pet’s only have a survival issue in large fights in WvW anyhow, where a lot of the game mechanics that were more than likely designed around smaller skirmishes don’t translate well.

Maybe that’s just a general performance issue for pets in WvW that needs to be handled, since it is a fairly global issue that affects much more than just the ranger class is all.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Many of you have suggested removing traps from the Skirmishing line. It seems the primary reason for this is because it is the crit line while traps are primarily focused on conditions.

Given the idea behind skirmishing (for Ranger, we expect them to be able to survive longer while whittling their opponent down), would it maybe make more sense to leave the traps there and perhaps swap the stats with a different line?

Or, would it make more sense to have more traits in the Skirmishing line that directly effect power builds so that there would be a larger range of options when choosing to invest in Skirmishing than just building for traps?

Allie Murdock.8152:

Atherakhia.4086:

Proposal Overview
By now everyone is familiar with the word ‘Zoo’ and how it relates to the Ranger class. While the screen clutter is still there, the strategic value of all the minions has lessened because of the changes to tab targeting. Body blocking is still a large issue though and I am proposing we remove the spirits from the game.

snip

Removing Spirits would be a pretty big change to the class. Additionally, they are part of the “spirit” (sorry, had to) of the Ranger. I do think the idea to add it to the pet is interesting, though I’m not sure how it really makes sense (the pets aren’t the ones drawing from nature, it’s the Ranger).

Do you have any thoughts or ideas that wouldn’t necessarily remove them, but maybe help to lessen the body blocking as you said?

Battosai discussed with me the idea of turning the spirits into auras that are applied to your pet, and then the range of the effects are based on the location of your pet.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Some of those ideas ARE brilliant though, from what I’ve read (5 pages worth). Looking at one of the newer posts, apparently somebody from Anet likes the idea of us getting a buff for a pet being stowed temporarily.

That’s undeniable, there is going to be a few ideas here and there every so often, but I think there are a few of us that just feel like ANet could have eased into the suggestion phase of the CDI instead of opening with it and making it entirely about that, because it makes the thread a lot less collaborative and a lot more “hell on earth” or “pandora’s box has been opened.”

We could have taken the time to establish where the class needs the most improvements and agree, and then start making suggestions specifically for those areas, for instance.

Forzani.2584:

jcbroe.4329:

It’s a good thing I’m not drinking when I read through the CDI thread so far, because most of the ideas are so depressingly bad that I don’t know if I’d be able to maintain myself lol.

Seriously though, I’m irritated for putting my suggestions up so early. I mean, I had to do them at some point, but at this point, I seriously, seriously, seriously doubt that this CDI is going to produce anywhere near the result that the community hoped it would produce, due to a combination of the the thread being handled in a way where it’s just “throw out your ideas at us” and people who don’t understand balance or are trying to project how they want the class to play onto the class and make it something it isn’t flooding the CDI with suggestions.

The CDI should have been much more philosophically centered, so that it became an open dialogue between the community and devs about where they think that class is versus where we think it is, and what direction they want the class to go versus what direction we see the class going, and how we could meet in the middle somewhere philosophically while ironing out any physical balance issues that are brought up along the way.

Sadly, entering the CDI thread right now just looks like a spam email folder…

It is horrible over there. I am seeing suggestions from people that I have never seen post before or if they have posted, it’s about every other class except Ranger. Some of the suggestions are so horribly bad it’s laughable.

This is not dissimilar to asking your 4 year old what he would like for dinner. You have pretty much finished cooking a dinner of spaghetti and meatballs.

So you ask him to tell you everything he would like. You let him ramble on about all the different foods he would like for dinner. When he finally says Spaghetti and meatballs you clap your hands and say …"that’s a great idea. Go play for a bit and when you come back down for down I will have made exactly what you wanted …spaghetti and meatballs.

We are being punkd.

The worst part is that the other thread (Ranger Balance) is fading out of peoples attention because of the CDI, which had lots of great discussions and featured many different ideas and debates that we as a community worked on for months+, and was a very collaborative effort for all of us to get it to where it was.

If the dev team took nothing from it, and focuses all of their attention on the CDI thread, it’s going to be a very bad day for rangers. I’ll keep trying to bring up the thread in my posts so that people will bump it (I can’t be the only one, it breaks forum rules I believe) so that all of the work and ideas in that thread aren’t lost.

But it’s really sad to see that thread only have one official response saying “I passed this on” while the CDI thread has quite a bit of junky ideas, random ideas, or “I think I’m playing a different game” ideas, and it’s the one that’s getting the visible attention while we don’t even know what was taken away from the efforts of the other thread.

AEFA.9035:

jcbroe.4329:

Specific Trait Changes

• Move Evasive Purity to Grandmaster Slot. Change Functionality to: “Dodge rolling removes 1 condition from you and all allies within range. 10 second ICD.”

• New Skirmishing Trait, Master level: Transfer up to 3 conditions from yourself to target foe on interrupt. Gain a small amount of health for each condition transferred.

AEFA picture

I’m honestly not sure what you are trying to insinuate. That fact that I’m taking concepts that existed during the beta period and reimplementing them after they were adjusted to be worse because they were deemed too powerful, like Evasive Purity (I was informed that during a beta phase, Evasive Purity removed 2 conditions on dodge roll for the player and all allies within range) is indicative and in line with how the game has developed since then, and is definitely an option the deserves some consideration.

The other suggestion is a homage to guild wars 1 interrupt builds that were very decisive with high/risk reward if played properly, and also sported a very decent plethora of skills that were capable of handling numerous conditions at a time.

Because guild wars 2 is a different monster, for the sake of risk/reward, the less “free” condi cleanses on a cooldown and more skill based situations that are created are a good thing, and transferring conditions is absolutely something that logically fits with the rangers kitten nal (also true for guild wars 1, think plague touch on the standard touch ranger) and since we can already make the tradeoff of transferring them to the pet, it makes every bit of sense to be able to transfer them to another player in a very, very situational circumstance.

We all have our own perception of the class though, I’m not saying you have to agree with me, I’m just providing supporting reasoning that obviously didn’t align with the proposed format when I made the posts.

It’s a good thing I’m not drinking when I read through the CDI thread so far, because most of the ideas are so depressingly bad that I don’t know if I’d be able to maintain myself lol.

Seriously though, I’m irritated for putting my suggestions up so early. I mean, I had to do them at some point, but at this point, I seriously, seriously, seriously doubt that this CDI is going to produce anywhere near the result that the community hoped it would produce, due to a combination of the the thread being handled in a way where it’s just “throw out your ideas at us” and people who don’t understand balance or are trying to project how they want the class to play onto the class and make it something it isn’t flooding the CDI with suggestions.

The CDI should have been much more philosophically centered, so that it became an open dialogue between the community and devs about where they think that class is versus where we think it is, and what direction they want the class to go versus what direction we see the class going, and how we could meet in the middle somewhere philosophically while ironing out any physical balance issues that are brought up along the way.

Sadly, entering the CDI thread right now just looks like a spam email folder…

Well, it’s up. I’ll work on Battosai’s list after class. I think that between my suggestions, his suggestions, and whatever Durz comes up with, we are going to have a very comprehensive and large spanning list of ideas that should cover all of our bases.

jcbroe.4329:

jcbroe.4329:

I’m going to do my best to make my list of proposals and suggestions fit into a format, though it isn’t going to be the exact format proposed because my suggestions are not singular.I will be breaking down my suggestions between multiple posts, and I will try to keep it as close to 200 words as possible.

Game Mode

PvP based (SPvP, TPvP, WvW)

Design Philosophies That Lack Specific Suggestions

• Make ranger utilities less dependent on 30 point traits in order to achieve viability
• Allow players to build around pet swapping as a mechanic for people and builds that don’t wish to invest into the pet

Goal

Both of these changes are being made in order to increase build versatility in order to make builds less linear in nature by opening up addition trait build options, pet swapping options, and potentially freeing up utility slot usage.

Cont’d

• Allow players to disable pet skills from entering the skill queue (like heroes from Guild Wars 1)

Goal

To increase the players ability to control the pet without adding too many commands, by simply deselecting certain skills so that they don’t get used, which then allows players to customize how they want to play. Also, it allows players with good micromanagement ability to control when a skill enters the skill queue, giving them more control over their pet without dramatically increasing the learning curve beyond being reasonable.

Next part:

Specific Trait Changes

• Move Nature’s Voice to Master Slot
• Move Evasive Purity to Grandmaster Slot. Change Functionality to: “Dodge rolling removes 1 condition from you and all allies within range. 10 second ICD.”

Goal

These changes reduce shout dependency on 30 points. The duration of the boons on Nature’s Voice may need adjustment to compensate. Evasive Purity is now a decent, general purpose cleanse with team support options, and aptly is placed as a Grandmaster tier to so that builds attempting to build for heavy condition removal will have to do so at a large tradeoff for that specialization.

Cont’d

• Pets now gain Opening Strike on Pet Swap
• Opening Strike now removes 1 boon on a successful attack (with investment up to 25 points)

Goal

These changes make Opening Strike more of a consistent factor in battle, promote the ranger working with the pet, and increase the viability of power builds by allowing them to remove boons that impair their damage output, which is also decent team support as well.

Last part:

Cont’d

• Merge Quick Draw with Eagle Eye (remains in Marksmanship)
• Merge Pet’s Prowess and Agility Training. Adjust numbers if necessary, it remains where it is.
• New Skirmishing Trait, Adept Level: Gain Fury, Might, and Swiftness when interrupting a foe
• New Skirmishing Trait, Master level: Transfer up to 3 conditions from yourself to target foe on interrupt. Gain a small amount of health for each condition transferred.

Goal

Merging traits to open up slots for new skills in skirmishing by helping power builds with interrupt traits that synergize with Moment of Clarity, have a risk/reward or skill-shot factor, and make power builds a little more potent and a little less frail.

Last

• Increase Zephyrs Speed to 5 seconds
• Stability Training now grants AoE stability for 2 seconds to all allies in range for any pet, on pet swap
• Rending Attacks now works with all pets. Now applies a stack of 3 bleeds for 5 seconds on every 5th attack
• Intimidation Training keeps it’s current effect, works on all pets, and also provides a short duration AoE fury (like 4 seconds max) to allies within range on pet swap

Goal

Zephyrs Speed is weak for a Grandmaster trait and with the reduction of quickness to 50%, could use a bit more potency for such heavy investment. The other traits are meant to open up pet versatility through traits, while providing different functionalities for different playstyles.

jcbroe.4329:

I’m going to do my best to make my list of proposals and suggestions fit into a format, though it isn’t going to be the exact format proposed because my suggestions are not singular.I will be breaking down my suggestions between multiple posts, and I will try to keep it as close to 200 words as possible.

Game Mode

PvP based (SPvP, TPvP, WvW)

Design Philosophies That Lack Specific Suggestions

• Make ranger utilities less dependent on 30 point traits in order to achieve viability
• Allow players to build around pet swapping as a mechanic for people and builds that don’t wish to invest into the pet

Goal

Both of these changes are being made in order to increase build versatility in order to make builds less linear in nature by opening up addition trait build options, pet swapping options, and potentially freeing up utility slot usage.

Cont’d

• Allow players to disable pet skills from entering the skill queue (like heroes from Guild Wars 1)

Goal

To increase the players ability to control the pet without adding too many commands, by simply deselecting certain skills so that they don’t get used, which then allows players to customize how they want to play. Also, it allows players with good micromanagement ability to control when a skill enters the skill queue, giving them more control over their pet without dramatically increasing the learning curve beyond being reasonable.

Next part:

Specific Trait Changes

• Move Nature’s Voice to Master Slot
• Move Evasive Purity to Grandmaster Slot. Change Functionality to: “Dodge rolling removes 1 condition from you and all allies within range. 10 second ICD.”

Goal

These changes reduce shout dependency on 30 points. The duration of the boons on Nature’s Voice may need adjustment to compensate. Evasive Purity is now a decent, general purpose cleanse with team support options, and aptly is placed as a Grandmaster tier to so that builds attempting to build for heavy condition removal will have to do so at a large tradeoff for that specialization.

Cont’d

• Pets now gain Opening Strike on Pet Swap
• Opening Strike now removes 1 boon on a successful attack (with investment up to 25 points)

Goal

These changes make Opening Strike more of a consistent factor in battle, promote the ranger working with the pet, and increase the viability of power builds by allowing them to remove boons that impair their damage output, which is also decent team support as well.

I’m going to do my best to make my list of proposals and suggestions fit into a format, though it isn’t going to be the exact format proposed because my suggestions are not singular.I will be breaking down my suggestions between multiple posts, and I will try to keep it as close to 200 words as possible.

Game Mode

PvP based (SPvP, TPvP, WvW)

Design Philosophies That Lack Specific Suggestions

• Make ranger utilities less dependent on 30 point traits in order to achieve viability
• Allow players to build around pet swapping as a mechanic for people and builds that don’t wish to invest into the pet

Goal

Both of these changes are being made in order to increase build versatility in order to make builds less linear in nature by opening up addition trait build options, pet swapping options, and potentially freeing up utility slot usage.

Cont’d

• Allow players to disable pet skills from entering the skill queue (like heroes from Guild Wars 1)

Goal

To increase the players ability to control the pet without adding too many commands, by simply deselecting certain skills so that they don’t get used, which then allows players to customize how they want to play. Also, it allows players with good micromanagement ability to control when a skill enters the skill queue, giving them more control over their pet without dramatically increasing the learning curve beyond being reasonable.

mtpelion.4562:

jcbroe.4329:

Note that these are also my “low hanging fruit” options, as in, I chose the things I thought would be some of the easiest changes to make that would have the greatest impact. I don’t want to suggest retooling any weapons because I think that the trait changes and design changes I’m making would be enough at this point, and that even if I personally don’t like some of the weapon skills (like Rapid Fire), those are much harder to balance because unless you are number tweaking, it would take a graphics team, skill team, and balance team a lot of effort to internally test, balance and develop a new skill, and I want the changes to be as immediate as possible.

Rule Number One of Negotiating: Ask for the improbable, settle for what you actually want.

I’ve already asked for the improbable numerous times, and most of the things I have wanted that were improbable ended up receiving official answers in one way or another.

My goal isn’t to give them a list of dreams that I want to happen, it’s to give realistic ideas that actually physically help the dev team both in creating ideas that provide reasonable improvements to the class while those same changes also serve as a representation of where I and many of the community members whose suggestions I’ve based my list on have been asking for.

I’m not just going to throw an unreasonable list at them and tell them to make it happen lol. It isn’t negotiation, it’s a learning process in which the developers and the community try to come together to reach a common understanding.