I’d argue that none of the Grandmaster traits are worth the investment.
Empathic Bond for condi removal and Trap Potency making traps twice as good are probably the only notable grandmaster traits.
That and the one that makes spirits move, which is so prevalent in PvP. But it has a niche role when compared to the amount of content it’s useful in.
Inb4 double energy sigil greatsword evasion bunkers lol.
I’d say there’s more but I also agree with the current list.
But a CC can happen at 75% if traited and still be far efficient than the pet and do far more damage. A Guardian can DPS hammer blow with mass damage 100% of the time. Why can’t a pet? If a pet is 40% of our damage I would jolly well expect it to hit 100%. I don’t see the logic of a 40% critter damage as being OP when scaled to what else is out there
You can’t expect pets to hit 100% because that would be working under the assumption that you’ll land your hits a 100%, which you don’t. No class does.
Not to mention balance and the the cornerstone of the pvp in this game is about dodging and mitigation (e.g. aegis/blind etc) and you’re asking for your source of DPS to go up without giving your opponents more chances to mitigate the said damage.
If you want 100% hit rate on pets, your weapons will have to become utterly worthless. To foster a healthy competitive environment, one should lower the instances of automation and chance, which pets have in spades currently. I’ve asked this repeatedly on this forum and hope a dev would actually address this:
If I can’t control whether my pet CCs someone, is it really skill if I managed to beat him because my wolf happens to land a pounce?
I would argue, pets in their current form actually introduce way too much randomness and ultimately skill debasement into the meta. And that’s the last thing this game needs if they want to make it into an esport.
No one wants to play a bot. No one wants to watch a bot either. No one likes playing against a bot, cuz it feels cheap. That’s not skillful, fun, or interesting.
I just wanted to quote this for double emphasis and to agree with it. +1
SynfulChaot;
in GW2 pets do define the ranger
Now, in no way am I disagreeing with you. But I just want to point out that I believe this statement is also the problem. Pets are the class mechanic, and by definition, do to a large extent define the class. However, compared to what all of the other classes in the game are capable of doing with their mechanics, the pet mechanics for the ranger seem to much more narrowly define the capabilities of the class than with what other classes can do for their mechanic; particularly with options.
For a quick breakdown:
Warriors: Can choose whether to use their burst skills and make them more effective, or use gained adrenaline to increase damage output or passive healing by not using burst skills.
Guardians: Can choose to focus on the passive effects of their virtues, or make the activations of them more useful. Or, can choose to not focus on them at all, and have them their as just additional effects for the class as a whole.
Engineer: Probably one of the more lackluster mechanics. However, it’s 4 extra skills to work with, and in certain builds, like HGH/Elixir heavy condi removal builds, the extra toolbelt skills can be more removal, more boons. They can be focused on to get shorter cooldowns, and even used in a particular build for insane burst.
Thief: Initiative has it’s obvious benefits. Then, on top of that, stealing can be made more effective with Mug, or even more utility based with traiting out to sleight of hand to be able to steal with a daze every ~20 seconds while gaining boons and stealing more boons on top of it. Or, it can not have any focus at all, and just serve as another gap closer with an additional gained effect if successful.
Elementalist: Can gain tons of boons and effects on swapping attunements. Or, can gain just as many benefits for focusing on a single attunement and using the rest as supplementary attunement swaps.
Mesmer: Very simple but effective. Can choose to go shatter focused for the shatter effects, or can make clones and phantasms the focus, and gain the benefits of keeping them alive as long as possible.
Necromancer: Can choose to use DS as another survival tool for additional health, to make DS a central part of a power focused build, or can make DS a more massive health pool with a utility based usage that can gain boons on using it while still having effective skills to use against enemies, and in some builds, can even heal party members by using certain skills, or even leaving DS.
And lastly:
Ranger: Has a pet that can attack stuff. Some pets have a unique attack to them, but not a unique effect within the parameters of the game. Traits can make the pet better at doing damage. The traitline can make all of the pets stats better.
7 classes that get vastly different functionality from their mechanics and can choose to focus on what role they want their mechanic to take. 1 class who gets to choose how much they want to invest in their tacked on AI DPS.
And don’t worry, I know you’ve acknowledged that there are issues with the mechanics. I just wanted to get this added perspective out there.
Good thread.
Just a question; at any point, when equipped with Eagle Eye (I know you weren’t quantifying traits to begin with, but Eagle Eye affects a single out-of-water weapon uniquely), does the longbow out DPS the shortbow?
My impression is that somewhere above 3000 attack, the longbow is capable of achieving the shortbow’s DPS with the use of rapid fire, and outdamaging it at 1000+ range. If this is the case, I’m assuming it’s because of the longbows better coefficients.
Just curious is all.
Eagle Eye would bring longbow to 1,123 DPS (however, you would then need to weigh the loss of Piercing Arrows or Spotter). Rapid fire also does more DPS than long range shot, so including that in the DPS rotation would be of benefit. As would the vulnerability stacks it applies.
Just as I would need to go back to short bow and include bleeds and poison to further enhance its DPS calculation.
I was merely trying to keep the calculations simple.
As to your other point about the coefficient, I’d argue that short bow has a higher coefficient because of the attack speed. You are getting that 40% of power almost twice in the same second it took for the longbow. Mathematically, short bow would have a 0.77 coefficient if it took 1 second per attack.
Good point, I didn’t factor in the attack speed for the coefficient.
I completely understand why only the autoattacks were used, without factoring in the bleeds or skill rotations as well. Especially because once you start factoring those in, the next step people start asking about is “practicality,” like how often you actually expect to meet certain conditions or land attacks on players to make calculations viable.
Thank you though. At the very least, you semi-confirmed that if I’m getting that impression, that there may be some basis for it. I’m just happy that I’m not entirely crazy, or so completely biased towards wanting the longbow to be viable that I start creating these ideas in my head to make the weapon seem better haha.
I can’t imagine a ranger dying easy when focused. Any decent ranger has enough evade to survive for a long time. We also bring a really nice rez elite. Though I do get the whole no aoe thing with such large numbers.
I’m not really part of the whole Zerg vs Zerg (I apologize but to me, GvG is an 8v8 game mode from guild wars 1 that doesn’t exist in guild wars 2) scene, but I imagine if rangers were to be used for a particular role, the main components of a build would be either to abuse piercing arrows or to abuse traps, or to frontline with a 1h sword or greatsword.
That being said, ZvZ players generally prefer heavies on the frontlines, and necromancers can take care of everything trap rangers can do at a farther range. The other thing I can imagine being a problem is retaliation absolutely destroying people trying to use piercing arrows for cleaved ranged support.
All of that being said, I don’t see the ranger as unviable. Just currently, the meta favors abusing tactics and mechanics like having near permanent stability, retal, and protection, which makes the whole gameplay of this player created game mode very exclusive for people that aren’t Warriors/Guardians/Eles/Necros.
At least that’s my perception of it. I’m still waiting for VoTF to prove me wrong and video themselves running a class other than the 4 I’ve mentioned.
Good thread.
Just a question; at any point, when equipped with Eagle Eye (I know you weren’t quantifying traits to begin with, but Eagle Eye affects a single out-of-water weapon uniquely), does the longbow out DPS the shortbow?
My impression is that somewhere above 3000 attack, the longbow is capable of achieving the shortbow’s DPS with the use of rapid fire, and outdamaging it at 1000+ range. If this is the case, I’m assuming it’s because of the longbows better coefficients.
Just curious is all.
@Aridia;
You reminded me of how much I miss the guild wars 1 scaling system, where what you chose to put point into determined the damage you did.
For instance, in guild wars 1, you could take pets with 0 points in Beastmastery. However, they would just serve as another entity on the battlefield, and the weight of the DPS wouldn’t be carried by them. By investing in Beastmastery, pets became much, much stronger, and they weren’t limited to roles at any given point, so that you could choose to make them damage heavy, or choose to make them heal you while you attack. You could even make your pet teleport directly to your target and hit them!
Comparatively, guild wars 2 pets just drops the ball. Mainly, not necessarily by forcing players to use pets, but by forcing a very limited amount of roles the pet can be built for onto the player, including making such a large amount of DPS potential being carried by the pet at any given time.
For instance, maybe I want to use my pet as a mobile buffing machine to grant boons to allies. Maybe, I just want to use it as a shield, and then be the healer for it. Regardless of the options I can think of, I’m limited in what I can do based on the functionality the game and the traits limit me to, and tying such an amount of DPS output to the pet that dictates the usage of the pet.
I would love, and I mean, LOVE, to be able to use my pet solely as a support option. Having little to no damage output, but being able to send it around the battlefield healing allies and giving them boons, or even having the pet grant “bonds” to my allies and take a percent of incoming damage, without sacrificing a portion of my “natural” damage output to do it. It almost seems like this was a thought of concept too, it really does, like with the Moas heals and the bears condition removal, or any of the numerous AoE buff F2 skills. The problem is that the pet can only do that some of the time, and at any given point that it isn’t attacking, you are sacrificing an annoyingly noticeable portion of your DPS as the player.
There’s my gripe. Elementalists and rangers are the only two classes in the game that lose DPS by not using their class mechanic. And arguably, the elementalist loses more functionality than they do actual damage potential.
tl;dr: I just want more options.
Range focused- High single focused damage at range
Susceptible to thieves
Elemental/Mesmer melter
Pet class
Moves a little faster than other classes in combat (keep away defense)
Squishy
I honestly don’t know a single thing about this classes in that game. I don’t even know how the attributes work.
I was just evaluating it on a “how skills function” basis.
@Everybody;
Here is another way of looking at it:
These are the damage stats we can invest into;
Power
Precision
Critical Damage
Condition Damage
Condition DurationWhen it comes to maximizing DPS, direct damage needs Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. For Damage Over Time, no additional stat investment is required.
For maximizing the DPS of condition damage, you need; Condition Damage. For Damage Over Time, you need an additional investment of Condition Duration.
Based on investment values alone, condition damage is the better investment because it requires less stat investment to be effective.
However, as previously pointed out, this doesn’t take into consideration the requirements and hard counters to either of the types of damage.
Also, I forget the users name, but from the spvp forums, there was an argument of why shorter condition were better than long lasting conditions. Basically, the point was made that being able to reapply 2 second bleeds over and over is better than being about to apply them on a long duration due to the nature of condition removal in this game.
Because condition removal in the game is very tied to cooldowns, whether it be passive or active, the chances of having your damage removed is actually lower for low duration conditions than high ones. Take for example, ranger Torch. Torch 4 can apply a long duration burn, which, for most players, will be cleansed almost immediately if they get hit by it, making the skill do almost no damage unless the person lacks the removal to get rid of it.
However, skills like Bonfire and Flame Trap reapply 1s/2s burns over and over, and even though overall the damage over time is lower, the DPS is safer because the chance that a 1s or 2s long condition is going to be removed is much lower than a 10 second long condition.
That’s just an interesting perspective I found on the actual benefits of condition duration.
Direct damage does not need critical damage, and critical chance is less important then condition duration is. Even if you only have 2200 power, 20% critical chance, and 15% critical damage, you still have a viable direct damage build. Condition damage requires more attention to build choices. Because of the hard counters to condition duration (Lemongrass Poultry Soup, Rune of Melandru, Rune of Hoelbrak, and Rune of the Sunless), you need more then +40% condition duration in a condition damage build, in the current meta. Next to this, you also need to be aware of all the condition damage types, as the more you have, the more damage you will deal. Burn, poison, and 10 stacks of bleed, deals a lot more damage then just 10 stacks of bleed alone. And because of this, you also rely more on multiple skills, meaning you’ll want some form of skill recharge reduction, so you can stack your conditions faster. Or in other words; auto-attacking with a direct damage build, is more powerful then auto-attacking with a condition damage build. Condition damage only becomes more powerful, when you can continuously keep conditions on a target.
I said it needs it to optimize damage, not just to be viable.
You’re also implying that I’m only addressing the WvW meta, and a very particularly high end meta where people are running the most condition counter centric options available to them.
I don’t see where at any point I’ve said that direct damage builds aren’t viable, or are less viable. The only thing I think I’ve said is that condition damage requires less stat investment than direct damage builds in order to achieve maximum optimization of damage output, particularly DPS wise.
Regardless, I have already acknowledged that you’re correct about the benefits of direct damage versus condition damage.
I don’t see why this has to be such a debate is all lol. This wasn’t even supposed to be a super serious, in depth topic for the ranger forum. I made the topic more so just because its a trial week period and it’s good to get some information out there for people.
I’ve already witnessed LOTS of new (hopefully they’re new at least….) ranger players on opposing teams in PvP or worlds in WvW that are just very inexperienced, both in the how the class works category as well as the importance of mobility in combat category.
So I just wanted to make a nice, lighthearted thread that shares information with people.
Ok, found it… Here :
“JonathanSharp
Game Design Lead
Thanks guys!
We’re being very mindful about the way the Sigil of Para fix will hit Warriors. We’ve already got another balance patch brewing, and we’re being very careful to watch all the classes and see how they feel after we shave down the condition spam classes slightly.
As others have said, once we bring down the conditions that “hold down” some of the physical based classes, they will feel stronger. We’re aware of that!
Thanks again for the feedback!"
Now, I guess the question is, are Rangers a “Condition Spam Class” or a “physical based class”?
Thanks for the support of the thread, I actually wanted to respond to this quote you brought though cuz I think I have an idea on it.
Rangers are a condition class, but they aren’t a condition spam class, at least not in comparison to how Engineers and Necros are. Both of those classes have access to literally every single condition, and necros particularly are very capable of just putting every skill on cooldown on recharge and having that be an effective source of damage. Engineers are capable of doing the same thing, but their skills require a tad bit more positioning, they have a slightly lower output, and they require a lot more actions per minute to accomplish.
Rangers on the other hand, don’t really spam conditions. The flanking clause of the shortbow prevents the mindless bleed stacking spam, and besides that, our weapons autos don’t even apply conditions. If anything, Splitblade might get a longer cooldown since it has the capability of being a very decent damage output skill on a very short cooldown.
Based on what the community thinks, spamming aside, I’ve seen players saying that the ranger trap build would be what they want the other classes output to be balanced around.
That doesn’t mean that’s what will happen, but I guess credit where credit is due, especially since the particular person I’m think of is streamer who absolutely hates rangers spirit build, which makes him seem like he hates the class entirely at times.
@Ryan and Bredin;
Darn! I knew I was forgetting my point about how useful Empathic Bond was, which only helps to build towards conditions. Oh well, now that we’re at this point, I’ll make the convenient excuse that I didn’t include it because the value placed on Empathic Bond is subjective.
@Chopps; If we’re going that route, I’d actually argue that it’s Condi/Toughness. It’s a more widely available stat combination, that also allows you to pick up precision, healing power, or vitality, and overall is the combination that probably has the most variation.
@Everybody;
Here is another way of looking at it:
These are the damage stats we can invest into;
Power
Precision
Critical Damage
Condition Damage
Condition Duration
When it comes to maximizing DPS, direct damage needs Power, Precision, and Critical Damage. For Damage Over Time, no additional stat investment is required.
For maximizing the DPS of condition damage, you need; Condition Damage. For Damage Over Time, you need an additional investment of Condition Duration.
Based on investment values alone, condition damage is the better investment because it requires less stat investment to be effective.
However, as previously pointed out, this doesn’t take into consideration the requirements and hard counters to either of the types of damage.
Also, I forget the users name, but from the spvp forums, there was an argument of why shorter condition were better than long lasting conditions. Basically, the point was made that being able to reapply 2 second bleeds over and over is better than being about to apply them on a long duration due to the nature of condition removal in this game.
Because condition removal in the game is very tied to cooldowns, whether it be passive or active, the chances of having your damage removed is actually lower for low duration conditions than high ones. Take for example, ranger Torch. Torch 4 can apply a long duration burn, which, for most players, will be cleansed almost immediately if they get hit by it, making the skill do almost no damage unless the person lacks the removal to get rid of it.
However, skills like Bonfire and Flame Trap reapply 1s/2s burns over and over, and even though overall the damage over time is lower, the DPS is safer because the chance that a 1s or 2s long condition is going to be removed is much lower than a 10 second long condition.
That’s just an interesting perspective I found on the actual benefits of condition duration.
I disagree with you. The weakness of condition damage comes from the fact, that it deals with more random elements, then direct damage does. Like condition removal, opponents negative condition duration, damage over time, and the attention to various condition types. These are variables that direct damage doesn’t have to deal with. Direct damage can’t be removed, there is no permanent damage reduction against direct damage, you can deal a lot of damage over a shorter period of time, and it simply just requires you to hit your target. Condition damage should really be called “complicated damage”.
Those are all very good points. I am in no way trying to devalue them with this next statement, when I say that I was only evaluating the differences of the two damage types on a stat allocation basis.
The only point I’m going to nitpick with is when you say there is no permanent damage reduction against direct damage, just because toughness is that permanent damage reduction, unless I’ve misunderstood what you meant.
Other than that, I’d have to say that it’s a very good evaluation of the pros of direct damage that condition damage has trouble with.
Wait, what’s the point of all of this again?
To explain why investing in Condition Damage could be viewed as having a more efficient stat investment per maximizing damage dealt. See, you can do more direct damage than condition damage if enough stats are allocated, but by allocating the same amount towards Condition Damage, you would also be able to invest into other offensive or defensive options that conditions benefit from, such as precision for more condition procs using traits and sigils, or toughness for incoming damage reduction, or even power for a dual output of conditions and direct damage.
In less words: By investing in Condition Damage, you are left with more points leftover to be able to allocate after optimizing the desired damage output than you are when investing in direct damage.
Wait, are you saying conditions are better to invest in as a ranger than direct damage?
No. Not at all. There are many situations in which conditions are not optimal. This is either created by the limitation of the condition cap; or the maximum stack of certain conditions that can be applied to a target, or just in general, needing to do more damage than what can be accomplished through conditions, or the target being a structure/object.
Wait, so if direct damage is stronger, why isn’t it better?
Simply put, doing the most damage possible isn’t everything. Particularly, against other players, toughness, vitality, and healing power are all important tools for the quest to be the most dominant player on the battlefield, and with condition damage, you have more opportunity to build defensively and offensively at the same time than you do with direct damage. Particularly, through condition damage, you an attain the most offensive and defensive at the same time build that you can possibly create.
So, where do pets fit into all of this?
Throughout all of this, pets are a static element. The same pet can be used by either somebody built for direct damage or somebody built for condition damage, so really the pet doesn’t factor much into the discussion. HOWEVER, players building for condition damage can also allocate stats towards beastmastery, which will increase the damage and durability of the pets in combat, which isn’t taking away from any of the damage done by the ranger player.
With everything factored in, rangers… no, not just rangers…. ANY class that has a viable source of condition output has more build options when using conditions as a primary source of damage.
tl;dr: Condition Damage requires less stat investment to reach its damage potential than building for direct damage, which is a huge bonus and deciding factor when it comes to choosing what to build for, since based on stat investment alone, investing in Condition Damage is more efficient per point invested, leaving more points to be invested elsewhere.
So, I’m sure many of you out there are already knowledgeable about your class; the Ranger. However, for those that aren’t, let’s review a commonality that never really seems to see much discussion:
Why are so many builds that are considered effective for the Ranger condition based?
Well, there are many parts to this question, as it isn’t an immediately easy answer. First off, weapon availability. By this I mean, what weapons are condition heavy, and which weapons lean towards direct damage.
Greatsword – Direct
Longbow – Direct
Shortbow – Condition
Sword – Direct
Axe – Condition
Offhand Axe – Direct
Dagger – Condition
Torch – Condition
Warhorn – Direct
Wait, that’s about an even amount of options. Doesn’t that mean that Rangers performance should be equal for both options?
Well, unfortunately, that’s not necessarily the case. Which brings us to the next point:
Skill Coefficients. For a reference point, go to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/List_of_ranger_skills and click on a skill, any skill you want. There will be a base damage value, and then next to it, in parenthesis, the decimal number is your skill coefficient. Take a look through some of these skill coefficients, and you will notice a trend; they are all pretty terrible.
Why does this matter?
Well, they are directly used in the damage formula for the game. Lower skill coefficients mean lower damage, and Ranger weapons compete for the title of lowest skill coefficients in the game.
Well, what about Condition Damage?
Ah, fortunately, Condition Damage is not tied in any way to skill coefficients. Condition damage has it’s own base values and scaling, which is standard for every class in the game. Let’s take an arbitrary example:
Swing your sword, and you hit for 500 damage.
Land a splitblade, which puts 5 bleeds on your opponent. With a similar/same amount of point investment, you do 100 damage per bleed stack per second, so 500 damage per second, plus the damage of landing all 5 splitblades, which is about 125 damage in this scenario, for a total of 625 damage in the same second that the direct damage occurred.
Why isn’t the direct damage doing more in the scenario?
Glad you asked. Direct damage isn’t doing more, because precision hasn’t been factored in, and neither has critical damage. See, Condition Damage is only reliant on itself for increasing Damage Per Second (condition duration increased Damage Over Time). Direct damage, however, can be bolstered through scoring critical hits. The result is that Direct Damage has a higher damage potential than Condition Damage, at the cost of requiring a larger stat investment that could otherwise be allocated elsewhere.
@mzt; You’re right, even though I’m going to throw out there that I have primarily played PvP in the past. But I’m still agreeing based on direct experience. There are a lot, A LOT, of PvP players who can’t separate themselves from their bias, and then call for changes based on that opinion. Watching the guildwars2pvptv channel, you hear things that these “top tier” streamers say about the ranger, like:
“eff the ranger, the pet carrying them”
“they don’t do anything but auto spam”
“wow, really? where did all those bleeds come from.”
“they should just delete that class”
I’ve even asked them in chat: “Hey, sorry that they are autoattack spamming. What rotation would you use that would be better or more skillful?”
And they respond: “I wouldn’t play that broken, (censored) crappy class. It’s for people with no skill that need AI to carry them.”
Then, we get people on the State of the Games, and people on the PvP forums who are considered “top tier,” who then say:
“Ranger is OP, they need a nerf”
“Rangers don’t take any skill to play and are too passive.”
“Rangers pets do way too much, they need to be looked at.”
The thing is, if those PvP players would learn to separate their own bias from their statements, they’d end up basically asking for some of the same changes the ranger community does; changes to our weapons, to make them better (by better I mean more interactive with a better opportunity to do damage or better effects; because you can’t make something stronger without increasing the amount of skill it takes to use it), or changes to our pets to make them more interactive or a more refined mechanic.
Watching the stream, take a look at any of the numerous streamers, and most of them, the moment they see a ranger, will immediately spend the next hour just complaining about the ranger class and the game. Actually, they aren’t that different than the ranger community (or any other profession subforum), who, during their low points, will just complain over and over in multiple threads.
It’s just really irritating that they can’t learn to take a step back, and with a good old fashion “don’t hate the player, hate the game” sentiment, collect their thoughts, remove their bias, and see that they are asking for the same things many of us are asking for, but with a negatively construed connotation because they are at odds with the current iteration of the class.
I just find it nightmarish that even if nobody agrees on the specifics that need to be changed; when you have a large majority, in fact, almost the entirety of the community complaining about the same core problems, that the devs won’t even speak up and have a dialogue about the issues, or offer some reassurance with helping us to understand the direction they are trying to take things and what they are trying to achieve.
Normally, I wouldn’t say something as negative as the following statement, but as far as balance updates go, it’s like the game is forced into eternal stagnation and purgatory, and every once in awhile, an update drops, that really only feels like it makes the health of the game worse, if it even changes at all.
As far as their small, gradual change philosophy goes, it’s understandable that they don’t want any knee-jerk changes being implemented into the game, so that players can get accustomed to changes being made without feeling like they have to relearn the game. However, without coming out and addressing it like I’ve mentioned previously, it gives the community of players the perception that because only small tweaks are being made, the devs probably believe that the game is close to being balanced, and big changes aren’t being made to in order to keep from disrupting that near perfect balance.
We don’t know that isn’t the case, because they simply don’t tell us, which means that players whose experience is being ruined by the state of their class are left with the frustration of not knowing whether to keep pushing onward in hopes that things will be better, or if they should simply give up the game because if it is meant to stay as is, they can finally be assured that it isn’t for them.
Not all of that is directed at you by the way lol. Got myself rambling again. Just kind of an “in addition to my previous statements” type thing.
Sword is a defense/disengage weapon. You get a nice evade, and a leap backwards while evading, which you can then detarget, 180, and leap away. Not to mention, being able to leap through all of the fields you’re able to make. Particularly, you’re own fire field to get yourself fire aura is extremely useful, as well as leaping through your own healing spring.
Also, the auto attack plus the burn is just more damage output than the shortbow in apothecary gear.
I think the biggest issue that ANet has that causes that results in the disconnect with the community is the lack of open dialogue with the community. It seems like they don’t really follow up well enough to get feedback from the community, which only increases the extent of the disconnect.
For instance, they rarely ever openly search for reasoning behind the players opinions. Take this thread for example. If the devs don’t want to give players a removal option, or more control over the pets, they never ask for reasoning. Even in the state of the games, the devs break in with their assumptions as to what people want to do with changes they are asking for.
Ideally, the conversation should go:
Players: “we don’t like the pet.”
Devs: “we’re sorry you don’t like the mechanic. What’s wrong with it that is hurting your experience?”
Players: “these reasons”
Devs: “Okay, well, it looks like the core of the problem is this thing. We’ve actually been toying around with a few options to address this. Things for us can change, but right now, we really like this and this, and want to push them forward. Would this address the issue for you?”
Players: “Appropriate response to the dev response”
See, that would be really great. But what actually happens looks more like:
Players: “We don’t like this feature.”
Devs: “We’re sorry you feel this way. However, we can’t tell you anything, other than we are working on it, and that we think you will like the changes coming out in a patch that we can’t give an ETA on at this point in time.”
The biggest thing though is that what the devs are working on and what the players are requesting seem like they take different priorities. Rangers, for instance, are asking for more utilities to help get into groups and help support those groups, and the big change they announce for us is Sic’ Em. Well, yay, we get a unique ability, but it isn’t really going to push the class into the place the place the players were requesting, and it wasn’t really a priority change for players that wanted their pets to be more useful in big groups, or their spirits or utilities.
A huge part of the problem is a lack of the developer update blog that guild wars 1 had. EVERY big balance patch had a page filled with information and why changes were being made an ultimatums and philosophies and goals for the destination of where they wanted each class to be.
I’m sure most of the community would at least be more content if ANet would provide that kind of information. Some reassurance that there is a plan and a goal, and the reasoning behind the steps being taken to get there.
Here is the LoL list that I would mix and match from:
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Ashe
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Vayne
http://leagueoflegends.wikia.com/wiki/Quinn
The first 2 are more bow/range heavy archetypes that would be more than satisfactory in this game. The third is another great example of what a good pet implementation would be.
Note that for all of these, I am not choosing archer archetypes because I believe the ranger in this game should be ranged focused. I’m choosing them because I believe our ranged weapons in this game need the most work, whether it be altered skills or supplementary utilities. The melee weapons are actually in a very decent place, they just don’t necessary have a plethora of traits or utilities that complement the weapons directly.
Given that the examples I’m going to use are from a MOBA that I don’t even play (therefore this isn’t an analytical process for that game in terms of the effectiveness of the listed characters), my ideal ranger class would be a combination of the next 4 heroes from DOTA 2:
http://www.dota2.com/hero/Windrunner/
http://www.dota2.com/hero/Troll_Warlord/
http://www.dota2.com/hero/Lone_Druid/
http://www.dota2.com/hero/Mirana/
1) Highlights an ideal archetype of how I would like bows to function in the rangers hands.
2) Highlights the use of a ranged axe. The particular character is able to sacrifice the safety of range to deal more damage up close, which overall is a good model to balance with (which is the opposite of how the longbow auto currently functions).
3) Highlights perfectly how the pet system should work, with the exception of the leveling since guild wars isn’t a MOBA, and the last skill which wouldn’t really have a place, and clash with the function of the Norn racial abilities.
4) Shows off a player working in tandem with a pet, albeit, a mounted pet. Attacks used are similar to rangers longbow auto/Point Blank and Barrage, albeit, particularly, the “Sacred Arrow” being highlighted is a much more useful range allocated function than having the range solely being used to determine damage.
Ultimately, this is just a “fun” or a “food for thought” thread to take other successful competitive games like DOTA 2, see what they are doing, and then applying something that apparently “works” to a game that is struggling in the “esports” scene right now. I’ll edit in LoL characters at some point since that game is the more popular MOBA.
So agility training would give pets +30% base speed on top of the 20% inherent boost?
I knew that was going to come up, and this game is very… different, with the amount of movement speed increases there are.
However, I don’t think it would be entirely crazy, when you look at the difference between in combat movement and out of combat moving speeds. Doesn’t it work out that like, every 25% movement speed out of combat is only a 7% movement speed bonus in combat? If so, then we are only talking about a pet that is moving 14%-10%-7% (depending on opponents movement speed bonuses) faster, that still has to stop and attack an opponent who doesn’t have to stop, which would actually make it humorously less broken than in guild wars 1, where, with an increased movement speed after the update, the pet had an insane success rate on hitting opponents, and basically just stuck to them and hit them every time they performed an action that wasn’t a stance/flash enchantment.
In guild wars 2, they could get a 33% movement boost on top of their 20% inherent boost, for a total of 53% total increased movement speed total, ~14% in combat. They would still have to stop to attack, where as players don’t, meaning that technically, the hit success rate wouldn’t be any higher on a moving target, it would just mean that the target would have to remain in motion in order to avoid getting hit, unless the target is crippled or chilled.
I’m not saying it’s a perfect solution, or the numbers don’t need tweaking. But there was a reason that guild wars 1 implemented that system, and it seems to be even more needed in guild wars 2, with it’s faster paced and more movement oriented combat.
I wouldn’t want to be a part of their ball vs ball spamfest anyways.
The first step to making pets better in this game would be to do what guild wars 1 figured out what they had to do a few years before the end of it’s life cycle; give the pet an inherent movement speed that is faster than players movement speed, that doesn’t count towards the movement speed bonuses that can be attained.
Quoted from http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Animal_companion
“Pets move 20% faster than party members by default, but this bonus is not counted against their max speed boost. "
You still run into the problem that in this game, NPC’s appear to need to stop moving in order to attack. So short of increasing the attack range or making the attacks instant with a longer aftercast, I’m not sure simply changing movement speed will resolve the issue.
True. But it is part of the issue that pet’s have when it comes to sticking to a moving target. When a player is kiting a pet, they are kiting a pet. Pets by themselves have a very hard time sticking to players, and when you combine that with them needing to stop to attack where as a player doesn’t have to, it creates the situation where against a good player, your pet will rarely hit them unless you are capable of locking that person down.
In Guild Wars 1, players had to stop to attack just like pets did. So, even if the pet couldn’t necessarily hit a moving target, as soon as that target stopped to attack, the pet would be right there attacking them. In guild wars 2, because players don’t have to stop to attack but pets do, it gives players a noticeable amount of breathing room to deal with the pet. At least with the 20% movement speed above players, pets would stick to their target better, making players who are worse at positioning/kiting more susceptible to the pets pressure.
The first step to making pets better in this game would be to do what guild wars 1 figured out what they had to do a few years before the end of it’s life cycle; give the pet an inherent movement speed that is faster than players movement speed, that doesn’t count towards the movement speed bonuses that can be attained.
Quoted from http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Animal_companion
“Pets move 20% faster than party members by default, but this bonus is not counted against their max speed boost. "
Even if the skill does help against thieves, I’m not going to take a skill for such a situational use when there are other skills that can be taken that can be more applicable to more situations.
HOWEVER, I am watching the MLG tourny right now, and Caed is running a stealth far-point assaulter build. Granted that the amount of people that effectively run the build can probably be counted on only 1 to 2 hands, but I wouldn’t see it as unreasonable for “top tier” rangers to take the new Sic’ Em particularly to counter Caed in that matchup.
That, however, is probably only going to happen in that game mode if spirits get made more useless and the pet centric builds make a comeback.
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Then you never read even the early descriptions they gave for the ranger. Even before it launched the pet was shown as a major component of what the ranger is. The class came about as a combination of a standalone archer and a beastmaster class as they whittled down the classes to a smaller number.
Asking them to remove pets is like asking to remove a guardian’s virtues, a mesmer’s illusions/shatters, or a warrior’s adrenaline. The class is built around the pet. It is integral to the design of the class.
If you really want a petless archer, then go for a warrior. Their longbow is more damaging than ours anyhow. Or maybe even ask for a new class. But please stop asking for the (even optional) removal of our core class mechanic. Because you do realize that if they make that option pets will be unviable for many things and the players that still use them will be shunned and pushed out of many a group.
I remember reading somewhere that before the implementation of the ranger with the pet, they were originally two separate classes, the Marskman and the Beastmaster, before they were later merged into what eventually become what the ranger is now.
I don’t think it’s unfair for people to express their dislike through topics such as this. The actuality of ANet taking the time to rework an entire mechanic at this point in time is next to zero anyhow, so we may as well have a friendly (ish) topic where people, instead of spending the whole time attacking each other, just express their own opinion and vote accordingly.
If the topic persists like that, it’s a nice change of pace that allows for a place for people to go to just express their opinion in order to get a nice representation of where the contributing community stands on an issue.
For my participation in the topic;
I’m torn. I have mentioned numerous times my disappointment with the pet mechanic, in regards to its effectiveness as well as lack of player interaction as far as the amount of actions per minute it takes for the pet to be effective (aka, it requires management, but is very boring compared to juggling attunements or kits and a toolbelt).
Personally, I’d like to see a rework, where a single pet is stowed, until activated with F1 on a cooldown (F1 toggles to an attack my target). F2 can remain a unique attack. F3 is a pet invulnerability which also makes the pet inactive during the duration, with a cooldown. F4 calls the pet back, reducing the cooldown time on the activation. The cooldown would work like the spirits did, prenerf, where the cooldown starts upon activation, meaning the pet is capable of achieving 100% uptime.
However, depending on the capabilities of the dev team, if a rework is out of the question, but a removal option isn’t, I’ll take a removal option over the current implementation. Even if I don’t use the removal option, I don’t consider having more options to be a bad thing.
So I guess that’s a conditional +1.
What Ryan said is accurate. All I can really recommend is getting -40% condition duration food and hoelbrak runes which will gives you a total of -60% condition duration while still giving you some dps. You really can’t hope to beat the ranger unless he makes some serious mistakes because that is just the way the current meta works, but you can go for a draw. I know that sounds silly but his build in particular is such a counter to most guardians (like I said earlier guardian has, no poison, little cc, few conditions) that you really just can’t win. And I’ll catch some heat for this, but the ranger really shouldn’t be losing to Necros either. Then again, his build probably sacrifices too much offense for defense that doesn’t work well against Necros in particular.
You aren’t going to catch that much about the necros vs rangers thing, it’s actually a pretty even fight, depending on the build. Rangers have all the necessary tools to win out against necros, but necros also have all the necessary tools they need to overpower and beat the ranger. It’s definitely a matchup the relies more on player skill than build composition.
As for the thread, I honestly can’t add anything more, other than on my Guardian, I prefer Staff for my ranged support. Of course, I’m also running an AH build, so staff makes sense in my build.
Most experienced players know that about ranger vs necro, but the inexperienced cry, “Necro op! Fear chain! Condi burst!” and would lash out at me for even mentioning something like this with remarks about how bad the pet is or something. Staff is a viable option, I almost included it. The only issue I find with it in 1v1 is the lack of any cc outside of a 40s ward which doesn’t really count since it doesn’t help you land your other skills very much. But yeah, I think I covered just about everything a guardian can do. I should add Traveler runes as a viable option to Hoelbrak.
Yeah you got everything lol.
I only use staff on a AH build, for the healing more than anything. It’s a good keep away support weapon to kind of just kite around and get some breathing room, but it wouldn’t be the crux of the build, and Scepter is much more valuable to a DPS build.
The particular build that actually made me think of suggesting it is how VoTF seems to run their Guardians, which is like a Soldiers/Zerkers mix AH/Shout build with Greatsword/Staff. Then again, their builds are more meant for grouping than solo, so the staff really has to be evaluated player to player to see how valuable it is for what they’re doing.
Good stuff though, by the way. I came into the topic and was like “well, I’m not really needed here” lol.
What Ryan said is accurate. All I can really recommend is getting -40% condition duration food and hoelbrak runes which will gives you a total of -60% condition duration while still giving you some dps. You really can’t hope to beat the ranger unless he makes some serious mistakes because that is just the way the current meta works, but you can go for a draw. I know that sounds silly but his build in particular is such a counter to most guardians (like I said earlier guardian has, no poison, little cc, few conditions) that you really just can’t win. And I’ll catch some heat for this, but the ranger really shouldn’t be losing to Necros either. Then again, his build probably sacrifices too much offense for defense that doesn’t work well against Necros in particular.
You aren’t going to catch that much about the necros vs rangers thing, it’s actually a pretty even fight, depending on the build. Rangers have all the necessary tools to win out against necros, but necros also have all the necessary tools they need to overpower and beat the ranger. It’s definitely a matchup the relies more on player skill than build composition.
As for the thread, I honestly can’t add anything more, other than on my Guardian, I prefer Staff for my ranged support. Of course, I’m also running an AH build, so staff makes sense in my build.
What would you guys consider to be minimum crit chance for a power oriented roaming ranger?
I’d say that really depends on what overall stat distribution is being aimed at. Is it Power/Toughness/Precision/Crit Chance? Is there some vitality or healing power in there?
In general, I’d say minimum I aim for is 30%, and that depends largely on how many stats I’m mixing in, or else I’d be going for at least 40%. That’s all personal preference though, so people prefer higher, some probably lower.
Just to point this out, you don’t need full apothecary gear or full settlers gear. The cheapest route to get the best mix used to be to go Apothecary armor and Settlers trinkets.
You can also run the build in multiple ways, though typically it’s a pet focal build. I say typically because you can also branch out and go for spirits or traps or anything else really that you choose.
One of these days I’m going to get around to making an Apothecary/Dire mix for crazy survivability.
Edit: Something like this:
(edited by jcbroe.4329)
Eurantien plays a 0/10/30/30/0 spirit build , if youre talking about PvP.
Back when solo Q leaderboards first came out, I saw him at least saying that he was running a 30/30/10 GC longbow build at that point in time. Could be wrong though, but it was in a topic in the spvp subforum.
@Atherakhia; Either is a fine change for the thieves. One way makes it harder to spam skills effectively, making it harder to stealth as often, while the keeps stealth but makes it less rewarding.
If it’s an effective change, I’ll take your suggestion over mine, I just want to see something done to that build, as the thief build is hardly punished for stealth, which in the end is much more rewarding than something of it’s caliber should be.
(edited by jcbroe.4329)
I believe that Eurantien was/is playing a longbow ranger with a 30/30/10 setup and performing very well with it.
All in all though, I’d say that the longbow functions much more as DPS range support for your team. I wouldn’t go hopping on point with it anytime soon in PvP. But on maps like Foefire for instance, you can really be a benefit for your team by overwatching mid with ranged DPS from the longbow.
At this point though, the “traditional” role of the ranger doesn’t have much of a use for the longbow in PvP.
I would get them on my ranger if I didn’t have multiple armor sets and multiple builds per armor set to worry about.
I do have them on my mesmer and my necro though and I must agree that they are a godsend.
I rather have Thieves be nerfed more than put out a band-aid fix like this crap.
Why do thieves need to be nerfed? They’re not that strong as is with the exception of Larcenous Strike spam, which is getting nerfed.
You don’t think they’re nerfing the wrong part of Larcenous Strike though? I didn’t think the boon ripping was as much of a problem as the high spammable damage on an evasive skill.
Regardless, and I just made this post elsewhere, but Shadow’s Rejuvenation is extremely strong in a perma stealth build, and could probably use some toning down to make builds that rely on perma stealth a little less forgiving.
I just think it should be implemented into Guard over Sic’ Em, since it’s still hard to see exactly how the reveal addition is going to work with the current adaptation of Sic’ Em, since it requires a target and isn’t AoE.
But with Guard, it could work almost like a reverse Shadow Refuge, where any stealth player entering the radius of your pets guarded area is attacked, destealthed, and gets reveal applied.
If counter stealth options are really needed at all that is. Not to say it isn’t a nice addition, but from playing on my perma stealth thief, the issue isn’t necessarily the availability of the stealth, but being able to trait for sustainability gained from stealthing with the Shadow Arts line; particularly, Shadow’s Rejuvenation, which heals for like 300 per second spent in stealth.
With a thief timing their backstabs right, they can get 900-1k health every time they stealth. Stealth, in the meantime, can also apply regeneration when stealthed if traited for it, and condi removal if traited for it, both also in Shadow Arts.
Again, not saying that giving classes options to reveal stealthed opponents and make them unable to stealth for a given amount of time is a bad direction, but the stealth at it’s core element, without Shadow Arts, wouldn’t be all that strong, since you could still whittle down the thief health over time, and all stealth would be able to do at that point is relieve a little pressure and setup another burst, instead of work towards healing the thief back towards full health.
Just a thought.
Curiously, for the people still doing teq, are you guys making sure to abuse piercing arrows and his multiple hit boxes? Standing to the side of him will net you 2x hits with piercing arrows, literally doubling your DPS. Barrage can also hit 2 places at once.
I don’t see nearly enough people utilizing that strategy.
The proposed Patch Notes for Ranger’s divided into three category’s:
Changes
- Soften the Fall: Maximum targets increased from 3 to 5.
- Maul: Damage for this skill has been increased by 15%. Vulnerability has been increased from 3 to 5 stacks and the duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds.
- Muddy Terrain: The maximum number of targets for this skill has been increased to 5, from 3.
- “Sic ’Em”: This shout now applies 4 seconds of “Revealed” on the targeted enemy.
- Healing Spring: Reduces the field duration to 10 seconds. It now pulses every 2 seconds instead of 3 so it will still provide the same amount of regeneration and condition removal, just in a more condense time frame.
Bug Fixes(Some can be considered nerfs)
- Nature’s Voice: This trait no longer carries the effects of Evasive Purity as well as the on-shout swiftness and regeneration.
- Companion’s Defense: Protection now occurs at the end of the ranger’s dodge-roll, instead of the beginning.
- Spike Trap: This skill’s tooltip now appropriately displays when Trapper’s Expertise is equipped. Updated the skill tooltips to include the immobilize condition that occurs.
- Rending Pounce (Jaguar): This skills tooltip now displays the correct amount of bleeding applied.
- Protect Me: This skill no longer prevents capture point progress.
- Vigorous Renewal: This trait now grants vigor to the ranger and nearby allies when the healing spring skill is cast and not every pulse.
Here, I fixed the OP to more accurately represent the list of leaked potential changes. To everybody reading, you’re welcome, and now you can make up your own minds, especially since healing spring is getting buffed.
Thanks for fixing my post. Although I thought it was fine the way I had it.
As for Healing Spring, I understand your reasoning on why you think its a buff, but I can guarantee you, it is in fact a nerf.
The point is that those were some leaked notes that came out almost 2 months before the patch is even scheduled to launch. It is much, much too early to start making judgement calls on things that could have potentially not even been in their final state.
And, just like I’ve been mentioning throughout the thread, only the duration of the combo field was reduced for healing spring. Yes, that can be considered a nerf to the duration. But overall, the functionality is being vastly improved, particularly, the condition removal, which makes it less of a heal used only for the group support, because it’s functionality, specifically the condi removal, has a better chance of being competitive outside of being in a group.
So, I’m saying that because it helps just as many builds as it hurts, it’s a change, not just a blatant nerf. Overall though, Spring will still be the best combo field in the game, so that even with the nerf, rangers are the most competitive in-slot team comp option for bringing a water field, if basing the choice solely on the quality of the water field alone.
Again though, it’s too early to make that final judgement call, so really the only thing I’ve been trying to do is point out that there is more than one viewpoint on these things, so that by labeling them with bias (particularly in the OP), it creates a certain atmosphere in the thread (see people saying “look, another complaint thread already” etc etc etc).
Just need more information and a hands on experience before I can personally start categorizing changes made to the game as good or bad.
I didn’t realize that as a ranger you were only capable of playing in a team or not at all. Oh wait… right… there is other content in the game that isn’t controlled by people who are only worried about blast finishers and combo fields.
Why else would you run healing spring other than in a team comp? It has a horrible heal unless you spec full healing and in PVE you’re not and if you’re doing 1on1s troll is amazingly better. It’s a team heal all the way, therefore it IS a nerf.
It’s actually a buff. Now, on top of being the longest and most sustainable water field in the game, it also has a higher rate of condition removal and regen application. Now, it benefits the ranger more, and makes empathic bond less of a necessity to deal with conditions.
So, it’s still the best water field, AND it functions better. It’s going to be more beneficial to people who don’t group up and roam around with access to blast finishers, it’s more beneficial to people who don’t want to trait empathic bond for condi removal, and it’s more beneficial for pvp in every role that the ranger has played since launch right up until this very moment.
Overall, the skill actually has MORE viable uses than being just a water field to drop for people to blast finish in, which results in it being an overall buff, even though it suffered a duration reduction. And even then, it is still the longest lasting water field in the game with the highest uptime percentage.
I didn’t realize that as a ranger you were only capable of playing in a team or not at all. Oh wait… right… there is other content in the game that isn’t controlled by people who are only worried about blast finishers and combo fields.
The proposed Patch Notes for Ranger’s divided into three category’s:
Changes
- Soften the Fall: Maximum targets increased from 3 to 5.
- Maul: Damage for this skill has been increased by 15%. Vulnerability has been increased from 3 to 5 stacks and the duration increased from 6 to 8 seconds.
- Muddy Terrain: The maximum number of targets for this skill has been increased to 5, from 3.
- “Sic ’Em”: This shout now applies 4 seconds of “Revealed” on the targeted enemy.
- Healing Spring: Reduces the field duration to 10 seconds. It now pulses every 2 seconds instead of 3 so it will still provide the same amount of regeneration and condition removal, just in a more condense time frame.
Bug Fixes(Some can be considered nerfs)
- Nature’s Voice: This trait no longer carries the effects of Evasive Purity as well as the on-shout swiftness and regeneration.
- Companion’s Defense: Protection now occurs at the end of the ranger’s dodge-roll, instead of the beginning.
- Spike Trap: This skill’s tooltip now appropriately displays when Trapper’s Expertise is equipped. Updated the skill tooltips to include the immobilize condition that occurs.
- Rending Pounce (Jaguar): This skills tooltip now displays the correct amount of bleeding applied.
- Protect Me: This skill no longer prevents capture point progress.
- Vigorous Renewal: This trait now grants vigor to the ranger and nearby allies when the healing spring skill is cast and not every pulse.
Here, I fixed the OP to more accurately represent the list of leaked potential changes. To everybody reading, you’re welcome, and now you can make up your own minds, especially since healing spring is getting buffed.
Both Tarnished Coast and Blackgate have decent successes of at least two times a day, if not more. Don’t go in expecting a win the first time, though. As people cycle through, there are occasional gaffes and people learning the encounter that cause failures. But nearly all of the failures are near wins. Unfortunately, near wins are still losses.
It’s more simple than that for me; it just isn’t fun.
To elaborate, it isn’t fun to watch my pet die to mechanics I can avoid. It isn’t fun to wait around for hours for content that’s over in such a comparatively short amount of time, and it isn’t fun for success to be so loosely determined by your own contribution unless you are 1 of the 6 usually inept turret users.
It also doesn’t make sense with the whole living world concept. The goal of the player is to defeat the invading tequatl. If you fail the even, why does teq just fly away? He won, he succeeded, nobody was capable of thwarting him. So he….. I don’t know, I guess gets bored and leaves, and has no more interest of invading because the players were weak, and just drops some troll-y fish head bombs instead.
Not to mention that it’s open world content that requires immense amounts of organization and a group of people very dedicated to using extremely exclusive mechanics that have much too much sway over the failure or success of the event to be left up to bad/troll players, with the game offering no way of compensating for the lack of the use or proper use of the mechanic (I’ve suggested guilds being able to purchase turrets for x amount of time, and have members of that guild able to take control of the turrets and kick people off).
Lastly, and not exclusively to the new event (aka, something that has bugged me about PvE style content for awhile), is the issue that the events don’t scale well with the participating population. If only 20 people go to teq, it is literally impossible. Same with other events in the game, especially with the timer. Having group events is understandable, but they need to be able to account for low population. Players interested in doing content shouldn’t be punished because it isn’t popular with the rest of the community, or it isn’t a well populated server.
So all of those things, in their totality, just make it so that I won’t participate in teq.
So I always hear people saying that 40% of their damage is tied to their pet and since the pet dies so much they are kitten 40% of their damage in fights most of the time.
I just don’t believe this. The times I’ve played s/tpvp with my ranger I’ve done greats amount of damage with all weapons. Any time there is any sort of balance update, people always seem to use whole 40% of our damage is tied to our pet so we are kitten and anet is doing nothing to fix this. Everytime I ask why they give me really poor reasons. Saying things like do the math, use common sense, look at the numbers. I compared the physical damage of our auto attacks and they dont seem to be that huge of a difference. That is not considering the utility and attack speed of our attacks.
So can anyone explain to me where this 40% thing start, and if it is true? If it is true, can you show some proof that it is true? Not saying someone else provided proof or you heard it on the internet.
For a small data sample, go to the mists, take a regular weapon (I wish steady weapons could be used here, but you can’t get a steady pet for a damage comparison, so you need a regular weapon), go to a golem, and attack it for x amount of time, keeping track of your damage output, then calculate your dps.
Then, have your pet attack the golem for the same amount of time, and get its dps.
The total of your dps + pet dps is the total damage output potential, and the ratio of player dps/total and pet dps/total will get you your percentage.
Well, that was my last try. Got it to 75% with almost 3 minutes left, and couldn’t even get it down to 50% from there. It’s just a big waste of a time.
…. People that are poorly geared and/or poorly skilled can take the spot of others who would be more of an asset and more coordinated, and the thing is, everybody else shouldn’t be punished for that just because a few lackluster people want to participate and have fun….
poorly geared? you mean like a mix of greens/rares/exotics? For some reason I thought that because this event was taking place in a level 65 area, EVERYONE is scaled down. I can’t afford ascended gear yet, but doesn’t scaling significantly reduce everyone to approximately the same level such that “poorly geared” is much closer to a scaled ascended?
back to what I think is your real point…. There are several ways to fail at this event. Since only 6 turret operators are allowed and they are100% required for event success, they are clearly the weak link in the event chain. Designers were obviously aware of this weak link and felt that everyone at the event should be punished (ie event SHOULD fail) if 6 players at the event didn’t coordinate ALL of their efforts during all aspects of the event duration. All other players at the event are essentially support for turret operators prot/heal/def from foes, dps while teq is stunned , & dps for sub event defend the megalaser.
Not necessarily for the poorly geared thing. I’m also including people that are geared for pure condition damage, for instance. It is at no fault to them that the condition cap has such a tight mechanical limit, but it is damage that is being lost because people won’t respec or regear for one fight when it isn’t really necessary for the rest of the games content.
I don’t really blame them either, because the content was placed in the open world for everybody to be able to participate in, meaning that it was in no way meant to be exclusive content.
To take it a step further though, if a game designer makes content that is accessible to everybody that’s willing to participate, but overall only a limited amount of slots before a server gets filled up, then the success of the event shouldn’t have to hinge on doing optimal DPS in a given time frame, nor should it have to rely on a small group of select players dedicated to a limited amount of game mechanics that greatly control the outcome of the fight.
I’m not saying content shouldn’t be challenging, and it should definitely, definitely be able to fail. But it should fail because the skill of the players at defending the fights mechanics isn’t good enough. Like if all of the turrets were destroyed, it fails. Or, maybe giving the dragon a “kill meter,” which scales on the amount of people participating, and if enough people are killed by the dragon, the event fails, among others. I mean, sure, more people would be able to grief, but success wouldn’t be so paramount to such a small number of turret users and simultaneously the amount of people participating to be able to do DPS in a time frame.
Which is why I suggested the alternative; giving players a way to buy their own turrets. Maybe have guild owned turrets that those guilds can take control of at any time. Something to make the necessary mechanics of the first part of the fight much more flexible for the people who are serious about completing the content.
As for a nerf, I support the mindset behind why people think it needs to be nerfed right now, but it remains to be seen whether or not every single server is truly incapable of completing it. In my server, this next push will probably by the last prime time server push we get for the day, and it will probably be indicative of how much of our server continues to try the event. Hopefully we get in enough meaningful progress to prove the forums calling for a nerf wrong, but if not, I doubt I’ll even participate again personally, knowing that it’s just going to fail again in it’s current state.
I’m just going to drop this question here instead of starting a whole new topic for it. It seems like some of the people in this thread might be able to give a decent opinion on it.
Should I even bother leveling a ranger? I wanted to level up a strong WvW class, something that I could roam with, do small group play with, and zerg with, but after spending some time on this forum I’m not quite sure Ranger is what I’m looking for. Would I just be better off making a Warrior and running longbow and/or rifle? Or would a thief be the better choice even?
I would argue that Engineer can do both zerging and roaming fairly well, and there are builds for both.
Engineer feels like the middle ground between rangers and necros, you have more AoE than rangers but less than necros, and more mobility than necros but less than rangers. For roaming survival, you have perma swiftness and vigor with some fun escape tools like Rocket Boots and slick shoes, and for zergs you have crazy HGH might stacking abilities.
Engi isn’t for everybody though.
This is what we asked for.
I never asked for this.
I would like to second this sentiment.
1 +5’d it
You lot may not have specifically, but any player – or dev – reading through these forums doesn’t have to browse long until they see people spamming “Harder harder, oh give it to us harder!”. Erm, the content, I mean.
I support the change to Tequatl. Not beaten him. Might never beat him. Even as an achievement hunter I don’t care too much, but at least now he’s what he should have been all along. Tell you what, though – I’d love to see a 1v1 between Tequatl and Zhaitan. Based on fight difficulty, seems to me, Zhaitan should have been the lieutenant.
Back to my original point – harder content. I’d rather like to see an open world zone, the size of Labrynthine Cliffs. Inside is an “unbeatable boss”. A boss even the devs can’t beat. If a server manages to beat it – it should be buffed, the boss should “learn” from it’s beating and become stronger for it. Reward: a Legendary of your choice. If people want rock hard, give them excruciatingly, tear inducingly, buttock clenchingly, groin grabbingly rock hard, and give them suitable rewards for completing it. Why this suggestion? It would keep such encounters out of mainstream open world PvE, which I believe should remain a relaxing experience to play through. At the moment it seems like any general PvE-er in Sparkfly Fen is getting abuse for “taking up valuable space”, which is truly horrible.
That’s my problem entirely. You don’t put “elite” content into a zone that everybody has access to, that requires raid style levels of coordination to successfully accomplish.
Not saying that it can’t be done, but just the other day in an interview (I think it was on Matt Visuals youtube) the devs said that they are okay with Champ trains, but are not okay with how it has become a “do it this way or gtfo” situation.
But then, they turn around and add an incredibly hard boss to open world content, on top of introducing new mechanics and new requirements for success, in an underleveled zone. You don’t get to pick and choose the skill level or gear level of these participants, which in turn, removes the availability of other players that could potentially be more beneficial to success.
The other thing that is a huge problem is how limited the amount of turrets are versus how useful they need to be. To give an example, what if only 6 people could use Charrzookas in the Claw of Jormag fight? Now, you have people camping for hours just to get one, and then upon getting one, can either choose to use it to benefit the group, or can just completely troll (or be poorly skilled) with it and hinder the success rate of the fight with it (this wouldn’t necessarily be the case with Jormag, but it would probably take longer than the new timer for it).
People should have to buy turrets if it remains open world, similar to WvW siege, that can be deployed for the fight and repaired from on site locations, and have people be kicked off of them. That way, at least organized players have a semblance of a chance to get at the tools necessary for the win.
Speaking entirely from a PvP standpoint, the nerf was meant to function in the way that Mesmers super strong 5 point trait nerf did, by pushing a trait that was commonly used back into a traitline used primarily for shatter builds, so that it made it less accessible for builds like the phantasm build without changing around their trait setup.
However, that particular traitline for mesmers was/is extremely good for shatter builds, and the damage output wasn’t reduced at all. However, for rangers, the pet damage output was scaled back fairly significantly, to the point where after the community had already agreed that most traits in the Beastmastery line are fairly unhelpful in their function and the traitline was only being used as a damage boost, the nerf made the traitline completely undesirable to invest in because the opportunity cost is simply to much for what beastmastery offers (at least for PvP).
People found that with ranger, you don’t really need that much healing power (basically, the amount that shamans gives you is enough) to still be extremely bunker-ish since.
So now, you have a really good trait that is barely seeing use because it’s in a traitline that isn’t considered worth investing heavily into right now (whether that be because of efficiency, because of what the meta dictates, or a combination).
It’s too bad because it’s a really good trait. I’m hoping to see a significant trait focused rework on the 15th, maybe making it more of a desired pickup than where it stands now. As of right now that is my major problem with rangers besides the weapon skills (lack of interesting or complex function of weapon skills), lack of interesting or useful trait options (just an opinion, when compared to all the other classes I have and have leveled to 80).
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