The only thing one can comment on being a success or failure is the PR related content such as streams and blogs.
Did they properly convey their plans?
Did Anet address issues in the streams and blogs that active players are concerned with?
Those kinds of questions we can answer if they were a success or not. You, OP, nor anyone can answer if the patch when it comes to pass is a success or not until after it has been applied and sufficient time has been given to kitten all aspects of the patch.
I can judge one thing: they have not sufficiently addressed my concerns with the Ranger. The only thing the CDIs, Streams, and blogs have done is confirmed beyond a shadow of a doubt the Ranger will always be handicapped and I should either learn to love another class or play a different game.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
I’m wondering if this patch is going to be the Ranger’s time to shine. I’m certainly not putting the slightest bit of hope into that. Just seems that from the CDIs and whatnot that the Ranger was going to be at the forefront of this balance patch.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
I’d take my zerker guardian or zerker warrior before I brought my zerker ranger into a dungeon.
That being said, if I get asked by my guildies to run another COF or something I’ll bring the Ranger if I have already ran my guard, war, mes, and ele through the dungeon they are requesting.
If this is your 7th level 80 it’s a safe assumption you have a level 80 guard and war already. Just stick to those and you’ll make it a better time for everybody in your group.
If you insist on still running your Ranger despite it all (or just to spite your guildies or PuGs) then at least run Brazil’s build or something extremely close to it.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
If you are good on a Ranger you’d be great on a Guardian, and if you’re good on the Ranger then you’ll be amazing on a Warrior. That is if the given is true that has been spouted here that Rangers are that much harder to play (read: higher skill level required). An amazing warrior will be worth more than a good Ranger. Sure, they may not be as fun to you but you’ll be worth more to your group.
Besides, a lot of you seem to be glazing over the OP when he said he is one of the min-maxing crowd. Not sure why y’all are getting so bu1t hurt over this. It’s his opinion. It just so happens that many others share the opinion. He and they are no more right in their opinions then you are in yours.
Get over it and move on.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Yeah, I had to go back and read the trait, that’s why I added the edit. I missed that about the damage… my bad. I definitely won’t be using any of these new GM traits.
Guildie of mine is about to shelve her ranger that she’s been playing since launch and she WVWs. She is not happy with these new GM traits. As soon as her Guard is geared up she’ll be using that one 100% of the time.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
My fear is we will be forced to run 30/30/X for our dps to compensate for class weaknesses as a zerker, and this RNG block trait simple can’t deliver on a zerker build. This puts a lot of pressure on read the wind to be effective, as no signets is a big loss.
For me the skirmishing GM was a ‘make or break’ for glass power ranger that doesn’t look to deliver, like the the new virtues GM on guardian (for dps)…
I don’t know what rock you’ve been living under but we are already forced into the 30/30/x build for zerker for over the last year I’ve been playing my Ranger. If you aren’t running that you need to l2p.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
For starters, there’s no change in PvP… so ANet doesn’t care about your opinion.
Secondly, burst damage is out of control and this change was more than warranted. That said, you’re right… it’s not a PvE nerf at all because PvE is still going to be berserker or bust. It always will be. Instead, this looks to be a targetted nerf against high crit dmg builds in WvW (and Thief being the primary target).
It is a dungeon nerf. It’s going to be a noticeable difference in how long it’s going to take to kill things in dungeons given the massive healthpools they gave things. When I’m running the same dungeon for the 10000th time, I want it to be as fast as possible and nerfing crit damage is directly affecting me and my zerker builds on all my toons, especially my warrior. And yeah, I do participate in timed runs, so even 30 sec more is noticeable… and massive.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Since all these new GM traits were s/tPVP based, I won’t be using them… except for the 50%+ more damage while enemy is poisoned one. That one might be useful in pve/dungeons because of sword #3. I like running a 20/30/15/5/0 build so far but that’s about to change to a 30/30/5/5/0.
*EDIT: Nevermind on that poison master. I’m not going 30 into WS for a PVE/Dungeon build. So yeah, I will be using exactly none of these new traits. GG, Anet.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
How about Ranger taking less damage overall when melee’ing, 15% would then be acceptable?
Actually, I would like that. 15% less damage from aoe and overall damage? Yeah. That would allow me to stay in melee that much longer and apply more damage. That is assuming it wasn’t an RNG based chance but a solid 15% reduction in damage.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
They aren’t going to buff the Ranger. It’ll be changes, yes, but not buffs. Why? Power Creep was the answer. We are supposed to be the sustained damage class (even though every class has sustained damage — it’s called auto attack). So, no damage buffs coming. And if you’re running a defensive build in pve/dungeons, you need to l2p and run zerker, or at least knights at the very least.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Yeah, easy easy easy to see these were all made with PVP/WVW in mind. There’s no way these incredibly underthought grandmaster traits were even considered with anything having to with PVE or dungeons. More I read information from the Devs the more I am convinced they do not want me to play a Ranger.
Skirmishing: Strider’s Defense – You have a 15% chance to block ranged attacks while in melee.
Again, Who is going to use this trait? Trappers won’t use it because they’re already investing points into making traps better, Interrupt Builds grab MoC, Berserker Rangers won’t use it because no one sane runs a bloody melee weapon with berserker gear
I assume you meant this towards WVW and PVP? Because I used to zerker melee on my Ranger all the time in PVE/Dungeons.
Yes i’m meaning towards PvP in general, because you can be successful being completely traitless in PvE in this game.
Not in Dungeons. Not to mention this pvp bullchit is effing up my PVE/Dungeon game.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Yeah, easy easy easy to see these were all made with PVP/WVW in mind. There’s no way these incredibly underthought grandmaster traits were even considered with anything having to with PVE or dungeons. More I read information from the Devs the more I am convinced they do not want me to play a Ranger.
Skirmishing: Strider’s Defense – You have a 15% chance to block ranged attacks while in melee.
Again, Who is going to use this trait? Trappers won’t use it because they’re already investing points into making traps better, Interrupt Builds grab MoC, Berserker Rangers won’t use it because no one sane runs a bloody melee weapon with berserker gear
I assume you meant this towards WVW and PVP? Because I used to zerker melee on my Ranger all the time in PVE/Dungeons.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
I use moment of clarity in dungeons and pve. Mostly because of vets and when champs have lost their defiance… granted, with the champs it doesn’t happen often, but it does. But that seems silly to have even 1/16th of the traits “not meant” for PVE or WVW or PVP, depending on how you are looking at it. Seems like a scape-goat answer to a lackluster grandmaster trait. Gimme one that allows me to get rid of the pet, then we’re talking
I’m just not holding out ANY hope that they are going to do anything that is going to make me want to play my ranger again.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Meh. I never used Keen Edge because everybody and their mom already applies 1000x bleeds. So that’s not exciting.
The pet f2 responsiveness improvement is a step in the right direction, but it is still going to take 2-4 seconds for the skill to go off… so, yeah, there’s that.
You’ll end up like me and lose your hope thus making your Ranger a mule.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
If you can’t fix the core issue with the pet, then you work around it. It isn’t acceptable to have kept Ranger’s waiting 1.5 years just like it won’t be acceptable to keep them waiting for another 6 months.
And you’re arguing as if the pet flat out doesn’t work.
Sadly, pets do not work well enough. What irks me the most is the refusal to give more control over the pet or even simple things like keybind for active/passive and stowing. There is no logical arguement you or any Dev can give as to why we don’t have keybinds for that. We have controls we can use but only by mouse.. WTF? That’s just… we-todd-ed in the worst way. And the reason that came out of the SoTG was that too much control would scare new players away from the class? REALLY!? THAT IS YOUR ANSWER!? Have you played a Elementalist or Engi? I have! They have tons of Fs!
Oh well… I’m a firm believer than until some persons leave or are fired from Anet the Ranger will stay a handicapped class.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Well the CDI is over. Was it a success or failure? We’ll have to wait, however I do not think they will be doing another profession-focused one in the near future.
All I can draw from this is the ranger community is probably one of the most divided of the profession.
Nah, not divided really.
I’ve never played an mmo were there was not a small vocal group calling for at least one class to be totally redesigned to suit their specific play-style, and everyone else be kittened. In this case it’s the sniper/archers wanna-bes’ that spam posted endlessly. It’s perfectly normal. And the spam posting by the same 7 or 8 folks, thinking that restating the same point a dozen times with ever increasing emotion will work, this is to be expected as well. And the exaggerated, “we are totally broken, Anet hates/ignores us”, this too is no surprise. Just another typical week in a cartoon video game forums – lol.
That said, the 3 most important points in regards to pets were driven home. So I expect to see a reasonable effort made for pets to handle AOE better in dungeons and zerg-balls. Also, a change or two to increase hit chance by pets and improved f2 responsiveness.
And there were some excellent suggestions made in regards to Longbows, Swords and Axes as well. I expect to see a few changes here as well. And perhaps a few traits redesigned to fit the weapon changes.
When the devs meet, they will sort out the reasonable and intelligent suggestions, and trash-can the whines and exaggerated nonsense. Overall it will result in some positive changes. Of course there will be no pleasing the “pets sux, we need more dps, pets sux, we need more dps crowd” – but hey, those types are never happy unless they can one-shot someone in WvW from 1500.
That bolded part… No.. Not just them. It’s those of us who like to melee as well.
In the end, I have lost hope for this class despite my carrying it much longer than many others I play with.
The name of the game in PVE/Dungeons is the more dps and the faster the dps the better. Obviously that is not what the Ranger is intended to do. Sure, my Beastmaster will be good for running world boss events when I’ve already done it on my other 6 toons, and when I want to forge… but that is it. And it’ll be good at being a mule… I’ll split my time more between my other toons, mostly my guardian, warrior, ele, and mesmer.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
@Zorby, don’t hate me because it’s true. That’s why you keep seeing it. Obviously some of us are better. It’s ok, buddy. Relax. That’s how it is in the world. There’s always someone better than you and always someone worse. Take a few shots of your favorite whiskey, relax, and practice to get better with the main hand sword. Or, you can continue to be bad. Your choice.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
If I want to be a beastmaster (wich I do prefer) i want my pet to be able to stayby my side constantly as today… Not just for a period of time like a summon that dies/diapears.
If the pet would become a temporary summon, that would ruin the class totally IMO.
Funny, because IMO, making the pet a summon that dies/disappears would totally fix the class.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
For clarification my crit damage is 92% and my crit chance is 50% Attack is 3600-3700. I should NOT be doing 400 damage with FGS to a regen warrior who is built all defensively and out healing all the damage he is taking without even using his heal skill. Give Warriors Signet of Restoration and give Elementalists healing signet for 1 month, see how fast your Warriors cry foul play.
Glass Elementalist only doing 402damage versus a Warrior who hits for a lot more damage with a hammer while fully out regenerating the damage? This needs to be fixed, and not in a few months, but like now… This has gone on for to long and it is quite pathetic that every time I see a Dev playing the game it is on a Warrior… There is a reason why Warrior is so overpowered, stop playing the Warrior and try an Elementalist for 1 hour and you will QUIT your own game. Go full bunker if you’d like, still will not help you live versus that regen. 8% Reduction is not going to be enough, you need to nerf the warrior down to Elementalist state, actually nerf ALL classes to Elementalist state. sPvP community got Elementalist nerfed, how about they get other classes nerfed now?
Un-do all the nerfs you whack-a-moled onto the Elementalist because people kittened and complained about how the Elementalist was tickling them but wouldn’t die.
Don’t worry. Allie already said they’re going to nerf all the other classes to bring them down to the Ranger level… because they can’t buff the Ranger to bring it up without chancing power creep. I can’t wait!
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Allie’s good job here shows we can have somethig else than a direct player to dev collaboration, it might be a good idea to figurate a way to work like that
You mean direct player to PR person. She’s not a dev. She’s a middle (wo)man between us and the devs.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Permastow is not impossible. I never meant to give that impression, so I apologize if I did. However, as far as priorities go for the Ranger, it is not high on the list. Why? Because it would require an entire re-balance of Ranger, but if we re-balanced, then the players that do play with the pet would be OP. See the dilemma there?
Oh, it is possible. Enough resources and it is more than possible. Y’all don’t want to, understandable, but a large portion of the Ranger player base doesn’t want the class mechanic because it does not work as intended (hence the band-aids from the start).
That just settles that the class will forever be handicapped because it’s going to take at least or more work to make the pet work as intended as it would be to give the option out of it.
Thanks for putting the final nail in the coffin of my hope for the Ranger to be truly fixed.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
My biggest worry is we get the Warrior Treatment, as in to much to fast..
I would rather that than nothing at all, i.e. what we have gotten the last 1.5 years.
True, but we aren’t the warrior. If they make us too good they won’t just go back and slightly whittle down things one skill at a time. We would likely just get Beta Nerf 2.0 and end up even worse than we were before this whole thing.
Probably. The CDI has convinced me I don’t need to play my Ranger anymore. I’ve gone back to playing Skyrim. There’s still ‘ish in that game I haven’t done. I’ll get my dailies still and log in for guild mission stuff, but that’s about it.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
And no, I don’t PVP at all. None. No WVW or PVP. And I still want to opt out of the pet for PVE and Dungeons. If the dam Ranger wasn’t so fun to play I wouldn’t say anything and wouldn’t care if the class continues to remain handicapped by the band-aided class mechanic. So yeah, I’d like to use it for more than a mule again but since the Devs are so suck on their failed “Ranger” COUGHBEASTMASTERCOUGH concept doesn’t look like it’ll ever happen
The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore.
Maybe that’s the point.
So few words and such meaning. 100% agree… besides, we never did have a Ranger. It was and always has been a Beastmaster purely because we HAVE to HAVE a beast with us ALL THE TIME. I said long ago they could have avoided a lot of confusion had they named this class Beastmaster instead of Ranger… a Skirmishing Beastmaster. Get rid of the beast and then maybe we could have an awesome Ranger.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Escape from Lion’s Arch, in my opinion, was the best living story segment. It had it’s issues (many of which fell into the “ignore it” category for bug fixing), but overall it created a good amount of play that wasn’t zerg focused (specifically rescuing citizens). Loot was handed out based on citizens rescued, so there was a drive to do what was effectively a zone wide event..
That loot that was handed out was terribad no matter how many citizens rescued. I got much much better loot for just zerging around than I did for trying to save citizens. Incentive to zerg was much higher (but still WAY BELOW Pav and 1st invasion) than the loot reward for saving citizens. That extremely small chance (0.000000012%) to get something from the previous LS wasn’t enough when I usually walked away with 1 exo + 3-6 rares from zerging.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Guest what?? in all other MMOs with a “beastmaster” their pet was able to hit the enemy players, you can "evade2 50% of a pet attack only using WASD while stomping his master……
And that is why the pet has to be improved and not be removed or damage re-distributed to the Ranger 100%. So how is this an argument against the pet mechanic as a whole? People really need to give ANet to chance to adjust the pet. Should it have be done earlier? Yes! Is them not doing it earlier a reason to reject the pet completely? Nope!
They’ve had 8 years. They’ve had 1.5 years with Gw2. If they could they would have already. It’s silly to think otherwise.
And I never said the pet should be removed. I have lobbied time and time again for the option to opt out of the pet for something else. That way people who want the pet can still use it and wait for it to be properly fixed while those of us who are done waiting and want to be effective have something else to use.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
PVE? You don’t need CC thanks to defiance. If you must have a cripple throw a spike trap into the mix every once in a great while.
PVE is DPS DPS DPS. And that’s a Power-Prescision-Crit Damage build, not anything to do with conditions as they are capped in PVE. Put out as much DPS as possible as fast as possible. That is the meta. It was always be the meta. Why? 1 shot mechanics and damage mitigation through dodging. Until they get rid of dodging and/or 1 shot mechanics (or 1-3 shot mechanics) there is no reason to run anything other than a build that does as much damage as possible. Unless your dodging/timing skills are not up to par, then you still want to do as much damage as possible while giving up as little as you can to gain that survivability.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Some of them may improve Necromancer attrition, but most involve such radical changes that they will probably never see the light of day. Feel free to post this in the Necro subforum – you’ll probably get a pretty good critique on most things from Bhawb and couple others.
That’s the problem with all of Swagg’s Wanna Be Dev Balancer threads.
Not sure why he isn’t programming his own game.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Mesmer clones don’t share common mob AI. That’s why they work better.
Nope. That is not true. Same AI. They just work better because they are bount to one target and lack an AA. This results in them being more reliable at hitting the target. This also means that Ranger mechanic would be a lot better if the pet was better at actually landing an attack. So saying the pet mechanic is doomed to fail because of the AI is just wrong. Increasing the melee range, maybe the pet speed and making pets more durable against area attacks might actually be enough to make it work.
So yeah, unlike my Mesmer or Guardian or Thief or Warrior or Engineer or Elementalist whose class mechanics work and I have never had issue with the Ranger pet will is a handicap. Thus, once you come to the realization of this fact, it is not unreasonable to want a way out of it.
Mesmers also got a rather low baseline damage because of Illusions. They also suffer when not using their Shatters. However, shattering Illusions has the same pathing issues like Ranger pets. They also suffer in scenarios with massive area damage like Rangers. There is a reason why you won’t see any Shatter Mesmer in larger scale fights. Elementalists and Necromancers also suffer from their class mechanic but due to different reasons. Suggesting that Rangers are the only class with flaws in their mechanic is just false and solely used to justify getting rid of it. Some people just don’t even try to make it work or simply don’t like pets.
Nevertheless, I can understand when people prefer getting rid of the pet. However, it quite obviously does not contribute anything to this thread when ANet clearly stated their position.
We’ll have to agree to disagree then. Read long time ago that Mesmer clones use seperate AI. Regardless, I still do not have issues using my class mechanic on the Mesmer like I do the Ranger. I also don’t have issues with the class mechanic on the Ele. I’m not sure what you’re doing on your Mesmer and Ele but I’m not having issues at all with their class mechanics. I also only play PVE/Dungeons. I don’t WvW or PvP. Pathing is not an issue on my Mesmer because I’m running mostly shatter build so as soon as I’m popping off clones/illusions I’m running them into the champ/legendary. Pathing hasn’t been an issue. When I hit F1-F3 they react instantly. There’s no wait. They instantly start moving. I don’t know what problems you are talking about on the Ele. The attunements changing when I hit F1-F4. The skills I use are F1-F3 and I don’t see any issues with the weapon skills tied to them. I’m not suffering using the class mechanic when I’m on my Ele. At all. I don’t have a necro and I refuse to have one so I can’t speak to that class mechanic.
It’s sad when 2/3 of the active Rangers I read on the forums and play with in game want an option out of using the pet a.k.a. perma-stow with or without buff. As it stands most of them use them as meat missiles because if you are melee (which those are the kinds of Rangers I play with) there aren’t enough tools available to micro manage the pet. That says something. I don’t see/hear anyone else wanting that of their class mechanic… Maybe thieves people want the initiative reworked because of being able to spam weapon skills but that’s just from the PVP side, not PVE/Dungeons.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, everything should take a back seat until the class mechanic is fixed or we are given the option to opt out beyond running on passive 100% of the time. That is the biggest problem with the class and until that is fixed we will be handicapped. Once the class mechanic is fixed or optioned out then we can start talking about fixing/band-aiding/tweaking other aspects of the Ranger… In my opinion, of course.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
4. No other classmechanic sets yourself on a disadvantage to justify itself.
5. The pet will never be a reliable damagesource. Therefore, make it additional.
I quote your post because I highly disagree.
First, people need to give up on the ‘Give me 100% damage and make the pet additional’ demand. It is not going to happen as long as the Ranger is the assigned pet class. It is a design decision ANet made if you like it or not. You will have to get over it. Repeating related demands does not contribute anything constructive and productive.
That being said, I already pointed out earlier that there are several other class mechanics which come with disadvantages if you like to admit it or not. Your fourth statement is just not true.
Especially Mesmers are in a very similar situation as Rangers are when it comes to baseline damage and pets. While their class mechanic are Shatters they are linked to Clones and Phantasms. This means that Mesmers as well have a comparibly low baseline damage when excluding the Illusions/Shatters. However, the Mesmer class also shows that an AI heavy class mechanic can work. While an AI is unlikely to reach human capabilities any time soon it still can be reliable. I therefore also disagree with your fifth statement.
Mesmer clones don’t share common mob AI. That’s why they work better.
2ndly, I have given up on getting Anet to see the errors of their vision of the Ranger and why my Ranger is regulated now to a mule and nothing more. Whether you like it or not the pet is a handicap. How anyone can put 1000 hours on a Ranger and not see that is a clear indication they see only what they want (wearing blinders/denialist because they want to play a pet class so bad no matter what and everyone should suffer for it too) and not the truth of the matter. Anet’s vision of a pet class has failed. It’s a band-aided mechanic. They will not put the resources into recoding the pets into it’s own AI to fix the issues because of the million things that would be broken. Allie has repeated Jon Peter’s point on that. So yeah, unlike my Mesmer or Guardian or Thief or Warrior or Engineer or Elementalist whose class mechanics work and I have never had issue with the Ranger pet will is a handicap. Thus, once you come to the realization of this fact, it is not unreasonable to want a way out of it.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
Been discussed before. As usual, some would take it over pets, some get defensive about a band-aided mechanic being replaced by something that works as intended, and some don’t give two poops about prep or pets.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
When the pet is stowed, the Ranger should gain “aspect of the <pet name>” effect which provides unique buffs based on the pet family and specific pet.
Please don’t do this. When I make my build and play the game, I want to select a pet and work alongside it to succeed. I don’t want to select a static buff that’s just going to sit there.
And no, it will not be “optional”. I foresee a future where rangers who use pets instead of the Aspect Of the _ will get auto-kicked from most elitist parties.
Hold your roll there, kiddo. We already aren’t wanted in those kinds of groups. 2ndly, just because you want to be handicapped by a band-aided class mechanic doesn’t mean that 2/3rds of the Ranger player base also wants that same handicap. By making pets optional they can make 100% of the playerbase happy. You can still use your pet if you want, and I don’t have to be handicapped by a class mechanic that they will not fix because of the resources required.
RNG is a bell curve. Better hope you’re on the right side.
