Guild Wars 2

It’s funny because Mesmers’ pets work because they are easily replaceable and not there all the time (cough permastow cough).

Besides, Mesmers bring so much more to the table overall. Reflect, boon strip, condi management, stealth.

Nevertheless, Mesmers can still fill niche roles well. They are never meant to be there for the sake of raw DPS.

In WvW, Rangers can’t seem to fill any roles because others can do better.

Agony.3542:

xallever.1874:

Yes, but with that Lupi fight over so fast, I suppose Mesmer’s feedback isn’t even necessary anymore.

Okay, supposing stability is required the ideal team would be (for pure DPS):

3 eles, 1 warrior, 1 guardian?

When is it better to bring a Mesmer for the Time Warp?

I know that Mesmer isn’t just for Time Warp, but how far behind/ahead is Time Warp compared to what the Ranger brings?

In a no wall fight, is it worth it to bring the guardian for better sustain?

Time warp and FGS don’t synergize too well, since the main FGS damage is very cooldwon reliant. A mesmer is rarely a good addition for “speedkilling x”, unless you mainly use autoattacks for your damage (that is what quickness mainly affects….). So in fact, timewarp is pretty much always a waste, and shouldn’t be your reason to bring a mesmer.

And again, as long as you just care for max dps, granted you can use fiery rush facing a wall etc. 3 ele, 1 war, 1 ranger will deliver it. I don’t think there is any mob in this game that can live long enough to outlast the stability war/ele/ranger has built in. There is simply no need for a guard. But keep in mind, this is about maxdps and speedkilling, and as I’ve already said, that’s not what you really want to be looking for. Sure it is nice to set some record for speedkilling Lupi etc. but when you theorycraft IMO it’s better to focus on more on the “praxis side”, ie actually running the a dungeon/fractal.

Actually, when I thought about Mesmer, I was thinking about a no wall situation. 3 Eles is for the LH instead of the FGS. With 1 Ele on Staff and the rest on LH, Time Warp this (useful on AA as you said) is it better than bringing a Ranger?

Agony.3542:

You already answered your own question “on paper” in your opening post. Every path is different and expecially when taking the clear time into consideration plain DPS will become less important.
If you just want “maximum dps”, 1 warrior 1 ranger and 3 eles will probably result in the highest possible damage, combining spotter, empower allies, frost spirit and both banners with 5 fiery greatswords, of course facing a wall.
But again, killing the boss isn’t everything you have to worry about.

Yes, but with that Lupi fight over so fast, I suppose Mesmer’s feedback isn’t even necessary anymore.

Okay, supposing stability is required the ideal team would be (for pure DPS):

3 eles, 1 warrior, 1 guardian?

When is it better to bring a Mesmer for the Time Warp?

I know that Mesmer isn’t just for Time Warp, but how far behind/ahead is Time Warp compared to what the Ranger brings?

In a no wall fight, is it worth it to bring the guardian for better sustain?

A proper Ranger brings more to the overall DPS in a group than a 2nd Warrior, an Engi or a Necro in dungeons, though?

You won’t be kicked out off an elitist group because you’re a Ranger but because you aren’t interested in min/maxing your Ranger.

dutchiez.7502:

I agree with 3 ele, 1 war, 1 ranger as demonstrated here

It would be interesting to talk about the highest DPS team in a scenario where you cannot use FGS (let’s not use blinks guys).

That’s very cool. That’s what I meant by bypassing support altogether. The fight gets over so quickly that not even reflects matter anymore.

I’m wondering on the 2nd bit too. In the 2nd scenario, that would be a scenario where a thief is likely able to go behind for the extra damage.

I forgot that the Eles can cover all the vuln that’s ever needed too.

So is there a point of diminishing return on more FGS?

Is 2 ele not enough for the might stack?

Maybe more vuln?

What is the highest dps team not requiring any support? (Aegis, reflects, stab)

What is the highest dps team with good support that will be able to outdps a team without one?

For instance, the golems in Sorrow’s Embrace Path 1, will a team of 5 Eles with just their own stability and FGS be able to reliably finish the fight faster compared to one with a Guardian?

I realize each fight is a different one. But what’s it like on paper?

Perhaps it’s an attempt to make the open-world PvE so difficult that a pet buff in dungeon is justifiable.

Dodging is more relevant to non-stacking battles and trash running.

The other bit is the PvE-oriented build. To get that right, you go to the profession that’s relevant to you in the profession forum, not this one.

It’s been brought up before the CDI, during the CDI, and I bet it’ll be brought up again after the CDI.

I’ve set up a poll to provide a small data for people to use (not complete, but if it isn’t representative, then those who argue against it should come up with a counter-data).

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745

You can contribute to the data if you wish. It’ll be welcomed.

Saint.5647:

Dat run-on paragraph doe. But let’s not berate the guy too much. He’s coming to the dungeon sub to get better. If more people would do that, Tyria would be a better place.

+1

Laurelinde.4395:

xallever.1874:

To be fair, the other CDIs receive quite a bit more love than the Ranger one.

And Chris Whiteside considers that to be ‘bad behaviour’ on his part for setting an unrealistic standard for other Anet posters to try to follow. I still kind of think they need more dedicated community time if they are going to keep doing CDIs, because they are always going to be time-eaters.

Indeed. I can understand the bit about the week-ends. Not so much on the absence on the other days.

And it’s fine for devs to just read and lurk, but then there ought to be quite a significant difference during CDIs. And by that, I don’t mean the difference between 0 post and 3-5.

Basically, anything resembling all the other CDIs would be much more acceptable.

Arghore.8340:

Higher Priority isn’t Cancelling
In this sense I would also want to point out that Anet stated that fixing the pet is higher on the priority list than making a perma stow option, now obviously you can disagree with that, but I read that somewhat different than it being entirely off the table. Thing is though, that introducing a perma stow that is an integral part of the ranger, while in essence seemingly easy, does offer a lot of issues when you get to the details of skills and traits. In this sense putting in a good solution that would also work intuitively for new players, might be just as much work as giving the pets their own AI…

Well, there can’t be an easy fix to any deep-rooted problems. Given the fact that they’re all equally challenging…

What I find weird is that a lot of people are already quite pleased to have a permastow option without the buff. They are prepared for the damage-loss for the window of time their pets are not out. Does the balance team think that this will make the rangers too weak? (Really? They can feel guilty about that? Lol)

Secondly, to make the pet an integral part of the Ranger if a permastow option is given a buff I think can be solved by making sure that the buff is temporary. So it will only last let’s say 30 seconds (I don’t know how long is appropriate) in which case they have to summon their pets and stow it back again to gain the Aspect buff.

I think this gives incentives to even people who don’t want to play with pets to use the pet (IF this is their main concern. With the lack of feedback from the dev team, it’s hard to know why certain approaches aren’t taken).

Power-Creep Nerf and Timing
I’m guessing another difficulty they’re facing is the power-creep nerf direction. Seems like that one has a higher priority. So, let’s nerf the damage of all classes first, and let’s see how far behind the Ranger still is and then pick up from there.

If that’s the case, what can they expect from a CDI placed in such an awkward timeframe?

Terravos.4059:

Its not Anet fault people didn’t take the hint..

I mean bloody hell, They’ve been telling you for over a year now the Ranger is the pet Class and its not going to change..But some people just can’t understand that.

Do you blame them?

Early on in the CDI, Allie specifically wrote this:

As Orca pointed out, some people aren’t as fond of the pets. The idea of the buff would be to appease everyone. Also, what if stowing the pet and having an aspect gave the Ranger some kind of aura that communicated to others they are in that “aspect”? Would it still feel like the pet was a part of you if them being stowed affected your physical appearance?

If not, I don’t think the aspect idea would be a necessity for players. There are definitely things that need to be done to fix Ranger pets in general, and it’s something we are well aware of. If we fixed those things, but maybe also added in the aspect idea, I think we’d be in a spot where everyone would be pleased, no?

Just musing!

Yeah, for the most part. Or Hide in Shadow. For trash running, the key is not to get hit at all by any conditions due to superior mobility from shadowsteps and invis and evades from S/P during battles.

I usually also use the two signets that increase damage and precision and haste. Activate haste immediately unless there’s a Mesmer about to time warp.

I try to activate the Signet of Assassin for my last heartseekers when the boss is dying.

Just when you thought some of these staff guardians only use staff for traveling, they switch to… MACE!

Brilliant.

In any case, for dungeons like Sorrow’s Embrace, CoF, if you haven’t got the achievement, it’s usually quite obvious that most likely you haven’t done SE P2, CoF P3, etc.

Since you’ll mostly use S/P for trash clearing, use Sigil of Superior Bloodlust there to stack.

When pugging, even boss fights are sometimes much easier with the S/P because of the evade. The damage isn’t on par with D/D, but it’s decent enough.

Plus during stacking, it’s not always possible to be behind the boss. In those scenarios, whip out (no pun intended) the S/P instead.

For ranged, use double pistol. If AoE, SB.

For single target, use the thieves guild. AoE, Dagger Storm.

Heal: Signet (Or Hide in Shadows when needed)

To be fair, the other CDIs receive quite a bit more love than the Ranger one.

Ephemeral.5409:

DigitalKirin.9714:

robertul.3679:

Stop saying longbow is bad dps. It’s not. Traited longbow hits for 992.25/s only factoring skill modifiers and weapon damage and the 5% damage trait. This is only the autoattack, without considering barrage. As a reference sword hits for 1055.55/s. Yes, longbow is just a bit lower auto.

There are other factors that have been mentioned, however. Group buffs affect damage greatly.

Yeah, to achieve comparable DPS to sword you need to be standing pretty far back. Because of that, you won’t get/provide any of the group buffs to your team and the DPS will end up being lower.

This.

Plus, consider the game mechanics. For instance, the spider boss in AC. It’s not just abt dealing the max damage but also staying in melee to mitigate damage.

Yoh.8469:

Atherakhia.4086:

xallever.1874:

Tryxtr.6295:

General question to progress this discussion further:

In PvE, the pets do not generally die that quickly, except for in dungeons when stacking. Pets can tank mobs pretty well.

In WvW pets almost insta-die and can be easily ignored (ran past) due to the fact that they can’t hit a moving target.

How can Anet fix this issue to make it work in both game modes?

Can’t make the pet way tankier (for WvW survivability) because then they’d be basically OP in PvE and Anet doesn’t want to separate WvW from PvE. Could make them a little bit tankier, but that doesn’t really help WvW since they need a huge boost to keep them alive.

Maybe a pet’s vitality and toughness could scale with the number of enemies around them. Not sure if that would fix the issue.

How do you guys visualize the pet ought to perform in WvW?

In a zerg encounter for instance, what do you expect the pet ought to do for you?

The arguably better archers like thieves or warriors also don’t bring too much into the table during such encounters. The thieves can put a poison field, but also die quite easily if they are targeted.

The thing is that if the Rangers are meant for single encounters, they are better suited as roamers. Just that at this juncture, thieves and mesmers (and arguably eles too) perform much better than rangers.

I don’t see it problematic that certain professions bring more to the table in a zerg situations such as guardians, warriors and eles. Just that currently every other profession can do what the Ranger can do better.

There are 2 scenarios that work…

You either make pets highly survivable but remove the swap mechanic so players aren’t overwhelmed. Or you scale back the focus of the pet and make it an inconsequential part of the game overall.

The first would be ideal and simply making the pet take 75% less damage from AE’s that don’t have the pet targetted would solve almost all of the survivability issues. They aren’t like phantasms and clones that can be replaced almost immediately. Plus if you remove the swap mechanic from the game, players can choose to kill the pet quickly and the Ranger is then stuck with a 30% dps loss.

The alternate scenario is you just reduce the impact the pet has and you effectively turn it into a class specific DOT. All pets do the same damage, that damage is about what a 6 stack of bleed is capable of, and you call it a day. You then increase the Ranger’s damage and coefficients up to a competetive level and make the F2 functions spawn ‘sprites’ that do their pet specific abilities instead of worrying about the pet being alive or dead at the time of activation.

Neither is ideal, but both methods solve the problems players have with the pets.

Actually I can think of a third option.
A great deal of the problems with pets stem from the fact that they are both always on and non-optional. We don’t have these problems with Mesmer Illusions, even thou they are non-optional, but we do have similar problems with Necromancer Minions that are always on.

So what if the pet wasn’t always on, but rater a summon?
You summon them, they do their thing while also giving you a pet skill, then they go away. Sort of like a Phantasm that can change targets, and a great deal tougher.
You could have up to 4 pets this way bound to each of the F1-F4 keys, and once summoned the bar changes to what we have now, with F4 recalling your pet and putting it on cooldown so you can summon another pet.

Then the Power and Effectiveness of the Ranger vs the pets can be reworked, you can have pets that are very powerful, but don’t last long. And the Ranger isn’t as required to have a chunk of their power go towards having the pet around at all times.
They could share a similar relationship between a Mesmer and their Illusions.

This way they wouldn’t have to survive an AOE encounter, as they could be traited for on death effects, and you would have enough backup pets to fall back on, some of which might be better for dealing with that situation.
It would solve a whole lot of problems, and I think it’s a good compromise between permastow and not.

I actually rather like this idea too. Plus, it suits the beastmaster theme to it. You can have an array of animals that serve you that you can command at will.

jrinc.6953:

xallever.1874:

jrinc.6953:

basically rangers cannot run with others unless its narrow down to another profession? now i understand certain weapons have different skills.. and rangers would have to play more of warrior aspect… hey im just listening to everyone input on this! but the majority of the players run other professions .. is there a true ranger on this thread that can confirm this

What do you mean other profession? It’s all about running efficiently and effectively. Just that a lot of the content in this game encourages melee stacking in that regard and all about DPS.

You’re lucky the general community is now more open to other professions. It used to be: 1 guard, 1 mesmer, 3 warriors.

look im not angry or anything … just feels like im not a ranger playing the way people want rangers to play i guess… basically useless

I sympathize with you in terms of the game lacking content diversity on ranged encounters. People who are new to the game likely just roll whichever class most appeals to them. It is however true that the game does not provide an equal level of viability on all the classes (hopefully yet).

Until that happens…

jrinc.6953:

basically rangers cannot run with others unless its narrow down to another profession? now i understand certain weapons have different skills.. and rangers would have to play more of warrior aspect… hey im just listening to everyone input on this! but the majority of the players run other professions .. is there a true ranger on this thread that can confirm this

What do you mean other profession? It’s all about running efficiently and effectively. Just that a lot of the content in this game encourages melee stacking in that regard and all about DPS.

You’re lucky the general community is now more open to other professions. It used to be: 1 guard, 1 mesmer, 3 warriors.

Funnily, I seem to come across with more and more Warriors with a similar profile too. The “easy mode” might not give them a clue as to why they shouldn’t use the rifle.

jrinc.6953:

Jahroots.6791:

Let’s not have this turn into another one of those ‘versus’ threads. And to be honest, for every ‘ranged saves the day!’ story there’s at least ten ‘bearbow fail’ ones.

I think we can agree that in PvE, rangers are about low to mid tier DPS. It’s a pretty versatile class, but awkward pet management tools make it a pain to play in most dungeons. TA and HotW are just about the only two I can think of where bringing a ranger won’t hold the party back a little. And of course, some dungeons ‘require’ specific classes so if you show up with a ranger when the group is waiting on a guard or mesmer, you’re probably going to be kicked or at least asked to switch.
And to the OP, since you don’t want to speed through dungeons you might want to stick to running with guildies or casual PUGs. Any LFG posting that doesn’t expressly state otherwise is likely for a group that at least -tries- to speed clear.

look im not really knocking the speed runs just the fact is rangers can run the speed runs and get the job done regardless of the range or melee… this bear crap never done it before but i remember gw always tried to balance everything there was never a class better then the other just bring your skills and get the job done.. so if i joined a pug let me switch my loadout for the speed run! ill put the damage in!

Welcome to GW2

Of course, Rangers can have a decent DPS output. I’ve seen it done when they properly use the sword build.

It’s not fair to kick a Ranger without even considering whether or not they can do this, this is true. But it’s also true that many Rangers don’t bother with the sword build.

jrinc.6953:

xallever.1874:

Sligh.2789:

I was once in a dungeon with some warrior zerkers. They berated me the whole time, they lay on the ground dead, while I killed the boss solo. It was amazing that I could not convince them that my build was superior to theirs, as 4 of them could not even dent the boss, yet I was able to kill him solo.
The zerker crowd bases their stand on the fact that they circumvent the game by stacking damage to avoid playing the game, no skill involved in that.
As a solo ranger, I would say that I showed them what skill is.

Usually, they die because there is not enough DPS in the time allocated for them before they run out of steam (elite CD, etc).

Look at the last boss in Sorrow’s Embrace Path 3. So perhaps it’s possible for you to end up soloing the boss with everyone dead, but the fact of the matter is that they needn’t be dead if the ranger had come up with a similar DPS normally expected from say, Mesmer/Ele/Thief.

Or even just dealing with the dredge mobs there. If everybody is dead from the initial burst, and the ranged Ranger somehow managed to survive this onslaught and slowly kills the dredges, it’s still not optimal.

To be fair, the decision to go range/melee isn’t a Ranger-only issue in PUGs, but the fact of the matter is, it’s a high chance of seeing them go range inappropriately because they’re so much in love with bearbows.

so basically its the rangers fault! because of the damage at the time! i didnt know there a time limit on damage output…. I thought the purpose of a dungeon is to complete it…
most people avoid the mobs that the game was design to slow us down! now we skip adds because they want the easy way around things! I must be wrong for trying to play the game the way its intended to be play

A lot of people might say “intended” is because it’s unfixed despite the knowledge of it. There’s some truth to that. So, if the mobs are skippable, the consensus generally agrees that it’s “intended”.

And just like in many other dungeon threads and posts in this thread even, if you decide to be more casual about dungeon-clearing, you either start your own group stating it very clearly such as “casual, no melee stacking, no mob skipping” or you ought to play along with the norms who don’t want to spend too much time in a dungeon that could’ve been over and done with in less than 10 minutes. Besides, they have to pay some money to repair their armours, don’t they? How is it that that isn’t necessarily the bearbow’s fault?

Sligh.2789:

I was once in a dungeon with some warrior zerkers. They berated me the whole time, they lay on the ground dead, while I killed the boss solo. It was amazing that I could not convince them that my build was superior to theirs, as 4 of them could not even dent the boss, yet I was able to kill him solo.
The zerker crowd bases their stand on the fact that they circumvent the game by stacking damage to avoid playing the game, no skill involved in that.
As a solo ranger, I would say that I showed them what skill is.

Usually, they die because there is not enough DPS in the time allocated for them before they run out of steam (elite CD, etc).

Look at the last boss in Sorrow’s Embrace Path 3. So perhaps it’s possible for you to end up soloing the boss with everyone dead, but the fact of the matter is that they needn’t be dead if the ranger had come up with a similar DPS normally expected from say, Mesmer/Ele/Thief.

Or even just dealing with the dredge mobs there. If everybody is dead from the initial burst, and the ranged Ranger somehow managed to survive this onslaught and slowly kills the dredges, it’s still not optimal.

To be fair, the decision to go range/melee isn’t a Ranger-only issue in PUGs, but the fact of the matter is, it’s a high chance of seeing them go range inappropriately because they’re so much in love with bearbows.

Atherakhia.4086:

xallever.1874:

Tryxtr.6295:

General question to progress this discussion further:

In PvE, the pets do not generally die that quickly, except for in dungeons when stacking. Pets can tank mobs pretty well.

In WvW pets almost insta-die and can be easily ignored (ran past) due to the fact that they can’t hit a moving target.

How can Anet fix this issue to make it work in both game modes?

Can’t make the pet way tankier (for WvW survivability) because then they’d be basically OP in PvE and Anet doesn’t want to separate WvW from PvE. Could make them a little bit tankier, but that doesn’t really help WvW since they need a huge boost to keep them alive.

Maybe a pet’s vitality and toughness could scale with the number of enemies around them. Not sure if that would fix the issue.

How do you guys visualize the pet ought to perform in WvW?

In a zerg encounter for instance, what do you expect the pet ought to do for you?

The arguably better archers like thieves or warriors also don’t bring too much into the table during such encounters. The thieves can put a poison field, but also die quite easily if they are targeted.

The thing is that if the Rangers are meant for single encounters, they are better suited as roamers. Just that at this juncture, thieves and mesmers (and arguably eles too) perform much better than rangers.

I don’t see it problematic that certain professions bring more to the table in a zerg situations such as guardians, warriors and eles. Just that currently every other profession can do what the Ranger can do better.

There are 2 scenarios that work…

You either make pets highly survivable but remove the swap mechanic so players aren’t overwhelmed. Or you scale back the focus of the pet and make it an inconsequential part of the game overall.

The first would be ideal and simply making the pet take 75% less damage from AE’s that don’t have the pet targetted would solve almost all of the survivability issues. They aren’t like phantasms and clones that can be replaced almost immediately. Plus if you remove the swap mechanic from the game, players can choose to kill the pet quickly and the Ranger is then stuck with a 30% dps loss.

The alternate scenario is you just reduce the impact the pet has and you effectively turn it into a class specific DOT. All pets do the same damage, that damage is about what a 6 stack of bleed is capable of, and you call it a day. You then increase the Ranger’s damage and coefficients up to a competetive level and make the F2 functions spawn ‘sprites’ that do their pet specific abilities instead of worrying about the pet being alive or dead at the time of activation.

Neither is ideal, but both methods solve the problems players have with the pets.

I quite like the idea of having the pet highly survivable since it ties in with the philosophy of the rangers being supposedly “resilient”. The question would be how appropriately resilient they should be?

I’m thinking that even if the pets become more resilient than warriors, it’s compensated by the fact that they obviously cannot provide more damage/utility compared to a warrior, so is that… fair? Shrugs.

I think the fact that we have the trait system is meant so that we can have the option to choose between these two routes, though.

Namica.2951:

Is Xallevar honestly trying to say there is nothing wrong with ranger?

This thread in and of itself is proof positive that the devs ADMIT there is a problem.

The issue is they admit the problem, and then we players present the problem they go “Well no, we won’t be doing anything about that”

Where do you get that idea? Lol. If I don’t see there’s anything wrong with Ranger, I wouldn’t even be interested in this thread, mate.

nagymbear.5280:

xallever.1874:

nagymbear.5280:

xallever.1874:

As Allie didn’t want this CDI to be all about the permastow option (or turning it into an aspect), I’d just like to come up with a poll:

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745

Obviously, a significant majority will be telling factor (not close to 50-50), but even without the percentage, if there are enough participants, I think the numbers also will show some weight.

The point of this is to lessen speculative statements for future discussions.

I hope everyone who has an opinion would take part in this short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ poll. I’d also post this in the Aspect thread.

Dev: You will not have 3 arms in this game. Please don’t talk about that on this thread so we can focus on other things instead.
Player: OK I made this poll on wanting 3 arms instead of 2. All go and vote!

That’s what the dev said but obviously people will continue bringing this up again and again from time to time.

The poll serves to:

• Provide a way to express your opinion without needlessly cluttering the thread
• Provide a data to back up people’s expressed arguments (vs counting on the total number of participating unique users who have expressed their opinions on this matter and manually tally it up)

If you frequented the ranger forums for the last year or so, you had the opportunity to express your opinion, lot of peolpe did. Your data will be meaningless because there are people who play ranger who accept what Allie said, and won’t contribute to your poll, as there is no point to vote on it.

I bolded the problem for you. Just kittening deal with it, there will be no permastow.

Yes, and those people will no longer participate in this CDI either. That’s as good as referring the devs to the other Ranger thread. The poll doesn’t serve as a complete tally on all opinions of all times, just whoever has any opinion and still want to express their opinion of this now.

Plus, those people who have an opinion but do not wish to express it because they regard their opinions as worthless, their opinions are as good as those who are undecided. So, the loss of these people participating isn’t a huge deal at all.

By all means, if you would be so kind as to provide people with a more complete data that will be useful for anyone participating in this CDI other than to “go back to all the previous posts that have been made and count the number of all unique users of their opinions” on this matter, go ahead.

And as I said, the poll doesn’t serve as a way to push the direction to permastow or no permastow. If it helps, good. If it doesn’t, it’s irrelevant.

Jocksy.3415:

xallever.1874:

nagymbear.5280:

xallever.1874:

As Allie didn’t want this CDI to be all about the permastow option (or turning it into an aspect), I’d just like to come up with a poll:

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745

Obviously, a significant majority will be telling factor (not close to 50-50), but even without the percentage, if there are enough participants, I think the numbers also will show some weight.

The point of this is to lessen speculative statements for future discussions.

I hope everyone who has an opinion would take part in this short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ poll. I’d also post this in the Aspect thread.

Dev: You will not have 3 arms in this game. Please don’t talk about that on this thread so we can focus on other things instead.
Player: OK I made this poll on wanting 3 arms instead of 2. All go and vote!

That’s what the dev said but obviously people will continue bringing this up again and again from time to time.

The poll serves to:

• Provide a way to express your opinion without needlessly cluttering the thread
• Provide a data to back up people’s expressed arguments (vs counting on the total number of participating unique users who have expressed their opinions on this matter and manually tally it up)

The “maybe” is missing in that poll:
If they can get the pet to work: no; if they can’t; yes

A correct poll, that takes into consideration the wide aray of possibilities mentionned, would be something along those lines

hide spoiler

1. In the ranger’s current state, do you think rangers should have a perma-stow (without stat boost) ability?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe / don’t care

2. In the ranger’s current state, do you think rangers should have a perma-stow (with stat boost) ability?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe / don’t care

3. If the pet was made to hit more reliably and die less easily, do you think rangers should have a perma-stow (without stat boost) ability?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe / don’t care

4. If the pet was made to hit more reliably and die less easily, do you think rangers should have a perma-stow (without stat boost) ability?
a) Yes
b) No
c) Maybe / don’t care

If you put a ‘maybe’, then I assume you will be torn enough not to come up with any concrete opinion on the matter (well, you have a concrete opinion on it: the ‘maybe’).

But that means you neither oppose nor support the notion overall. It should be up to you to balance the probability of them fixing the pet AI happening in regards to whether or not currently you support / not support the stance. The option for you if you are undecided is not to take part in that poll. It is that simple.

Supposing I included the “maybe” option, and they end up being the majority, what good would that be for people that talk about this permastow option? “The vast majority of the people are undecided on this topic, so I think we should take this into account and go / not go for the permastow.” Or, “The vast majority of the people are undecided on this topic, so I think we should remain undecided.” If you are undecided, just remain undecided since it obviously will not matter to you whether this gets a green light or a red light.

The permastow option exists only because the reworking of the pet AI is seen by the many as unlikely to happen. I think even people who rolled Rangers wanting to play archers would not mind having a pet there if it’s working properly, making the question, “Would you still want to have the pet if the pet works perfectly?” a rather bizzare question.

Tryxtr.6295:

General question to progress this discussion further:

In PvE, the pets do not generally die that quickly, except for in dungeons when stacking. Pets can tank mobs pretty well.

In WvW pets almost insta-die and can be easily ignored (ran past) due to the fact that they can’t hit a moving target.

How can Anet fix this issue to make it work in both game modes?

Can’t make the pet way tankier (for WvW survivability) because then they’d be basically OP in PvE and Anet doesn’t want to separate WvW from PvE. Could make them a little bit tankier, but that doesn’t really help WvW since they need a huge boost to keep them alive.

Maybe a pet’s vitality and toughness could scale with the number of enemies around them. Not sure if that would fix the issue.

How do you guys visualize the pet ought to perform in WvW?

In a zerg encounter for instance, what do you expect the pet ought to do for you?

The arguably better archers like thieves or warriors also don’t bring too much into the table during such encounters. The thieves can put a poison field, but also die quite easily if they are targeted.

The thing is that if the Rangers are meant for single encounters, they are better suited as roamers. Just that at this juncture, thieves and mesmers (and arguably eles too) perform much better than rangers.

I don’t see it problematic that certain professions bring more to the table in a zerg situations such as guardians, warriors and eles. Just that currently every other profession can do what the Ranger can do better.

nagymbear.5280:

xallever.1874:

As Allie didn’t want this CDI to be all about the permastow option (or turning it into an aspect), I’d just like to come up with a poll:

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745

Obviously, a significant majority will be telling factor (not close to 50-50), but even without the percentage, if there are enough participants, I think the numbers also will show some weight.

The point of this is to lessen speculative statements for future discussions.

I hope everyone who has an opinion would take part in this short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ poll. I’d also post this in the Aspect thread.

Dev: You will not have 3 arms in this game. Please don’t talk about that on this thread so we can focus on other things instead.
Player: OK I made this poll on wanting 3 arms instead of 2. All go and vote!

That’s what the dev said but obviously people will continue bringing this up again and again from time to time.

The poll serves to:

• Provide a way to express your opinion without needlessly cluttering the thread
• Provide a data to back up people’s expressed arguments (vs counting on the total number of participating unique users who have expressed their opinions on this matter and manually tally it up)

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

To clear the air about pets, lets collate:

What’s negative about the pet:

• Offers no benefit to certain playstyles

I don’t see this as a negative or a positive. It will be a negative thing if it is an impediment to certain playstyles.

I don’t see the Mesmer shatter mechanic as negative if you decide to go for a phantasm-heavy build. You just simply don’t benefit it as much than if you had gone Shatter or Lockdown.

For instance, if you had gone the beastmaster route, and your pet dies too easily, makes no real threat before it’s dead, then it’s a hindrance. In which case, it will be a negative thing.

How do you mean?

The poll isn’t meant to make one decision or another based on it, only that it can help to show whether the figures we imagine during our discussions are made up or not.

It’ll be easier to make your statements saying “the overwhelming majority” by basing it on a data like this, rather than referring people to threads and ask them to count the unique users one by one on each of their opinions regarding this topic.

ItIsFinished.9462:

xallever.1874:

As Allie didn’t want this CDI to be all about the permastow option (or turning it into an aspect), I’d just like to come up with a poll:

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745_result?v

Obviously, a significant majority will be telling factor (not close to 50-50), but even without the percentage, if there are enough participants, I think the numbers also will show some weight.

The point of this is to lessen speculative statements for future discussions.

I hope everyone who has an opinion would take part in this short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ poll. I’d also post this in the Aspect thread.

Correct link:

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745

Thanks! Edited.

Guys, let’s do a quick poll on this permastow option:

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745

Obviously, a significant majority will be telling factor (not close to 50-50), but even without the percentage, if there are enough participants, I think the numbers also will show some weight.

The point of this is to lessen speculative statements for future discussions.

I hope everyone who has an opinion would take part in this short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ poll.

As Allie didn’t want this CDI to be all about the permastow option (or turning it into an aspect), I’d just like to come up with a poll:

http://poll.pollcode.com/38561745

Obviously, a significant majority will be telling factor (not close to 50-50), but even without the percentage, if there are enough participants, I think the numbers also will show some weight.

The point of this is to lessen speculative statements for future discussions.

I hope everyone who has an opinion would take part in this short ‘yes’ or ‘no’ poll. I’d also post this in the Aspect thread.

Welcome back, Allie.

As others have noted, an improvement in the F2 would be a welcomed addition, but it’s far from fixing the pet AI.

Others have noted the other major problems, such as not being able to dodge on demand.

It’s very nice to know that there will be an improvement in the upcoming patch, but if you are not allowed to comment on what those improvements will be, then I’m afraid that there will not necessarily be a similar opportunity of a CDI on this class in the near future after the changes have been made. In other words, I’m quite paranoid that we may not be able to do a follow-up that will receive a similar attention.

“Every other avenue has been explored” may be a sensible thing to say, but this would mean that the Ranger would potentially be stuck in its current state indefinitely, wouldn’t you say? How do we know that “every other avenue has been explored”? If that entails the whole reworking of the pet AI, which nobody can know how long that would take… I don’t think another 1.5 years spent to explore every other avenue would be the kind of expectation we have (which doesn’t even sound plausible in the eyes of many). Maybe a bit unfair?

What’s wrong with a quick dirty fix to make Ranger viable first before eventually the pet AI is reworked, if ever? Are you afraid that once the Ranger has become viable without the pet, the dev team will quickly see a pet reworking as a low priority and probably abandon it altogether?

During heart quests, for instance, when you’re gathering fishes collected from the fish traps in Wayfarer Foothills to feed to the cubs, why do we have to enter a press-mouse-to-click ‘give’ dialogue instead of simply pressing the function key to give to the cubs?

The other option that we get from the dialogue is to leave. I mean, I can’t imagine a player cursing for accidentally giving the fish to the wrong cub?

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Jocksy.3415:

wolfyrik.2017:

Permastow isn’t the same thing as getting rid of all pets. It would be an advantage to many players in certain environments and wouldn’t affect people like you at all. It wouldn’t harm your gameplay, it wouldn’t affect how you play, it wouldn’t prevent you from using the pet. It would only grant people the option of not using the pet, when the pet is a liability.

Risk: People expect rangers to stow their pets, thus playing with pets might be seen a lesser playstyle…

If the beastmaster ranger is viable in dungeons and on the same damagetier as the non-pet zerker ranger, this wont be happening.

Yup. Plus, this is true to all classes. Mesmers aren’t expected to go Shatter-build in dungeons even if they like it so much. And wouldn’t you agree that the Shatter-build is a deeper engagement in the class mechanic than the phantasm build?

Another example of a playstyle that isn’t highly engaging to the class mechanic would be the staff Ele in dungeons where you are expected to mostly be in fire. So, while class mechanic dependent builds are interesting or fun, it’s not an end-all baseline for everything.

Not a lot of classes are given the kind of variety of viable builds like the Guardian or Elementalist, even then they have to spec for one of the viable builds for PvE.

So, I’m not even sure if that can be classified as a “risk” per se.

What the Ranger needs is at least ONE viable build. Then from there, we can talk more about build diversities.

WatchTheShow.7203:

xallever.1874:

gawker.8340:

xallever.1874:

By theory, ranged DPS out-DPSes a melee not by the numbers per hit, but by the fact that a ranged DPS has more ability to connect hits. So in 10 seconds, a warrior may hit once for 4k, while the ranged DPS only hits 2.5k. But in that span of time, the ranged DPS then may hit 10 times, clearly outshining the melee.

It shouldn’t be the case that ranged DPS hits as hard as melee per hit. Just that there should be more situations where being in the melee range is unsuitable.

What are you saying? Ranged attacks have many problems with obstruction, body block, out of range, and projectile lagg. Range attacks, especially slow moving LB shots hit less than 30% of the time.

I’m not saying that ranged DPS must always hit more. I’m saying that this is how ranged DPS is normally out-DPSing melee in general. This is how it is in games like WoW or DotA.

Of course every range attack suffers those potential DPS loss, but the reason why they shouldn’t hit as hard is because range is already a great advantage due to kiting possibility, positioning, etc.

In AC dungeon, when you kill the mobs atop the rocks in melee is usually an advantage only privileged to the ranged DPSers because this advantage is all about being unreachable yet you still manage to connect hits.

Ok rolling with this. The only time this happens in WvW, is if I am on top of a wall using a longbow to attack an enemy on the ground. From here, the enemy can easily run away from me and my damage.

However, if I jump down, or if I meet an enemy on a plain level field (basically the entire map) the enemy can close the distance in less than a second. All rangers have is a knockback #4, and that is on a traited 12 second cooldown. If this shot is blocked or dodge rolled through, it’s over. I must switch to melee or die.

On my warrior alone I have 3 gap closers I can use at any time. 2 of them are tied to weapons. 1 for each weapon, so no matter which weapon I am using, I always have at least 1 gap closer. From there I have built in weapon mechanics that can keep people from kiting me. I even have 2 condition removals so if I get CCed, I can get out of it very quickly.

Guild Wars 2 is not like other MMOs. Every class has gap closers and CC. Obviously some have a lot more than others. Because of this, kiting never happens in WvW (at least not with a ranger). I have never gone up against a ranger and had them kite me successfully. It just doesn’t work. Too many condition removers, too many gap closers, dodge rolls, etc.

Now in PvE, if I am hitting an enemy while high up on a ledge, the mob will become invulnerable and I will not be able to kill it or even damage it (see fractal harpies). Therefore that whole point of range being “advantageous” in those situations is a moot point.

Yes, so these are the problems for a class where the sustained damage is the vision. If ever GW2 wants to involve some form of ranged weapon combat (which a lot of Mesmers already do in WvW btw by using their GS/Staff) for the rangers, they need to work on gap-maintainer abilities, in the forms of evade like the thief’s heal or more CC. Mesmers have GS #5, Staff #2, invis, blink. By no means I think the GS ought to deal as much damage as melee weapons.

I can see one scenario where ranged combat is preferred. For instance, the final boss in HotW path 1. It’s possible to go melee, but it’s also much riskier. So ranged combat is optimal for an easy learning curve. You can see how positioning is an advantage here? While the boss does the whirling axe attack that reflects projectiles, Mesmers’ GS, ranged weapon, is able to DPS while those in melee are forced to sit out for a couple of secs. This is the key to out-DPSing melee.

WatchTheShow.7203:

xallever.1874:

By theory, ranged DPS out-DPSes a melee not by the numbers per hit, but by the fact that a ranged DPS has more ability to connect hits. So in 10 seconds, a warrior may hit once for 4k, while the ranged DPS only hits 2.5k. But in that span of time, the ranged DPS then may hit 10 times, clearly outshining the melee.

It shouldn’t be the case that ranged DPS hits as hard as melee per hit. Just that there should be more situations where being in the melee range is unsuitable.

Ok, I am trying to follow what you’re saying. I kind of understand, but in the game, this never happens. My warrior’s attacks always connect with mobs. I can stand on top of the boss and facetank it while hitting it continuously until it is dead. My warrior’s greatsword auto attack hits faster than my ranger’s longbow auto attack does. Did you mean specifically in WvW?

You are right in saying that the game’s content so far actively discourages this. I never liked it when anyone is ranging unless it’s necessary. I’m just saying that this problem may have more to do with how the game content is designed by way of not providing more situations in which ranged encounters are preferred, fun, untrivial, etc.

gawker.8340:

xallever.1874:

By theory, ranged DPS out-DPSes a melee not by the numbers per hit, but by the fact that a ranged DPS has more ability to connect hits. So in 10 seconds, a warrior may hit once for 4k, while the ranged DPS only hits 2.5k. But in that span of time, the ranged DPS then may hit 10 times, clearly outshining the melee.

It shouldn’t be the case that ranged DPS hits as hard as melee per hit. Just that there should be more situations where being in the melee range is unsuitable.

What are you saying? Ranged attacks have many problems with obstruction, body block, out of range, and projectile lagg. Range attacks, especially slow moving LB shots hit less than 30% of the time.

I’m not saying that ranged DPS must always hit. I’m saying that this is how ranged DPS is normally out-DPSing melee in general. This is how it is in games like WoW or DotA. For 5 seconds, the melee heroes may be slowed, immobilized, while the ranged heroes continue to DPS them not being hit at all. Once the melee heroes manage to close the range gap, this should be when they beat the ranged heroes to pieces. But the first 5 seconds of ranged advantage should be life-threatening to the melee users.

Of course every range attack suffers those potential DPS loss, but the reason why they shouldn’t hit as hard is because range is already a great advantage due to kiting possibility, positioning, etc.

In AC dungeon, when you kill the mobs atop the rocks in melee is usually an advantage only privileged to the ranged DPSers because this advantage is all about being unreachable yet you still manage to connect hits.

WatchTheShow.7203:

Vox Hollow.2736:

NOT SO FAST!!!!!

You know it’s a pretty intense CDI, when people start Ace Attorney’ing the thread.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I didn’t say Rangers are in the right spot. I just meant that we have to be very careful of the power creep.

OBJECTION! Put our ranged weapons on par with warrior’s greatsword!

On my warrior, who is in berserker exotics, I can hit 42,000 damage, using 100 blades inside Arah explorable with 25 stacks of might. That is a non-crit hit.

On my ranger, who is in fully ascended berserker armor, hitting the same mob, with the same 25 stacks of might, I critically hit 22,000 damage on my longbow. The no-crit hit right before that was around 15,000 damage. Yes I was standing at max range for the full dps.

Whenever my guild fractal group is having trouble dpsing a boss down, I have to log off my ascended armored ranger, and get on my exotic armored warrior to finish the job. If anyone else in the party is on their ranger, they too will get off their ranger and get on a warrior/ele to come back in for “proper DPS”.

I am, by no means, bad on my ranger. I managed to kill Liadri on my ranger. I’ve done everything in this game on my ranger. I can solo champions, elites, heck, I’ve even soloed the legendary grawl fractal boss at the end twice when the rest of my party died. I got all of the skill challenges solo, even the ones with champions guarding them. I’ve had to solo the marionette platforms a few times because the zerker warriors stood in AOE while #YOLO 100BLADES. I’m not trying to toot my own horn here, but I consider myself to be pretty good at the ranger class. So when my fractal party members can’t bring the dps, and I have to log into my warrior to make up for them, not because my ranger playing skills are below average, but because the ranger is “sustained dps” by design, then yes I have a problem with this design.

On my warrior I can use 100 blades, switch to my sword/axe, use a bunch of those skills, go right back to greatsword, use 100 blades, maybe use my #4, pop a utility, then 100 blades again. I can turn my burst damage into sustained burst damage the entire fight.

Just compare these 2 pictures. The top one is my Charr zerker Warrior. She has exotics on. She is 20/20/0/20/10.
The second picture is my zerker Sylvari Ranger with ascended gear on. She is 30/20/20/0/0.

Look at how close the stats between the 2 are! Very close. Yet my warrior can put my ranger to shame in a dps war. TO SHAME!

By theory, ranged DPS out-DPSes a melee not by the numbers per hit, but by the fact that a ranged DPS has more ability to connect hits. So in 10 seconds, a warrior may hit once for 4k, while the ranged DPS only hits 2.5k. But in that span of time, the ranged DPS then may hit 10 times, clearly outshining the melee.

It shouldn’t be the case that ranged DPS hits as hard as melee per hit. Just that there should be more situations where being in the melee range is unsuitable.

Mesmers also end up using very little of their shatter mechanics if they use the phantasm build. I don’t see what the problem is with a class with multiple options, mechanics or not.

Thieves trait to improve their steals if they so wish, not if they don’t. So is the case with their initiatives.

Overall, I think the flavour of the class is important, but more importantly, viability in game.

Listen to the people here.

If you want to have a better experience overall, just roll a warrior. ESPECIALLY if this is going to be your first character.

I have rolled all the best professions by “accident”, but you probably don’t want to be in a state of crying for your profession to finally be decent to finally be able to enjoy the game as 1. it may never come, 2. it would take too long.

At this point of time, the consensus agrees that Ranger is the class that needs most fixes.