Troll Unguent FROM RANGERS NEED A NERF

[Teratus.2859]

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

• none elite builds being able to use elite map pets (one of which provides way too much in terms of both damage and utility which is why its used in almost every competitive build)

Seen this argument made before and strongly disagree, if you limited pets like that then you'd effectively kill Rangers competitive build diversity and force everyone to start playing the same generic Soulbeast builds.Nobody is going to run a Druid.. a healing spec for the Smokescale and Core Ranger will more or less be pushed out of the game mode entirely.If you forbid non specs to used expansion pets then you'd also have to restrict the core pets elite specs could use too otherwise they would be blatantly superior to core class and that's something i'm pretty sure the Devs have said in the past they absolutely don't want elite specs to be.Well no one is going to resitrct core pets being combined with elites thats just silly but the other way around is possibly fair game.

To reverse ideals of killing ranger build diversity this it means effectively that the ranger is potentially back peddling on 1 or 2 pets which is also not good.

On this I agree, but rather than restrict those pets to elite specs I'd much rather see the other pets be improved or completely revamped to make them more useful and unique.

If you say ranger is dead without smoke scale than smoke scale is equally part problem as to why some people see it as over performing. Build diveristy already looks pretty slim with ranger because all i see is smokescale, pig, and deer, and rarely someone uses a bear for immunity with soul-beast.

It's not so much that Ranger is dead without smokescale or Deer etc it's that locking those pets behind specific specs means that you are effectively limiting people to a very small amount of viable builds.You say everyone is running these specific pets now on various builds but if you restrict them to the specs only then that problem is going to turn into every ranger is running the exact same cheapo OP build that everyone hates.That just leads to cries of nerf this nerf that (as we saw with the Soulbeast Sic-Em damage) and if the Devs do decide to nerf the build due to excessive use then that will effectively kill the Ranger entirely by screwing it's only viable playstyle and forcing people into other roles they're not interested in playing.. to which most will just take up another class entirely so they can keep playing high dps.

As far as pets go people dont bother with much diversity as it is and i cant help but wonder if its that all pets are bad or maybe just a few of them are over performing (a conversation for another day)

It's true there are a number of pets that get little to no use what so ever.. For example I can't recall the last time I saw someone running around with a Krytan Drakehound or a White Moa bird.Imo the problem lies not in that SmokeScale and Deer are exceptionally good though.. it's that most other pets are pretty garbage at standard or just stand inferior to others due to their abilities falling short of other pets or Ranger skills.

There are other HoT pets and other PoF pets that see almost no use 1 because smoke scale immediately takes one slot in 9/10 builds.

True.Tiger see's little use because Fury is so easily obtained from other sources, the best thing Tiger can contribute to really is 100% fury uptime but that can be obtained easily without it as well so overall kinda useless pet tbh which really sucks for me since Tigers are one of my favourite animals.

Fire Wyvern is a cool one but it's F2 is so abysmally bad it's not even funny.Pathetic burn on what is a bad joke of a cast time.. far better off getting a fire field from Torch instead.

Electric Wyvern isn't too bad though, I've taken to using it recently to add some more CC to my build.It can provide some decent CC for a pet, Cripple, Wing Buffet, the F2 and the lightning field can all provide CC which is pretty great, specially if your build was lacking in it like mine was.

I can't speak as much for PoF pets though, I haven't really used them personally so i've little familiarity with them.

• gs block duration is far too long for the short cd it has its basically stronger than warrior shield block with a counter attack option not sure this should be a thing something needs to change here either the duration of the block or the cd of the block.

It is a pretty strong block, I guess that's the tradeoff for the removal of evade though.I thought the evade on auto was fine.

As did I, I made a Ranger build based around high evasion just for fun and I enjoyed it until the Greatsword change took away the only backup evade weapon that was viable to my Sword Dagger combo.At least I got the block now but it's not the same.

What was not fine is intentionally triggering the 3rd part of the auto chain 3 times in a row for a very long extended evade duration. All they really needed to do was force the chain to reset to the first hit instead of allowing the 3rd hit to repeat 2-3 times.

Agreed, that was pretty broken.

I do like that the counter attack is player input based now rather than auto/cancelling the block.. but I miss the ability to throw the greatsword at a fleeing enemy to cripple them, I used that quite a bit when I ran GS.

This part is fine no one will argue that counter attack was bad before if someone hit you at ranged but it did kind of make the gs predictable and could force the block to be ended early i just think as it is right now gs block should not be outperforming warrior shield block but thats just me. Minor number adjustment really only need to be made there.

Again I agree, I like Warrior Shields but GS block shouldn't be outperforming a Shield.. I mean, it's a friggin shield!! that's it's primary function!! XDWarriors do get access to projectile reflect on block though but if you ask me that should not be a trait, it should be a default part of the shield block skill.

Going back to the smoke scale though this thing is a problem and while im not saying it should be treated as for what i said previously it certainly needs to be looked into with just how much it provides to all builds of ranger which is why its so over used. Its a very strong well rounded pet in terms of damage and utility especially when combined with soul-beast. Nerf it? No.... not yet but do keep an eye on it while looking at other areas of ranger. Maybe start comparing how ranger performs in competitive modes across different builds with it vs without it even when using other HoT and PoF pets which generally all of which are better than Core game pets having a fairly smarter AI and superior attacks compared to core game pets.

I use the Smokescale myself largely for it's CC which is something I lack on my actual Ranger but the damage it deals and it's sturdyness is nice to have too.It is a well rounded pet compared to others that I definitely agree with.

The thing with Smokescale though and by extention some othe rexpansion pets is that it's easy to see these pets as better because a good number of them have very uniqe catagories and abilities.

There is only one Smokescale, one Deer, one Iboga, one Jacaranda and One Bristle Back. meanwhile other pets like Sand Lion and Tiger get lumped into the Feline category where they're competing against other felines for abilities/utility while trying to avoid becoming clones of another Cat but also still having to be restricted to the feline stat set.Stat set here being one of the main issues I have with most pets..I cannot stress enough how much I don't like that almost all pet categories share identical stats..All Felines.. same statsAll Bears.. same statsAll Canines.. same stats (except Hyena)Wyverns.. sameDevourer.. sameSpiders.. sameThe only one that doesn't comply to this rule is Saurians.. Bristle Back and Smoke Scale

To me this seems to be one of the easiest ways they can diversify pets.. change their stats slightly so we can have more offensive, defensive and supportive creatures in the same species.A faster bear with more offensive stats.. a tankier bear with slower attacks, a bear that focuses on conditions, a bear that focuses on CC.. that sort of thing.Hell the pet system could be entirely redeisgned so that you could customize your pets role and what skin your using could be purely cosmetic.Rather than pick between 7 cats you could just pick Feline, pick the skin/F2 ability and then choose what stat role you want, offensive, defensive, CC, support etc.. that would be so much better than what we currently have atm.

[Avatar.3568]

Guys, I think the gazelle could get a slightly nerf but pets did get worse over the years.

In vanilla my hawk killed my friends Mess 1 hit (actually 2 hits, 14k and 16k)

Now days the hawk does nothing?

[ZDragon.3046]

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

• none elite builds being able to use elite map pets (one of which provides way too much in terms of both damage and utility which is why its used in almost every competitive build)

Seen this argument made before and strongly disagree, if you limited pets like that then you'd effectively kill Rangers competitive build diversity and force everyone to start playing the same generic Soulbeast builds.Nobody is going to run a Druid.. a healing spec for the Smokescale and Core Ranger will more or less be pushed out of the game mode entirely.If you forbid non specs to used expansion pets then you'd also have to restrict the core pets elite specs could use too otherwise they would be blatantly superior to core class and that's something i'm pretty sure the Devs have said in the past they absolutely don't want elite specs to be.Well no one is going to resitrct core pets being combined with elites thats just silly but the other way around is possibly fair game.

To reverse ideals of killing ranger build diversity this it means effectively that the ranger is potentially back peddling on 1 or 2 pets which is also not good.

On this I agree, but rather than restrict those pets to elite specs I'd much rather see the other pets be improved or completely revamped to make them more useful and unique.

Based on what i heard this wont happen unless anet decides to pretty much revamp the core game from the ground up but i mean.... dreams.

If you say ranger is dead without smoke scale than smoke scale is equally part problem as to why some people see it as over performing. Build diveristy already looks pretty slim with ranger because all i see is smokescale, pig, and deer, and rarely someone uses a bear for immunity with soul-beast.

It's not so much that Ranger is dead without smokescale or Deer etc it's that locking those pets behind specific specs means that you are effectively limiting people to a very small amount of viable builds.You say everyone is running these specific pets now on various builds but if you restrict them to the specs only then that problem is going to turn into every ranger is running the exact same cheapo OP build that everyone hates.That just leads to cries of nerf this nerf that (as we saw with the Soulbeast Sic-Em damage) and if the Devs do decide to nerf the build due to excessive use then that will effectively kill the Ranger entirely by screwing it's only viable playstyle and forcing people into other roles they're not interested in playing.. to which most will just take up another class entirely so they can keep playing high dps.

In truth anything thats over used that feels way too cheap will always be complained about to needing nerfs. To that statement is why we saw rampage get over nerfed the way we did because you pressed 1 button and either you immediately win via cc damage chain or the person is prepared for it but has to blow hella defenses against it to ensure they didnt take 12k in a single strike. Overall when it didnt work it was just scary but when it did work it just felt extra cheap. People demanded it be culled. Sickem was much of the same thingMurge > Sickem > Elite skill > Rapidfire.... or Maul and Target died before they knew what hit em. Ideally 1 shot builds, skills, or mechanics just dont need to exsist on the level that most of them do in the game right now. Even if its a really competitive build or not its just not fun getting one shot. People dont like "not getting to play" regardless of their skill level, thats just universal feeling you want to feel impactful even if you die in the end as a result. IF you die without being able to have done anything right away its not a good feeling. People will demand culling and pick up their spears.

As far as pets go people dont bother with much diversity as it is and i cant help but wonder if its that all pets are bad or maybe just a few of them are over performing (a conversation for another day)

It's true there are a number of pets that get little to no use what so ever.. For example I can't recall the last time I saw someone running around with a Krytan Drakehound or a White Moa bird.Imo the problem lies not in that SmokeScale and Deer are exceptionally good though.. it's that most other pets are pretty garbage at standard or just stand inferior to others due to their abilities falling short of other pets or Ranger skills.

There are other HoT pets and other PoF pets that see almost no use 1 because smoke scale immediately takes one slot in 9/10 builds.

True.Tiger see's little use because Fury is so easily obtained from other sources, the best thing Tiger can contribute to really is 100% fury uptime but that can be obtained easily without it as well so overall kinda useless pet tbh which really sucks for me since Tigers are one of my favourite animals.

Fire Wyvern is a cool one but it's F2 is so abysmally bad it's not even funny.Pathetic burn on what is a bad joke of a cast time.. far better off getting a fire field from Torch instead.

Electric Wyvern isn't too bad though, I've taken to using it recently to add some more CC to my build.It can provide some decent CC for a pet, Cripple, Wing Buffet, the F2 and the lightning field can all provide CC which is pretty great, specially if your build was lacking in it like mine was.I can't speak as much for PoF pets though, I haven't really used them personally so i've little familiarity with them.

People really do discredit Electric Wyvern a bit too much its not so bad of a pet tbh.Alot of the PoF pets aside from the creepy bush and the strange tongue worm thing are rarely used i know one is a cat that like blinks or something then you have the sand lion which looks like it would have potential but in reality its just kinda meh. I feel like they should expand on at least the HoT and PoF pets to open up options a bit more and maybe at least try to temp people away from just smokescale.

• gs block duration is far too long for the short cd it has its basically stronger than warrior shield block with a counter attack option not sure this should be a thing something needs to change here either the duration of the block or the cd of the block.

It is a pretty strong block, I guess that's the tradeoff for the removal of evade though.I thought the evade on auto was fine.

As did I, I made a Ranger build based around high evasion just for fun and I enjoyed it until the Greatsword change took away the only backup evade weapon that was viable to my Sword Dagger combo.At least I got the block now but it's not the same.

What was not fine is intentionally triggering the 3rd part of the auto chain 3 times in a row for a very long extended evade duration. All they really needed to do was force the chain to reset to the first hit instead of allowing the 3rd hit to repeat 2-3 times.

Agreed, that was pretty broken.

I do like that the counter attack is player input based now rather than auto/cancelling the block.. but I miss the ability to throw the greatsword at a fleeing enemy to cripple them, I used that quite a bit when I ran GS.

This part is fine no one will argue that counter attack was bad before if someone hit you at ranged but it did kind of make the gs predictable and could force the block to be ended early i just think as it is right now gs block should not be outperforming warrior shield block but thats just me. Minor number adjustment really only need to be made there.

Again I agree, I like Warrior Shields but GS block shouldn't be outperforming a Shield.. I mean, it's a friggin shield!! that's it's primary function!! XDWarriors do get access to projectile reflect on block though but if you ask me that should not be a trait, it should be a default part of the shield block skill.

Going back to the smoke scale though this thing is a problem and while im not saying it should be treated as for what i said previously it certainly needs to be looked into with just how much it provides to all builds of ranger which is why its so over used. Its a very strong well rounded pet in terms of damage and utility especially when combined with soul-beast. Nerf it? No.... not yet but do keep an eye on it while looking at other areas of ranger. Maybe start comparing how ranger performs in competitive modes across different builds with it vs without it even when using other HoT and PoF pets which generally all of which are better than Core game pets having a fairly smarter AI and superior attacks compared to core game pets.

I use the Smokescale myself largely for it's CC which is something I lack on my actual Ranger but the damage it deals and it's sturdyness is nice to have too.It is a well rounded pet compared to others that I definitely agree with.

The thing with Smokescale though and by extention some othe rexpansion pets is that it's easy to see these pets as better because a good number of them have very uniqe catagories and abilities.

There is only one Smokescale, one Deer, one Iboga, one Jacaranda and One Bristle Back. meanwhile other pets like Sand Lion and Tiger get lumped into the Feline category where they're competing against other felines for abilities/utility while trying to avoid becoming clones of another Cat but also still having to be restricted to the feline stat set.Hell the pet system could be entirely redeisgned so that you could customize your pets role and what skin your using could be purely cosmetic.Rather than pick between 7 cats you could just pick Feline, pick the skin/F2 ability and then choose what stat role you want, offensive, defensive, CC, support etc.. that would be so much better than what we currently have atm.

I really like this last bit as an idea overall tbh at least with being able to just pick the f2 ability that would feel more like you trained x pet to do x thing rather than swapping to a whole new one altogether.

Though like i said im not demanding smoke scale nerfs but its certainly a pet to keep an eye on for now. Ive always felt like ranger was one of the stronger professions and i still think it is and i dont think that it shouldnt be. But i do think that all the others should be right up there with it (at least on a core level) and undoubtably many of them are not.

[MrFrusciante.2438]

@"Ragnar.4257" said:Why is anyone writing up proper answers to this?

https://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/93485/troll-unguent-from-rangers-need-a-nerfhttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/93232/warrior-crits-are-buggedhttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/91578/when-they-going-to-fix-the-exploit-where-warriors-avoid-all-the-projectileshttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/89253/bug-or-ninja-nerf-stand-your-ground-shout-not-workinghttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/87770/mesmer-gs-mirror-blade-bug-or-intendedhttps://en-forum.guildwars2.com/discussion/86464/why-i-cant-get-gem-refund-if-i-bought-the-game-20-days-ago-from-an-official-retailer

my thoughts exactly, its a troll that doesn't understand how skills work

[ZDragon.3046]

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:@"ZDragon.3046"

"all pets buffs are dependent upon the beast mastery line."

I get what you're saying here, but that's just not how they chose to do things. And people screaming "nerf pets" Is not the way to deal with anything, considering that not only are the pets not OP, but Ranger in general is not even approaching the bar of currently problematic build structures. I feel like people are tunneling visioning the idea that "Pets are an individual entity outside of the Ranger class, and we feel they are strong." No this all wrong. Pets are a part of the Ranger. Some of the Ranger's skills are in the form of the pet, rather than Sand Shades, or Tomes, or Swapping a list of utilities by swapping legends, ect ect. The Ranger which is not even approaching the bar of problematic, as clearly indicated by its complete lack of representation in more competitive AT environments or even top leaderboard play, needs those skills to remain viable, even middle way up the hierarchy of class tier strength. The only difference here between the pet and other class kits, is that the Ranger's pet being visually its own vector, makes people visually isolate that small allocation of skills from the Ranger that is on the pet, as some individual entity. It makes them feel like "They are being tag teamed by some strong AI, and other classes don't have pets, so this pet is some unfair advantage to Ranger." When the reality is that the Ranger & Pet's collective damage output, utility when paired, is a necessity to staying relevant to powerful kits like Photon Forge. Again, this whole pet thing is an illusion, and people need to identify the difference between things that are actually overpowered, and something they annoys them because they have not yet learned to how to counter play some basic mechanic.

Understandable and in every case i dont think its just "the damage" as noted in some cases i think its the utility combined with the damage. Its one thing to have a pet that only omega boost your damage or only provides great lockdown via cc or conditions or only improves the rangers utility kit if that is its primary purpose its another to have a pet that focuses several of these things at once certainly wouldnt be fair depending on how much of each it provided. Smokescale just happens to be one of those pets in my opinion under certain cases.

That said i dont have the exp that you have in ranger if you have been a main of ranger for 7 years so i take your opinions pretty seriously if thats the case.

About Smokescales:

The only reason Smokescale is so popular is because of Soulbeast merge. While merged, the Soulbeast gets a relatively quick cycling 2s Knockdown, and Smoke Assault. Smoke Assault functions exactly like Unrelenting Assault on a Power Shiro Herald. This single skill right now, is completely responsible for keeping Soulbeast viable at all. No really, this single skill is so powerful that the properly used timing of to be able to counter offensive & chase while evading and ruining someone's burst, is the only thing that allows Soulbeast to potentially brawl with other classes. Like, you have to use Smokescale right, it's not really a choice unless you're so much better than the opponent that it doesn't matter what you use. Even if you want to claim it's not "essential" it's still by far the best choice. Even while unmerged, the Smokescale deals his damage with fair accuracy due to the teleport, and often is good at landing his extra CC. But in no way is the Smokescale a big damage dealer in the way that many people like to believe. It's more that he's accurate, than a big damage dealer. Not so easy to kite Smoke Assault from a pet is what's going on here. But on Core Ranger or Druid who have no merge skills, Smokescale isn't so hot of an option unless you're leaning on its F2 skill for stealthing. The Smokescale dies a lot easier than other pets when you can't merge him for free reset and there are pets that just deal a lot heavier damage and are tankier than the Smokescale. Most Core Rangers you see using Smokescale are because they've just seen Soulbeasts use it for so long, that they imagine it is the go to pet. Most of them don't even utilize the stealth, and as such they should be taking other pets in its place while running Core or Druid.

I dont agree here smoke-scale is still a good option in pvp for builds outside of soulbeast play as it grants stealth access and thats a very valuable tool as you pointed out its fairly accurate at landing attacks and cc as well. These things alone makes it very valuable asset to all ranger builds. I think smokescale has the same stats in hp and toughness as bears so it does not die as fast as some of the other pets (nothing dies faster than birds and felines) being the most glass cannon pets out there.One thing i will say is that you are correct smokescales damage is not very high until soulbeast comes into the picture but over all its still a very very strong pet. if not the best common pet any ranger can take on almost any build.

More like, Ranger isn't present at all in any competitive team lol. I don't think you're quite understanding to the degree that this class is not viable for tournament right now. And yeah you're kitten straight something is wrong. What's wrong is that people who are like 4 months deep into this game with only 300 matches played, come in here and complain about things like Deadeye & Ranger "pretty much anything with ranged damage" because they have not yet discovered the basic mechanic of "Taking LOS seriously." Use it, it's there to use, it's part of the game. You can't expect to waddle around in the open on a $%^&ing Necromancer and not get clapped by a Deadeye that you know is in the game design. But yet this is what people do. The scope of their mind somehow only wraps around the idea of "Cool melee knights clashing together on a node" and they seriously completely ignore ranged attackers. They completely ignore things like the 4 pillars around mid in EC. They just stand there and get shot up, stay in the Silver 3/Gold 1 division, and then come in here and complain about how OP it is. And even when people mention to them to start using LOS, they refuse to alter their playstyle "Which is why they're stuck in Gold 1" because the entitlement to complain and get something annoying changed, is easier than accepting that there is ranged damage in the game, and that they need to utilize LOS in Guild Wars 2, the same way they would in some FPS. The difference between the players in competitive teams and the players who are in here complaining is this: The competitive players utilize LOS and this makes ALL ranged based builds pretty much no longer viable, which is why you don't see them at all in tournament or very very rarely, and the competitive players realize how suck Rangers are Deadeyes are which is why they aren't in here complaining. The players who are in here complaining, are literally the players who I shoot up in the open while running unranked/ranked. They are the players who for some reason, will walk at me, directly at me in the open, while I'm on a Berserker Soulbeast DPS, and never learn their lesson. They repeatedly do the same thing over and over and expect some different outcome, and then come into here on the forum and complain about it, rather than accept the basic fundamental present in literally every other game, that you do not walk across an open field towards something is high powered ranged, unless you have some tact about how you are going to reach that player to dismantle him. This idea is no different in GW2 than it is in any game, and nor should it be. But if players want to stress that "They don't like how the dynamic feels in this game with ranged attackers" I can't argue with that. They have every right to say they just don't like how it feels and would rather see it not in the game. But I will always argue when they say "The ranged is OP" because it isn't. Again, they need to understand the difference between actually OP and just annoying or something they don't like.

I still consider any pvp content competitive and yes there are different skill levels within competitive play but i think the majority should always be considered. The majority of people dont and likely wont have the skill level or time and freedom to play at the level that some of those teams do.As far as people not making changes to how they play, Its one thing to know when your current profession does not have the capability to win a certain fight and another when something is either unjust or obviously broken.I dont think ranged attacks are op especially projectile based ones. (WHICH CAN BE REFLECTED) Ranger's kits are well built, as you said you can run zerker and generally im guessing your utility set up covers your defense via additional evades, breakstuns, or damage resistance etc. I honestly dont know why you dont see ranger in high level competitive because its always appeared as one of the stronger professions to me personally. Or maybe its just strong for solo but does not live up to the standard in coordinated combat also.... firebrand is doing "the most" right now and thats probably got something to do with it too.

In any case just because there is no team using ranger does not justify a means to say its not competitive, I mean if we went on balancing by what is or is not used by top teams this there is always going to be some spec thats not competitive for a season.Not everyone here is new to the game with less than 300 matches played some people here do make legit complaints with reasoning behind them. The OP in this case is not one of those people and the other post are making that pretty clear.

lol dude come on man. I play every class from time to time. And don't try to disregard the knowledge of someone who mains a class. The people who main the same class each season are the people who notice things like this: "Well last season I would tear this guy up. This season after my nerf and his buff, I can't beat this guy 1v1 on a node anymore. He isn't doing anything different than he ever has, his class is just stronger now, and mine was nerfed a bit." Not everyone is ultra bias dude. There are a lot of people who really do just want this game to be balanced. You've got to understand that when these types of players say "Dude my class is just suck right now in this meta" they aren't lying. They are noticing that after some patch changes, buffs in some places, nerfs in others, that their rating dropped from like 1600-1700 play down to like bottom 1500. They also notice the other people they've know for years who play the same class they do, are also experiencing similar rating drops due to nerfs vs. buffs. So we can INB4 this "You main it so you don't know what it feels like to fight it! You're probably biased!" garbage, because I'm not. I was a main advocate in the nerf suggestion vs. Sic Em. Just think about it that for a bit. Consider what that means.

I know not everyone is ultra Bias but we will tend to be even slightly bias (or maybe there is a better word) lets say "concerned" for professions we main even if we try to go about it in a open and honest way of how we see it from both the giving and receiving ends. Im certainly this way myself i try not to be very bias but if i have a need to make a case to point something out based on my exp and i think i can i certainly will try it just as you have here and there is nothing wrong with making your case.

Most people i want to think who are still doing pvp these days tinker every or almost every class to some extent because thats the best way to learn what other professions can do and cant do.

I'll be honest it my statement was a bias check though your initial one did feel kind of the same and ill apologize for that it might not have even been directed at mel, But I see where you are coming from overall.

As far as the bits about rating goes it happens people get nerfed and people get buffed not every nerf or buff is because of "complaints or demands" if anything most of the time anet does not listen to us unless its on something critical like people running perma stealth deadeye in wvw (back before it was reworked where you just needed to mark someone and wait.)Certain things are justified to complain for obvious reasons somethings are not.

[Arheundel.6451]

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

• none elite builds being able to use elite map pets (one of which provides way too much in terms of both damage and utility which is why its used in almost every competitive build)

Seen this argument made before and strongly disagree, if you limited pets like that then you'd effectively kill Rangers competitive build diversity and force everyone to start playing the same generic Soulbeast builds.Nobody is going to run a Druid.. a healing spec for the Smokescale and Core Ranger will more or less be pushed out of the game mode entirely.If you forbid non specs to used expansion pets then you'd also have to restrict the core pets elite specs could use too otherwise they would be blatantly superior to core class and that's something i'm pretty sure the Devs have said in the past they absolutely don't want elite specs to be.Well no one is going to resitrct core pets being combined with elites thats just silly but the other way around is possibly fair game.

To reverse ideals of killing ranger build diversity this it means effectively that the ranger is potentially back peddling on 1 or 2 pets which is also not good.

On this I agree, but rather than restrict those pets to elite specs I'd much rather see the other pets be improved or completely revamped to make them more useful and unique.

Based on what i heard this wont happen unless anet decides to pretty much revamp the core game from the ground up but i mean.... dreams.

If you say ranger is dead without smoke scale than smoke scale is equally part problem as to why some people see it as over performing. Build diveristy already looks pretty slim with ranger because all i see is smokescale, pig, and deer, and rarely someone uses a bear for immunity with soul-beast.

It's not so much that Ranger is dead without smokescale or Deer etc it's that locking those pets behind specific specs means that you are effectively limiting people to a very small amount of viable builds.You say everyone is running these specific pets now on various builds but if you restrict them to the specs only then that problem is going to turn into every ranger is running the exact same cheapo OP build that everyone hates.That just leads to cries of nerf this nerf that (as we saw with the Soulbeast Sic-Em damage) and if the Devs do decide to nerf the build due to excessive use then that will effectively kill the Ranger entirely by screwing it's only viable playstyle and forcing people into other roles they're not interested in playing.. to which most will just take up another class entirely so they can keep playing high dps.

In truth anything thats over used that feels way too cheap will always be complained about to needing nerfs. To that statement is why we saw rampage get over nerfed the way we did because you pressed 1 button and either you immediately win via cc damage chain or the person is prepared for it but has to blow hella defenses against it to ensure they didnt take 12k in a single strike. Overall when it didnt work it was just scary but when it did work it just felt extra cheap. People demanded it be culled. Sickem was much of the same thingMurge > Sickem > Elite skill > Rapidfire.... or Maul and Target died before they knew what hit em. Ideally 1 shot builds, skills, or mechanics just dont need to exsist on the level that most of them do in the game right now. Even if its a really competitive build or not its just not fun getting one shot. People dont like "not getting to play" regardless of their skill level, thats just universal feeling you want to feel impactful even if you die in the end as a result. IF you die without being able to have done anything right away its not a good feeling. People will demand culling and pick up their spears.

As far as pets go people dont bother with much diversity as it is and i cant help but wonder if its that all pets are bad or maybe just a few of them are over performing (a conversation for another day)

It's true there are a number of pets that get little to no use what so ever.. For example I can't recall the last time I saw someone running around with a Krytan Drakehound or a White Moa bird.Imo the problem lies not in that SmokeScale and Deer are exceptionally good though.. it's that most other pets are pretty garbage at standard or just stand inferior to others due to their abilities falling short of other pets or Ranger skills.

There are other HoT pets and other PoF pets that see almost no use 1 because smoke scale immediately takes one slot in 9/10 builds.

True.Tiger see's little use because Fury is so easily obtained from other sources, the best thing Tiger can contribute to really is 100% fury uptime but that can be obtained easily without it as well so overall kinda useless pet tbh which really sucks for me since Tigers are one of my favourite animals.

Fire Wyvern is a cool one but it's F2 is so abysmally bad it's not even funny.Pathetic burn on what is a bad joke of a cast time.. far better off getting a fire field from Torch instead.

Electric Wyvern isn't too bad though, I've taken to using it recently to add some more CC to my build.It can provide some decent CC for a pet, Cripple, Wing Buffet, the F2 and the lightning field can all provide CC which is pretty great, specially if your build was lacking in it like mine was.I can't speak as much for PoF pets though, I haven't really used them personally so i've little familiarity with them.

People really do discredit Electric Wyvern a bit too much its not so bad of a pet tbh.Alot of the PoF pets aside from the creepy bush and the strange tongue worm thing are rarely used i know one is a cat that like blinks or something then you have the sand lion which looks like it would have potential but in reality its just kinda meh. I feel like they should expand on at least the HoT and PoF pets to open up options a bit more and maybe at least try to temp people away from just smokescale.

• gs block duration is far too long for the short cd it has its basically stronger than warrior shield block with a counter attack option not sure this should be a thing something needs to change here either the duration of the block or the cd of the block.

It is a pretty strong block, I guess that's the tradeoff for the removal of evade though.I thought the evade on auto was fine.

As did I, I made a Ranger build based around high evasion just for fun and I enjoyed it until the Greatsword change took away the only backup evade weapon that was viable to my Sword Dagger combo.At least I got the block now but it's not the same.

What was not fine is intentionally triggering the 3rd part of the auto chain 3 times in a row for a very long extended evade duration. All they really needed to do was force the chain to reset to the first hit instead of allowing the 3rd hit to repeat 2-3 times.

Agreed, that was pretty broken.

I do like that the counter attack is player input based now rather than auto/cancelling the block.. but I miss the ability to throw the greatsword at a fleeing enemy to cripple them, I used that quite a bit when I ran GS.

This part is fine no one will argue that counter attack was bad before if someone hit you at ranged but it did kind of make the gs predictable and could force the block to be ended early i just think as it is right now gs block should not be outperforming warrior shield block but thats just me. Minor number adjustment really only need to be made there.

Again I agree, I like Warrior Shields but GS block shouldn't be outperforming a Shield.. I mean, it's a friggin shield!! that's it's primary function!! XDWarriors do get access to projectile reflect on block though but if you ask me that should not be a trait, it should be a default part of the shield block skill.

Going back to the smoke scale though this thing is a problem and while im not saying it should be treated as for what i said previously it certainly needs to be looked into with just how much it provides to all builds of ranger which is why its so over used. Its a very strong well rounded pet in terms of damage and utility especially when combined with soul-beast. Nerf it? No.... not yet but do keep an eye on it while looking at other areas of ranger. Maybe start comparing how ranger performs in competitive modes across different builds with it vs without it even when using other HoT and PoF pets which generally all of which are better than Core game pets having a fairly smarter AI and superior attacks compared to core game pets.

I use the Smokescale myself largely for it's CC which is something I lack on my actual Ranger but the damage it deals and it's sturdyness is nice to have too.It is a well rounded pet compared to others that I definitely agree with.

The thing with Smokescale though and by extention some othe rexpansion pets is that it's easy to see these pets as better because a good number of them have very uniqe catagories and abilities.

There is only one Smokescale, one Deer, one Iboga, one Jacaranda and One Bristle Back. meanwhile other pets like Sand Lion and Tiger get lumped into the Feline category where they're competing against other felines for abilities/utility while trying to avoid becoming clones of another Cat but also still having to be restricted to the feline stat set.Hell the pet system could be entirely redeisgned so that you could customize your pets role and what skin your using could be purely cosmetic.Rather than pick between 7 cats you could just pick Feline, pick the skin/F2 ability and then choose what stat role you want, offensive, defensive, CC, support etc.. that would be so much better than what we currently have atm.

I really like this last bit as an idea overall tbh at least with being able to just pick the f2 ability that would feel more like you trained x pet to do x thing rather than swapping to a whole new one altogether.

Though like i said im not demanding smoke scale nerfs but its certainly a pet to keep an eye on for now. Ive always felt like ranger was one of the stronger professions and i still think it is and i dont think that it shouldnt be. But i do think that all the others should be right up there with it (at least on a core level) and undoubtably many of them are not.

The main reason why people ask for nerfs is because they hate to lose...not because of the validity of their claims. The use of smokescale got nothing to do with their defeat and it's rather hilarious that people think the smokescale is the reason the ranger wins, the pet has seen already several nerfs..so many that it's completely useless outside a niche fightning scenario in 1v1....

The CC provided by smokescale is neither unique or random ...ulterior nerfs to the pet are pointless..as you will realize

[ZDragon.3046]

@Arheundel.6451 said:The main reason why people ask for nerfs is because they hate to lose...not because of the validity of their claims. The use of smokescale got nothing to do with their defeat and it's rather hilarious that people think the smokescale is the reason the ranger wins, the pet has seen already several nerfs..so many that it's completely useless outside a niche fightning scenario in 1v1....

The CC provided by smokescale is neither unique or random ...ulterior nerfs to the pet are pointless..as you will realize

Well thats a fairly bold statement of you to make. Ill simply say i dont fully agree with you and move on. Some complaints are justified some are not. Its not just about winning or losing in every case.

[Arheundel.6451]

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Arheundel.6451 said:The main reason why people ask for nerfs is because they hate to lose...not because of the validity of their claims. The use of smokescale got nothing to do with their defeat and it's rather hilarious that people think the smokescale is the reason the ranger wins, the pet has seen already several nerfs..so many that

it's completely useless outside a niche fightning scenario in 1v1

....

The CC provided by smokescale is neither unique or random ...ulterior nerfs to the pet are pointless..as you will realize

Well thats a fairly bold statement of you to make. Ill simply say i dont fully agree with you and move on. Some complaints are justified some are not. Its not just about winning or losing in every case.

Complaints are made with the intention of nullify a class to a point where it's no threat to even a toddler playing naked any other profession....Obviously any gaming studio will never nerf any class out of usable state...reason the complaints never end...I mean you are in a thread started by somebody whining because he lost...

[Teratus.2859]

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

• none elite builds being able to use elite map pets (one of which provides way too much in terms of both damage and utility which is why its used in almost every competitive build)

Seen this argument made before and strongly disagree, if you limited pets like that then you'd effectively kill Rangers competitive build diversity and force everyone to start playing the same generic Soulbeast builds.Nobody is going to run a Druid.. a healing spec for the Smokescale and Core Ranger will more or less be pushed out of the game mode entirely.If you forbid non specs to used expansion pets then you'd also have to restrict the core pets elite specs could use too otherwise they would be blatantly superior to core class and that's something i'm pretty sure the Devs have said in the past they absolutely don't want elite specs to be.Well no one is going to resitrct core pets being combined with elites thats just silly but the other way around is possibly fair game.

To reverse ideals of killing ranger build diversity this it means effectively that the ranger is potentially back peddling on 1 or 2 pets which is also not good.

On this I agree, but rather than restrict those pets to elite specs I'd much rather see the other pets be improved or completely revamped to make them more useful and unique.

Based on what i heard this wont happen unless anet decides to pretty much revamp the core game from the ground up but i mean.... dreams.

Yeah, unfortunate but Anet does have a bad habit of neglecting the core game over new content..That said though they do occasionally come back to it and sometimes add to it.. Beetle racing for example and current events.I do think they need to give the core game more TLC though.. Living world 1's absense still bugs me to this day but Im not going to get my hopes up lol

If you say ranger is dead without smoke scale than smoke scale is equally part problem as to why some people see it as over performing. Build diveristy already looks pretty slim with ranger because all i see is smokescale, pig, and deer, and rarely someone uses a bear for immunity with soul-beast.

It's not so much that Ranger is dead without smokescale or Deer etc it's that locking those pets behind specific specs means that you are effectively limiting people to a very small amount of viable builds.You say everyone is running these specific pets now on various builds but if you restrict them to the specs only then that problem is going to turn into every ranger is running the exact same cheapo OP build that everyone hates.That just leads to cries of nerf this nerf that (as we saw with the Soulbeast Sic-Em damage) and if the Devs do decide to nerf the build due to excessive use then that will effectively kill the Ranger entirely by screwing it's only viable playstyle and forcing people into other roles they're not interested in playing.. to which most will just take up another class entirely so they can keep playing high dps.

In truth anything thats over used that feels way too cheap will always be complained about to needing nerfs. To that statement is why we saw rampage get over nerfed the way we did because you pressed 1 button and either you immediately win via cc damage chain or the person is prepared for it but has to blow hella defenses against it to ensure they didnt take 12k in a single strike. Overall when it didnt work it was just scary but when it did work it just felt extra cheap. People demanded it be culled. Sickem was much of the same thingMurge > Sickem > Elite skill > Rapidfire.... or Maul and Target died before they knew what hit em. Ideally 1 shot builds, skills, or mechanics just dont need to exsist on the level that most of them do in the game right now. Even if its a really competitive build or not its just not fun getting one shot. People dont like "not getting to play" regardless of their skill level, thats just universal feeling you want to feel impactful even if you die in the end as a result. IF you die without being able to have done anything right away its not a good feeling. People will demand culling and pick up their spears.

I absolutely hate one shot mechanics too likewise things like stunlocking and long imparing conditions etc, it's not fun at all it's extremely cheap and infuriating to deal with.I very much agree there that these kinds of things don't have a place in games like this, at least in combat situations.In the PvP world especially no player should have the ability to one shot another, that's just bullskritt and it's very annoying and cheap.

As far as pets go people dont bother with much diversity as it is and i cant help but wonder if its that all pets are bad or maybe just a few of them are over performing (a conversation for another day)

It's true there are a number of pets that get little to no use what so ever.. For example I can't recall the last time I saw someone running around with a Krytan Drakehound or a White Moa bird.Imo the problem lies not in that SmokeScale and Deer are exceptionally good though.. it's that most other pets are pretty garbage at standard or just stand inferior to others due to their abilities falling short of other pets or Ranger skills.

There are other HoT pets and other PoF pets that see almost no use 1 because smoke scale immediately takes one slot in 9/10 builds.

True.Tiger see's little use because Fury is so easily obtained from other sources, the best thing Tiger can contribute to really is 100% fury uptime but that can be obtained easily without it as well so overall kinda useless pet tbh which really sucks for me since Tigers are one of my favourite animals.

Fire Wyvern is a cool one but it's F2 is so abysmally bad it's not even funny.Pathetic burn on what is a bad joke of a cast time.. far better off getting a fire field from Torch instead.

Electric Wyvern isn't too bad though, I've taken to using it recently to add some more CC to my build.It can provide some decent CC for a pet, Cripple, Wing Buffet, the F2 and the lightning field can all provide CC which is pretty great, specially if your build was lacking in it like mine was.I can't speak as much for PoF pets though, I haven't really used them personally so i've little familiarity with them.

People really do discredit Electric Wyvern a bit too much its not so bad of a pet tbh.Alot of the PoF pets aside from the creepy bush and the strange tongue worm thing are rarely used i know one is a cat that like blinks or something then you have the sand lion which looks like it would have potential but in reality its just kinda meh. I feel like they should expand on at least the HoT and PoF pets to open up options a bit more and maybe at least try to temp people away from just smokescale.

I think that largely comes from players ignoring the pet side of the Ranger.. and tbh I think we're all guilty of this quite often.For a long time I only picked my pets based on their F2.. never cared much for thier stats or how well their skills worked alongside mine.When I decided recently to change my pet I didn't consider the Electric Wyvern at first but once I sat down and thought about my builds main weakness (lack of CC) I figured I'd focus that on my pet choice, I was surprised to see how much CC the Electric Wyvern could add to my build.

Point Blank Shot (150 Defiance), Signet of the Wild (4 seconds Imob = 4 x 50 Defiance) Takedown/Smokescale (200 Defiance) Monarch's Leap (3 seconds cripple =3 x 15 defiance), Barrage (12 seconds cripple 12 x 15), Smoke Cloud (5 x 20 Defiance)Total max defiance (875)That was all I had before which isnt all that much tbh, specially since I had limited control over Smokescales Takedown as well(Could only guarnatee it's use shortly after a petswap) leaving a good chunk of my CC dependent on conditions which take time to apply their full load of defiance, likewise popping Signet of the Wild lowers my Ferocity too.

Adding the Wyvern to my build give me:Lightning Assault (232 Defiance), Tail Lash (6 seconds cripple = 6 x 15 Defiance), Wing Buffet (another 232 Defiance) and creates a 3 second lightning field allowing a combo with Monarch's Leap causing Daze (150 defiance)Wyvern defiance potential alone (704)

Total new max defiance (1579) if my math is correct which is almost double what I had before purely because of one swapped pet.I very much noticed the difference as soon as solo challenged my first champ with a CC bar lol.I've got much easier access to direct CC making me less dependent on condition CC which takes time to apply.Plus actively comboing the lightning field with Monarch's Leap means that I am perfectly positioned to take advantage of quickness sword after breaking a CC bar which is great as I can maximize my damage easier during their stun phase which was much harder to do before with much less CC as every skill and condition mattered if I wanted to break a bar, now it's much easier to do thanks to the Wyvern's abilities.

• gs block duration is far too long for the short cd it has its basically stronger than warrior shield block with a counter attack option not sure this should be a thing something needs to change here either the duration of the block or the cd of the block.

It is a pretty strong block, I guess that's the tradeoff for the removal of evade though.I thought the evade on auto was fine.

As did I, I made a Ranger build based around high evasion just for fun and I enjoyed it until the Greatsword change took away the only backup evade weapon that was viable to my Sword Dagger combo.At least I got the block now but it's not the same.

What was not fine is intentionally triggering the 3rd part of the auto chain 3 times in a row for a very long extended evade duration. All they really needed to do was force the chain to reset to the first hit instead of allowing the 3rd hit to repeat 2-3 times.

Agreed, that was pretty broken.

I do like that the counter attack is player input based now rather than auto/cancelling the block.. but I miss the ability to throw the greatsword at a fleeing enemy to cripple them, I used that quite a bit when I ran GS.

This part is fine no one will argue that counter attack was bad before if someone hit you at ranged but it did kind of make the gs predictable and could force the block to be ended early i just think as it is right now gs block should not be outperforming warrior shield block but thats just me. Minor number adjustment really only need to be made there.

Again I agree, I like Warrior Shields but GS block shouldn't be outperforming a Shield.. I mean, it's a friggin shield!! that's it's primary function!! XDWarriors do get access to projectile reflect on block though but if you ask me that should not be a trait, it should be a default part of the shield block skill.

Going back to the smoke scale though this thing is a problem and while im not saying it should be treated as for what i said previously it certainly needs to be looked into with just how much it provides to all builds of ranger which is why its so over used. Its a very strong well rounded pet in terms of damage and utility especially when combined with soul-beast. Nerf it? No.... not yet but do keep an eye on it while looking at other areas of ranger. Maybe start comparing how ranger performs in competitive modes across different builds with it vs without it even when using other HoT and PoF pets which generally all of which are better than Core game pets having a fairly smarter AI and superior attacks compared to core game pets.

I use the Smokescale myself largely for it's CC which is something I lack on my actual Ranger but the damage it deals and it's sturdyness is nice to have too.It is a well rounded pet compared to others that I definitely agree with.

The thing with Smokescale though and by extention some othe rexpansion pets is that it's easy to see these pets as better because a good number of them have very uniqe catagories and abilities.

There is only one Smokescale, one Deer, one Iboga, one Jacaranda and One Bristle Back. meanwhile other pets like Sand Lion and Tiger get lumped into the Feline category where they're competing against other felines for abilities/utility while trying to avoid becoming clones of another Cat but also still having to be restricted to the feline stat set.Hell the pet system could be entirely redeisgned so that you could customize your pets role and what skin your using could be purely cosmetic.Rather than pick between 7 cats you could just pick Feline, pick the skin/F2 ability and then choose what stat role you want, offensive, defensive, CC, support etc.. that would be so much better than what we currently have atm.

I really like this last bit as an idea overall tbh at least with being able to just pick the f2 ability that would feel more like you trained x pet to do x thing rather than swapping to a whole new one altogether.

I wouldn't mind the F2 defining the skin tbh, be kinda weird if a Sand Lion pulled off an Icy pounce XD

But the idea generally of reducing the pet list down to species categories rather than having it cluttered by several dogs and several cats would make it a lot cleaner to use and less cluttered opening the door for more pet categories in future too.(I believe it was said in the past that one reason new pets are rarely added is due to the UI and how cluttered it would be having so many pets, species category would help reduce that a lot and allow for a lot more pet skins to be added as well)

The species categories could replace the current pet selection menu.A arrow menu similar to utility skill selection could be added to the top of the F2 to select the skin and skill of the active equipped species.The main thing would be the stat selection if they choose to add it which would probably work much like how stat swapping works on legendary weapons.Also Soulbeast would need to be fixed up to work with the changes too.But yeah basically that's how I would design these changes.. pretty much all the UI/Menu's etc are already in the game being used for other things so I don't think much if anything would need to be designed from scratch which i'm pretty sure would save a lot of time despite being such a huge change for the pet mechanic.Likewise this could serve as a foundation going forward for any potential (yet unlikely) future elite specs that add a less minion more pet like mechanic to another class.

[MrFrusciante.2438]

@Arheundel.6451 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

@Teratus.2859 said:

@ZDragon.3046 said:

• none elite builds being able to use elite map pets (one of which provides way too much in terms of both damage and utility which is why its used in almost every competitive build)

Seen this argument made before and strongly disagree, if you limited pets like that then you'd effectively kill Rangers competitive build diversity and force everyone to start playing the same generic Soulbeast builds.Nobody is going to run a Druid.. a healing spec for the Smokescale and Core Ranger will more or less be pushed out of the game mode entirely.If you forbid non specs to used expansion pets then you'd also have to restrict the core pets elite specs could use too otherwise they would be blatantly superior to core class and that's something i'm pretty sure the Devs have said in the past they absolutely don't want elite specs to be.Well no one is going to resitrct core pets being combined with elites thats just silly but the other way around is possibly fair game.

To reverse ideals of killing ranger build diversity this it means effectively that the ranger is potentially back peddling on 1 or 2 pets which is also not good.

On this I agree, but rather than restrict those pets to elite specs I'd much rather see the other pets be improved or completely revamped to make them more useful and unique.

Based on what i heard this wont happen unless anet decides to pretty much revamp the core game from the ground up but i mean.... dreams.

If you say ranger is dead without smoke scale than smoke scale is equally part problem as to why some people see it as over performing. Build diveristy already looks pretty slim with ranger because all i see is smokescale, pig, and deer, and rarely someone uses a bear for immunity with soul-beast.

It's not so much that Ranger is dead without smokescale or Deer etc it's that locking those pets behind specific specs means that you are effectively limiting people to a very small amount of viable builds.You say everyone is running these specific pets now on various builds but if you restrict them to the specs only then that problem is going to turn into every ranger is running the exact same cheapo OP build that everyone hates.That just leads to cries of nerf this nerf that (as we saw with the Soulbeast Sic-Em damage) and if the Devs do decide to nerf the build due to excessive use then that will effectively kill the Ranger entirely by screwing it's only viable playstyle and forcing people into other roles they're not interested in playing.. to which most will just take up another class entirely so they can keep playing high dps.

In truth anything thats over used that feels way too cheap will always be complained about to needing nerfs. To that statement is why we saw rampage get over nerfed the way we did because you pressed 1 button and either you immediately win via cc damage chain or the person is prepared for it but has to blow hella defenses against it to ensure they didnt take 12k in a single strike. Overall when it didnt work it was just scary but when it did work it just felt extra cheap. People demanded it be culled. Sickem was much of the same thingMurge > Sickem > Elite skill > Rapidfire.... or Maul and Target died before they knew what hit em. Ideally 1 shot builds, skills, or mechanics just dont need to exsist on the level that most of them do in the game right now. Even if its a really competitive build or not its just not fun getting one shot. People dont like "not getting to play" regardless of their skill level, thats just universal feeling you want to feel impactful even if you die in the end as a result. IF you die without being able to have done anything right away its not a good feeling. People will demand culling and pick up their spears.

As far as pets go people dont bother with much diversity as it is and i cant help but wonder if its that all pets are bad or maybe just a few of them are over performing (a conversation for another day)

It's true there are a number of pets that get little to no use what so ever.. For example I can't recall the last time I saw someone running around with a Krytan Drakehound or a White Moa bird.Imo the problem lies not in that SmokeScale and Deer are exceptionally good though.. it's that most other pets are pretty garbage at standard or just stand inferior to others due to their abilities falling short of other pets or Ranger skills.

There are other HoT pets and other PoF pets that see almost no use 1 because smoke scale immediately takes one slot in 9/10 builds.

True.Tiger see's little use because Fury is so easily obtained from other sources, the best thing Tiger can contribute to really is 100% fury uptime but that can be obtained easily without it as well so overall kinda useless pet tbh which really sucks for me since Tigers are one of my favourite animals.

Fire Wyvern is a cool one but it's F2 is so abysmally bad it's not even funny.Pathetic burn on what is a bad joke of a cast time.. far better off getting a fire field from Torch instead.

Electric Wyvern isn't too bad though, I've taken to using it recently to add some more CC to my build.It can provide some decent CC for a pet, Cripple, Wing Buffet, the F2 and the lightning field can all provide CC which is pretty great, specially if your build was lacking in it like mine was.I can't speak as much for PoF pets though, I haven't really used them personally so i've little familiarity with them.

People really do discredit Electric Wyvern a bit too much its not so bad of a pet tbh.Alot of the PoF pets aside from the creepy bush and the strange tongue worm thing are rarely used i know one is a cat that like blinks or something then you have the sand lion which looks like it would have potential but in reality its just kinda meh. I feel like they should expand on at least the HoT and PoF pets to open up options a bit more and maybe at least try to temp people away from just smokescale.

• gs block duration is far too long for the short cd it has its basically stronger than warrior shield block with a counter attack option not sure this should be a thing something needs to change here either the duration of the block or the cd of the block.

It is a pretty strong block, I guess that's the tradeoff for the removal of evade though.I thought the evade on auto was fine.

As did I, I made a Ranger build based around high evasion just for fun and I enjoyed it until the Greatsword change took away the only backup evade weapon that was viable to my Sword Dagger combo.At least I got the block now but it's not the same.

What was not fine is intentionally triggering the 3rd part of the auto chain 3 times in a row for a very long extended evade duration. All they really needed to do was force the chain to reset to the first hit instead of allowing the 3rd hit to repeat 2-3 times.

Agreed, that was pretty broken.

I do like that the counter attack is player input based now rather than auto/cancelling the block.. but I miss the ability to throw the greatsword at a fleeing enemy to cripple them, I used that quite a bit when I ran GS.

This part is fine no one will argue that counter attack was bad before if someone hit you at ranged but it did kind of make the gs predictable and could force the block to be ended early i just think as it is right now gs block should not be outperforming warrior shield block but thats just me. Minor number adjustment really only need to be made there.

Again I agree, I like Warrior Shields but GS block shouldn't be outperforming a Shield.. I mean, it's a friggin shield!! that's it's primary function!! XDWarriors do get access to projectile reflect on block though but if you ask me that should not be a trait, it should be a default part of the shield block skill.

Going back to the smoke scale though this thing is a problem and while im not saying it should be treated as for what i said previously it certainly needs to be looked into with just how much it provides to all builds of ranger which is why its so over used. Its a very strong well rounded pet in terms of damage and utility especially when combined with soul-beast. Nerf it? No.... not yet but do keep an eye on it while looking at other areas of ranger. Maybe start comparing how ranger performs in competitive modes across different builds with it vs without it even when using other HoT and PoF pets which generally all of which are better than Core game pets having a fairly smarter AI and superior attacks compared to core game pets.

I use the Smokescale myself largely for it's CC which is something I lack on my actual Ranger but the damage it deals and it's sturdyness is nice to have too.It is a well rounded pet compared to others that I definitely agree with.

The thing with Smokescale though and by extention some othe rexpansion pets is that it's easy to see these pets as better because a good number of them have very uniqe catagories and abilities.

There is only one Smokescale, one Deer, one Iboga, one Jacaranda and One Bristle Back. meanwhile other pets like Sand Lion and Tiger get lumped into the Feline category where they're competing against other felines for abilities/utility while trying to avoid becoming clones of another Cat but also still having to be restricted to the feline stat set.Hell the pet system could be entirely redeisgned so that you could customize your pets role and what skin your using could be purely cosmetic.Rather than pick between 7 cats you could just pick Feline, pick the skin/F2 ability and then choose what stat role you want, offensive, defensive, CC, support etc.. that would be so much better than what we currently have atm.

I really like this last bit as an idea overall tbh at least with being able to just pick the f2 ability that would feel more like you trained x pet to do x thing rather than swapping to a whole new one altogether.

Though like i said im not demanding smoke scale nerfs but its certainly a pet to keep an eye on for now. Ive always felt like ranger was one of the stronger professions and i still think it is and i dont think that it shouldnt be. But i do think that all the others should be right up there with it (at least on a core level) and undoubtably many of them are not.

The main reason why people ask for nerfs is because they hate to lose...not because of the validity of their claims. The use of smokescale got nothing to do with their defeat and it's rather hilarious that people think the smokescale is the reason the ranger wins, the pet has seen already several nerfs..so many that

it's completely useless outside a niche fightning scenario in 1v1

....

The CC provided by smokescale is neither unique or random ...ulterior nerfs to the pet are pointless..as you will realize

but those blinds are too good in 1v1s along with evade f2otherwise yea much better pets exist