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Point Blank Shot needs to do 0 (or at least very little) damage


Devildoc.6721

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After years of watching rangers point blank shot out of their own barrage, I'm convinced it's the only way to make your average ranger see the skill as a tactical utility rather than attack they should spam off cooldown. Note you don't find Ele's using gust, mesmers using temporal curtain, or engineers using air blast on their flamethrower off cooldown. Even after politely informing them of the fact that their #1 skill does more damage (unless they're standing at melee range with a longbow which is usually not the case) than point blank shot so it's a personal DPS loss, they continue to assume that since it's a "special" attack that deals damage that it MUST do more damage than their "autoattack" so they MUST use it off cooldown for maximum efficiency. They don't view it as a tactical utility that it's intended for. It's disruptive to group play in anything other than a break bar or by sheer luck (almost never used intentionally for this purpose), an interrupted skill.

I know it makes little sense to shoot someone in the face at point blank with an arrow and not do any damage, but at the same time, neither does something actively being pushed back by said arrow (no getting hit by an arrow or bullet does not send a person flying backwards like the movies.. their body's own muscles make them lose balance and fall down from blood loss).. so we can chalk it up to video game mechanics like most everything else, to keep the utility of the skill while not encouraging its use just for damage.

If necessary since PVP rangers would notice a drop in burst damage since they usually lead off with PBS and then rapid fire to make the target eat the whole thing while stunned, you could split the skill for PVP/WvW and just make the PVE version do 0 or at least so little damage that no ranger will opt to use it over long range shot for damage.

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I never see the mesmer skill used in PVE events. I do see, and hear, a LOT of point blank shots. Trust me, I know the difference between Illusory wave, a level up explosion, and point blank shot. In virtually every case, it's a point blank shot. Second most often it's a warrior with peak performance using kick instead of or in addition to bolas. But that's not usually that often.

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I use a mesmer with gs in pve but i always knew skill 5 is a pushback and therefore should never use it in group battles with the exception of breakbar as its a cc. Regardless if it does damage or not, players will use the skill if they see it and if they are aware how annoying pusbacks are in group content (some exceptions there in specific event where its needed as tactic... tarir). A lot of players are unaware of aoe fields of other players that are put at a fixed spot at mobs (read at melee dps feet) or combo fields in general. When i see someone push mobs i just explain them why its a bad idea to use push and when its good to use (cc). In full solo play they can use it as much as they like tho.

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@"Justine.6351" said:I think they use it because they don't know what else to do besides auto attack. That is more of a rotation issue perhaps?It's conditioning from other MMO's and RPG's where autoattacks/basic attacks are the lowest damage skill you can use at any time aside from utilities that do no damage at all or only token damage. If it does any real damage worth being considered, it's always more damage than the auto attack. GW2 is one of the exceptions to this where your basic attack is not meant to just be an auto attack as something to do when you have nothing else off cooldown. In some cases even if a skill does more than token damage, the #1 skill is designed to do more than it, so you should never see your "autoattack" as the lowest priority skill to use as it is in other MMO's and RPG's. In most of those other MMO's your auto attack does nothing but straight damage and maybe generates primary resource. Here your autos can cause conditions, boons, and aoe damage, it's not something to be overlooked.

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I don't think the damage are the incensitive behind the abuse of the skill. The main reason players use it without a thought is that it doesn't need to be used at "point blank" range and it is an instant skill.For me the proper way to change it would be to change the knockback into a knockdown even if it's a PvE only change.

@EmmetOtter.8542 said:Asking for a skill to be nerfed just to keep unskilled players from using it inappropriately is just stupid.

The unskilled will eventually learn or they won't.

People never learn. and it's especially true when they follow a zerg in PvE.

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@"Dadnir.5038" said:I don't think the damage are the incensitive behind the abuse of the skill. The main reason players use it without a thought is that it doesn't need to be used at "point blank" range and it is an instant skill.For me the proper way to change it would be to change the knockback into a knockdown even if it's a PvE only change.

@"EmmetOtter.8542" said:Asking for a skill to be nerfed just to keep unskilled players from using it inappropriately is just stupid.

The unskilled will eventually learn or they won't.

People never learn. and it's especially true when they follow a zerg in PvE.

I think the core functionality of the skill being a utility to re-position enemies or create distance between them and you is good, a knockdown will have less utility in that regard. Rangers who use the skill properly can be an asset to a team, being able to push mobs INTO AOE or melee cleave or out of defense point circles The problem is that people aren't using it properly like that, people are using it for damage, because they're not aware, or don't want to believe, that a skill they have to hit a button for does equal to or less damage than a skill that goes on auto with no cooldown.I pointed out in the original post other skills with similar functions in other classes that I don't see being used as disruptively very often, and I think it's because those skills do no damage so people don't feel compelled to use them to deal damage with. I don't see staff eles using gust off cooldown, or dagger eles using updraft off cooldown. Those skills do no damage so they reserve them for using when knocking an enemy back would be beneficial by itself, to interrupt, re-position, or create distance. It's either that, or a difference in average intelligence of the playerbases of those two classes but I don't want to flame a playerbase like that, I want to assume that people are smart and will learn to use the skill properly if improper use is no longer encouraged by prior MMO conditioning and the assumption that skills do more damage than autoattacks.

As for Emmet's complaint of a "nerf" Point blank shot should not be used for damage. Unless you are literally in melee range, long range shot does just as much, if not more damage, and doesn't have a cooldown. I added that it should be split PVP/WvW and PVE versions with the PVP version retaining its damage as a part of longbow ranger burst damage. I understand that use there, but it's not necessary in PVE and is obnoxious in group PVE when rangers are using the skill for damage without considering enemy positioning. For some rangers, who really do faceroll 5 4 3 2 1... this will be a damage increase if they just go 5 3 2 1 or 5 1 3 2 1 or anything BUT 5 4 3 2 1 because at least the mob will stand in barrage and take damage rather than getting punted out and avoiding the bulk of it.

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I don't think I've seen an illusory wave knockback in a PVE event since the first Queen's Jubilee, that was over 5 years ago. But I saw a ranger point blank shot something out of aoe and melee at least once every single meta I did yesterday.during this bonus event. It's kind of a copout to keep pointing out other classes that can use knockbacks when 9/10 times it is a ranger. When it happens that frequently, they're obviously not learning on their own, so without a nudge, by like, taking the damage away from a utility skill to encourage its use as a utility rather than as damage, they'll probably never learn. They've been doing it for over 6 years with no evidence of it ever changing.

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I rather want a trait that immobilzes on CC use in marksmanship. So the push would immobilize first and the target would not love at all although be CCed. Just for PvE use this would be great. For PvP it would depend on build and it should have an ICD or something like that to balance it.But otherwise it's just a L2P issue.

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@"Devildoc.6721" said:I don't think I've seen an illusory wave knockback in a PVE event since the first Queen's Jubilee, that was over 5 years ago.

I see them all the time. It's just that GS mesmers are less common than LB rangers.

It's kind of a copout to keep pointing out other classes that can use knockbacks when 9/10 times it is a ranger.

First, you haven't established that it's 90% likely to be a ranger; you've only established that rangers are the only ones that you notice knocking foes back. I assure you that they are not. I see scourges [f4] all the time, which is worse since it affects multiple foes.

Second, no, it's not a copout to point out that the problem isn't unique to rangers.

They've been doing it for over 6 years with no evidence of it ever changing.No, "they" have not been doing this for six years. Different people running different builds do the same thing because there is a universal problem that people aren't familiar with what their skills do.It's just that it's easiest to notice knockbacks. Other misuses and inefficiencies come from: using projectiles against foes that reflect, DPS while foes are blocking/dodging, blasting the 'wrong' fields, interrupting autoattacks, etc. Or people running solider's instead of zerker's (or even Marauder's). No amount of editing of skills/traits make up for people who don't do any research about how things work.

In short: point-blank shot is a symptom of a larger issue, one that can't be resolved by removing damage from a single skill.

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@"Devildoc.6721" said:I want to assume that people are smart and will learn to use the skill properly if improper use is no longer encouraged by prior MMO conditioning and the assumption that skills do more damage than autoattacks.

The game is already 7 years and the issue with point blank shot exist since release. If you really don't want people to use it abusively in PvE, you have to really make it "point blank" which mean melee range (just like updraft or illusionary wave). If you want to just make PvE a less frustrating place to play, the knockdown effect is a simple fix.

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@EmmetOtter.8542 said:Asking for a skill to be nerfed just to keep unskilled players from using it inappropriately is just stupid.

The unskilled will eventually learn or they won't.

QFT. Point Blank Shot isn't the problem. That said I wouldn't mind it being changed to a KD or applying the effect only at point blank range if they also added something else to it, maybe a cool flippy evade akin to SB3.

ETA: Idea!Point Blank Shot is replaced by Punishing Shot. Projectile finisher. Causes knockdown based on the distance of your target (400-500-600 knockback becomes 1-3 seconds knockdown). Unblockable. CD increased to 20.

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I don't like the idea of changing the knock back to a knock down, mostly because I do use PBS for its intended purposes in positioning enemies: farther away to get more out of Long Range Shot, into an AoE or the melee range of an ally, into a group or line with other enemies to take advantage of piercing or other multi-target or out of a defense/cap area to keep them from slowing that down. You can get some mob positioning control with pets, but its not nearly as precise or reliable, and often affects mobs you'd rather not move, so we'd pretty much lose all those abilities with a switch to knockdown.

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@Taelac.7036 said:I don't like the idea of changing the knock back to a knock down, mostly because I do use PBS for its intended purposes in positioning enemies: farther away to get more out of Long Range Shot, into an AoE or the melee range of an ally, into a group or line with other enemies to take advantage of piercing or other multi-target or out of a defense/cap area to keep them from slowing that down. You can get some mob positioning control with pets, but its not nearly as precise or reliable, and often affects mobs you'd rather not move, so we'd pretty much lose all those abilities with a switch to knockdown.

This, I don't want to change the core functionality of the skill which is useful if used properly. I just want to discourage the improper use.

@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Devildoc.6721" said:I don't think I've seen an illusory wave knockback in a PVE event since the first Queen's Jubilee, that was over 5 years ago.

I see them all the time. It's just that GS mesmers are less common than LB rangers.

It's kind of a copout to keep pointing out other classes that can use knockbacks when 9/10 times it is a ranger.

First, you haven't established that it's 90% likely to be a ranger; you've only established that rangers are the only ones that
you
notice knocking foes back. I assure you that they are not. I see scourges [f4] all the time, which is worse since it affects multiple foes.

Second, no, it's not a copout to point out that the problem isn't unique to rangers.

They've been doing it for over 6 years with no evidence of it ever changing.No, "they" have not been doing this for six years. Different people running different builds do the same thing because there is a universal problem that people aren't familiar with what their skills do.It's just that it's easiest to notice knockbacks. Other misuses and inefficiencies come from: using projectiles against foes that reflect, DPS while foes are blocking/dodging, blasting the 'wrong' fields, interrupting autoattacks, etc. Or people running solider's instead of zerker's (or even Marauder's). No amount of editing of skills/traits make up for people who don't do any research about how things work.

In short: point-blank shot is a symptom of a larger issue, one that can't be resolved by removing damage from a single skill.

Aside from wearing gear that makes them do less damage than they're causing the enemy to be scaled up to (and there's really nothing that can be done about that), those other things are not really detrimental to group play aside from getting the player themselves killed. A player killing themselves is negative feedback they can't ignore and they will probably learn from it. You fire into a reflecting enemy and get killed, you go "oh, I did something wrong and got killed because of it, I should not do that in the future" But when knocking an enemy out of a ball of aoe during the last seconds of a timed event causes the event to fail, blame is distributed among everyone, nobody says "I did something wrong" it becomes "maybe we didn't have enough people", so people don't learn what they did wrong and correct it. If you try over chat to tell someone they did something wrong, this baby coddling community will dogpile you making excuses for the bad play that failed the event "Maybe they're new" "are you sure it was point blank shot? It could have been a level up explosion" "Mesmers, Eles, Necros, and Engis can knock back too why do people blame rangers" etc. This community refuses to place responsibility for failure on a person and instead chooses to coddle and just say "Nice try, we can try it again in an hour and a half!"

You see it all the time, if not getting breakbars broken causes an event to fail you can't declare that it's the fault of people not bringing CC and learning a 3 year old mechanic (breakbars) it's just "Nice try, we'll try again (doing the exact same thing and failing again) in 2 hours!" The result? Anet had to nerf Serpent's Ire to make it easy enough for zombies to do. If a map fails a dragonfall event because people won't listen when someone says to stop attacking the legendary because they all need to die within 30s of each other you can't call out those people on chat, the only rationale this coddling community will accept is "we didn't have enough people". You will never teach people in this game to "l2p" as long as responsibility for failure is distributed among everyone rather than a few people who actually caused the failure. You have to find other means of teaching, like putting training wheels on because this community will not allow for negative reinforcement.

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@"Devildoc.6721" said:Aside from wearing gear that makes them do less damage than they're causing the enemy to be scaled up to (and there's really nothing that can be done about that), those other things are not really detrimental to group play aside from getting the player themselves killed.

I'm confused then by your original post: using point blank incorrectly is equally detrimental to pushing foes away using fear or illusionary wave or any other crowd control skill used improperly. People do them every bit as often as rangers misuses PBS. You keep pushing this one skill as if it's the only one out there causing issues, rather than you just happen to notice it more often.

You fire into a reflecting enemy and get killed, you go "oh, I did something wrong and got killed because of it, I should not do that in the future"

I can assure you that, no, some people do not do that. They complain that Feedback is overtuned... and continue to use projectiles. Or they don't even bother to figure out why they died.

... when knocking an enemy out of a ball of aoe during the last seconds of a timed event causes the event to fail, blame is distributed among everyone,How is that different for PBS from any other misused skill?

if not getting breakbars broken causes an event to fail you can't declare that it's the fault of people not bringing CC and learning a 3 year old mechanic (breakbars)Sure.Which is why I don't wait until after the event to complain. I accept that not everyone understands the game at the depth I do (just as I'm aware I don't understand it at the level of others).

Instead, I say something before the event. And I don't use jargon, such as "bring CC" because I accept that the type of person unfamiliar with a 3-year old mechanic is also unfamiliar with the abbreviations used to describe it. It doesn't always work, because some people aren't inclined to listen to a stranger and many aren't willing to swap skills. It does work often enough that I keep typing in /map or /say.

The result? Anet had to nerf Serpent's Ire to make it easy enough for zombies to do.

I doubt very much lack of CC was the only reason Serpent Ire was changed. There were lots of constructive criticisms aimed at that event; the amount of CC required was just one. It also was a critical event to a lot of people, making the issues with it fraught.

You'll notice that other CC-heavy bosses were not nerfed.

You will never teach people in this game to "l2p" as long as responsibility for failure is distributed among everyone rather than a few people who actually caused the failure.

The thing is: it can't possibly be "a few people" contributing to failure. It takes quite a lot for there to be insufficient CC or DPS. We know this because (a) a core group of people who know mechanics are almost always enough and (b) because explaining to people before an event starts is often all it takes, even though we can presume that very few will change their behavior on the fly.

You have to find other means of teaching, like putting training wheels on because this community will not allow for negative reinforcement.Negative reinforcement is largely a poor way to train, based on oodles of research out there.

Changing individual skills is not going to teach anyone how to use their skills better. It will, at best, just mean that you personally won't be annoyed by misuse of that particular skill. Instead, people will be misusing other skills... and you might not even notice, as you haven't noticed necros and fear or mesmers and GS5.


I'm not at all against ANet overhauling skills. There's no value in keeping things the way they are for the sake of the status quo.

However, I also think we need something more substantive than "people misuse the skill," because that applies to all sorts of things. Why change this one and not any of the others? What makes PBS so much more important to the community than anything else?

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@Illconceived Was Na.9781 said:

@"Devildoc.6721" said:Aside from wearing gear that makes them do less damage than they're causing the enemy to be scaled up to (and there's really nothing that can be done about that), those other things are not really detrimental to group play aside from getting the player themselves killed.

I'm confused then by your original post: using point blank incorrectly is equally detrimental to pushing foes away using fear or illusionary wave or any other crowd control skill used improperly. People do them every bit as often as rangers misuses PBS. You keep pushing this one skill as if it's the only one out there causing issues, rather than you just happen to notice it more often.

PBS is the most subtle out of those effects, and I can notice it, I would notice if a pink aoe wave came out and pushed multiple enemies away instead of a bow sound followed by a knockback on one mob. I'm not seeing pink aoe waves with a big obvious magical crashing sound or enemies running away with skulls over their heads. I am hearing bowshots, followed by a single enemy getting pushed back 400 units.

You fire into a reflecting enemy and get killed, you go "oh, I did something wrong and got killed because of it, I should not do that in the future"

I can assure you that, no,
some
people do not do that. They complain that Feedback is overtuned... and continue to use projectiles. Or they don't even bother to figure out why they died.

That can happen, but where people just ask for resses, but if people don't enable it and make dead people waypoint and run back they'll either learn, or spend a lot of time running back and not be a detriment to the group as a whole.

... when knocking an enemy out of a ball of aoe during the last seconds of a timed event causes the event to fail, blame is distributed among everyone,How is that different for PBS from any other misused skill?

Because a misused skill in most cases only affects yourself personally and has minimal effect to the rest of the group. A misused knockback affects everyone.

if not getting breakbars broken causes an event to fail you can't declare that it's the fault of people not bringing CC and learning a 3 year old mechanic (breakbars)Sure.Which is why I don't wait until
after
the event to complain. I accept that not everyone understands the game at the depth I do (just as I'm aware I don't understand it at the level of others).

Instead, I say something
before
the event. And I don't use jargon, such as "bring CC" because I accept that the type of person unfamiliar with a 3-year old mechanic is also unfamiliar with the abbreviations used to describe it. It doesn't always work, because some people aren't inclined to listen to a stranger and many aren't willing to swap skills. It does work often enough that I keep typing in /map or /say.

Almost all of the time, a handful of people that are capable of failing the event for the rest of the map don't listen, and afterwards, what are you going to do? Just go along with the baby coddlers saying "nice try, we'll get it for sure next time in 2 hours!"

The result? Anet had to nerf Serpent's Ire to make it easy enough for zombies to do.

I doubt very much lack of CC was the only reason Serpent Ire was changed. There were lots of constructive criticisms aimed at that event; the amount of CC required was just one. It also was a critical event to a lot of people, making the issues with it fraught.

You'll notice that other CC-heavy bosses were not nerfed.

Other CC heavy bosses didn't absolutely require CC in order to beat. If you fail to breakbar the matriarch wyvern, or either Shatterer, it doesn't fail the event, it just makes it take longer and in combination with low map DPS can cause a failure, but it does not cause a failure outright. It makes you miss out on achievements and if anyone mentuons failing to stop the attack, the coddling community says "so what? we still beat it, GJ everyone!"

Serpents ire required CC or it failed every single time because you could only damage them after a breakbar.

You will never teach people in this game to "l2p" as long as responsibility for failure is distributed among everyone rather than a few people who actually caused the failure.

The thing is: it can't possibly be "a few people" contributing to failure. It takes quite a lot for there to be insufficient CC or DPS. We know this because (a) a core group of people who know mechanics are almost always enough and (b) because explaining to people before an event starts is often all it takes, even though we can presume that very few will change their behavior on the fly.

Depends on tuning and scaling.

You have to find other means of teaching, like putting training wheels on because this community will not allow for negative reinforcement.Negative reinforcement is largely a poor way to train, based on oodles of research out there.

Changing individual skills is not going to teach anyone how to use their skills better. It will, at best, just mean that you personally won't be annoyed by misuse of that particular skill. Instead, people will be misusing other skills... and you might not even notice, as you haven't noticed necros and fear or mesmers and GS5.

As I pointed out, those 2 things have much more obvious signs, Everyone would notice those if they can notice a PBS. You keep referring to them when they're almost never used in the same situations as LB4. As I said, second most common is peak performance warriors using kick, but that's not that common. A key difference is, the fear does not cause damage, kick causes only token damage, point blank shot causes enough damage that people think it's good to use for sustained dps so they use it off cooldown because they think it improves dps.


I'm not at all against ANet overhauling skills. There's no value in keeping things the way they are for the sake of the status quo.

However, I also think we need something more substantive than "people misuse the skill," because that applies to all sorts of things. Why change this one and not any of the others? What makes PBS so much more important to the community than anything else?

Frequency of misuse. There's a lot of longbow rangers because it's an easy forgiving class to play, so you will encounter problems with bad ranger players far more frequently than GS mesmers or fearing necros. I play Necro quite a bit as of late, and I only use my fear on breakbars, because there's never a reason to use it as a part of a regular dps rotation. It does no damage unless I'm specced for conditions then it can cause some DOT.

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@Devildoc.6721 said:

@Taelac.7036 said:I don't like the idea of changing the knock back to a knock down, mostly because I do use PBS for its intended purposes in positioning enemies: farther away to get more out of Long Range Shot, into an AoE or the melee range of an ally, into a group or line with other enemies to take advantage of piercing or other multi-target or out of a defense/cap area to keep them from slowing that down. You can get some mob positioning control with pets, but its not nearly as precise or reliable, and often affects mobs you'd rather not move, so we'd pretty much lose all those abilities with a switch to knockdown.

This, I don't want to change the core functionality of the skill which is useful if used properly. I just want to discourage the improper use.

To be clear, I don't like the idea of nerfing what damage it does, either. The kind of player who uses it on cooldown is unlikely to notice that it's not doing any damage and learn not to use it that way, and the kind of player who uses it for its intended purpose shouldn't be punished for a mistake made by plenty of other classes and skills. Archetype rangers are already disadvantaged by the boon-sharing mechanics that force the choice between sharing in might stacks or getting the most out of our arrows; further damage reduction will hurt us much more than inexperienced players deciding not to use the skill will help.

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If that's true how come ele's aren't spamming gust off cooldown? Most staff eles pretty much camp fire attune unless they need heals I'll grant but there's use in air for static field (and the combo of static field + gust isn't bad). I think more people would recognize it as a dps loss and stop using it off cooldown.

Here's an idea. It does only token damage unless you interrupt a skill with it. Then it deals more damage than it does now. Kind of a savage shot/punishing shot mechanic. It'd reward strategic use and punish random use in a way every ranger could visually see.

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@Dadnir.5038 said:

@"Devildoc.6721" said:I want to assume that people are smart and will learn to use the skill properly if improper use is no longer encouraged by prior MMO conditioning and the assumption that skills do more damage than autoattacks.

The game is already 7 years and the issue with
point blank shot
exist since release. If you really don't want people to use it abusively in PvE, you have to really make it "point blank" which mean melee range (just like updraft or illusionary wave). If you want to just make PvE a less frustrating place to play, the knockdown effect is a simple fix.

Anet has stated before that skill functionality cannot be split between the modes. Only number splits are possible (base damage, power coefficient, cooldown, etc).

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@Shadowcat.2680 said:

@"Devildoc.6721" said:I want to assume that people are smart and will learn to use the skill properly if improper use is no longer encouraged by prior MMO conditioning and the assumption that skills do more damage than autoattacks.

The game is already 7 years and the issue with
point blank shot
exist since release. If you really don't want people to use it abusively in PvE, you have to really make it "point blank" which mean melee range (just like updraft or illusionary wave). If you want to just make PvE a less frustrating place to play, the knockdown effect is a simple fix.

Anet has stated before that skill functionality cannot be split between the modes. Only number splits are possible (base damage, power coefficient, cooldown, etc).

Still vote for a PvE focussed skill that will add immobilize to PBS and has some interaction with opening strike.

This way it won't be an issue in PvP and be better for group usage in PvE.

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