personally i prefer the ability to fire deeper into a zerg rather than faster. The extra range has saved my life far more times than faster arrows.
You can take them together?
No, you have to take both. Faster arrows are wasted if you don’t have the extra range.
And as he said, he likes to run piercing arrows more than RTW and I agree with him completely. In my mind RTW is both in a traitline where already are too many favorable traits for the LB and too weak for a grandmaster trait.
So, a quick post patch analysis. As I predicted ahead and bought runes of rage for the anticipation of Survival of the Fittest, I can honestly say that a longbow 30/0/10/30/0 build as a long range single target DPS with air/fire sigils works incredibly beyond what I could have imagined for it. I might get a more consistent damage output with runes of the ranger though, so I’ll see.
I’ve played a 30/30/10 LB/GS zerker build and your tactic didn’t worked out for me. Yes, both sigils will burst a good amount but they trigger far too rarely to make up for the 1k critdamage I deal less now.
I actually had the feeling prepatch that I could kill people with my LB if they don’t instagib me. Now it’s like “hey I’m shooting at you, did you notice?” again…
I will just repost my suggestion regarding axe and torch. I don’t try to lower the condition part of the weapons but I want to give them some use outside of that.
Axe #1:
Change the autoattack to melee with higher damage output
Axe #2:
Combine old Axe #2 and #4, so you got an AoE pull which pulls all enemies hit.
Axe #3:
I’m kinda ok with this attack.
Axe #4:
This will be the old axe #1. So you can choose between melee and ranged attacks.
Axe #5:
It’s ok, but it could be stronger. The reflected damage could be doubled, the cooldown lowered or the range increased.
If you don’t like the suggestion of the mainhand melee axe, you could switch axe #1 and axe #4.
Make the torch to a mainhand weapon.
Torch #1:
Simply like every other autoattackchain.
It could inflict burning, though.
Torch #2:
I’ve got two ideas so far:
Either you hit one enemy which will cause him to stack burning like warrior sword #4 stacks tornment and leave a firetrail
or this attack will be an explofinisher.
Torch #3:
This one will be a firefield wich either stacks burning or deals a flat amount of damage to enemies within the radius.
I wonder why ANet doesn’t change the way armors and weapons are crafted.
Let’s say there is one ingerdient for each stat and the normal statcombo is 3-2-2 (major-minor1-minor2). That would be 7 ingerdients you need for one armor or weapon. Now you could just change up the mixing (like 6-1 instead of 3-2-2). The only requirement is that you need exactly 7 ingredients. As example, celestial gear would be 1-1-1-1-1-1-1.
I’m all for this suggestion. This would cover the most ideas made so far and would be even more versatile. I can’t say if this would be balanced or not but it looks pretty neat on paper.
An RP flag (that would be visible to others, and also determine which megaserver you end up on) would be great.
This flag could be added to the already existing statuses “Online”, “Away” and “Invisible”. Simply a new status “RP mode”.
And a RP chat, which will hold all emotes and messages if you’re in “RP mode”.
It should function like the normal /say chat and emote messages, just with the difference that you can either hide this chat or any other chat.
If done so, they could also add a new report option, “violating chatrules”, if someone uses the RP chat to insult RPlers. He would be punished with not being able to use the RP chat anymore.
Anet needs anyways to redesign finally all of the other World Bosses to make them more challenging and up on par with Tequatl and the 3 Wurms.
Each World Boss should have their own Tab of Achievements, just like Tequatl and the 3 Wurms have their own Achievements.
The original Boss Tab Aschievements should get moved into the various seperate Boss Achievement Tabs at the end, so that for example that old Tequatl Achievement http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/That_Had_to_Burn gets shown also under the achievements from Tequatl and not anymore under the general bosses Tab, which should get removed, once all of those old boss achievements have been moved to their fitting Boss Achievement Tabs.
This, or instead differentiate the Bosses Tab between Bosses Tab and World Boss Tab, because the game also has some Bosses, where I’d say, they aren#t worthy to be redesigned and should stay as easier Bosses for Beginners, like the Hydra Queen, The Shaman Chief, the Fire Elemental, the single Great Jungle Wurm, the Shadow Behemoth or the Steam Ogre
ANet still needs to redesign:
The Shatterer
Jormag’s Claw
The Mega Destroyer
Ulgoth the Modniir
Golem Mark II
All of the Temple Bosses
That are bosses, where I think they are worthy to be redesigned into real big world bosses similar to Tequatl and the 3 Wurms.
Everythign else could stay under the Bosses Tab like now, all others should get shown under a new World Boss Tab with their complete own Achievements.
—-
Then there should be also another new Tab, that of Dungeon Bosses, which also should have their own Achievements and some need redesigns very badly, so that they aren#t that boring damage sponges anymore, but more interestign fights with more interesting and challenging mechanics to beat, that if you do them well, will lead into quicker boss battles instead of minute long slappings onto a boss.
bosses that come into mind here are:
Giganticus Lupicus
Subject Alpha
Howling King
Ghost Eater
Clockheart
Golems Mark I & II
Destroyer of Worlds
Searing Effigy
Ginva the Butcher
Svanigandr
While I do agree that all bosses need reworks, I don’t agree with the way this rework would probably happen. All new bosses are zergfests. It is way more rewarding to do the Behemoth with just a few people than with a whole zerg.
I think the dragonevents like Tequatl should require a lot of people to bring them down. However all other world bosses shoud not require more than 5 people to complete them.
They have metrics for where GOLD comes from in this game. This is literally to keep the economy in the same position it is at now.
If they have and if this metric has told them that the most gold is aquired through events, they are simply wrong.
They have all the Numbers, but since what they do, to address what their numbers tells them hurts what you do…. THEY are wrong??? hahahahahaha
Most self-serving argument…. ever!!!
What is the reason of nerfing the event rewards? Did the players got too much gold from it? Please, if they want to lower the goldincome, they should have started with the TP flippers and the dungeons. Farming events to get the gold is the most stupid thing I could think about simply because the current event rewards are near zero. So why nerf eventloot again? It will hardly have any impact.
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?
Thank goodness. I am confused about something though, why would perma stow make pets op? I figured that something like a damage boost would only occur while the pet was stowed. I don’t think that the skills themselves would need to be changed, just a %stat boost that would give the approximate damage that the pet gave.
The reason why I latched onto the aspect idea was because it was an option that seemed we could maybe work around. Rather than having to rebalance the whole class, we’d just have to balance the aspects to be similar to what the pet does damage-wise. That seemed a little more viable.
I thought that aspects was basically the equivalent of perma-stowing with a stat boost, an F2 skill by family and glowing particles to show which aspect you were in. I don’t really understand how this is dramatically different from perma stowing with a damage boost while stowed.
Perma stow wouldn’t make pets OP. In rebalancing for permastow, it would make those that still want to play with the pet op. THAT IS, unless we design something that gives the player a boost to balance it out.
The aspects I think were a little different. They talked about having specific bonuses based on the pet that the player was using. That is different from just giving a damage boost, which could end up being difficult to balance.
So if you don’t want to shift the damage to “Ranger 100% damage + Pet additional damage”, which could be partly shifted back by investing points into beastmastery, you better have a smart solution. Personally I like to have a pet around since it draws the aggresion. The only thing I want more than having a pet tanking for me is having my damage back. With my suggestion, I could have both. If you want to give us our damage back if we’ve our pet stowed, I would have to decide.
‘To provide a highly repeatable 5 man strategic instance experience that scales in difficultly as you progress in fractal levels whilst providing the opportunity to tell old and new stories from within the Guild Wars Universe.’
I interpret this to mean that the difficulty keeps scaling so only the most skilled players can beat the highest levels. But that might just be some kind of optimism that comes from my deeply buried hope that there might someday be some kind of encounter that can only be completed by actually skilled players.
Untraited Spirits
Simply too weak. Small chance to trigger passive effects, stationary, low HP pool and weak active effects hinder the spirits.
Spirits + “Vigorous Spirits”
The spirits remain useless for the most time. You can only use them in dungeons vs. boss encounters. You have to place them in a save distance so that they don’t get hit from the boss. Thereby their active effect remains unused.
Spirits + “Vigorous Spirits” + “Spirits Unbound”
The spirits become somewhat useful in open-world PvE due to their passive effects.
Their active effects are on a too long cooldown to use them against normal mobs. Certainly the spirits are both too weak to survive heavier mobs and their active effects are too weak vs. those mobs. You don’t want to use them in dungeons since they get killed rather easily when staying by your side.
“Nature’s Vengeance”
Only useful in PvP.
Comparison with banners:
Banner skills vs. Spirit actives
Both are pretty useless vs. boss encounters => Banner = Spirit
Both have passive effects (I don’t know which ones are better) => Banner = Spirit
Spirits can use their effect while the summoner is fighting => Banner < Spirit
If traited, spirits will follow the summoner, banners have to be carried => Banner < Spirit
Spirits can offer their passive to more people => Banner < Spirit
Untraited, spirits are stationary, banners can be moved => Banner > Spirit
Banners can be used by other classes => Banner > Spirit
With traitinvestment, banners have a longer uptime of passive effects => Banner > Spirits
Conclusion:
Spirits are only worthwhile if traited. The mortality of the spirits is a big hindrance and I can’t see how spirits can compensate for that. Right now, they are weaker banners.
Suggestion:
If you are using “Spirits Unbound”, you should be able to put them down on a save place. Furthermore, the active effects should be changed from just one skill starting from the spirit into 5 charges applied to the summoner, which will be consumed on the next hits. The charges should also apply to 4 more allies. To make them more useful in dungeons, you could add a flat damage of 1% of the maximum HP of the target.
Beastmastery III: Hunter’s Call – Using a shout reveals up to 3 foes within 600 and shout skill recharge time is reduced by 20%. (renamed Shout Mastery)
Thank you for reading!
While I do agree that we need more revealing options, your suggestion could turn out too powerful. You could reveal people up to 3 times, which is already huge. Furthermore it was been suggested multiple times, me included, that RaO and HaO should be turned also into shouts. You would be able to reveal an enemy up to 5 times, which would be all their stealth they have.
Anyways, if the devs lower the damage of the pet in order to give us our damage, the pet has to be more centered around providing support. Revealing enemies would be such a support the pet could offer.
Specific Game Mode
Primarily PvP and WvW, but decent for PvE as well Proposal Overview
Reverse the leaps on Ranger Sword Skill #2 Goal of Proposal
Currently the Ranger sword skill #2 leaps backwards and then forwards, the goal of the proposal would be to make the sword first leap forwards and then backwards Proposal Functionality
Currently the sword 2 leap feels kind of wonky and useless in most situations. It’s alright because of the hard evade on it and the distance generation of the initial leap, but reversing the leaps would improve fluidity of gameplay. For example, with my proposal you could do combos like this:
Sword 2 to leap into the fight, Sword 3 to poison, Torch 5 for burning field, Sword 3 to leap out of burning field, swap to longbow or shortbow now at range. Associated Risks
Not much, I’d say that the evade on Sword 2 could be removed if this was implemented, but keep the cripple and leap finisher.
This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this idea. I am strongly opposed to it.
The argument is that the current leap order is useless in most situations. My argument would be that in fact, this would at best result in the same feeling in most situations and at worst, be even worse.
It’s highly impractical outside of things like PvP where you want to chase someone. I would be open to considering this for PvP-only, but even then…what do you do when you’re already face-to-face with your foe and they’re landing massive damage and AoE on you? You leap forward to take more damage?
What people tend to forget is that the sword #1 leaps do not only inhibit dodges but also movement. So if ANet lets you dodge within a leap, you will still not be able to move as you want.
Therefore I have also suggested to turn sword #2 into a double/triple forward jump and remove the jumps on sword #1.
To your concerns: sword #2 is pretty slow with a long animation time. You probably want to evade instead of using sword #2 to get out of the AoE. Furthermore, sword #2 has no long uptime, so you’re forced to use it almost immediately again in order to close the distance. You can see my detailed suggestion here
Permastowing Pets
This suggestion goes in line with my previous suggestions, which I will sum up shortly:
Shift the damagemodel from Ranger: 70%, Pet: 30% to Ranger: 100%, Pet: Additional damage (10%)
I disagree here. 100% + 10% = 110% not 100%. We shouldn’t be asking to be balanced around doing 110% of what other classes do, but 100%; anything more is just asking to be op.
That is correct and it wouldn’t be OP at all.
Let’s take the warrior as example. Without his F1 skill, he deals 100% damage and that’s the 100% I’m reffering to. But the warrior can use his F1 and can hit for over 10k every 10 seconds. Furthermore, he can also use traits to get up to 15% more damage if his adrenaline is full.
The ranger on the other hand can’t boost his power. Also the pet wont hit all the time vs. smart enemies. Last but not least, I’m not suggesting a boonshare between pet and ranger. So if the ranger buffs himself, only the 100% will get buffed, not 110%, unlike the warrior, who will buff his whole 115% damage.
Lightning Reflexes: This utility skill needs NEEDS NEEDS to break immobilize and chill. I’m also left wondering why it does such poor damage and also only hits 3 targets where most other AE utility skills hit 5?
Among the things you have mentioned I would like to see an auto-activation if we would otherwise be hit for more than 50% (33%?) of our maximum HP.
Is it me or does the OP message sound like "I don’t like being a special snowflake, I want to be an unrecognized cog in the machine! "
That’s the undertone I’m picking up. Not that it’s necessarily bad, but in a video game where the story is interactive with the player I feel it is.
When I want a story that doesn’t give me credit I’ll watch a show, a movie, or read a story. I’m not taking part in those stories so I shouldn’t get any credit.
Yes, you are a special snowflake (clapclap). But so am I, and every other player in this game. So you are just one of many “special snowflakes”. In this terms, it would be better if we were some guy in the backline rather than beeing the “hero”. The story wouldn’t be that flawed. It’s like “Hey, I’ve stombed scarlet!”, “Hey, I stombet her too”, “You know what, Player XY stombet her too! Man I fell so special right now.”
If you have an ally, and the ally stomp, you can poison the downed enemy + massive AoE damage and/or massive condi pressure.
If the ally successfully stomps, you win.
If the ally fails to stomp, the enemy that was reviving should now be in half-hp. Kill them.
There is also access to knockbacks and stuns to interrupt the revivers.
When soloing, with enough practice you can tell if you are able to stomp or not. Giving you the choice of making the next round easier to fight or taking the chance to stomp the downed enemy or not.
Engies/Necro’s love revivers because of this.
The only place I have a problem with how fast reviving goes is in WvW where it just further increases the power to larger numbers (hurr durr zerg blobs). It needs a DR on how much health is added per additional reviver there imo.
People don’t get revived in a zerg fight. They rally because the enemy dies faster.
Revives are fine IMO.
It’s not so much that spammy specs are having too much impact, it’s that regardless of impact everything I do feels like spamming.
I’m on board with focusing on sustain damage as a concept, but how that’s being satisfied right now is just by focusing on autoattack.
Which is just a touch natively boring, makes weapons feel more like additional utility skills instead of playstyle experiences, and causes traits to be a schizophrenic mess trying to make the whole thing seem interesting expostfacto when they’re actually trying to be interesting at all.
While I do agree with you that pressing 1 all the time is not very entertaining, I do like those weapons more, where every skill fulfills a purpose. Like the Shortbow: You want to use the poison if the enemy tries to heal, you want to cripple him if he comes to close, you want to use your evade if an AoE is fired at you, you want to use your daze/stun if the enemy is channeling. Ofcourse, this get pretty pointless in PvE. The only thing that matters in PvE is who can press his buttons most rapidly.
Actually all 8 can do that much in a second if they spec specifically for it, even though some of those specs are completely gimmicks while others are actually viable builds.
Errr, not for the ranger. I can think of just one ranger build with high numbers. And this build requires a norn elite. Furthermore it’s just one hit with 40secs cd. So it’s a hit-n-miss gamble. Otherwise the ranger can just outsustain his enemy.
I went back to ranger because even though warrior may be regarded as king of the game? It doesn’t work for me. And it’s why I really don’t want the ranger to turn into “warrior in medium gear”.
The ranger should atleast be able to compete damagewise.
But yeah, I already have 2 warriors; I don’t need a 3rd one.
No argument there.
Well, maybe a minor one. I’m not sure we should compete for damage – we’ll lose. What we should compete for is being useful.
I went back to ranger because even though warrior may be regarded as king of the game? It doesn’t work for me. And it’s why I really don’t want the ranger to turn into “warrior in medium gear”.
The ranger should atleast be able to compete damagewise.
But yeah, I already have 2 warriors; I don’t need a 3rd one.
Everybody can simply roll over their buttons and play a class well enough, but when you start to get to the higher tiers that doesn’t fly as much. You need to time your stuns/condis/stability/heals/etc. if you want to “play with the big boys.”
I know that there are some specs right now that are particularly spammy, though. We’re hoping that some of the changes we make in the feature build will help with a lot of that. One step at a time!
That’s exactly the point!
Our pet behaves like rolling over buttons all the time and no matter how much you will tweak the AI, it will never become as skillfull as the player and that’s the reason why the pet oughtn’t be burdened with dealing our damage.
I get the biggest issue seems to revolve around pets. I’ve also seen a couple others (utilities not being viable unless spec’d into them, burst vs sustain, traps, spirit clutter, etc.).
I get frustrated by the simple lack of synergy between skills. When you play a condi-necro and can dance through your buttons to put a bleed on the target & yourself with utility, then use your off-hand to move your bleed to them, then use a utility to copy all those bleed to all enemies in the area while putting conditions on yourself, then use your heal to cleanse those conditions and gain bonus healing for doing so… you know that playing those out of order or having to respond to changing circumstances will affect your performance.
Compared to that, ranger gameplay is just dull. You occasionally can stack up a few ‘on next hit’ buffs to pump a single maul, but their weapon skills and utilities mostly feel like oatmeal. There is no difference in what happens if I cast my traps in different orders. there’s no combos, no special order or special timing for many, many Ranger skills.
As a general statement there are also far too many ranger traits that reduce cooldown and nothing else – in other professions we’ve seen a steady march towards combing the 20% cooldown with a secondary flavorful effect. Rangers have good effects but they are spread out across too many traits. A little combining or making certain effcts default behavior of the class would go a long way towards injecting not just raw power, but some cool into a class that sorely needs it.
I don’t think anybody questions that some classes, or should I say specs, are easier to play than others.
I do think the ones that are easier to play shouldn’t be so rewarding, though. It’s hard to balance that correctly in our game right now, though.
I’ll make a note to bring up the trait discrepancies.
I think the biggest flaw of the current ranger traitsystem is:
1. Traits regarding the pet are scattered all over our traitlines which reduces the possibility to build a build which doesn’t rely heavily on the pet.
2. The traits can be divided in “promotes pet” or in “promotes ranger”. If we want to trait for a beastmaster spec, we should be able to promote both us and our pet.
I also want to add Nike’s proposals regarding the traits since he summed up the whole mess quite nicely.
And why after a full year? Why not sooner? Why not right after release?
Nothing to do after the living world has passed.
Seriously, if they want to announce a new addon, which some have proposed, ANet would be better off fixing the old classes first before adding new ones with the addon.
Now now, MQM, let’s let the Rangers have their time. Eles are next, and then it’s us necros.
I wouldn’t hold your breath. If just a quarter of the suggestions made in this thread are taken into consideration, we would have to wait a long time to see some core-mechanics to be improved.
You’ve been around here for a while and are a steadfast, reliable poster on the ranger forums, I thought you would have known that. I wish I remember exactly when that quote came out so I can link it but it was a while ago.
Thanks for the kind words but I switched from the german forum onto the english forum just 3 months ago. So I’m not familiar with any dev posts earlier than that.
Specific Game Mode
PvP, WvW, PvE Proposal Overview
Fix Spirits dying from oneshot mechanisms Goal of Proposal
Change spirits state so that they take the same damage regardless of ennemy strengh Proposal Functionality
Fix Spirit HP to 10 (or more with an increase with traits), they can’t take more than 1 damage per hit. They become immune to boons, conditions, lifesteal and healing. Associated Risks
They’ll still die against big zergs in WvW in a few seconds. Will need some tweeks to make them as sturdy in PvP because fast attacking class will down them really quick. Extensions
Could also be applied to phantasms, spirit weapons and eventually pets at some point.
Another risk: Every damage, no matter how strong would lower the “HP” by one.
Your spirits would die easy to weak, long lasting AoE.
Just think about this for a second…Lets just say that the damage nerf to pets from over a year ago needs to be reverted…..well, what about Every single change to every single profession since then? What kind of imbalance would be created if you suddenly gave pets back their damage? Do you just revert everything back to what it was in 2012, or do you find a different way that doesn’t break everything? There is way too many things to take into account, not just Rangers, but how the interplay will work with all other professions, as well as how the simple act of killing an npc monster will change.
1. I want them to revert the damage on the ranger, not the damage on the pet; I want to nearly nullify it.
2. I don’t think that the devs were totally brain afk while programming GW2.
They probably have some sort of damagechart, where they can see what skill does how much damage under what circumstances. Ofcourse they have to test it. But let me ask you this: If they implement a new class, doesn’t they also have to balance it out?
3. Noone ever said this would be easy or quick to do. ANet would probably like to take the easier route and just adjust some numbers. But I hope we made clear that they have to spend more time on fixing the ranger as they have initially planned.
For the pet to work
1) they have to get their AI off the PVE mobs
2) they have to recreate AI – better faster reaction
3) they have to change traits that hurt the pet
4) they have to lower the ratio of pet only/ranger only traits. Make more pet and ranger / pet and allies /ranger and allies traits (so that we are welcomed in groups)
5) they have to make it so the pet does not die in 2 seconds in heavy melee settings settings
For the ranger to work without the pet :
1) does not apply
2) does not apply
3) they would need to be changed
4) They would need to change
5) does not apply
6) they need to make another class mechanic… Easy way out “F1-F4 are utilities that a player can choose among the old ranger’s pet special abilities”
5 points to change keeping the pet, 3 by getting rid of it…
Easy for players to expect a new class mecanic instead of a pet fix… and most are just asking for a perma stow option, with a little bonus… not eve a trait rework, just a possibility to not have pet in the way anymore…. until anet finds a way to give us a working class mecanic…
While I do agree with you that the pet has to be more versatile or removed it is very clear that replacing the pet with another mechanic is probably too much work to do. They would have to change the whole code of the ranger in order to do so.
Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.
I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:
- “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
– “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*
Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)
But, what big overhaul to the class does everyone propose, and not just propose, but how would it work? Its easy to just say “Permastow Pets!”, but, how does it work? You can’t just say “Overhaul the Ranger!”, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and expect to fix everything. You can’t expect them to spend months and months of their time running on a player suggestion about permastowing pets if it turns out to be a dead end and not work at all, since it takes alot of time and money to do such a thing.
You can do that to Lion’s Arch, where they just have to move around graphical assets, but to completely change around the ranger, something 1/8th of the players of this game spend all of their time doing, is considerably more difficult.
Yeah, go on and argue that there have been plenty of reasonable suggestions in this thread,….this thread, that way less than 1% of all Rangers have posted on, where probably 1% of those posts have put any thought into how it affects the game beyond “Well, I don’t see any downsides, so its good, right?”. There is a lot more at play here than just removing pets, or increasing weapon damage. It changes the entire balance of power in the game when a change is made, and everything related to it must be taken into consideration.
I’m not advocating Anet’s Philosphy concerning the Ranger, because, frankly, I think it sucks. But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.
Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.
The seeming difference in scope is not necessarily because there’s any workload misunderstandings between us, but because as customers we only experience the surface of the game and as a developer their daily lives are the deeper infrastructure.
It’s like talking to a fish about lillypads covering the surface of a lake. From your perspective it’s obscuring the entire lake, but for them, it’s the thin green roof of a much larger world.
No, ANet is only experiencing the surface. We as players are the one who notice that something doesn’t work as intended. ANet has everything on the paper. And maybe it looks nice on the paper but in terms of the ranger, it hasn’t payed out the way the devs thought. And yes, we don’t have any information about their workprogress but we do know better than the devs to what’s OP, UP or balanced.
Proposal Overview
Introduce a new heal mechanic that causes the Ranger to be healed when the pet is hit, and the pet to be healed when the Ranger is hit. Add this as a short-term buff to Heal as One or add a new Healing skill Signet of Symbiosis.
Goal of Proposal
Make the survivability of tankier pets more of an asset in some game modes. Create a healing skill that incorporates the pet to the same degree we find in some other skills. Encourage rangers to think more about what is happening with their pet, because it now affects their own healing.
With a symbiotic heal, a tanky pet could provide reliable extra healing to a squishy ranger, or a tanky ranger provide reliable healing to a squishy pet. Having the extra healing be based “per hit” it could easily scale to accommodate zerg situations while not unbalancing 1v1 encounters. In many situations tanky pets that provide less than desirable dps could provide some reliable healing and thus be more worth taking.
Proposal Functionality
If changing Heal as One: For 5 seconds after using Heal as One, the ranger is healed whenever the pet is hit, the pet is healed whenever the ranger is hit. This brings Heal as One more in line with Rampage as One.
If adding Signet of Symbiosis:
Passive: The ranger is healed whenever the pet is hit and the pet is healed whenever the ranger is hit.
Active: Heals both ranger and pet.
Counterplay: The ranger gets less healing if his pet dies.
Associated Risks
Could require a 1s per enemy cooldown for balance depending on size of the heal. The amount of healing gained could vary greatly by game-mode. Would further encourage rangers to split their builds… squishy pet with tanky ranger or vice versa. There may be a better active for signet of symbiosis because in current form it does not benefit from Signet of the Beastmaster.
I’ve suggested pretty much the same for HaO: Link
It’s a little bit more detailed, so you may like it.
I think every content should tell a story. This storytelling could be divided into small parts, a puzzle which you have to put together on your own and epic story which should be satisfying.
I want to talk about this “epic moments” a little bit more since our personal story did it all wrong. 1. The animation didn’t fit into the context. You’ve always used the standart animations which are not convincing to say atleast. The new approach as seen with Kasmeer and Marjory would be the way to go.
2. The current music doesn’t reflect what’s happening. The music has to be as satisfying as the animations have to be.
Speaking of which: This game need new music. New good music. The music has to fulfill two criteria: 1. It has to be matching the content. 2. It has to be “re-listenable”. Play the music one week at work every day. If noone goes crazy, the music is good.
i dont think the stuff we see now in LS would be good for fractals IF it takes too much time, remember fractals replayed alot. I do think its a good idea to have lots of little bits you put together for the whole story (if you choose to hunt it) like scarlets hideout, etc. Or perhaps pieces you can observe in background if you choose. It may also be good to have some hidden areas with some interesting side things happening maybe even hidden chests (like SAB but with lore and loot/events)
and yeah was just talking about the music the other day with a friend, its not bad, just way too random, and very often not related to anything happening. It doesnt serve as a storytelling element that often. Selecting specific music for certain events/places would help the game ALOT imo. But thats probably a totally different issue.
I didn’t speak about the LS in particular. I just mentioned the “kiss-scene” as first scene of proper character animation.
Since the devs did a pretty good job in avoiding this thread, I just want to remind you all that this thread is probably going to get closed on monday.
I think every content should tell a story. This storytelling could be divided into small parts, a puzzle which you have to put together on your own and epic story which should be satisfying.
I want to talk about this “epic moments” a little bit more since our personal story did it all wrong. 1. The animation didn’t fit into the context. You’ve always used the standart animations which are not convincing to say atleast. The new approach as seen with Kasmeer and Marjory would be the way to go.
2. The current music doesn’t reflect what’s happening. The music has to be as satisfying as the animations have to be.
Speaking of which: This game need new music. New good music. The music has to fulfill two criteria: 1. It has to be matching the content. 2. It has to be “re-listenable”. Play the music one week at work every day. If noone goes crazy, the music is good.
PS. The Rabid Fire are suppose to be a burst skill, but its doing even lower dmg then our auto attack does, take that Rabid Fire out of LB and but some skills like Kill shot on Warrior, with the Hunter’s Shot, the SotH or Attack of Oppurtunity (if it will still be there after the rework) will at least give us one burst dmg and actually make ppl a little bit very while fighting oss., at least we would then have one skill that ppl needed to dodge like other classes have punch of ^^
Still, stacking buffs or debuffs. The pet could inflict debuffs or stack buffs per hit.
But basically the idea is to shift the power from the autoattacks to the skills of the pet.
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. Does that make sense?
Why do pets have to deal damage at all for the Ranger to be considered a Ranger?
Would the Nature Loving Ranger really not be considered a Ranger if for example, you introduced new pets like :: (examples Op slightly to show Utility)
Some more suggestions:
Eagle F2: Marks an enemy – The enemy can’t stealth for the duration and all arrows shot at the marked enemy will hit (if not obscured or out of range).
Raven F2: Cripples an enemy for 3/4 seconds every 1/2 second for the duration of the skill.
Krytan Drakehound: Passive: Tracker – The drakehound can attack and use abilities on stealthed targets without breaking their stealth.
F2: Reveals all enemies in a small cone around the drakehound.
Bear AA: Knocks the target down
Spider AA: Removes 1 stack from stackable boons or removes 3 seconds of the duration of non-stacking boons.
Some more fleshed out thoughts behind Ranger Sub Classes.
How do you want the subclasses to work? Ought they offer additional strengths or would you want to nerf the Main Classes first?
Example: If the Ranger subclass offers a pet, does a ranger who already has a pet get a second one?
Do we get a new skillbar?
I don’t want my pets to be there just to deal damage. I want them there to be able to support me in a fight, especially if I am running a full glass cannon build with no survivability. I would like for my pet to be able to provide me with some amount of survival and utility, not just be a mindless NPC drone that only deals damage.
Right now it’s the other way round. There are countless traits where your pet gains X if you do Y. This is what bothers me the most: I don’t want to play support for my pet; I am the one who should get supported.
Chinese release is arround the corner (Tuesday).
In about 6 months they’ll have the same complains about ranger and will probably check western forums (if not already) to see why it’s still so awful after 2 years of release.
This CDI needs to succeed.
It is like this game has never left the beta balancingwise.
I’ve seen people mention several times that the pets damage should basically be moved to the ranger, and replaced with tons of support and crowd control.
I think this would be very nice. The pet would feel like it is contributing to the fight, but is no longer reducing the ranger’s damage when it isn’t useful, like in attacking/defending walls in WvW.
If this was done, pets would not need scaling stats. Also aspects wouldn’t be needed either. However I feel like there should be a trait that allows the ranger to shift some of his damage back to the pet if wanted.
I think this would keep the pet as a valuable part of the class no matter whether you wish to emphasize the archer or the beastmaster parts of the ranger.
However this would require a complete rebalancing of all weapon skills on the ranger, and redoing all the skills on pets. This would be a significant amount of work.
This is why we’ve suggested that the beastmaster traitline should serve the purpose of shifting some damage back on the pet.
Furthermore, I don’t really think the weapons would be additional work to do.
Partly because some weapons have to be changed anyways since they’re weak how they are now, partly because they just have to increase the damage by a flat amount and change the pet interactions with the weapons. Instead of getting damage on the next hit, our pet applies a nice condition on the next hit.
I believe that the core problem with pets is that they are design to be Always On.
The greatest underlying problem of the problem you’ve described is that the pet is reponsible for 30% of our damage. It has to be always on. Otherwise we would lose damage. Ofcourse, there should also be a stow option, so you don’t run into problems like we do with scarlets hologram. But the biggest problem for me is the mindset behind the current pet. It is designed as damagedealer, as huge part of our damage. This implies that the pet is always on. I think I don’t have to give examples where this becomes an issue.
If the pet would only offer additional stuff to the ranger, he wouldn’t have such a huge loss if he has to turn the pet off for a while.
The Ranger pet is no more damage potential for the Ranger as Illusions are for the Mesmer. The only real difference, besides being always on, is that pet’s can’t deal their damage reliably where illusions can.
And part of the reason they can’t deal damage reliably is because they are designed to be always on.
The pet has no damage potential; and it oughtn’t.
It’s because Illusions aren’t expected to survive.
That’s the problem with your idea. So pets oughtn’t survive either?
That’s not how the ranger works. You’re not spamming your illusions until the enemy is dead, not caring about the pet at all. The ranger should use the pet to get an advantage and he should lose this advantage if the pet dies.
If I want to play with illusions, I pick a mesmer.
What you fail grasp is what do you even gain out of having the pet out at all times besides flavor? Is there any mechanical advantage to that?
It’s kind of like;
There needs to be one.
Designing around the pathing problems and pet health as an endlessly awkward concept really pales in comparison to the notion there isn’t an easily understood reason this mechanic exists at all.
If this CDI accomplishes nothing else; a pet without any skills at all should still be something you want to have around.
That’s exactly the point. The current pets have no advatages, exept taking aggro from the ranger and the horribly slow and non-instant F2 skill.
The pets main purpose is to deal damage. Dealing damage is what the ranger already does. There is no advantage in using a pet.
I only just found about this CDI from a post in General. As someone with 3 rangers at 80 I’d like to think I have something to offer here but after 52 pages and 12 days it doesn’t look like it now. I’ll just have to see what happens in game.
I agree that the CDI turned out very big. It should be closed and divided into the main aspects, the pet, the weapons and the utility and traits. And those threads need more collaborative development.
