This is the third or fourth MERGED thread about this. The only official word in any of them was “If you want to duel, the PvP servers are there.”
The only other official word anywhere was from a developer, pre-beta, saying they were looking at maybe including it.
The ONLY argument for dueling that strike’s me as vaguely reasonable is one I encouraged earlier – let people do it, but have it set to auto-decline by default. Also have the duelists not render for other people who are playing the game normally.
Would go, “Invite to duel: player name”. If it gets accepted, both characters, and all effects become generally unrendered, and unable to affect anything else in the area. No problem with that at all.
Anything that leaves the mortal kombat kiddies affecting the world near them is just not reasonable.
You forgot the most painfully obvious – put the bloody trap traits into the condition line.
Seriously, until they do something to raise our damage relative to the pet, we’ll still be broken. We’re less broken than before, but we’re still kitten by an NPC that accounts for 40% of our damage. If they fix that (either make the pet optional, or make it so that the damage is more in line of 90:10 ranger:pet) then we’re on a much more even footing with other classes.
In every way the bloody pet is a handicap. It doesn’t scale with armour, so any future armor progression (ascended kitten, anyone?) will make the ranger weaker compared to all the other classes. Pet’s cannot dodge, nor hit moving opponents, which is truly unforgivable in a game based around rapid, mobile combat.
The glass is less than half full – it’s got an inch or so of fluid in the bottom, and I’m telling you, that yellow stuff isn’t water.
Also, before someone tells me to re-roll – I love the flavour of the ranger, and it was my main in GW1. I object to having no choice but to be a beastmaster. It’s depressing to see all the potential of the class just kitten upon because of our broken class mechanic.
Am I really the only ranger playing who doesn’t have a problem with retaliation? Honestly, there’s another thread up that I’ve been posting in where someone is complaining because if they’re specced as glass and unload rapid fire on a guardian with retaliation, they suffer damage. WTF people?
Either 1) learn to check your bloody target before unloading a skill (single target, obviously) or 2) tap a direction key to cancel the channel and get a reduced cooldown on the skill if you start to eat retaliation damage. This isn’t neurosurgery.
Dude, open world duels will:
-break events when aggro happens on duelists (or duelists aggro stuff)
-clog waypoints
-introduce griefing whiners (the previous thread before the merge was full of people who admitted they wanted it purely to troll new people.)
-bring the whiney “duel me bruh” freaks that that other game is overrun with.none of these are good things.
I’m afraid I don’t understand a couple of your points.
One, how would dueling break events? If people are dueling and not doing the event then scaling doesn’t apply to them, no more than someone af’k in an event area. The event only sees people who are doing the event. And if they get aggro from event mobs, then they will have to stop dueling to deal with it. At that point they are doing the event.
The other was, clog waypoints. How would they clog waypoints? You can still travel even if people are standing on a waypoint. And what difference does it make if people duel on top of a waypoint or somewhere else?
Been ignoring this thread, because why feed the people who want to troll, but you’re speaking (as it were) directly to me.
The first one – breaking events. Simple – ANY skill that interacts with an event enemy or NPC has an effect on event scaling. Let’s say the mortal kombat kiddies have chosen a nicely public place to duel. (In WOW they always did, safe to assume the same kittens will do the same thing here.) Without fail, they’ll be altering the dynamic events near them, to the detriment of people playing the game.
For clogging waypoints; Waypoints are pretty much the other obvious place the trolls are going to gather to play their games. Having an extra 10-20 people at a WP when loading will slow up older machines. Having dozens will be crippling for those players.
There’s also the simple fact that you can go to PvP, choose to duel there, and not be annoying to the rest of the world who doesn’t want to either a) wade through the people “fighting” at/around where stuff is going on, or b) the “duel be brah” kittens who crawl out of the woodwork when world dueling is an option. (Again, WoW as a great example of “duel me brah! You scared? I’ve got a bigger kitten than you! You scared Brah!” crap that inevitably comes with this sort of thing.)
Seriously, there’s nothing at all to be gained by open-world dueling, other than the ability to grief players. Since Anet has managed to produce a wonderfully anti-grief climate to play in, I’m dead set against anything opening the door on this mindset.
This is really notable because in GW1 they DID separate the skill balances. The current practice of letting “balance” for the 10% kitten over the 90% that don’t bother with PvP… well, it’s beyond flawed.
Um, this problem isn’t a problem. If you’d actually LOOK at the opponent before using a skill, you’d know if he had retal up. Also note that retal doesn’t do that much damage, on it’s own. (Barrage against a group with retal being a special case.)
I think this may be one of the very few legitimate “L2P” problems I’ve seen on the forums.
Guardians can get near perma retaliation times with the right build and combo fields+ leaps and blasts on their own symbols and a 25% extra retal duration trait.
You’re being stupid if you suggest I should wait well over 15 seconds before attacking a guardian while he’s trying to kill me.
Since i’m pretty sure that even with the extra time from the trait, you can max it out at about 11 seconds, for an absolute max of 400 damage per strike… it’s really not that big a deal. If your build can’t take 4400 damage in the course of 11 seconds, that’s very much on you. If the damage is that big a deal to you, then wait for the little icon to go away, while you kite.
Against a whole zerg, well, it’s a different issue. I play ele, ranger and guardian – not once has retaliation been a significant factor in whether I win or lose. I’ve eaten retal damage, of course, specially while fighting from the walls of a keep, but never enough to worry about. Annoying, but not deadly.
Seriously, the whole thread IS a l2p issue. (This is maybe the second time I’ve said that about anything in almost a year of gw2. Not a knee jerk reaction – just honest opinion about what’s going being complained about.)
Also note, the OP is griping about retaliation when he’s fighting a single target, using a 10 hit channeled skill. This is why I say it’s a L2P issue. When someone who rolls glass cannon complains about taking damage… well, carry on, there’s nothing to see here.
(edited by stale.9785)
Huh, just tested this, in a squad this time, with no other allies nearby. Best we could tell, nobody gets the buff. WTF?
Um, this problem isn’t a problem. If you’d actually LOOK at the opponent before using a skill, you’d know if he had retal up. Also note that retal doesn’t do that much damage, on it’s own. (Barrage against a group with retal being a special case.)
I think this may be one of the very few legitimate “L2P” problems I’ve seen on the forums.
Dardamaniac, I like that idea as well, Pretty much anything that gives us control over the abilities, without the handicap that the pet is (undodging, bad pathing, can’t hit moving targets, and our damage is kitten as a side effect.)
Since the elites in gw2 are basically useless, or at best, extremely situational, I can only agree. I miss the GW1 elites, where it was a hard to get skill that was extremely powerful – you built your entire build around your elite skill.
I was laughing by the end of the OP. Still, I am in the camp that says WvW should not be required for map completion. At least, let mapping ONE of the frigging borderlands count as doing all of them, since the kittening maps are identical.
I enjoy wvw for its (mad laughter here) strategy. (Find the blue dorito, join zerg, bash 1 frantically, collect bags. Strategy.) Keeping the non-pvp people (you know, the 90% of any gaming population) out of WvW could only be good for people who are serious about it.
EDIT: For the slow of thought, the above means that I enjoyed the OP, but still disagree, at least as far as mapping goes. I have no issues with the JP in wvwvw, it’s just having an area that’s not part of the world count as map completion bugs me to no end.
It reduced the overall damage from Longbow, unless you’re rocking 30 in Marksman and chose Remorseless over, say Eagle Eye, Piercing Arrows or Spotter, which until the update would be a fool’s choice.
Having said that, I can see the appeal in wvwvw. Dropping all aggro, even for 3 seconds, and repositioning is huge. In PvE, it’s utterly useless. This sentence, btw, answers every question of why in this game. If the question is Why, the answer is PvP.
I would have much preferred to see Hunter’s Shot add be an immobilise + pet speed buff.
I never did enjoy the dervish. Paragon and Rit were the only expansion classes that I had any fun with. I had one of everything, but the sin and dervish were simply mules after they hit 20.
Honestly, my playtime was probably fairly evenly split between monk, ele, rit, ranger, necro and paragon. Since they’re all represented here (monk+paragon=guardian) I have no real desire to see them try to shoehorn dervish into the current game.
Pets are hopelessly broken. The fact that they’re 40% of our damage output means that rangers are going to be doing sub-par damage in any situation where the pet can’t connect. IE: any large scale group fighting, dungeons with their 1 hit insta-gib skills, and any PvP target who takes the effort to move.
The solution to this is painfully obvious; reduce the pet’s overall damage output, and raise the ranger’s weapon skill coefficients to be closer to other classes.
If we had a damage split of ranger:pet 90:10 instead of the current 60:40, a useless NPC would be far less of a liability than it is now, while those who really want an NPC to do all their fighting for them could still spec into beastmastery and have the NPC win for them. (Yes, I have a very low opinion of the last meta’s beastmaster bunker. Unskilled play should NEVER be the optimal setup.)
Few thoughts, first being that the game is world wide, so while the update happened during the slot time for Jormag on your server, odds are it was good for the bulk of the rest of the playerbase.
Same argument applies to the timers on events and your “dinnertime”.
Last thought it that you shouldn’t give out your e-mail. Even a throwaway account like hotmail. Were I in a nasty enough mood, I could have great fun messing with your life with the information available even in a throwaway account. I heavily suggest you edit the OP to remove that info.
I’m certain players have priority over npcs, and I believe party members have priority, but I could be wrong on that.
From what I can tell in wvwvw, your own party members have no priority. It’s rare to see the icon for spotter EVER be up on my party members when we’re bopping about wvwvw. This implies that it’s being applied to other nearby allies.
The truly spooky bit? I’m not entirely sure that the ranger with the trait himself has any priority. I’ve had the icon missing from my own boon bar while in combat, then come back at the next engagement.
Give pets an endurance bar, then give them the AI coding from the Queensdale bandits. Problem solved.
For those who don’t know – the bandits in Queensdale are programmed to dodge AoE attacks, and will do it twice, at which point they are (presumably) out of endurance.
If pets had this, a LOT of complaints about pets would be gone.
(My personal complaint would still be there. I HATE having no choice but to have an npc do 40% of my damage. Pets should be doing minimal damage, and ranger weapon coefficients should be brought more in line with other classes. Pets should be providing boons and conditions, not damage. bleh.)
I have no issue with stationary vs mobile spirits. What I would love would be to have spirits just be invulnerable to damage. (think warrior banners).
I’ve said it before, and I imagine I’ll say it again.
Fire should all be high damage AoE skills; the splash on fireball should be far larger, the default area of Lava Font should be double what it is.
Air 1 and 2 should be instant cast, high single target damage. Air 3 still needs a larger hitbox.
Water 1 should either have it’s damage removed and it’s healing increased, or the reverse. Water 2 needs to be far, far faster.
Earth 2 needs to be faster (make it so it’s laid after the field instead of beforehand to trigger a combo), earth 4 should be a circle, like water 4.
So the final result would be:
Fire: AoE damage
Air: Single Target damage
Water: Snares and heal
Earth: Snares, bleed and defense
Hey all, just spitballing, but I think this would be workable.
Instead of having an actual animal companion, what if F1-F4 summoned the spirit of an animal? Something that would work more like the Guardian’s Virtues?
Say, you’re a new ranger, and you only have the starter pet – then you can summon the spirit of the bear by pressing F1, and your pet brown bear shows up, clears all conditions, and disappears again. As you tame more pets, you gain access to more skills.
The 4 skills would be customisable from the pet menu, but you wouldn’t be allowed to, for example, have 4 brown bear summons at one time.
There would be one for each tamable pet in the game, and I’m basing them around existing F2 pet skills.
Examples:
Brown Bear: Cure all conditions on allies in range.
Black Bear: Nearby foes suffer 10s of weakness.
Polar Bear: Target foe and nearby foes are chilled for 3s
Fern Hound: Nearby allies gain 10s of regeneration.
Drake Hound: Nearby foes are Feared for 5s
Wolf: Target foe is immobilized for 3s
Reef Drake: Target for and nearby foes are confused for 5s.
Marsh Drake: Create insect cloud (poison field) at target foes location for 5s.
Melandru’s Stalker: Nearby allies gain 5 stacks of might for 10s
Jaguar: Gain 6s stealth.
Jungle Spider: Your next attack immobilizes your foe.
And so on.
Anyone think it’s workable?
Edit: I picture the animation being like swoop or maul in it’s execution. Fast, distinct, but not something that’s going to cause major distraction or FPS issues.
Roll a warrior, lay your face on the keyboard, and profit.
If you ignore your pet, you lose 40% of your potential DPS. So any build that doesn’t allow for the pet (this includes the DDR and the 20/25/0/25/0 spirit build) is doing significantly less damage than any other class will.
Speccing into the pet means you’re accepting that a poorly coded NPC is going to be doing the lion’s share of your damage, and you’re merely along to make sure the opponent is slowed up enough for the pet to actually hit it.
I love the flavour of the ranger, and the nature themes. What the class desperately needs is for pets to be something that help, rather than hinder us.
In general overworld PvE, rangers are excellent. In PvP, there are two builds that are fantastic. In wvwvw, they’re about standard with the others. In running dungeons, Rangers are the undisputed absolute bottom of the barrel.
My advice? Try it, see how you like it, and if you enjoy the gameplay, join the rest of us in waiting for Anet to finally admit that they kittened up badly with pet implementation and actually fix it.
Chopps, dude, stop it. You are, frankly, not as good as you set yourself out to be. Nor is every single other player as bad as you claim. Rangers are in a bad place – not as bad as a month ago, but still, not good.
I used to main a ranger, and I still won’t bring one into a group for dungeons/fotm, unless they’re a guildy. I know exactly what rangers are capable of, and frankly there’s absolutely nothing that other classes don’t do at least as well, if not better.
You’re doing the community no good at all by pretending otherwise.
F1:
Tap – Attack/Return (Returns if attacking and vice versa)
Hold (0.5s) – Swap pet
F2: Pet specific ability
F3: Family ability 1
F4: Family ability 2There, I fixed the ranger… hooray……………..
Add an endurance bar to the pet, and have the Return function incorporate a dodge if there’s enough endurance, and we’re laughing – though I think pet swap should still be on F4.
The game is centered around fast paced, mobile combat. Having an attack chain that roots you is so clearly not in line with this, that to consider it anything but a bug is… blind, is the kindest term that comes to mind.
Lack of mobility in combat is the largest problem with ranger pets – having this extend to a weapon set is just bad design. Dodging is the ultimate damage mitigation in this game – an attack chain that removes the ability to dodge? Yeah, working as intended… right.
Unfortunately, until it affects the PvP node-capturing gameplay, there will be no fix.
Hello, I’m a normal player, who does PvE and WvW, and recognises that the tiny meta of PvP capture the node produces builds that are unworkably bad for any application other than the closed little 10% that is PvP.
EDIT: that came off unnecessarily snarky. However, the perceptions of PvP players on class balance, while the sole measure for balancing the game, are so skewed that they are worthless.
It’s long past time that every single balance is split between game modes, so that PvP can achieve their longed after “every-class-is-exactly-the-same” mode, while the rest of the players can actually enjoy playing classes that have different strengths and playstyles.
(edited by stale.9785)
Every time a dev posts it just proves they don’t care and haven’t got a clue that other forms than PvP even exist in this game.
Note that all the dev posts about class balance have been by the PvP guys. Where are the PvE balance devs? Do they exist?
No, there are none. The entirety of the game is balanced according to the PvP needs. Since the PvP needs are only about controlling nodes, this means that the “balance” is nearly non-existent. As long as one profession can’t control two nodes at once, or move the spirit watch orb unreasonably fast, nothing is going to change.
I understand they want the game to be an e-sport. This means that the needs of the 90% of non-pvp players will ALWAYS come second, if at all, to the needs of that 10% that Anet can show off in videos to rub their kitten about the e-sport they’ve produced.
For Nature’s Vengeance, I simply couldn’t think of anything that fits nature magic that well that could go there. (I’m open to suggestions, btw) Also, it’s possible, if not terribly likely, that someone wants to play with spirits and plans on them being killed for their abilities.
For Opening Strike, I changed the wording to include the pet. There’s an awful lot of things with the ranger where simply having it say “You and your pet” instead of “your pet” makes a difference. 75 traits, 49 of them are pet related.
Moment of Clarity, I simply couldn’t think of anything better to go there. Mining the other professions traitlines (specifically warrior and thief, since they’re the closest to us in playstyle) gave me no real inspiration, either. Again, open so suggestions.
Also, thank you for actually replying. :-) Whole lot of effort here, and I wasn’t sure any gave a rat’s kitten .
Beastmastery:
Minor:
Instinctual Bond When you are downed, your pet gains quickness for 5 seconds. 50 second cooldown.
Loud Whistle Pet swapping recharges 20% faster.
Nature’s Wrath 10% of healing is given as a bonus to power.
Major:
Adept:
Speed Training Pets recharge their skills 10% faster.
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.
Shout Mastery Shouts recharge 20% faster.
Compassion Training Pets deal 2% more damage for each boon on them.
Commanding Voice Pet skills (F2) recharge faster.
Mighty Swap Pets gain 3 stacks of might (10s) when they are activated.
Master:
Rending Attacks Pets cause bleed on criticals hit with their basic attacks.
Stability Training Pets gain stability (3s) when disabled.
Intimidation Training Activated (F2) abilities for pets cause cripple.
Vigorous Training Pet F2 skills grant AoE vigor (5s) when activated.
Zephyr’s Speed You and your pet gain 6 seconds of quickness when you swap pets.
Natural Healing You and Your pets have natural health regeneration.
Nature Magic:
Minor:
Rejuvenation Gain regeneration when your health reaches 75%.
Fortifying Bond Any boon you get is shared with your pet.
Bountiful Hunter You and your pet deal 5% more damage while you have a boon.
Adept:
Circle of Life Create a healing spring on death.
Concentration Training Boons applied by your pets last longer.
Nature’s Bounty Regeneration you apply lasts 33% longer.
Vigorous Spirits Spirits have twice as much health. Spirit bonuses have a 35% better chance of providing their benefits.
Strength of Spirit 5% of vitality is given as a bonus to power.
Nature’s Protection Receive protection for 5 seconds when you take more than 10% damage in a single strike. This effect can only trigger once every 30 seconds.
Master:
Nature’s Vengeance Activated skills of spirits are larger and trigger when the spirit is killed.
Spiritual Knowledge Spirit bonuses have a 35% better chance of providing their benefits.
Evasive Purity Dodging removes blind and poison from you (10 second cooldown).
Two-Handed Training Greatsword and spear damage is increased by 5%.
Enlargement Pets get enlarged when you reach 25% health. (Pet gains stability and 10 stacks of might for 10 seconds – 60 second cooldown)
Grandmaster:
Spirits Unbound Spirits can move and follow you. Spirits are immune to damage.
Nature’s Voice Shouts apply Regeneration (10 seconds) and Swiftness (10 seconds) to Allies. 360 degree radius. [sic]
Wilderness Survivial:
Minor:
Natural Vigor * Increases endurance regeneration by 50%.
*Companion´s Defense You and your pet gain 2 seconds of protection when you dodge roll.
Bark Skin You and your pet take 30% less damage when under 25% health.
Adept:
Soften the Fall Create Muddy Terrain when you take falling damage. You take 50% less damage from falling.
Healer’s Celerity Grants swiftness to you and your ally when you revive someone. Increases revive speed by 10%.
Shared Anquish Incoming disables (stun, daze, knockback, knockdown, sink, float, fear, launch) are transferred to your pet. This effect can only trigger once every 90 seconds.
Vigorous Renewal Gain vigor when using a heal skill.
Expertise Training Pets deal extra condition damage.
Wilderness Knowledge Survival skills recharge 20% faster.
Master:
Off-Hand Training Offhand skills have a longer range and 20% quicker recharge.
Oakheart Salve Gain regeneration for 5s when you suffer from bleeding, poison or burning. This can only trigger once every 20 seconds.
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.
Trapper’s Expertise Trap skills use ground targeting and are 50% larger.
Empathic Bond Pets periodically take conditions from you.
Trap Potency Conditions caused by traps last twice as long and traps recharge 20% faster.
(edited by stale.9785)
Skirmishing:
Minor:
Tail Wind Gain swiftness when swapping weapons in combat.
Furious Grip Gain fury when swapping weapons in combat.
Hunter’s Tactics Deal 10% more damage while flanking.
Major:
Adept:
Pet’s Prowess Pets do 30% more damage on critical hits.
Sharpened Edges Chance to cause bleeding on critical hits.
Trapper’s Defense Create a spike trap while reviving an ally.
Primal Reflexes You gain 5s of vigor when you are struck by a critical hit. This can only trigger once every 15 seconds.
Companion’s Might Critical hits grant 5 seconds of might to your pet.
Agility Training Pets move 30% faster.
Master:
Carnivorous Appetite Pets gain health on critical hits.
Martial Mastery Sword, greatsword, and spear skills recharge 20% faster.
Honed Axes You do 10% more critical damage when wielding an axe in your main hand.
Quick Draw Shortbow and longbow skills recharge 20% faster.
Grandmaster:
Moment of Clarity Gain an attack of opportunity for you and your pet on interrupting a foe. This effect can only trigger once every 5 seconds. Daze and stun durations you inflict are also increased by 50%.
Weak Spot Flanking attacks have 66% chance to cause 1s cripple (5 sec cooldown)
(edited by stale.9785)
Marksmanship:
Minor:
Opening Strike You and your pet cause vulnerability with your first strike when entering combat. Opening strike always critical hits.
Piercing Arrows All arrow attacks pierce targets.
Remorseless Regain Opening Strikes when you kill a foe.
Major:
Adept:
Steady Focus Damage increases by 10% when endurance is full.
Malicious Training Increases duration for conditions applied by you and your pets.
Keen Edge Use Sharpening Stone when your foes health reaches 50%. Can only be triggered once every 45 seconds.
Signet Mastery Signets recharge 20% faster.
Predator’s Instinct Apply cripple to foes you hit when they are below 25% health (removed cooldown).
Beastmaster’s Bond Gain fury and might when your pet’s health reaches 50%.
Master:
Spotter Increases precision of nearby allies by up to 150 points.
Eagle Eye Increases longbow, shortbow and harpoon gun range. Increases longbow,shortbow and harpoon gun damage by 5%.
Beastmaster’s Might Activating a signet grants 3 stacks of might (15 seconds).
Martial Training Deal 10% more damage when you are within 300 range of your target.
Grandmaster:
Beastmaster’s Signet Active effects of signets also affect you.
Stunning Arrows: When your arrows strike a foe with less than 50% health, you cause 4 seconds of immobilize. (30 second cooldown)
(edited by stale.9785)
Ok, so, I went through our triats, line by line, compared them to the other classes traits, and moved/changed a number of them. Breaking it up into multiple posts, because of holy-great-wall-of-text, eh? A lot of my changes are combining existing traits, or moving things (martial weapons into skirmishing, traps into wilderness survival) that weren’t in a spot that made sense.
The gaps that I got from combining things, I basically stole traits from other professions, and added ranger-esque requirements to them.
(edited by stale.9785)
https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/elementalist/staff-fixes-improvements/first
Been a while since I got any feedback on this thread. Some of what I asked for came through in the last patch, but not nearly enough. Staff is still our weakest weapon. Also, shamelessly bumping my old thread, because… well, I’d like to see it float on the front page till staff gets the love it deserves.
Holy wall of response. Right on – summing up, you’re saying it’d be OP, and impossible to balance. My counter is GW1, where the longest recharge I can recall (other than smiter’s boon – which is now the term for when izzy decides to gut a skill) was about 25 seconds, on very powerful skills. The more common recharge times would be 3-10 seconds.
GW1 was a far more skill based, reactive game than what we have now. (We went from a game where interrupting and punishing other’s was standard, to a hack ‘n’ slash. The skill floor is lower, as is the ceiling, in GW2.)
Yes, it’d be work, though less than you’re implying. Simply take the skill charts (wiki is handy for these) set each class beside one another, start at the weapon skills and work down. Recharge time’s go down, generally speaking effects go down – though I think this would mostly be toning down weapon skills.
A lot of utility skills I figure wouldn’t need adjusting – outside the insanely long recharge times, they’re actually fairly good. You know you’re done when each class has damage/utility coming at the same speed as the others, even if it’s coming in different ways.
A quick example would be gap closers. Of the top of my head, we have Rush, Swoop, Ride the Lightning and Burning Speed.
Rush: range 1200, cooldown 20s.
Swoop: range 1200, cooldown 12s
RTL: range 1200, cooldown 40s
Burning Speed: range 600, cooldown 15s.
I’d say make them even across the board. Range 1200, cooldown 12s. That way all 4 have the same level of utility on the same timer.
Can do the same thing with the classes auto-attacks. Right now we have some (warrior axe) that are the highest sustained DPS in the game. We have others (any water auto attack, ranger’s longbow, guardian scepter 1) that either do pitiful damage or don’t even hit.
Now I’d argue that from a flavour perspective, Warriors should do more melee damage, so perhaps no change is needed – but should the ele be doing pitiful damage outside of staff fire 1 on auto attack? Probably not. Should ranger longbow be one of the weakest weapons in the game? I’d say it should hit nearly as hard as a warrior’s melee auto. Go through them all, notice that some are definitely bottom of the barrel, and bring them up to useability. Other’s that may be overboard can be toned down.
Total time to work through every skill in the game side by side and bring them to some semblance of balance, if that’s your only task? Probably about a work week. Time spend play testing it (which is also known as release to the public, and wait to see what’s broken, if you’re Anet) probably two whole weeks, between PvP and WvW.
It’s not as daunting, nor as OP as you assume, dude.
How about making Signet of Renewal into the GW1 Antidote Signet. It would preserve the ranger flavour, and actually be useful.
The description was “Cleanse yourself of Poison, Disease, and Blindness, and one additional condition.” On a 4 second recharge.
Yes – 4 seconds. Virtually all skills recharged faster in GW1 – it made for a more responsive game, where reflexes really mattered – but that’s a different rant.
We don’t have Disease in this game, so change it to: Cleanse yourself of Poison, Blind and 2 other conditions. and put it on a 45 second (36s traited) cooldown. It’s passive could be the same as Signet of Renewal’s – but we’ve done away with the need for a pet. That alone is a trend in our skills that’s worth encouraging.
Not entirely true, Sandpit. Were this a PvP thread, the changes asked for would be in the game in some form next month. Because the issues with the ranger affect the majority of players rather than the minority, we won’t see anything done.
I actually feel that pretty much all the recharge times (aside from the auto-attack) should be looked at and shortened.
I’d love to see the longest recharge on any skill in the game be 60 seconds (only elites) with every other skill capped at 30 seconds or shorter, and rebalance around that.
We’d have:
Elites at 1 min.
Powerful utilities at 30 seconds.
Medium utilities at 10-20 seconds
Weapon skills at 20 seconds or less. (would think that 3/4s, 5s, 10s, 15s, 20s as the standard, and balance weapon sets around that, would be groovy.)
Would make for a far faster paced, reactive game than what we’ve got right now. It would also, likely, do something about evening out some of the class imbalance we have right now. If all skills were put to the same measure when balancing, ideally all classes would end up with the same level of damage/utility in their skills.
Bacon is a hard line thief/warrior supporter, who firmly believes his two chosen professions have gotten the wrong end of the stick. Ignore him.
My 3:
1. Spirits are invulnerable.
2. Pets become optional (only used if you put points into BM line)
3. Traps get moved to the condition line.
Everyone is screaming and crying about it, but 900 range makes sense on the SB. If they buff Eagle Eye, they need to move the damage component and put it on a different trait.
The only thing that really needs to happen is that pet damage needs to be decreased and coefficients increased across the board on Ranger skills. The pet should be utilitarian, you shouldn’t be totally dependent on it for basic DPS.
I’ve said that before – but Anet is hung up on “The ranger and his pet are one”. I’d love to have the stupid NPC removed from our damage calculation (I’ve said extremely disparaging things about the people who used the x/x/30/x/30 build and letting a poorly coded AI npc be your source of damage.)
Personally, I’ve never been big on using the shortbow, but I included that purely because of the amount of forum crying about it. And it is a simple enough fix – extend the 5% damage to shortbows as well.
Pillager, I don’t care if they break the animations for it, pets should hit at 300 range, while moving. Most of the attack animations would work fine while moving anyway – the bulk of them amount to bite/swing paws about.
Just what the title says – easy to make changes that would result in massive quality of life improvements. KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid.
Make the trait “Eagle Eye” affect shortbow as well. Trait would read: Increase Longbow range to 1500, Shortbow to 1200.
Let pets attack while moving, and increase hit range to 300.
Give pets an endurance bar and have them dodge AoE circles.
Make spirits invulnerable – make Vigorous Spirits: Spirit effects have 100% increased range. Spirit bonuses have a 35% better chance of providing their benefits.
Signet of Renewal – Passive remains the same – active: Remove 3 conditions from ranger and pet (I don’t get why this should sacrifice your pet on use – seems rather cold-blooded when we should be trying to keep them alive)
These wouldn’t solve all of our problems, but would certainly go a long way toward making us more playable.
Take GW1 – there was no auction house, just player to player. So the major towns became FULL of WTB/WTS spam. 24/7. Normal conversation and group finding was impossible, because that’s all there was. Then they put in a group finder, and it became overrun with WTB/WTS spam.
They changed the party find window to have specific wtb/wts sections, and even with that, the towns were full of WTB/WTS spam.
For scamming, it is mostly a matter of paying attention – People would put in wrong amounts of cash (accidentally putting in 1200 instead of 120) or people would put up an item with the same icon as what you were after, but the wrong item. Or, two or more people would work together, chatting, to drive the price of a rare up. (No, i’ll offer X more than him! nah, i’ll offer XX more!)
The TP is the happiest in-between possible. You can still trade through mail, if you want to. Note, Anet doesn’t care if you get scammed on P2P trading now. They’ve given you a flawless system to use, if you don’t want to, that’s on you. (flawless as in, there can be no wrong items/price change/scamming or spamming.)
Terkov – the numbers are from the heavy golem in the mists. Flat out, longbow deals significantly lower damage. Both are exotic zerker weapons without sigils, on a 20/30/20/0/0 build, for consistency.
And yeah, I exaggerated with pets – but pets are so bad that we should just assume that you’re down 40% potential damage compared to every other class anyway.
Player to Player trading is an epic fail. It causes a spamfest and scamfest.
I like the other suggestions though – and desperately miss the UI customisation that we had in GW1.
I like the idea of a karma map-maker based on your main character’s progress.
You have a character who’s completely mapped, say, Sparkfly Fen, they can go have a map made for X karma, and your alts can buy said map for the same X karma. The only things such a map would unlock would be waypoint access. You wouldn’t get credit for it on map completion until you physically visited each WP with the character in question.
Simple fix – put doors that won’t open until objective X is done.
I think it’d help if we could agree with what’s wrong with rangers. Instead of every time someone complains about a portion someone else pops up telling them they’re wrong.
Anyone who believes pets aren’t broken are flat out wrong. Bad pathing, inability to hit mobile targets, can’t avoid AoE/high damage attacks, and there’s one whole build where they’re viable. Pets are BAD.
Inevitably, someone is going to tell me to cripple my target so my pet can hit. That’s great and all, but it shouldn’t be required for the other half of my damage to hit. Imagine if a warrior only dealt full damage to crippled foes? People would be screaming. Same with any class, aside from us.
For the pet survivability issue, your choices are to either build entirely around your pet, or accept it’s going to die, all the time. Again, if any other class faces losing half their damage whenever there were lots of AoE around, or a single high target attack, there’d be screaming. For rangers, it’s par for the course.
Solution? Lots of people (I count 1824 separate posters in the last 4 months) calling for pet removal. Outright perma-stow and fix rangers skill coefficients so we deal normal damage (normal as in not 40% weaker than everyone else, because: pet.)
Or they could add some AoE damage reduction, and extend the pet’s range of attack. (If they’re not going to allow perma-stowing, this makes the most sense)
That’s the first glaring issue with the ranger covered. The pets.
Second issue is group utility. Right now, that’s limited to Healing Spring and Muddy Ground. There’s nothing else rangers bring to a fight that someone else can’t do better. The ideal solution? Fix spirits.
Spirits should be invulnerable, like warrior banners. That leaves a trait that can be remade into something else (hopefully not pet related, since we have 49 pet traits already) and allow for spirit based builds. That’s it – one change, and spirits become reasonably useful. The internal cool down needs to be addressed, but I’m not even sure Anet is aware that’s an issue.
Last issue, and it was mentioned above – our traits. Every class has 75 traits to choose from. For rangers, 49 of them revolve around the pet. Now, I figure there should be 15 pet traits (All in beastmaster line, obviously) and the rest should be related to US.
Later, I’ll make a separate post with our current traits, and what they should (could) be.
Just want to point out that ranger condition removal is limited to:
- a 30 point trait investment that triggers every 10 seconds, and we can’t control it
- a signet that triggers every 10 seconds. If we use the active, we have to wait 60 seconds for cooldown
- healing spring, assuming we’re running it and not troll unguent or heal as one
- brown bears, if you’re within range when you use their F2 (which you won’t be, if you’re fleeing.)
So, that’s… two whole on-demand condition clears. Three if they’re running a bear and it’s keeping up with them. In combat conditions aren’t much a consideration for a ranger. When chasing, a ranger just can’t clear snares fast enough to keep up with an ele who’s determined to get away.
The flip side is ele, who can clear conditions:
- on heal (ether renewal)
- swap to water
- on gaining regeneration (if traited)
- using magnetic wave
- using phoenix
- using cleansing fire
- on dodge roll (if traited)
An ele should laugh in the face of snares.
For mobility you have (let’s assume D/D or S/D)
- swap to air attunement (5 seconds swiftness)
- RTL (target a yellow critter for shorter cooldown, or live with the 40 seconds) (1200 leap skill)
- swiftness from GoeH if you’re using it (10 seconds swiftness)
- swap to fire, fire 3 (if mainhand dagger) (600 leap skill)
- lightning flash (900 range teleport)
- swap back to air attunement (swinging through water if snared)
- and repeat till you’re somewhere safe.