Guild Wars 2

Locuz.2651:

Dojo.1867:

What the kitten you would want someone in your team that DCs once like every 4 games?

4 might be a bit over the top.

But lets assume he plays 10 games a day and DCs once per day. Doesnt sound like a big deal does it? He contributes like everyone else during 90% of his games and only DCs 10% of his games. Right?

But in theory this could mean that every single soloq game could end up being a 4v5. Since its “ok” to DC once a day (which isnt more than 10 games a day for most).

Or people that play only a few games per day could end up just afking out one of their games since their stacks get reset a few hours later anyway. So the punishment needs to be severe enough or people just laugh about it and afk out whenever they like.

Reminds me of GW1 where I can’t seem to remember the downtime ever extending beyond 10 minutes. It didn’t really discourage people from afk’ing or ragequitting at all, they just wouldn’t rage every match.

Yeah I think it might be on your end. My tiger emote emits a very loud roar as well.

I’m sorry, how did you lose your progress? You are still the same rank you were when you stopped playing, and you still have all of your glory and PvP skins.

That’s all there was in the mists. Glorys value was using it to buy RNG chances to get new armor and weapon skins in the mist.

So you got burnt out and stopped playing. That’s fair, it happens to everybody. But while you were away, during part of a living story arc (which by the way, you missed all of those, but really seem to only care about rewards than content. Just saying, I’d be equally upset for everything I missed, not just rewards) in which new glory vendors were introduced, and with that living story arc, a wintersday based vendor was added to the mists as well.

Now, while I’m sure ANet knew full well that people were going to trading post the vendor items that they could, the vendors themselves were just carrying Wintersday items that allowed the PvP playerbase to participate in Wintersday without having to to PvE.

Unfortunately, you did miss that opportunity. I feel bad for you, really, I do. But just like with all of the other content based rewards in the game, like dragon wings or halloween weapons, there are time constraints on particular rewards that you can get during living world story arcs.

BUT, you still have all of your ranks and all of your glory. Just like the wintersday vendor was a pleasant surprise to everybody, there is a chance that any number of living story arcs will provide another vendor that has items that you can trading post for money.

It really sucks that you did miss this opportunity, but that doesn’t mean there won’t be more opportunities in the future.

Sorry that my first post came off as rude. The thread just came off to me as another whine thread about somebody who feels entitled to money, when in reality, the glory and ranks are the reward, and any money being made with the glory is being done through living world content.

Grouch get bored of his engi? Well if that’s what we’re waiting on, I guess we’re in it for the long haul lol.

Working as intended really.

Making the poor life decision to continuously join matches knowing that with a shoddy internet you could drop out on your teammates every match and leave them disadvantaged, while there is a hotjoin available, deserves to punished.

Oh, and 3 stacks before you get banned is much too lenient, people should start getting banned from joining rated matches after the 2nd time, with the first time already giving you a visible debuff to show everybody what a lousy, dishonorable person you are.

We can say that we’re sorry all we want to try to empathize with you and you’re network situation, but did you even apologize for the (at least) 12 different teammates whose gameplay experience you ruined? Because you come off as extremely insincere and overall just very selfish to think that only your gameplay experience is being affected, and even went out of your way to insult other plays you queue with and against:

If you care about rating go play team arena. Using solo arena for rating is just a bad idea period. Just because someone has good solo arena rating means absolutely nothing. At all.

Who are you to say that other people shouldn’t enjoy or care about their gameplay experience just because you don’t value things in that experience that others perhaps do?

In fact, you’ve basically said that you don’t care whether or not it effects your teammates. So you know what, even if you’re internet situation was treated too harshly and given a dishonorable debuff, your attitude solidifies that you in fact deserved the debuff.

Good day to you sir. I hope that you’re internet clears up enough so that when you are no longer being penalized, everything will be in order for you and everybody that comes in contact with you to have an enjoyable gameplay experience, without you DC’ing on them and then telling them what they value in a gameplay experience is worthless and that you shouldn’t be penalized because you played a rated internet game with an unreliable internet and put yourself at risk and your teammates at a disadvantage.

-Implements a way to convert glory into gold

-refuses to log in to use the conversion but wants to be compensated

Yeah, sorry, you don’t get rewarded for not playing the game. If you dedicated the time in the past, you can log in and convert your glory to gifts and then trade them for gold.

If you aren’t willing to even log in to use this system that everybody else had to live with, then honestly, you don’t deserve anything.

Everybody else played, and converted their glory as mentioned as their compensation for the time they invested. If you can’t even log in because “you don’t feel like it,” then you get nothing.

Everybody wishes that they didn’t have to work and still get paid. If you want your payment, you better log in and get it. Simple.

/Thread

Akisame.9508:

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

I think that this is probably the best solution, although it would either need to be a PvE only change, or the spirits themselves would require some serious adjusting due to PvP/WvW purposes because right now the only counterplay outside of interrupting the spirit is to kill it, and either way, the spirit would need to be able to be targeted.

Every single spirit would have to be tweaked and toned down in order to make this possible.

Now, there is a strong argument with comparing them to warrior banners, and the honest answer is that I can’t make excuses, and that I have no idea what ANet was thinking making persistent AoE buffs that can’t be targeted. There is literally zero counterplay, which defeats the idea of even balancing a game to begin with.

The one thing I can say though is that I think it would make the Trait Spirits Unbound near useless outside of PvP, and in PvP it would only be used to get the spirits close enough to use their active skills.

Anyhow, yeah, I really wish I could pick the devs brains about that decision (banners versus spirits), because from the outside, it just looks like a silly balance decision.

I really, really enjoy the playstyle of Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch. The only other class that has a similarly “dance” style combat (dancing in and out of skirmish range and controlling the fight through maneuverability) is a thief with sword/dagger, and that build is much more 1 dimensional than a ranger.

“Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee” and all of that.

Wow, thanks for all the continued discussion and responses, there have been lots of good and interesting suggestions.

Also, thanks to Xsorus for porting your entire suggestion list into this thread. There are lots of great suggestions and I really hope that somebody is taking notes for the devs.

@Signet of the Wild discussion;

It either needs a higher base heal, or a better scaling coefficient. Currently, it is just absolutely underwhelming, especially when other classes can gain much better passive base heals through certain traits or skills.

That being said, because SotW is a utility slot skill that doesn’t require traiting for the heal to be effective, and still leaves access to our dedicated healing slot for an active skill, I think there is a fine line between where it is at and where a new base and scaling coefficient could be.

Currently, the heal at its base at level 80 is 62 health per second with a .06 scaling coefficient.

Assuming a fairly basic amount of max healing power (PvP anyhow) is around 1200, that means with 1200 healing power, you only get 134 health per second, or an additional 72 healing per second on top of the base.

Honestly, I think the scaling coefficient should either be increased to .09, or the base heal amount should be increased to around somewhere in the high 80ish or 90ish range, 98 being maximum base heal.

Anyhow, that’s just my take on that particular issue.

Agreed on the first part, not so much the second.
I’m not convinced that fixing AI is really necessary, because as you said it is one heck of an undertaking, one that isn’t that likely to happen.
So isn’t it more productive to think of possible solutions that don’t require an AI fix?

Such as having more direct commands over your pet.

I’m of the opinion that it is a yes and no type situation, which directly relates to the content you’re playing.

Having more control over the pets skills would definitely be of some benefit, especially pets that have access to AoE, combo fields, and finishers. The drawback would be that the response time for the skills wouldn’t be much improved, if at all, over the already existing F2 command.

Where this is a problem is against other players. Since the pet shares the same AI with monsters, including pathing patterns and “stop to attack” animations, a player that knows how to “beat” the AI with movement alone is going to severely reduce the impact that the pet has in combat, so much so that it appears devastating to your performance as a ranger player.

That being said, yes, outside of just redoing the whole system of AI, there are many, many different small fixes that can be made in order to make the pet system more reliable without having to code a new AI.

The problem that I can foresee is that if ANet ever decides to revisit how AI functions for normal monsters, it has the potential to break every single other fix that gets implemented for the pets as long as pets and monsters share their functionality.

So at this point, no, I see ANet as being very happy with how their open world monsters exist and interact. But if there is ever a point where they become dissatisfied and there are a bunch of ranger pet fixes that would get broken in the process, then all they’ve really done is prolonged when the “heavy lifting” work needs to get accomplished.

But no, I guess it isn’t necessary that they redo the AI, so long as ANet remains happy with how their open world monsters function and are content with implementing other ranger pet specific changes knowing with full certainty that they never need to be revisited.

Personally, if I was the one coding it, I would like the safety net of knowing that if I needed to change something, it wouldn’t break so many different things I may as well be coding from scratch again, but hey, if they are so certain that nothing will ever be changed to that degree, more power to them.

Josh Davis.6015:

jcbroe.4329:

Snip.

The sooner we talk about the changes the longer we have to react to feedback, as we’re always approaching deadlines. We mentioned that the changes wouldn’t be going in until the feature build, but I suppose that not everyone is familiar with that terminology quite yet. As I mentioned in a previous post, we’ll work on being more clear when discussing our plans.

That’s fine, I figured you guys hadn’t had enough time to work on such a substantial patch with the time between now and December 10th, combined with people being on break and out of town and such.

Admittedly I just don’t like seeing when you guys bring on unnecessary flak from the community. People tend to go a little overboard when they don’t see what they want and when they want it.

Taken directly from the SPvP forum:

Josh Davis.6015:

The first ‘feature build’ as we’re calling it, won’t go live until the current Living World story arc wraps up. The next feature build will contain substantial PvP updates, the balance items we talked about on Friday, and hopefully even more things that we aren’t ready to talk about yet.

The scope of the balance changes going in is massive. Honestly, putting all of the changes we talked about on Friday straight into the game today would have been extremely kneejerk, and I’m sure many of you would agree that some of the changes needed additional eyes on them before they hit live. We want the time to go through the feedback and make adjustments, and we’re already doing that.

I’m sorry if we gave you the impression that there would be a balance update today – that was not our intent.

Just a heads up for everybody.

Josh Davis.6015:

The first ‘feature build’ as we’re calling it, won’t go live until the current Living World story arc wraps up. The next feature build will contain substantial PvP updates, the balance items we talked about on Friday, and hopefully even more things that we aren’t ready to talk about yet.

The scope of the balance changes going in is massive. Honestly, putting all of the changes we talked about on Friday straight into the game today would have been extremely kneejerk, and I’m sure many of you would agree that some of the changes needed additional eyes on them before they hit live. We want the time to go through the feedback and make adjustments, and we’re already doing that.

I’m sorry if we gave you the impression that there would be a balance update today – that was not our intent.

Awesome, thanks for the reply

I can’t wait just to be able to read through those balance update notes lol.

@Sasajoe.1509;

I’m disappointed too, and yes, there does seem to be an extreme issue in communication when it comes to clarity at times.

But me expressing that disappointment or even outrage on the forums in a nonconstructive way isn’t going to make the balance magically drop today, or tomorrow.

The only thing it will do is lead to more infractions, and ultimately derail the purpose of this thread, which is to make the devs lives easier by having a place where the community can brainstorm constructive and positive ideas to help with the development and balancing process for the game.

At the end of the day, I would rather be the “better man” in this situation, knowing that I’ve done everything I can as a community member to be constructive and necessarily critical in order to voice an opinion that may be taken into consideration as the game progresses.

If the dev team fails at utilizing us community members as a resource, then at least I get to walk away from my experience with this game knowing that I did everything I could to try to salvage my gameplay experience, while at the end of their day, they have to live with the realization that any time they don’t commit to fulfilling some of the more reasonable desires and suggestions of community members, that ultimately all the game is left with is a fleeting playerbase.

@Thread;

With that in mind, let’s try to get this thread back on track and keep the constructive ideas flowing. The balance patch hasn’t dropped yet which means that there is still the chance that any number of suggested ideas here in this thread can be taken and used for the next balance patch.

Keep it up everyone

Josh Davis.6015:

Pyriall.5027:

IB4 Grouchasaurus comes in to try and calm the masses with some vague reference to future updates that they’re unsure of and he used to hate hearing when he was a player….

This was eerie. Are you in the air ducts?

Not to be too forward, but was there some reasoning behind “rushing” to do a balance preview before a patch that wasn’t meant to contain the previewed balance changes? Especially with a “no ETA” policy?

I’m just wondering, because it seems like the balance preview could have either waited until next Friday’s (January 31) bi-weekly stream, or somebody could of just come out and said that today was going to be an empty balance patch with a few minor bug fixes.

Was there any sort of reasoning behind it? Scheduling purposes, anything?

Durzlla.6295:

Well this patch is the first of the 4 “living story finale” patches, so I really wasn’t expecting much… That being said the runes and sigils are going to be a HUGE change for PvP and WvW and probably even PvE so I’m more than happy to wait, not to mention the amulets (especially if they include a power/precision/healing power one in PvP) are gonna completely ruin the current meta and flood it with new possibilities.

All that aside I think we will take the pause in balance updates to talk about the weapons a bit.

Yeah. I just don’t care about PvE is all. I don’t log in for PvE lol.

I can’t wait for the AttK though. Always looking to see if I can learn something new.

Sasajoe.1509:

patch came & guess what .. a failure once more. no balance changes no sigil changes no rune changes NOTHING !

I had some little hope left but it’s totally dead now… I don’t know where did they get those clowns on the stream on friday but they need to go NOW !

It was the Living World content update. It would have been nice if there was an ETA or a confirmation or denial on whether or not the actual balance patch would be today, but I had my doubts considering ANet has probably only had about 3-4 actual weeks now with Winter vacations and such to actually work on balance, and with that considered, it means that the most recent balance patch probably feels extremely recent to the balance team, so much so that they haven’t been able to get a good footing on the next balance patch yet.

That being said, they really could have skipped the balance preview before a patch if the patch isn’t going to contain any balance fixes, especially with a “no ETA” policy.

I would at least wait to see what the actual balance update is going to look like before breaking anything. 3-4 weeks really isn’t a whole lot of time to be doing all of the fixes that were discussed, even just re-purposing and bug fixing all of the runes and sigils is going to take a lot of man hours and fine tooth combing, and from an admittedly (on their part) small group of personnel working on these balance patches.

@Yoh;

To the pet AI fixing, it is definitely not an easy issue. Especially due to the understanding I get from some of ANets posts in the ranger subforum that suggests that the pet AI and mechanic inherits heavily from the open world monster AI and mechanics. Essentially, ANet would have to recode pets from the ground up, in order to not break the rest of the games AI, which would involve creating whole new sets of functions and more than likely redoing all of the pets animations to be in line with the new functionality. Not to mention having to code to allow a new type of object to exist in the current environment.

It would require lots of work and testing. It is extremely doubtful that ANet even has the resources to take on such a task currently, but at the same time, in order for the game to reach its highest possible quality, it may eventually reach the point where this needs to happen. It probably should have never been coded the way it was in the first place.

But either way, here we are now. Nothing we can do other than to suggest bandaid fixes while letting the devs know that the pet having its own functional AI system would be nice, and hope for the best.

Not to be over critical, but I really don’t see the purpose of the devs doing a balance preview before a patch that isn’t going to contain the balance fixes that they are previewing. Especially as a company that “doesn’t believe” in giving ETAs, it only frustrates players.

I just don’t see why the balance preview couldn’t of waited until next Friday (aka January 31) since there is a bi-weekly developer stream now, so as to not unintentionally mislead community members by “rushing” to speak about upcoming balance changes with an inbound patch and no confirmations or denials about whether the balance will be a part of that patch.

That being said, how it relates to AttK;

It’s a shame there is no new balance patch for you guys to talk about, and there isn’t enough info out there about balance to even begin to “reliably” speculate about what incoming changes could be. I know that you guys will do brilliantly regardless.

Sorry that the majority of this post of mine is coming from a place of frustration. It’s just yet another disappointing PvE only patch day.

Atherakhia.4086:

Moment of Clarity would need something silly like you gain it on every evade, dodge, or interrupt before it was even remotely close to being worth a GM trait. I’m also 110% against another 30pt trait being designed as a condi solution for this class. Go with the other suggestions we’ve had in other threads like Quicken Zephyr removes 3 conditions when used. Lightning Reflexes clears immob, chill, cripple. Improve all Ranger Shouts since they’re so awful base to remove a condi and break stun.

The last thing this class needs is 2 30pt traits as the only options to condi cleanse. Now if you want to make Moment of Clarity an Adept Trait (which is all it deserves the way it currently works or a master if you put condi cleanse on it) then so be it. But leaving it GM? Come on…

So many of the Ranger’s 30pt traits are so awful compared to what other classes get nearly ever single one of them needs to be replaced.

You’re very right.

My whole thinking behind both the suggestions would be that the healing for my change to Carnivorous Appetite would be strong enough to warrant it being moved into the grandmaster position, while MoC gets moved down to Masters at the very least.

The problem is entirely just the Skirmishing line though. Not even necessarily that traps are “misplaced” in the line, but that there literally is nothing else other than MoC going on that even remotely helps direct damage builds functionality wise aside from the stat bonuses you get from picking up points in Skirmishing.

My opinion is that the entire traitline needs to be overhauled lol. Something that makes direct damage builds better, and as far as I’m concerned, the traitline can keep traps too, as long as there are other competitive in slot options for different build types that don’t use traps. Or, traps could be made into a viable power options as well by upping their base damage.

There are many ways to approach the problem, but ultimately making all of the most needed traits 30 point options is the last thing we need.

Thanks for checking us on that lol.

Jaysin X.6740:

Yeah I could have a lot of fun with that MoC isn’t perfect but it’s not just the 50% damage boost it’s also got the 100% stun/daze duration. Maybe a bigger damage boost like 100% after a interrupt could give it that oomph it needs. The SB/GS traited have 20 sec cd on the #5 skills, so I don’t think it could be abused.

Or maybe have it apply after a stun/daze and just remove the interrupt entirely. That could be interesting…
sorry i’m rattling, it’s halftime lol

Well, back on page 1, some of things suggested and combined together would end up looking like:

MoC: +100% stun/daze duration. Transfer x conditions to foe on interrupt.

and in the master slot:

Carnivorous Appetite: Your crits steal health for you and your pet with ICD.

So it would be trading the damage boost for a little more sustain with removing conditions, and then for a damage boost, the extra damage would come from stealing health, which isn’t effected by armor/toughness in any way, and would also make rangers a little “beefier,” which is directly designed for power builds.

There are many other suggestions out there, I just think that in general, outside of a trap build, the skirmishing lines trait selection needs some love, since the only trait that actually adds any functionality to power based builds is Moment of Clarity.

Not that I don’t like your idea! I just wanted to share my thoughts as well, an increased amount of situations it could be used in and/or more of a damage boost would be very nice as well.

Something to make it better lol.

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Well while i was away from this thread i had a new idea for signet of hunt active. that is – “recharge all pet skill cooldowns”. Signet cd let’s say 60 secs. Traited with signet of beastmaster it would recharge ranger’s weapon skills as well.

Point to it is simple – occasional abuse of skills on cd, plus given how ranger doesn’t have any “Ultra damage on long cd” weapon skills, it wouldn’t hurt that much. On the other hand he has a lot going on defense wise there, for example whirling axe. That could be a small panic button.

As for moment of clarity – a simple change from “on interrupt” to “on succesfful block/evade” would rack it up in ranger’s favour.

Man this company shuld hire me pronto, i’m a clear genius;)

You’ve definitely got some good and interesting ideas.

This is why I enjoy brainstorming threads, it gets out ideas from a bunch of different perspectives.

Let’s just hope that a dev reads through the thread and decides to start taking notes about some of these ideas haha.

Jaysin X.6740:

Idk I get a lot of use outta MoC. It doubles daze and stun duration’s. A 2 second stun/daze on Hilt Bash really helps me hit that Maul follow-up, if I do get the interrupt that’s just icing on the cake. Plus if you lead with SB #5, swap to GS and Swoop than follow-up with the above combo you get a nice burst which surprises the hell outta of a lot of ppl. As I get better at reading the other classes animations I’ll get better at actually interrupting, and man that is gonna be fun.

You’re right, the increased daze and stun duration is extremely useful. I should have been more specific, since I was directing my comments towards the extra damage portion of the trait, seeing as how the only skill that actually truly fits the concept of the trait is Maul on the greatsword.

Neither the shortbow, the longbow, or the offhand axe can really follow up with a “big damage” skill after an interrupt. So, even though having some sort of damage boost is better than nothing, it would be nice to have more combos like Hilt Bash → Maul in order to truly take advantage of the full extent of the possibilities the Moment of Clarity has the potential to provide.

I don’t have any better suggestions though lol. It isn’t like the game has really changed all that much since the last AttK.

Strategy/weapon breakdown maybe? Like, in general, how can a ranger be the best they can be in a dungeon as far as weapons/traits/utilities/pets? And then similar discussion about solo WvW, group WvW, and PvP?

I’m really not sure, and most everything I say is going to be a rehashing of sorts of old discussions and/or forum threads.

Maybe a pet tip discussion? Since lately, a lot of forum threads have thrown around the common “well only 5% of the ranger players know how to use their pets” argument against threads wanting to abolish the pet, maybe giving some tips to better control the pet are in order. When to swap, skill priority, using F3 to cancel cast and reset pathing, passive versus guarding pet benefits, and which traits benefit the pets the most (like agility training, very underused on people using melee pets without signet of the hunt).

Just trying to help as much as I can!

Yeah, Moment of Clarity seems like a leftover relic from when rangers were being ported from guild wars 1 where there was an interrupt build that was part of every GvG metagame.

However, at some point during development, interrupts were decided to really just not be as big of a part of rangers repertoire as other skill, but the trait was never really changed or removed.

Speculation aside, I have suggested multiple times since launch day the the trait be removed or changed significantly to be much more beneficial than it is currently, especially with there being only one weapon it really benefits (greatsword).

Sube Dai.8496:

jcbroe.4329:

I’d say wait for the patch to drop (assuming its this tuesday) and discuss the changes that are made, assuming the balance previews was intended to preview the patch that is dropping that day.

Nice to say that the ranger podcast is back!

This isn’t the balance patch right, I’m assuming that is way off in the distance?

There wasn’t any specification that I’m aware of.

I’d like to at least see the changes to crit damage and all of the runes/sigils happening, but again, zero clarity from ANet.

The only thing I have to go on is ANet specifically stating during the livestream that this next patch is the “living world patch,” which does make me doubt whether we’ll see any significant balance changes, but at the same time, it’s all just speculation.

They could have at least tried to give a projected ETA like saying something similar to “yeah, we’re working hard to get these changes in for next patch day, but it isn’t a guarantee since we are still ironing out specifics for things and don’t want to make hasty changes that might disrupt the game more than improving it.”

Anyhow, @Durz, I’d say for a plan B, discuss the current state of the ranger and where it is excelling and lacking, and then get peoples opinions on what they think the biggest improvements to the class should be, and what they hope will be in the next patch. Metagame debates could be a part of the conversation, for example, in PvP, the spirit build is an apex predator build, but mostly due to how strong of a utility the Elite Spirit is. Without the elite spirit, it would be hard to see rangers even being part of the PvP metagame. Etc etc etc, I know you get it lol.

I’d say wait for the patch to drop (assuming its this tuesday) and discuss the changes that are made, assuming the balance previews was intended to preview the patch that is dropping that day.

Nice to say that the ranger podcast is back!

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Ok, after little brainstorming i had few ideas, but they were already in traits in one form or the other…so why not just alter signet of hunt active a bit:

For next 10 seconds all your pet’s non critical attacks do 50% more damage.

I think that would be epic and non game breaking. If your pet is not a zerker (or you with signet of beastmater trait) you won’t get much, because crits will not get the boost and by default each crit will be at least as strong as attack of opportunity.

But less critical oriented builds would get a nice damage boost, one that would earn a place in their skillbar, where zerks would normally put some defensive skill. Plus i feel rangers should get more crit buffs then most. This not being one, but a nice way to have damage without going balls to the wall on precision and critical damage (or soon to replacement).

That’s a really interesting idea and I think it would create some unique builds and gearing options that would work to separate the ranger from other professions.

It reminds me of the old Read the Wind preparation from Guild Wars 1, which makes me like it that much more lol.

Good suggestion!

Khayoss.2019:

Good read, thanks for your efforts. I do appreciate what you are trying to do, but I remain very pessimistic that you will actually get a response. I actually use to try to drum up attention for this class that I want so badly to love…. I even wrote this over 6 months ago that contains some of the same things you discuss: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/archive/suggestions/Complete-Ranger-class-suggestions

I never got a dev response, and while we did get a blast finisher after that post (and several others on the ranger forum), noting else has been touched. I have essentially given up on the class and moved on, but if you can get some traction at overhauling the pet part of this class so that we are not so severely handicapped I would come back to the ranger class and forum in a heartbeat. Keep up the good fight.

Yeah, it’s unfortunate :/

There are a lot of people who started off as ranger mains that put in lots of time and effort trying to theorycraft and perfect the best builds, as well as being constructive and analyzing the class, who just aren’t around anymore either do to switching professions or leaving the game entirely.

So I’m glad you’re still around and can offer other reference threads and support! The least we can do as players is offer up our honest opinions, criticisms, and analyses, and hope that the effort pays off at some point.

@Everyone;

I appreciate seeing the discussions and support taking place in this thread. Hopefully we can keep the constructive ideas flowing and the conversation going (I rhymed on purpose because reasons lol).

Swagger.1459:

jcbroe.4329:

Personally, I prefer that they fix the bugs in the game that are causing unintentional functionality before they put too much of a focus on balance/overhaul. Unintended functionality could lead to even more bugs down the road if they don’t nip them in the bud now, and since ANet seems to enjoy using inheritance in their coding, a bug could be passed through and effect multiple things, and changing it at that point could literally break everything that they spend time building on top of the bug.

So personally, I think that it’s good that they get this stuff done now. I saw some true excitement about the ranger changes they were unwilling/unable to talk about during the stream, which is a true first to see the devs excited about something ranger related.

So ultimately, we’ll have to wait to see if the changes are as exciting to us as they seemed to be to the devs.

After the patch though, the Elite Spirit will still be one of the best elites in the game, and Empathic Bond will be functioning just like I had though it always functioned, and the traps will maybe get something I thought they should have always had.

Here’s to hoping some fresh gameplay is created though!

valid points j. guess i’m just tired of seeing potential wasted and larger issues neglected across all professions.

I definitely understand. It took years for ANet to get Guild Wars 1 balance into a good place. The majority of the time, their balance patches always ended up leaving something overpowered, and something nerfed so hard it wasn’t part of the metagame anymore.

I get jaded just like everybody else, and I don’t blame anybody, because any reasonably negative (aka not making threats or being so insulting that it no longer comes of as criticism) things being said about ANets patching/balancing are just criticisms that are brought on by their own methodology and the changes that are actually made at the end of the day.

Guild Wars 1 took 3 months between balance patches. Even if it was a pressing issue, if it didn’t constitute as a bug, ANet wouldn’t fix it. Coming from that kind of experience with their patching process, I can honestly say that seeing any sort of changes a month after a balance patch shows me that balance is taking a much larger precedence for them this time around, which shows signs that it still has the potential get better.

I just let the patch notes determine how much “criticism” I offer up at the end of the day. So it’s more of just a wait and see thing until Tuesday (I think the 21st is patch day anyways).

Right now we’re in what I like to refer to as “balance limbo” where ANet does a livestream/patch preview and only gives the tiniest actual details out about the incoming changes, which then stimulates the forum into an entire knee-jerk reaction based on the smallest amount of facts combining with the largest amount of speculation possible.

The best way to not let it effect you or get to you is to just get away from the forums and wait until patch day to see for yourself. I found that I enjoy the game much better when I’m not always reading about every little thing that’s wrong with it on the forums. Granted that gameplay gets stale and there are still glaring issues at times, but without all the doom and gloom, the game can at least remain enjoyable, and I can walk away and do something else whenever I’m just not feeling Guild Wars 2.

Personally, I prefer that they fix the bugs in the game that are causing unintentional functionality before they put too much of a focus on balance/overhaul. Unintended functionality could lead to even more bugs down the road if they don’t nip them in the bud now, and since ANet seems to enjoy using inheritance in their coding, a bug could be passed through and effect multiple things, and changing it at that point could literally break everything that they spend time building on top of the bug.

So personally, I think that it’s good that they get this stuff done now. I saw some true excitement about the ranger changes they were unwilling/unable to talk about during the stream, which is a true first to see the devs excited about something ranger related.

So ultimately, we’ll have to wait to see if the changes are as exciting to us as they seemed to be to the devs.

After the patch though, the Elite Spirit will still be one of the best elites in the game, and Empathic Bond will be functioning just like I had though it always functioned, and the traps will maybe get something I thought they should have always had.

Here’s to hoping some fresh gameplay is created though!

@ZeftheWicked;

I agree with the overall idea of your change, but 50% more damage for 10 seconds with signet of the beastmaster and the active of signet of the wild has the potential to be way over the top for the amount of damage you will be able to do for a sustained period.

That being said, when there are suggestions like this, it leads to a very obvious conclusion; if rangers need this type of availability to damage increases, then the weapon skills and/or pets aren’t doing enough damage on their own and the weapons should be buffed up instead of the utilities, or else you shoehorn builds into specific utility and trait choices, which reduces build versatility overall.

That being said, I definitely agree with the functionality change to Signet of the Hunt being “your pets next x attacks do y% more damage” or “for the next x seconds, your pets attacks do y% more damage.”

However, the bigger problem I see with making this change is that it leaves Sic’ Em completely and totally overshadowed. Any thoughts on how you would change Sic’ Em to accommodate for the changes to Signet of the Hunt?

My personal suggestion for Signet of the Hunt is to turn it into a stunbreak while keeping it’s current functionality. Being able to slot a movement signet which can double as a stunbreak and be used to create a “big” hit sounds very reasonable to me, especially on the utility bar compression side of things.

Changes incoming.

At least that’s what the livestream said.

Not that outside of the bug fixes/nerfs (they are bug fixes that result in lesser capabilities than what is currently available) any information was actually given.

The devs seemed excited though. More excited about ranger changes than I have seen them look and react since launch and the state of the game streams. Hopefully that implies good things.

Some teasers would have been nice, but ehhh, the upcoming patch notes will speak for themselves. Hopefully some of the issues mentioned in this thread are addressed and/or some of the suggestions are taken. It would be nice to see.

Oidmetala.8426:

-Spirit of Nature – ‘reduced’ to 320hp/second

thats a buff or not? Oo
its atm 320/3secs

The tooltip is really off on it, it’s actually currently 480 healing per second. The patch will reduce it to 320 per second.

Essentially, it’s a bug fix that is a nerf from what it is currently but a buff from how the Spirit would have worked had it been working as intended.

Kadin.2356:

From a thief perspective rangers are just too easy to stick too. The melee specs can be a bit more tricky but they lack punch. Really they should give bow skills some more positional movement (warps) and up the melee damage done.

I’ve definitely suggested this before since there was a skill like it in the first game (http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Strike_as_One) which I would love to see implemented in some form, basically you and your pet swapping places.

I think the best implementation of this would be to have it be a secondary effect on the end of guard, which would help specs both offensive and defensive. Tell the pet to go guard, then activate, and you swap places with your pet (1200 range).

Akisame.9508:

Seeing this thread hit the second page makes me feel like ranger’s have finally given up on Anet and are tired of repeating themselves and are waiting for the greener pasture coming out in April.

I just didn’t want to keep posting “for the sake of posting” if you know what I mean.

@Everyone;

I love that the conversation is still going and in a positive direction without me, ummmm, “commentating” on everything posted. I’ve been super busy with real life events this week, but it’s good to see that people think a thread like this is meaningful and to see people supporting each others ideas and just overall being able to see that no matter what specific change is addressed, the direction the change is trying to push the class is agreed upon as far as what the class lacks and what it needs.

I hope the devs are at least periodically checking this thread and jotting down notes in a notebook somewhere, if they don’t feel the need to make their presence known. As opposed to just proposing changes that can be patched into the game, people have actually tried to use their powers of deduction to breakdown the strengths and flaws of the ranger class and then talk about areas that can be improved upon and have even provided specific examples of changes that can be implemented.

I sincerely hope that such a constructive effort has at least gained some attention.

@Topic specifically;

What do you guys think for a ranger as far as being single target based or AoE based? For instance, thieves are all about doing damage to a single target, while eles are more designed around hitting multiple targets.

Should rangers be more single target based than AoE based? Is the game balanced well enough to make distinctions like this between classes when it comes to balancing? Or is the game in a state where single target damage and AoE damage are so close together that when all other things equal, you choose the class with more AoE? If so, is that a problem that affects how the ranger balance significantly enough that if a larger disparity was created between AoE and single target damage, ranger would be in a more balanced place?

Any thoughts?

Any more ideas anybody?

Any contribution is more than welcome

Sol.4310:

Many good idea’s but like always I can almost 100% say we won’t see a single change based on the idea’s of many rangers whom know the class inside and out.

What we will see if more hard counters buffs to skills we didn’t want nerfs to skills that didn’t require nerfing.

So ask yourself why bother, to get the Ranger into a good state with many viable builds it would take them at-least 2-3 years as we can already see it seems to take them forever to make changes.

Honestly it’s a very selfish reason why I continue to post stuff, it’s so that when I’m ready to move on and away from this game, I will be able to do so knowing that I did as much as I possibly could to give ANet feedback to help them improve the game and be successful.

Because I know that if I stopped posting, then even the slightest chance of getting any of the changes I believe the class needs would go right out the window lol.

At least this way, if the class never gets the changes it needs (or that I perceive it to need), I’ll be able to say that it honestly isn’t from a lack of trying.

For the sword, I was hoping that adding a blind to sword 2 on the initial evade would alleviate any frame issues the skill is currently having, since it is a clunky skill to use for an evade because of the evasion frames occurring after the hornets/bees/whatever are thrown out, and you then have to wait for your character to begin leaping back before those evasion frames set in.

However, I’m split on the issue with the sword autoattack. On the one hand, I appreciate how unique it is as a weapon and I personally enjoy the gameplay it provides. On the other hand, it does have some gameplay restrictions and even though the weapon is unique, I personally would prefer that unique gameplay to not be centered around the autoattack, and to not be locked into an autoattack by animations.

So while conceptually I enjoy the idea of the sword and physically I’ve grown accustomed to it and can handle it’s current iteration, I find that overall, I would prefer that no weapon in this game be designed around having maximum damage output just by autoattacking, and that you shouldn’t get “locked” into an action by automatic animations (which is why the only “solution” to the sword issue is to turn the autoattack off, unless you enjoy losing control over your character).

Ryan.9387:

Sword dagger axe torch
Sword torch axe dagger

Both are better than bow builds for roaming in most any case. A (rare) example of bow being better is shortbow with x-x-10-x-20 with pet condi dmg and feline bleed on crit. Then you shortbow 4 for extra bleed stacks.

Bows generally have less control over condi / dmg application and apply less as well. Take ranger vs ranger. You cant time condis to empatic bond while the s/d a/t can stack 11 bleeds and 6s burn in 2s after empatic bond ticks. His condis will last and yours will not so you will die.

Power builda are generally garbage for roaming. You can only kill with luck or bad opponents.

I agree, and not to derail the thread at all, but since you’re here, help end an internal debate of mine if you don’t mind; traps or spirits?

nagymbear.5280:

jcbroe.4329:

Prysin.8542:

jcbroe.4329:

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

If pets had 70~100% hit rate rather then the current 15-25%, they would do so much DPS, that certain builds would be over the top.
My Beast Cannon Build is pretty much over the top if the target doesnt keep moving. Trapper, BM Bunker and Remorseless builds will be insane.

Which is why you balance them straight FPS style, either they are accurate but weak, or inaccurate but strong.

I’m just asking what peoples preference would be with that question, I know it’s worded weirdly now that I read it haha.

We should have both I think. Birds and dogs would hit more reliably bot not that hard, while boars and bears would hit harder but would be harder to land, sort of like maul.

I immediately +1’d this.

nagymbear.5280:

Probably wouldn’t be the new meta for bunker rangers, just wanted to highlight that its a pretty big change we are talking about. Also see SoW and SotH would pigeonhole power rangers, because there aren’t many burst skills to begin with (maul, path of scars, ist there anything else). One of those damage buffs would need to go, and probably a lot of other changes necessary as well. It sounds like 1 change, but it would have a huge impact probably.

You’re right, and the way I see it with this situation, dropping the damage boost on Signet of the Wild would be the way to go, since there are a lot of suggested traits and weapon improvements that would ultimately help out power builds.

Having an irremovable stability is probably powerful enough.

Just an idea thread though, and I do like your ideas and appreciate you pointing out potential oversights like this.

Just lots of good discussion all around (crosses fingers for a red post to jump in with their thoughts).

Prysin.8542:

jcbroe.4329:

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

If pets had 70~100% hit rate rather then the current 15-25%, they would do so much DPS, that certain builds would be over the top.
My Beast Cannon Build is pretty much over the top if the target doesnt keep moving. Trapper, BM Bunker and Remorseless builds will be insane.

Which is why you balance them straight FPS style, either they are accurate but weak, or inaccurate but strong.

I’m just asking what peoples preference would be with that question, I know it’s worded weirdly now that I read it haha.

I like the idea not having to trait 30 into MM for more useful signets (even though SoR is good untraited as well, SotH is widely used for the speed bonus anyways). However, with anything else unchanged, a ranger could take signet of the wild for stability at 20 points into MM, barkskin in WS (maybe not the best choice for sPvP currently though), and enlargement, which they surely not let happen. And than you could have protection on dodge, and maybe Stone spirit. Sorry to split hairs… but there are probably other combinations that would be too powerful for most (especially non rangers ?).

I see how it could be an issue with where the numbers currently are on combinations like that, and in no way do I advocate over buffing anything or contributing to power creep, but from a functional standpoint alone, I find it hard to see where a build combination like this is doing anymore than other classes build combinations.

Not to argue for super powerful combinations, but I am just saying from a functional standpoint, I would rather see combinations like this exist and then nerf things accordingly, like maybe making Enlargement not last as long as the actual SotW active with SotBM, similar to what was done to traits like Necro’s Weakening Shroud.

That’s more of a “compelling gameplay” argument though.

Using some of my other suggestions throughout the thread, like moving eagle eye up to grandmaster, increasing the damage to 10% for longbow and the shortbow range up to 1200, as well as Signet of the Beastmaster also competing with Spotter, would builds like what you’re suggesting really become apex predator builds?

I really do see what you’re getting at though. Ideally, over time, everything would be tweaked numerically to achieve balance, but the process I would hope to see is providing the class with some functionality that it feel like it’s sorely missing at times when builds have to go all out with traits and utility slots, and then once this new functionality and versatility is in place, iron out the numerical balance.

Edit: And thank you for your thoughts and contributions! I like the discussions the thread is creating, and it’s interesting seeing how everybody has a different take on how to balance things that ultimately ends up reflecting the same core issues over and over.

Azure.8670:

Please make the greatsword do more damage than a warriors banner. Thanks.

I was just assuming that it was a problem with a scaling coefficient, which I’m sure plays into it, but there isn’t even enough information for a banner stab to conclude that, since on the wiki there is no damage coefficient listed, and has a base 325 damage apparently.

I would bet money on it being an issue mostly tied to our poor weapon scaling coefficients, which was to balance for have an “always-on” pet mechanic. ANet would probably have to address the pet mechanic before allowing the player to do more damage, which is frustrating for sure since players want as much control over their gameplay as possible and don’t want to be doing less damage because their “other” damage is tied up in an AI that isn’t considered to be the most reliable.

If the pet scaled off of the players stats, the player could actually have more damaging weapons, and then investing in beastmastery would allocate damage to the pet over increasing your own stats and thereby your own damage.

That would probably be the best solution to this problem.

The problem right now is that as long as the pet remains unchanged, it is a linear mechanic that is always on, always functioning as a damage source, with very little in-game changing how it works, and the overall effect of putting points into beastmastery not being the greatest.

From what I understand, and from my own assumptions, the pet AI is basically using the open world monster AI, down to the point where they stop to attack the same way. It is assumed then that necro minions and mesmer summons behave in the same fashion.

So, I gather that what I’m suggesting would mean that they would have to literally recode ranger pets entire AI system. Essentially, the game would have to be overhauled to allow for this new “object,” aka the updated pet, to exist within and interact with the environment. How it takes damage and does damage and everything would have to basically be coded from the ground up.

That’s just based on my assumption though. Truly, there isn’t an easy solution to the problem. The easiest solution would be to make the pets autoattacks act similarly to the 1 handed sword so that the pet always has a small leap to the target, but even then, it would probably take some time to get all of the animations right for the different pet species and attacks.

It’s just one of those sigh issues, but it definitely needs to be addressed.

Detharos.3157:

jcbroe.4329:

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

More or less. With pets, its hit or miss. In some cases, namely where targets are standing still and the full might of the class can be brought to bear.. it becomes exceedingly powerful. I think we as a class should want our damage to be at 100% when we launch a successful attack; not 70% percent with a cat, drake, canine or ursine and what not helplessly chasing a moving target while the ranger does all the heavy lifting with uplevel style damage. That or obviously, the pet could be made a choice rather than forced.. which is unfortunately something that ArenaNet historically expressed its being adamantly opposed to. Right now it seems that two; ranger and pet; are expected to fight as one entity- so we need to be able to attack in unison. Enemies randomly hitting movement keys or teleporting, whatever just mitigates that expectation far too easily.

Another argument for a different method to theoretically achieve that desired result is increased pet control. I fear that what some people have in mind for that might not be a good direction for the ranger class however.

More pet control would be a godsend for easily controlled ranger builds, but see those with an already extremely high skill requirement becoming exceedingly difficult. Melee ranger for example you have to pay a lot of attention to your timings and need high levels reaction time and good instinctual reflexes built from good amounts of pratice. You’re getting hit by more attacks, timing interrupts and stuns very carefully, fighting against your sword planting in timing your dodge rolls, very easily put yourself in a downhill fight if you mistime a utility or react poorly to stun at the wrong time; throw in having to control a pet with your mouse as well like a unit in Starcraft on top of that as some might have in mind, however nice for longbow spammers.. would make skill requirement on melee ranger even higher, maybe to the point of becoming a brain workout. I could see that becoming a living nightmare.

Plus, while admittedly not being an expert in programming; with reassigning pet locations even if the pet was controllable to that degree (as some ranger suggestions seem to demand) could increase scripted requests to the server for pet movements which would still potentially see pets responding slowly and increase strain on servers, that given certain responses by certain balance team members; I’m not certain the servers could handle the added load from a few thousand rangers constantly clicking their pets location requests everywhere. Despite that I’m not completely opposed to such pet control options, only hesitant towards them.

Definitely all true. I don’t think that the state of the game can physically handle the level of control players would like to see with the pet without recoding the pets entirely. From what I understand, ANet took the route of having the pets inherit from open world monster AI, and unfortunately, what rangers are requesting, and what I doubt will happen, or happen any time soon, based on how tedious it would be, would be to remove how the pet is currently implemented, then code pets as their own entity with their own AI entirely.

Since the likelihood of that is low, what did you think of my previous suggestion? This: My 2 cents on it is that I think that removing the rooting animation and allowing pets to attack while moving, but only for autoattacks, would be the best middle ground. Damage output balanced as necessary of course.

Doing that would allow pets to have more decent sustain than they have now, but because they couldn’t land their burst/cooldowns without setup from the player through CC/positioning, it wouldn’t be such an overpowering change that it would be unfeasible.

At least not in my opinion lol. I’m not sure whether or not it would fix, or even bandaid fix, the core issue though. Maybe making Agility Training just part of the pets coding would be a start?

So basically, making the pet hit more reliably even if it would mean numerical adjustments to any damage needed would be better than how pets currently work?

Let me give an example of why I think pets are easy. Keep in mind that I keep my pet on passive at all times.

So, I hit F1 to attack something, and then I wait. And wait. And wait. If I want to use an F2 skill, I watch for an animation to begin/end, and use the F2 at the right time to get the best pet response, and then let the pet go back to attacking, or switch pets appropriately if trying to pull a pet combo (a wolfs fear into a drakehounds KD for instance). And I wait. If my pet starts getting hurt or I want it to come back to me, I press F3. If I want it to reset its chase animation so it stops getting kited, I press F3 and then quickly F1 again. If its about to die and retreating doesn’t save it, I press F4.

During the time period that I’m managing the pet, there is a whole lot of inaction where I could still be doing something with that pet, but because of the simplistic controls, I am forced to be less active than I could possibly be.

Compared to a class like an elementalist or an engi where I’m constantly toggling and using skills the entire time so that there really is no period where I feel less active than I could be on my keyboard, its frustrating to go back to a ranger where I can be so much less active on the keyboard than I am on other classes, knowing that I could manage more than what the game lets me manage just because “it would be too hard for new players.”

You don’t have to try to be insulting just because I have an opinion.

And yes, a trickery based thief is more difficult in my opinion because of it’s versatility. You have to know what you’re stealing, when to steal, at certain times, how to steal (for instance you can steal into a backstab provided you can hit the keys fast enough), when to use what you stole, when to use steal defensively versus offensively.

Micromanaging a pet in this game is child’s play in comparison to having to micromanage 3 different heroes in guild wars 1, or maybe I’m just good at micromanaging.

Regardless, it’s still my opinion, like I’ve said numerous times, that micromanaging the pet for me personally is easy.

And yes, every pet has a different AI, skillset, and skill priority. This is a very, very well known fact. The issue isn’t understanding the AI, it’s finding the managing of the AI to be a very boring endeavor.

Sorry for expressing my opinion.

Edit: And I never said pets were useless. I said I found the mechanic easy to use. I love the pet, I just wish that more micromanagement options were implemented so that players capable of a higher level of micromanagement ability would be able to have more control over their pet. I don’t see how it would be any more difficult than elementalist attunements or engineers kits/belt.

thefantasticg.3984:

jcbroe.4329:

1)

• Revamp the pet AI to make this possible
• Overhaul – Take away the always-on aspect of the ranger pet mechanic. Turn F1 into a Toggle that activates the pet (essentially summoning them and using the old spirit mechanics where they are active for 60 seconds and can be reactivated with no cooldown after 60 seconds, or go on cooldown if they die earlier than 60 seconds), then toggles to a target selection key (current F1 function). F2 remains the same in function. F3 can either be kept the same or turned into a damage immunity/dodge type button with a cooldown. F4 can “dismiss” the pet early, in turn, reducing the amount of recharge time the pet activation would have compared to if it had been killed.

I like this one the most. I’m assuming coefficients are brought up and Ranger is balanced with 100% damage output returned to the Ranger except for when the pet is out?

Exactly. And then I was thinking that with this way, the pet stats could scale off of the player in some manner, and then the more invested into beastmastery, the higher the scaling coefficient, while being able to choose pet traits to further increase the pets functionality/damage/support/survival/etc, or maybe decrease the recharge time if the pet dies, or etc.

FallinDevast.5364:

I also main a ranger before but she is now relegated to just doing low-mid level fractals. My engineer is now my “go to” class for open world pve, dungeons and WvWvW because damage-wise, mobility-wise, utility-wise and in fun factor, the ranger is severely outclassed.

I have a few ideas floating in my head which I want to share because I, like you, want to go back and main a ranger again.

1. Marksmanship minor traits rework – both Opening Strike and Alpha Training serve the same purpose and going by the concept of a ranger and his/her pet being one entity broken into two, these minor traits should be merged and put into Adept tier. Precise Strike, an upgrade to Opening Strike, should follow accordingly and be put into Master tier. This leaves the Grandmaster minor trait open and can be filled in by a major trait, my personal pick being Remorseless which also serves as an upgrade for Opening Strike.

2. Marksmanship major trait idea – “Puncturing Shot” projectiles ignore the target’s armor value and defense boosts provided by boons (10 seconds cooldown), this gives our ranger a periodic burst which synergizes well with the power line and Opening Strike.

3. More access to Stability – it irks me that our only access to stability is an elite (not all builds benefit from a “traited” SotW), how about giving the rangers a trait which grants stability while channeling? or tweak a few utilities to grant it?

A lot of the glaring flaws had already been addressed over and over so there’s no reason repeating them.

Just wanted to let you know that I personally love your ideas and +1