Guild Wars 2

SynfulChaot.3169:

jcbroe.4329:

The game right now has 7 classes that can be played with your face on the keyboard, rolling it around, and the 8th is the elementalist.

Sorry. Gotta strongly disagree here. You try that on a ranger and you’re dead. Same goes for thief and mesmer. True for most of the others, though.

It’s an exaggeration that stems from my experience with multiple other games that are much more punishing for whiffing and/or playing badly versus guild wars 2, including guild wars 1.

Mostly because the game decided to remove valuable support roles, like interrupter (this is what I played in guild wars 1) or supporter (like a prot monk or a ritualist) in favor of being an entirely offense, damage versus defense game.

The skills for most classes are just simple, easy to use, and don’t require much setup. I say elementalist is the highest because they require the most memorized attunement rotations and skill usages to be effective.

I’m not blaming the game, I’m blaming myself for expecting something more challenging.

I’d say where the skill comes in in the game right now comes from 3 different aspects; recognizing on the fly what your opponent is using and calculating in your head whether it is advantageous or disadvantageous to engage them based on build wars; rotating and controlling maps effectively with a team of people, and seeing through the jumble of animations on screen to interpret what your opponents actions are to outplay them accordingly.

I’d argue that actually playing the classes and using the skills are just about the easiest thing in the game.

I’d like to see the longbow be changed to bonus damage. Something like: “Your attacks do this much damage. If your opponent is 1000+ range, you do this much more damage.”

Something that doesn’t punish you for having an opponent too close, but does reward you for keeping them at range (specifically, the longbow should always have a better power damage output than the shortbow).

Poliswag.8240:

jcbroe.4329:

SynfulChaot.3169:

jcbroe.4329:

It’s doubtful that any autoattack is going to receive much improvement, as last time balance devs were communicating to players (I believe it was in a twitch chat during the last tourny), they said that they were already in the stages of discussion reducing the effectiveness of autoattacks where it’s needed across the board, and improving cooldown skills, in order to promote skill rotations and gameplay that doesn’t involve running around and autoattacking.

Whether they go through with that change remains to be seen, however, if it was something that was already on the table, it’s doubtful that autoattacks are going to see many damage increases, for the most part.

Yeah. It does surprise me that they’re so shocked that people auto-attack so much. Maybe is because all the weapon skills have decently high cooldowns. And the utilities, by and large, have very large cooldowns. I want to use more skills. But with so few skills with decent cooldowns that really does put a damper on it.

I mean, it’s fine if the goal is to slow down the pace of combat across the board. The game actually needs a slower paced combat in a competitive atmosphere.

The problem is changing content and mechanics to go along with those changes. Entire builds would need reworking, like perma-stealth and boon heavy guardian builds, which need fast counters to balance out the speed at which those builds can function.

Boss encounters would have to be reworked and time-gated events would have to be recalculated to allow for a greater variance in skill level between characters capable of rotating their skills and maximizing DPS, and players new to or incapable of adapting to the situation, particularly in open world combat and dungeons.

Personally though, I would love this to be the direction the game takes; slowing down combat.

Sorry, I couldn’t disagree more. The fast paced combat allows more experienced players to respond quicker and skill as well as reaction timing come up ahead.

I actually heard earlier today that supposedly they were discussing increasing Maul damage, which I would be okay with, too. I don’t have a source though as I just heard it from a friend. Let’s hope for the best.

Slow paced combat would allow make skill rotations more valuable and important, while creating an atmosphere that punished players more for spamming then the skilled and experienced players capable of saving their rotations, bursts, and important skills, waiting for the perfect moment to land them.

“Feinting” would also make a more important appearance in the game; faking a burst setup to make your opponent waste dodges or a heal, to then unload on them.

As it stands right now, the game can be so fast paced that players aren’t rewarded for performing feats that require that much skill, and instead the game is much more rewarding to players who just autoattack and use skills on cooldown until a target dies.

Slowing it down creates a skill gap between players who can actually choose to use their skills at the best possible time for the best output versus players who just try to use their skills on cooldown to do as much damage as they hope they can.

The game right now has 7 classes that can be played with your face on the keyboard, rolling it around, and the 8th is the elementalist.

Writetyper.1985:

Rym.1469:

Decklan.7540:

Chopps, how does your build fair against a warrior with Mobile Strikes?

To be honest, if you take a look at recent warrior builds…None, literally none of them runs Mobile Strikes anymore. Only Warrior’s Sprint.

I dunno, there’s kind of an option between warrior’s sprint or signet cooldown + SoR (As swiftness is pretty vital) and DotE or Mobile Strikes on the second slot. Mobile Strikes works with Earthshaker but I feel if you’re running that hammer/lb build it’s not worth it just for that. GS or sword builds though, definitely.

Pets have been and will always be the mechanic that holds the ranger back from ever being a solid class.

A year later and Anet still can’t get them right.

In saying that one would assume what we have is all we will get.

I truly don’t know why anyone bothers to complain anymore as it’s a waste of time.

It has nothing to do with pet AI. Pets are great. If you micro them well you can turn a fight. It has everything to do with the F2 skills being extremely unresponsive. There are hundreds of other pet complaint threads, don’t infect this thread and turn it into one please. I just want anet to see this and maybe do something so I can play the kitten class properly.

The pet pathing isn’t quite there yet either. I was watching an engi circle strafe my wolf earlier and my wolf couldn’t deal with it because it was basically moving in a 4 point direction system instead of an 8 point. Basically, the Engi was making a circle around my pet, who was on the inside of that circle making a box, trying to meet the engi at certain points.

It looked as though the AI was interpreting and predicting the next logical place the player was going to be based on the last place the pet intercepted (or near intercepted) that player, but that the player was out-maneuvering the AI’s “thinking” process and being out paced by the player because of it.

That, and uneven terrain still “confuses” pets, and makes them run out to obscure places in order to get around terrain that players can travel with no problem.

Now, it isn’t a 100% persistent problem (meaning that it doesn’t happen every time), but the inconsistency is part of the problem; sometimes pets work perfectly, sometimes, you’re yelling at your computer screen and wanting to put down whatever sorry excuse for a pet your using.

Well the devs did say specifically to tune in during the preview for more “balance teasers before patch Tuesday” during a livestream, but they could just dev-troll us and discuss Sic’ Em some more -.-

Math has been shown time and time again that no matter what the class, power scales better for increasing DPS than precision, but that a combination of both is the key.

I believe it’s this:

Precision is more beneficial than Power when d(Damage)/d(Precision) is greater than d(Damage)/d(Power) or:

Power – Precision + 832 > 2100 / (0.5 + Critdmg)

Plot for various values of critdamage to make your plot.

Taken from this thread, albeit, it is old, but still relevant: https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/game/gw2/Finding-the-Diminishing-Returns-in-Stats/first#post2040924

SynfulChaot.3169:

jcbroe.4329:

It’s doubtful that any autoattack is going to receive much improvement, as last time balance devs were communicating to players (I believe it was in a twitch chat during the last tourny), they said that they were already in the stages of discussion reducing the effectiveness of autoattacks where it’s needed across the board, and improving cooldown skills, in order to promote skill rotations and gameplay that doesn’t involve running around and autoattacking.

Whether they go through with that change remains to be seen, however, if it was something that was already on the table, it’s doubtful that autoattacks are going to see many damage increases, for the most part.

Yeah. It does surprise me that they’re so shocked that people auto-attack so much. Maybe is because all the weapon skills have decently high cooldowns. And the utilities, by and large, have very large cooldowns. I want to use more skills. But with so few skills with decent cooldowns that really does put a damper on it.

I mean, it’s fine if the goal is to slow down the pace of combat across the board. The game actually needs a slower paced combat in a competitive atmosphere.

The problem is changing content and mechanics to go along with those changes. Entire builds would need reworking, like perma-stealth and boon heavy guardian builds, which need fast counters to balance out the speed at which those builds can function.

Boss encounters would have to be reworked and time-gated events would have to be recalculated to allow for a greater variance in skill level between characters capable of rotating their skills and maximizing DPS, and players new to or incapable of adapting to the situation, particularly in open world combat and dungeons.

Personally though, I would love this to be the direction the game takes; slowing down combat.

I would honestly never use this skill, especially because I play in mostly a PvP environment.

People are already extremely savvy to telegraphed attacks (killshot, 100 blades). The tradeoff leaves you too vulnerable for an attack that is very avoidable and especially obvious.

Healing Spring becomes more valuable to the ranger player, and less valuable to a group, while remaining the best water field in the game.

The same healing, with better condi removal and regen application (meaning potentially more reliable regen application for more Healing Over Time? Yes please).

It’s so sad that some people would prefer to be water field slaves than actually have better functionality out of their skills. Oh, and it’s still the longest lasting and most sustainable water field in the game, even with a duration change. So, ranger are still the top slot for the role anyhow.

This is why we can’t have nice things.

It’s doubtful that any autoattack is going to receive much improvement, as last time balance devs were communicating to players (I believe it was in a twitch chat during the last tourny), they said that they were already in the stages of discussion reducing the effectiveness of autoattacks where it’s needed across the board, and improving cooldown skills, in order to promote skill rotations and gameplay that doesn’t involve running around and autoattacking.

Whether they go through with that change remains to be seen, however, if it was something that was already on the table, it’s doubtful that autoattacks are going to see many damage increases, for the most part.

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

I play 30/25/15 and its fun. People dying before they realise what’s going on. It reminds me my hunter from Lotro looong ago ;P

The only class that poses serious threat is backstab thieves. I can kill the n00by ones, but good thieves are impossible atm. Even though you might be able to eventually run away from them, you can’t kill them. This will change though when sic ’em gets changed. 10 secs of non stealth will destroy backstab thieves.

Also always run away from bunker builds. The good ones won’t go down, but in most situations you can escape.

PS: just had a 6.4 Long range shot on a ranger lol

Where are you getting 10 seconds from? The reveal duration of the Sic’ Em change hasn’t been discussed or confirmed by any devs to my knowledge. Is there a source?

I was thinking James Brown haha.

Soilder.3607:

SynfulChaot.3169:

Soilder.3607:

Are you joking? Most of my changes are QoL improvements. If they all did come true, which I don’t expect to happen and is not my intention, then the only thing that’d be even remotely op would be our vigor uptime. But even then, as I explained earlier, that uptime has the potential to be strong but also has the potential to be weak. Maybe you can claim the 20% increased power scaling op, but I think its completely justifiable over the fact that our pets are unreliable and the fact that we already have poor power scaling to begin with. And that power increase only effects auto attacks as well.

While the pets are highly unreliable in some modes of play (PvE), their shortcomings aren’t quite so glaring in others (PvP). This led to the current situation where we, in PvE, are nerfed for design decisions in PvP.

Pets can be relied upon to a much greater degree in PvP. In fact they are and that is a major reason why rangers are firmly in the PvP meta. In PvP as the ranger pet can and does deal significant damage buffing the rangers damage further, while highly requested and helpful in PvE, would make the ranger too powerful in PvP.

The only way a power gain to rangers directly would make sense and not be OP is to simultaneously nerf pet damage output. While that would not be noticed by many PvE players, it has the potential to greatly impact the meta for rangers in all game modes for those that are skilled with the class.

Rangers are only in the pvp meta because of spirits. When was the last time a power based ranger build was requested? God kitten never. This is why we need better power scaling. That, or every cd build in the game, including ours, needs to be nerfed because of the cd meta.

Seriously, 20% increased power to only the auto-attacks isn’t as bad as it sounds. Running 30/30/10/0/0 with zerker ammy and full runes of the ogre, that means great sword auto would deal 602, 602, 711

Sword would be 600, 600, 697

SB would be, 398.

LB would be, 525, 680, 940

And axe would be 498

Ranger has been in the PvP meta since launch. The progression has gone Traps>Beastmaster>Spirits.

Rangers have also always been complained about by the PvP community as OP, and always regarded as top tier; only dropping lower than that during the times between the emergence of the next popular meta builds.

Not to say that building for power was ever the popular choice; it wasn’t. But the issue isn’t necessarily damage, but the lack of tools on the power based weapon sets for the defensive tradeoff to be worth the offense gained.

I have my popcorn ready either way cuz I know it’ll be entertaining. I’ll just avoid salting it in case my own tears end up in it.

Searban.5984:

“PvP heavy” as in both WvW and sPvP, or only sPvP? Because if it’s the latter, I doubt we’ll learn anything meaningful from it.

I’m intending to watch it anyway, but to be honest, I feel like another set of leaked patch notes would be more useful. ;p

PvP heavy as in, there has been a mentioning of this update potentially being a revamp, or the beginnings of a revamp, of the PvP environment. There has been mentions of a less random reward system, a better leveling system, and rewards that span more content of the game (such as a way to earn copper/silver/gold from PvP, and players are hoping/speculating for ways to give their characters PvE experience).

All of those things that the devs definitely mentioned, like gold from PvP and a better rank and reward system are said to be definitely happening by the end of the year, and supposedly the patch is going to contain at least one QoL improvement in that regard.

However, the devs have said in a thread/livestream I believe that we’ll get more balance previews during the livestream too.

My goal with this thread is to get any and all rangers with active twitch accounts to heckle the chat stream about ranger changes so we can get as much information out there before next Tuesday as humanly possible, since devs have a habit of glossing over our classes changes and things that would be important to us.

And just to get the info out there for anybody that is interested in getting a peak at what’s in store for us.

So ANet is going to be streaming a patch preview this Friday on their twitch channel. It’s going to be a PvP heavy preview, and there should be some discussion about the changes that will be occurring on the 15th.

Just a heads up everybody. I’ll edit this and post a definite link and time once I figure out all of the exact details.

Here’s hoping for more than just a Sic’ Em discussion when rangers come up!

Edit: This is no longer a patch preview livestream. This is a bogus, Beginners Guide to PvP. It’s live now, and I don’t recommend wasting your time with it.

Where: http://www.twitch.tv/guildwars2
When: October 11
Time: Currently unknown, estimated to be around noon PST.

SynfulChaot.3169:

AndrewSX.3794:

That was a random number to enphatize the idea.
Hyperboles!

Seriosly talking, i boubt my pet deals even nearby 50% of the dmg, but it’s undeniable that the gap between “ranger + pet” and “ranger alone” DPS is quite harsh.

Too wide imo, and it’s one of the main issue of the class.

Sorry. Many people who post here do seem to think the gap is as big as that.

I believe that the actual percentage is 30% to 40%. Yes, that is a high percentage for how unreliable the AI is. I think all of us want either a more reliable AI or more of the damage shifted to us. Both solutions would work. But something does need to be done regardless.

I’d have to say that because ANet is unwilling to give more control of the pet to the player, that for reasons involving creating a competitive environment; making the pet any better at dealing damage to other players, aside from making F2 skills more reliable, is a bad move.

I am fully aware of the fact that this particular viewpoint does not address all of the games content, but hopefully, shifting the damage back to the player would.

I just really hope I don’t have to explain to anybody why, in a Player versus Player environment, having an overly effective AI tied to a player removes a skill versus skill factor from the environment that a competitive gametype needs in order to push for balance and to create a necessary skill gap that distinguishes experienced and inexperienced players.

This topic again…. (sigh)

Linguistically Inept.6583:

id be interested in spear dps… i cant help but feel that i do more with spear than GS (the tooltips imply spear AA takes longer; but it doesnt feel like it)

The spear has much better better base damage values and damage coefficients.

Autoattacks:

Format:
Weapon
Number in Attack Chain) base damage value (damage coefficient)

Greatsword:
1) 203 (0.55)
2) 203 (0.55)
3) 240 (0.65)

Spear:
1) 269 (0.8)
2) 302 (0.9)
3) 336 (1.0)

I would LOVE for the greatsword to have the spears base values and damage coefficients.

SynfulChaot.3169:

jcbroe.4329:

SynfulChaot.3169:

By traiting that far into Wilderness Survival we are blocked from taking more of the good offensive traits. Many, if not most, of the current powerful ranger builds don’t have the free trait points to boost Wilderness Survival up to 30.

Yes, it is a great option if we can spare the points, but most rangers would be harming themselves far more than helping by traiting out of the traits that make their build.

But it is the same argument that a lot of the other classes have. Everybody seems to think that they should be able to build full offensive and get all of the defensive utilities they need to go along with it, when that just isn’t the case across most classes. Most classes have to give up defense, particularly condition removal, in order to get more offense.

Now, the classes that this is the least true for are Warriors and Thieves, with Cleansing Ire and (cba about the name) the trait that removes conditions in stealth. They lose some damage potential, but not such a huge amount that it is detrimental to their damage output.

Whether or not ANet likes how it works on these classes and is willing to spread the love remains to be seen. All we know is that they want the Guardian to be even better at removing conditions outside of shouts at this point. At least, for certain at this point.

That much is true. We do need to give up offense for good defense. That is always the case with all classes, but affects some of us (rangers) more than the more … ‘favored’ classes (guardian).

Now I think the complaint here is less that we don’t have any condition clears and more that we don’t have better active condition clears. Passive clears are nice, yes, but without more strict control you can find yourself with a bad condition and be waiting for the passive effect to get around to occurring. And we are not unique in having few active condi clears.

People complain, when fighting against us, that we are too passive. This may be true. The problem is that we don’t have many active options. I’m sure a majority of rangers would prefer more active options than the passive ones we tend to use and abuse now.

Absolutely. That’s my problem with it mostly; how passive it is. It makes it hard to even spectate lol.

felixdacat.3804:

@jcbroe: I understand what you’re asking loud and clear and hopefully a dev comes along with an answer. It really does baffle me that if we are intended to always have our pets (as Anet has pretty much shoved that idea down our throats from launch) then why even implement a stow feature? It further baffles me that if there is a stow feature in place, why is it not more useful? Make it a hotkey, make it so when I take 14 damage from falling it stays stowed like I wanted, etc. I can see some very minor benefits, like if I’m roaming and get surprised my pet pops out of nowhere with might or aoe vigor… but that’s it. Really, it’s just cosmetic – as is much of this game, I suppose – but why have a feature like that for only a cosmetic purpose? Seems like a lot of trouble to go to.

As to the trait descriptions, aren’t those supposed to be cleaned up in an upcoming patch?

Exactly. And they should be, yes.

Like, why create a usable feature, and not even bother adding a hotkey to it? That alone is baffling lol.

naphack.9346:

when activated = “come into play”-effect (for all the Magic players out there).
Basically “activated” means, when the pet enters the battlefield. Seems pretty straightforward to me.

The in game descriptions are not consistent. Stow/Activate versus swap. Also, there is apparently a difference in the trait description that you highlighted for me that differentiates the two functions, just as there is in game.

naphack.9346:

Yes, they do what their description implies and your examples only prove that.
Look over your list again.
There is a difference between vague/incorrect wording and missing metrics. All those traits work as specified, the descriptions just don’t give any information on how significant their effects will be.

And, if you want to be real technical about it, since the description says activate, and not on pet swap, it means that the pets should only gain might or vigor after being activated from a stowed state, since that is the only in game description that stays consistent with the traits description. Nowhere in that trait description does it say pets should be gaining any bonuses on swap. Only on activation.

naphack.9346:

jcbroe.4329:

with very situational uses that most likely are abusing how the mechanic was coded and how it interacts with traits (meaning what I explained earlier, that it inherits from pet swapping without distinguishing any mechanics associated with either feature).

Just read the trait descriptions:
Mighty Swap: Pets gain 3 stacks of might (10s) when they are activated.
Vigorous Training: Moa, bird, and jellyfish pets grant AoE vigor (5s) when activated.

Then read this trait description:
Zephyr’s Speed: You and your pet gain 3 seconds of quickness when you swap pets.

Then try to figure out the difference between these sentences(hint: I highlighted it) and go figure out the implications of this.

And if your only problem with the traits is the fact, one of them is named “Mighty Swap”, yet also works on other occasions than pet swapping, feel free to file a suggestion, suggesting to change the name of the trait to “dynamic entry” or something.

Wow, you sure are angry. Please read through the thread before suggesting to me that I have a problem with them, when I’m merely suggesting that it is more than likely an oversight that comes from the way the feature was most likely coded. Though I could be wrong about my assumption, it isn’t like I’m a programmer or anything (that last part there is sarcasm).

Also, because you want to do it to me, let me do it to you:

-Malicious Training: Increases duration for conditions applied by your pets.

Gee, that’s specific.

-Predator’s Instinct: Apply cripple to foes you hit when they are below 25% health (15-second cooldown).

How much cripple?

-Beastmaster’s Bond: Gain fury and might when your pet’s health reaches 50%.

Do these have durations?

-Sharpened Edges: Chance to cause bleeding on critical hits.

What’s the rate of application and how much bleeding?

-Carnivorous Appetite: Pets gain health on critical hits.

How much health?

-Healer’s Celerity: Grants swiftness to you and your ally when you revive someone. Increases revive speed by 10%.

How much swiftness?

-Vigorous Renewal: Gain vigor when using a heal skill.

How much vigor?

-Expertise Training: Pets deal extra condition damage.

How much condition damage?

-Hide in Plain Sight: Applies camouflage when you are dazed, knocked down, launched, pushed back, or stunned. This effect cannot trigger more than once every 30 seconds.

How long is the duration?

-Empathic Bond: Pets periodically take conditions from you.

How many conditions? How long is periodically?

-Concentration Training: Boons applied by your pets last longer.

How much longer?

-Nature’s Vengeance: Activated skills of spirits are larger and trigger when the spirit is killed.

How much larger?

-Master’s Bond: Your pet has a bond with you that increases its attributes each time you kill a foe. When it is defeated or deactivated, the bond is reset.

How much are they increased by?

-Compassion Training: Pet healing attributes are increased.

By how much?

Commanding Voice: Pet skills (F2) recharge faster.

How much faster?

Natural Healing: Your pets have natural health regeneration.

How much health regeneration? Is there a chance this affects me as well?

Looks to me like ANet is very specific with their trait descriptions. They always do exactly what their description implies. /sarcasm

And, if you want to be real technical about it, since the description says activate, and not on pet swap, it means that the pets should only gain might or vigor after being activated from a stowed state, since that is the only in game description that stays consistent with the traits description. Nowhere in that trait description does it say pets should be gaining any bonuses on swap. Only on activation.

SynfulChaot.3169:

Jackums.3496:

Almost every ranger, whether offensively built or not, should be investing in the WS trait line. It has three of the ranger’s best traits, which are almost crucial for any spec.

Natural Vigor: 50% faster endurance regen.
Companion’s Defense: 2 seconds of protection on dodge.
Empathic Bond: 3 conditions cleansed every 10 seconds.

It’s not even a matter of build type. That’s like saying a defensively-built mesmer shouldn’t take Deceptive Evasion because it’s in a trait line with offensive stats. Traits aren’t selected based on the stats of their respective line. Any good player builds based solely on the traits themselves, and if they happen to be in line that provides beneficial stats to their particular build, then that’s just a bonus.

By traiting that far into Wilderness Survival we are blocked from taking more of the good offensive traits. Many, if not most, of the current powerful ranger builds don’t have the free trait points to boost Wilderness Survival up to 30.

Yes, it is a great option if we can spare the points, but most rangers would be harming themselves far more than helping by traiting out of the traits that make their build.

But it is the same argument that a lot of the other classes have. Everybody seems to think that they should be able to build full offensive and get all of the defensive utilities they need to go along with it, when that just isn’t the case across most classes. Most classes have to give up defense, particularly condition removal, in order to get more offense.

Now, the classes that this is the least true for are Warriors and Thieves, with Cleansing Ire and (cba about the name) the trait that removes conditions in stealth. They lose some damage potential, but not such a huge amount that it is detrimental to their damage output.

Whether or not ANet likes how it works on these classes and is willing to spread the love remains to be seen. All we know is that they want the Guardian to be even better at removing conditions outside of shouts at this point. At least, for certain at this point.

I just don’t see why stealth gets to be permanent for offensive AND defensive use. There is no reason why bursting from stealth doesn’t increase the reveal duration up to like 8 to 10 seconds. If you don’t burst from stealth, then you don’t get the increased reveal duration, but you also aren’t damaging the opponent, giving them time to reset the fight in their own way, or start setting up a counter attack.

As for my thoughts on Sic’ Em after a month, I’ll quote someone:

rangers and most decent pvp’ers dont require anti-mesmer or anti-thief abilities

So this happened to me just recently: I’m hotjoining it up for some fun, trying out a rendition of a build that would be used in WvW if it worked out.

I’m on the walkways surrounding midpoint on Khylo, and I have 4 people chasing me. I call back my Wolf, I detarget my previous target, and I hit F2 to get the fear off so I can escape. Nothing. I hit it again. Nothing. Nothing. Nothing. Wolf cancels itself to keep moving with me instead of executing the skill I told it to. Then nothing.

This lead to a 3 minute longer than intended chase around the map until my wolf FINALLY decided it was ready to execute its fear, finally allowing me to disengage far enough to out LoS, heal up, and support my team somewhere else.

Still though. My pet wasn’t attacking and I didn’t have a target, and it was on passive and returned, therefore, not attacking an opponent. Why won’t it use the skill I told it to?

No idea. Probably because I didn’t have any Scooby Snacks.

NargofWoV.4267:

What you say about Barrage is so true, after playing with the Warriors f1 shoot and forget AoE, the Ranger Barrage has got to change to a cast while moving or cast and forget.

It is not fair this ability v. the Warrior ability is so different. I can hop up onto a wall, hit my Warrior f1 at the gate, hop off run and hide, and watch the Condition ticks roll.

Not just that, but I’ve seen my warriors longbow 3 crit for like 4k damage in one hit, and I’m not even built that zerker heavy (I only have like 45% crit chance and 60% crit damage).

Chopps.5047:

jcbroe.4329:

He didn’t have 100% control over the pet either O.o

Does your pet double your bag count though?

Well no, but logically, assuming Gimli’s stature, neither would he lol.

Eurantien.4632:

So we don’t get owned running up the stairs in the asura style fractal. Also, helps navigate ledges so they don’t have to catch up…

Fair. Though I’ve always just pet toggled (assuming out of combat) going up ledges. The lack of being able to hotkey the stow has always made in more inconvenient for me personally, and I play primarily hotkeys using my mouse mostly for LoSing and dodging.

But I guess I shouldn’t apply my own experiences with the feature to everybody, so maybe there are people out there that find it a very convenient tool.

It’s so hard to express what I’m trying to express, like, I can’t get the words out of my head lol.

@Thread, let me try this:

Somebody went through the trouble to implement a working pet stow. It has no use when already in combat, and out of combat its use is mostly either aesthetic or a player used fix to help the pets navigation and pathing, with very situational uses that most likely are abusing how the mechanic was coded and how it interacts with traits (meaning what I explained earlier, that it inherits from pet swapping without distinguishing any mechanics associated with either feature). It also lacks a hotkey, which inadvertently grants it lower priority to the player, and makes it more of an inconvenience to use.

With the philosophy that the player’s pet is always on and the player should always be utilizing the pet for maximum efficiency, combined with everything previously mentioned, why does the stow mechanic even exist? Is it a remnant from the games pre-launch status?

Was it meant to have a higher purpose but scrapped for the current system? Was it previously a different function that got turned into this for the sake of time/balance?

It just seems highly illogical to invest the time to make a feature that you aren’t even going to add a hotkey to, implying with that action alone that the feature isn’t expected to see significant use.

I mean, I’m aware it would take a dev to actually answer this question, because really what I guess I’m asking is: Where in the development process did this seem like a necessary idea?

He didn’t have 100% control over the pet either O.o

Yelloweyedemon.2860:

Why do people play rangers if they do not want pets?

Or they’re guild wars 1 vets and hate being forced into playing a particular way when they used to have an option to do so.

Really though, it’s no excuse to not adapt to the new game. That being said, it goes without saying that the better balance is, the easier it is to get accustomed to how a class functions, and the class balance in the game has needed tweaking for awhile (not implying where the ranger is on the spectrum as I would probably get crucified for it, but still).

Once the game gets a differently balanced meta, rangers will need to reevaluate whether their performance is truly or has always truly been as bad as they perceive it to be, and how the pet handles in the before and after environment.

-Dps absolutely sucks compared to other classes.
-Pet AI sucks and pets get in the way more often than they are helpful.
-Anet made the longbow suck majorly, and now I get kicked from parties every time I use it.
-You only have a few viable builds. The rest are broken.

1. Not true. Where is this figure even coming from? Not being number 1 doesn’t immediately make a class have the worst DPS in the game, that’s called power creep, and it shouldn’t be balanced based on power creep.

Furthermore, ranger weapons are arguably very easy to use. Most weapons achieve maximum DPS by autoattacking, and the ones that don’t only have to spam a single skill on cooldown. Compared to other classes that require more actions per minute and more rotations to achieve maximum DPS, it makes perfect sense that the autoattacking class isn’t top dog.

2. There is some truth to the statement that the pet AI needs to be worked on. However, based on all the “reasoning” quoted, this is most likely being overstated. By like, a lot.

3. Longbow is a great weapon actually. It is probably the best 1200 range power weapon in the game for single target damage. That being said, you can’t just go into any content you want with it. If you’re in a party, you bring party options, especially if it’s a party looking for DPS. Playing how you want, and not in a way that’s conducive to the party, including just using a longbow because you want, is going to get you kicked because they need you to do more than that.

4. That’s every class. There isn’t a single class in the game where you can just throw points into anything, randomly, and it be viable. There’s also ALWAYS going to be an option that’s better than the rest. To make everything individually viable would lead to OP combinations, and it would take a very, very long time to make every combination of everything just right, if it’s even possible.

I don’t normally quote people and do this, but being negative just to be negative with absolutely no backing for anything being said other than basically saying “I don’t like that I’m not playing the best OP profession in the game that dominates with the weapon I want them to” is in no way constructive. If that is truly what you are looking for, go play Maplestory, where the developers have caved and balanced around power creep.

Kasama.8941:

Stow triggers Mighty Swap and Vigorous Training, if you get into combat while the pet is stowed. It can put your pets health back to 100%, when you come out of combat. If you’re doing a jumping puzzle, it gets rid of the pet so it doesn’t block your visibility. And when you go past a ledge, it makes sure your pet isn’t left behind.

Interesting to the first part. That doesn’t really sound intentional though. It sounds like the current stow feature inherits from the pet swap feature and the creates an “empty” swap, or an “empty” object, given that it seems that most likely, the way that pet swapping is working is that it’s creating a new “object” on swap (object being the pet).

Not to discredit it, that is a truthful use. I just have my doubts the devs even intended it to work like that since the current stow option is so literally unimportant that it doesn’t even get it’s own key on the keyboard.

As for out of combat healing the pet to full health, you can just do that with the pet swap, since out of combat, there is basically no cooldown on pet swapping. Not to say they can’t do it with the stow button, but I’m sure more people do it just by toggling their pet real quick.

For jump puzzles, I’ve personally never had an instance where the pet was in my way. Then again, I’ve only done half the jump puzzles. Is there a particular one that the pet interferes more with visibility than others?

For the thread, I’ve seen you and everybody else list uses. Personally, I think they are a little out of the way still, but that’s my opinion, and unbiasedly, there are definitely some pros to utilizing the stow feature.

So I’ll restate the line of thinking I’m on right now:

How many people actually use the feature?

Personally, even with the pros listed, I don’t use it. Mighty Swap isn’t that important to me, I avoid bird pets at all costs, and I’ve never had a problem with visibility in jump puzzles.

If the usage percentage is as low as I believe it to be, why was money spent on implementing the feature?

Tied in to the last question; if the ranger is meant to be a pet class at all times, why even create a stow feature?

This isn’t pokemon, they don’t just return to little pokeballs. You physically are saying “screw you pet” and then getting rid of it. What’s the point of even having the feature of the ranger is a pet class and meant to always be using the pet? It’s like a counter designed feature for everything the devs have said the ranger is supposed to be in regards to the pet.

Again, not trying to ask any leading questions here, I’ve just been curious about this for a long time, because bluntly, I think that whoever designed and implemented the feature wasted their time. It was programmed, tested, and given a UI, for practically no reason, and the entire time that person was getting paid to do this, when they could have been making something else.

Honestly.

Here’s how I’m looking at it: Somebody took their time to develop, test, and perfect a mechanic, completely and totally for aesthetic purposes that can only be maintained out of combat (aka if you take falling damage, the pet comes back out).

This isn’t even a thread to argue about the merits of certain things that already have threads for (aka, this isn’t to discuss whether perma-stow should be a thing).

I’m just genuinely curious why a developer would go through the trouble of implementing a feature with little to no practical use during gameplay.

Signet of Renewal should work if your pet is in range, since it would pull the immobilize to itself.

Lol it’s because the censor hits me for trying to save time in typing out time increments like that all of the time. So now I just go through the trouble of typing out “seconds” every single time, or otherwise any suggestion I make ends up looking like “I think they should change that skills kitten cast time to kitten.”

For the rapid fire cast time thing, all I can really do is stopwatch it or guesstimate it, so I’m holding off saying something like “Rapid fire isn’t a 5 second cast time” because the aftercast on it could very truly be a half second aftercast making the skills total time until you can make another attack 5 seconds.

I can’t give on honest read on the build because in the pic you’re being downleveled :/

Does rapid fire have a half second aftercast delay?

Also, I bet it was kitten that was typed.

Edit: Yep, 4 point 5s. Hits the censor for being a “leetspeak” adaption of “donkey.”

Robyn Yew.6072:

I think the runes are bugged. It doesnt seem to be as fast as signet. If someone can do test and confirm that would help.

On my necro I run at the same pace with the runes as I do with the necros 25% signet. Not sure if that’s a validation since it isn’t the ranger class, but I don’t have the runes for my ranger :/

@SynfulChaot;

While I agree with your list of why things would be okay, I just wanted to nitpick a little and say that Evasive Purity wouldn’t be able to remove fear, because you can’t dodge when you’re feared.

Just wanted to throw that in there, it isn’t something that makes the change any less powerful.

Oh really? <(O.o)> (that’s my suspicious face)

It would, at average efficiency, be like 5 hours of frostgorge champ runs right now if a set of 6 is still around 36-40g on the TP.

Still, I’m on edge about it. I’ve just been leveling an Engineer using Queensdale champ runs until the next patch to see if it sways me.

I’m still hung up on it. I’ve already dished out the money for 2 sets, 1 for my necro and 1 for my mesmer.

I’m hesitant about dishing out more for my ranger because I change armors and builds on my ranger the most often. I was waiting for a patch to help me make a more definitive decision on the exact build I want to run with.

Without intentionally glossing over the issues that pets and traits have (every class in the game has their fair share of poor traits and features not being entirely up to snuff), Rangers really aren’t in a bad spot at all.

If anything, the class suffers more from power creep than it does from actual balance issues, which is a collaboration of other classes being overtuned with the ranger not getting the love it needed to keep up in every aspect that other classes received improvements on.

And power creep doesn’t do anything but affect a players perception of viability versus actual viability. Arguably, rangers can complete any other content that any other class can complete, and in terms of in general PvP/WvW, is a very effective class to use. In WvW, before people start disagreeing with me, it isn’t an argument of what rangers do for balls and zergs of players, it’s the actual concept of going head on against other players while playing as a ranger, which rangers are very, very good skirmishers.

There’s a line between constructive debate and just blatant crying. If I was a mod (inb4: we’re glad you aren’t a mod) there would be a whole lot less of the garbage and the qqing all over all of these subforums.

If this is WvW, I know I made one of the guides sticky’d about using Spirit Ranger in WvW, but it is highly dependent on what you’re doing. If you are mostly just solo roaming, it isn’t that spirits are bad, but other solo classes you can go up against seem to have a very easy time dispatching the spirits.

That doesn’t make the build any less viable though, it just makes it more susceptible to the skill level of your opponents is all, and is less than forgiving. It can either be really good or really bad.

Personally, I’d recommend a hybrid mix of either Rabid/Dire or Rabid/Apothecary. Going hybrid with dire allows you to keep precision, but allow to get some more vitality in there which will help with survival.

If going with the rabid/apothecary option, I’d recommend getting either runes of speed or runes of the traveler, and dropping signet of the hunt for signet of the wild. That will also improve survival by quite a bit.

I’ll give some example links, you can mix and match as you please if that’s what you choose to do.

This one is the rapid/dire hybrid:

http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjAV11xVCWo2BgVBBbPyUTMZPM0xHB-j0xAoOB5cogYmUZtaWENWVakVsCpeEioaA-w

To add more precision, if you desire it, you can use the builder and switch dire pieces to rabid pieces. The reason why I only went with 30% crit chance is because of precisions primary use outside of crits being to proc bleeds. Sharpened Edges has a 66% proc chance, so with a 30% crit chance, you’ll proc bleeds at a 20% chance. Increasing it to 40% crit chance ups the proc rate to 26.67% chance, for an example. Time table wise it would either be about once every 2.5 seconds versus once every ~2 seconds. That’s not guaranteed because it’s RNG, but it’s good information.

The rabid/apothecary: http://gw2skills.net/editor/?fMAQNAV8fjAV11xVKWo2BgVBBbPyUTMZPM0xHB-j0BBIOCy5QCi5RKrlhFRjVlKyqVCpeFER1A-w

Same deal. The difference with this one is that 600 healing power minimum is a preferred number, because about 610 healing power gets the signet to heal for over 100 healing per second. If you are going to sacrifice healing power, I wouldn’t go much lower than 600, maybe 500 at the lowest.

The other thing is these are just references to help you out. I optimized them for my preferences for the way I play, but that doesn’t mean it will work for you, since we all have our own playstyles haha.

A universal suggestion, dunno if it will help, is dropping 10 in Marksmanship for 10 in Nature Magic for Nature’s Protection, if there is ever any trouble with bursty power classes like thieves. It can definitely be the lifesaving factor if you’re caught of guard. It’s just an offense vs defense option to mull over.

I hope any of this helps.

Hey, hey, hey, that ranger wasn’t the worst player. A worse player wouldn’t have used the rangers active spirits at all….

OE I love your streams and really haven’t disagreed with you ever about any skill versus reward issues that the game has. But don’t you think it’s just wasted energy at some point? Trying to highlight things that are wrong or seem off-balance I mean.

Like, maybe it isn’t obvious, but sometimes it’s hard to imagine why things are even making it into the game, like AI doing AoE 3k damage on a short cooldown and on death.

Just saying, the goal with some of these implementations seems hard to find. It definitely isn’t pushing the game any closer to a balanced, viewable iteration of lolesports, but that’s more opinion than fact.

Bredin.5368:

You can even see it on this forum. Plenty of people will post to threads that are negative or solicit complaints. Much fewer posts for people posting on build or other constructive things.

I agree about the pet mechanic problem, but we’ve had enough posts about them. I miss the posts about builds, gameplay and tactics.

Well the main problem with the posting is that the game has been stagnant since April. By that I mean that nothing has really changed for rangers functionality wise. The things that have are immediately addressed, and so the only thing left to post about seems to be ranger vs new content.

13 days away from a potential creativity/constructive thread abundance. Potential, not guaranteed.

Nike.2631:

jcbroe.4329:

Just to nitpick, if you’re talking about something that is entirely unique for the ranger class, then it would be spirits. Spirits are the only skills that function the way they do in the entire game, and the only similar mechanism they have with anything else in the game is having to be summoned.

Other than that, there isn’t a single other class in the game that can reproduce what the spirits can do for the class.

The difference between Ranger spirits and Guardian’s spirit weapons ain’t all that large…

And both of them are tragic compared to Warrior banners .

I’d argue that Guardian summons and Necro minions are the ones that are similar in that regard.

Ranger spirits are like a combination of a small aspect of every other summon in the game. They are summons that don’t attack. They are stationary unless traited. They are destroyable, and they give an AoE proc chance to allies, working almost like RNG AoE signets. On top of their actives of course.

Note that I’m not saying there aren’t similarities lol, there definitely are. But I’m also trying to express that in terms of summons, ranger summons are probably the second most beneficial in the game, the first being warrior banners because of their unkillable property and not needing to take traits to be able to move them.

I’ll probably get crucified for this, but as far as summons go in this game, rangers have some of the best ones.

Just to nitpick, if you’re talking about something that is entirely unique for the ranger class, then it would be spirits. Spirits are the only skills that function the way they do in the entire game, and the only similar mechanism they have with anything else in the game is having to be summoned.

Other than that, there isn’t a single other class in the game that can reproduce what the spirits can do for the class.