HotHit.6783

Super Adventure Festival mate. If it's an April Fool's joke then it's absolutely in-season.

It has to be PvP examples of self rooting being good design? Fine. League of Legends: The ultimates of Nunu&Willump, Caitlyn, Jhin, Malzahar and Warwick. And if I have to give examples of other MMORPGs using self-rooting in their design: Final Fantasy XIV: Everything from Black Mage and all healers, Samurai's Midare Setsugekka. Those skills not having sufficient payoff is a fine complaint. But if play feel simply isn't irrelevant, then you wouldn't have made points about self-rooting making you unhappy and being finnicky for you to use.

It's a few reasons honestly. Spectre is pretty terrible at outputting might, especially with the nerfs to rot wallow venom. It also isn't a notable single target healer since all its single target is barrier. But consume shadows is CHUNKY and ranged targetted barrier can save teammates who don't like letting you heal them. Spectre's healing is more than enough for its subgroup if the group isn't terrible at mechanics and prior to the "bug" fix of last patch, it was able to compete with scourge on picking its group back up. Throw in good personal DPS and easy alacrity uptime and all your asking for is your subgroup to give might and quickness. Whereas Druid is asking for an alacrity and a quickness provider or exactly Boon Chronomancer, which is an extremely safe but extremely low DPS core. For the new strikes Spectre is perfect, especially Kaineng Overlook. Spectre struggles if it is the only healer for a team comp and is assigned to a subgroup, as consume shadows doesn't care if your subgroup is at full health. This hasn't been a problem, as every squad I've formed has players that are terrified of rolling with only one healer. Spectre is also trash at might uptime (but should provide perma alacrity, vigor, swiftness, fury and 3 might at minimum). It's far easier to splash group might across the other 4 players than it is to get both quickness and alacrity.

I wanted Bunny Thumper, we got... Well a very poor execution with the appropriate goal in mind. Untamed has been alright in PvP and it's great when I'm solo in PvE or completing DRMs because of the strike based cleave, boon strip and control. The hammer still feels too floaty, but I'm never getting Slash Kick Pounce back, so that's not a fight worth having. I'll be the first to admit I don't care to use Cantrips. As for Strikes, well, I'm playing Specter. It forms more group cores than Druid and more easily heals clown fiestas. But I'm going to wait for the Firebrand buffs on the CM strikes patch before I flip out over bad PvE balance decisions.

This simply isn't true. Or, I suppose, it's simply subjective making it an opinion and ultimately a decision point for the designers. Self imposed vulnerability is good game design and makes actions carry more weight. This makes your actions and decisions meaningful and more fun. Perhaps my opinion is just because I love Monster Hunter. As powerful as it would be, an Elementalist having free movement during Meteor Shower wouldn't feel good. Thousand Blades is the same.

Soulbeast also isn't following the usual rules of skill transfer and rather than get the rad as hell dash, we're getting the basic attack on a 5 second cooldown. White Tiger is fine, Rot Wallow has the same problem, Seige Turtle also gives skill 1 instead of 2 but it doesn't add the cooldown and it's super cool.

If your goal is healing and support, then it makes perfect sense. The problem is that Specter (and thief as a whole) has very low healing power scaling. Which means that Specter is likely better off using other stats so to have a niche over other professions. The fantastic vitality scaling means that there are situations you would still want Plaguedoctor in your build. For example, if your build is Ritualist stats with Runes of Tormenting, then you've overbought on Torment duration. But you can replace equipment with Plaguedoctor parts to trade the excess expertise for the next best stat for the build.

Depends exactly what you're looking to do in open world, but I would argue Ranger has the tools needed for whatever you're after. Most of open world doesn't require much thought, but to run through some common scenarios where there are notable decisons. Zerging The only thing that matters is tagging enemies, so you want to have ranged multitarget attacks or at least good mobility for melee cleaving. Sadly, this may be one of Ranger's weaker parts. Barrage is great but it's slow and piercing attacks can be very awkward. It's no Thief Shortbow/staff, Scholar Staff or Revenant Hammer. Untamed definitely will help with attacking large groups. Zerging a boss Nothing matters. Though Druid is particularly great for keeping the zerg alive, amping their damage and breaking defiance just like Raids. But United Legions Waystations, sheer numbers and Guardian being broken make that role kinda redundant. Soloing a boss Animal companions can trivialise some content and are wandering into chainsaws in others (literally in the case of the Labyrinthine Horror). The former is an obvious strength but the problem of the latter is solved with a Soulbeast. Defiance bars are one of the concerns for this type of content, though again it's been alleviated a lot by Ice Brood Saga masteries. Ranger is one of the best professions in the game for breaking them. Druid and Soulbeast give incidental tools, while Untamed's best builds seem like they will focus on spamming interrupts. Ranger also has great options for regenerating that aren't major losses in DPS as well as evasion on some weapon skills. Heart of Thorns Even these days the jungle is just super deadly if you aren't prepared. Greatsword/Longbow for clearing trash/bursting veterans, traps to let condi builds quickly clear trash, breaking bars, good regen and a permanent aggro magnet by your side... Again, all the same strengths I've been mentioning. Ranger has a lot of room to tweak builds to better fit what you're comfortable with, a soulbeast might opt for a Boar, Pig or Siamoth rather than the classic Iboga for better control, sustain and/or a stun break.

Hi hi! I didn't exactly make a thief for End of Dragons, but I've been prepping her for play on-launch since Spectre was revealed. Still, a neglected alt I made for box-ticking is practically a new character when I've mostly played Ranger and Engineer this whole time. Others might not love it, but I've played Druid for years and nothing has frustrated me more over this time than people on low health running away from me like my rejuvenating tides are some kind of buzz saw. Which is to say, I'm most excited by the ability target the fools who most need my help. My biggest concern with Spectre is the scaling and the barrier/healing ratio. 2000 healing power will more than double your numbers on Druid, but with Spectre some skills struggle to get a 20% increase. So... There's no reason not to build for damage and it can be a bit awkward to try and spot heal.

It's unlikely unless the new pets do something egregious when in the stomach of a Soulbeast. Even if I look at it from the horribly cynical perspective that the expansion must power creep on what we have so it sells a lot of copies, Ranger is the one profession whose Elite Spec isn't bound to that. All Rangers will have the new pets to consider. So even if Untamed is bad, then we'll still want (as a completely made up example) the Reef Lurker because it can provide 10 target alacrity. A nerf or two likely won't kick Soulbeast out of WvW any more than it already is. For that exact reason I don't know why they would target nerfs at Ranger in WvW. Untamed brings something distinct from Soulbeast in WvW and PvP, so there isn't any need to carve out a new niche for both.

If I've understood the patch notes correctly, then the 3s window more than enough. The Ambush only activates when you Unleash Ranger, which means you are in full control of the effect triggering. In other words, the problem Quickdraw had is likely not relevant. A shorter duration is fine, just like with Mirage's Ambushes. The problem with the shared cooldown is caused by the Unleash swap cooldown being too low. If they're once every 20 seconds, the 10 second cooldown would cause that to line up. With the current cooldown at 1 second, a tracker around skill 1 or the Unleash button like others described would be nice. But having to keep track of too many hidden cooldowns is nothing new for this game.

I also really like the evades on skill 1, but I can understand why it was changed to a small endurance refresh. It isn't completely a downgrade either because of dodge traits. If you asked me whether I would use Greatsword from Launch or the current version, I'd be taking the current version every time. The much heavier focus on Maul (and vuln rather than bleed to focus on being a power weapon) gives the weapon such a strong identity. If that means it had to lose some extraneous power of the Crippling Throw, it's well worth it. Though the actual reason for losing Crippling Throw was probably because having two flipover skills with completely different functions dependant on whether you've blocked while they're available probably feels awful. Not to say I don't still find myself trying to throw my sword.

Accidentally posted twice.

That's thoughts too. It'll depend on how exactly the unleashed Ambush skills function. I expect the devs are intentionally overcorrecting. Our feedback made it clear they were too conservative with the design initially and the Untamed suffered from 3 or more separate trade-offs as a result. Some of those (mainly the pet controls) seeming to be unintended based on the design direction. With their design approach this time making the most of community feedback, I trust they're going to use our feedback this time around to bake in an trade-off. I just hope we get one that affects gameplay in a clean way like Soulbeast losing pet swap and not just lowering numbers like Druid.

Why is there only one option for the Slot skills? That just makes your poll extremely biased for that. I don't think Cantrips need to interact with unleash, but the skill type as a whole has no clear direction. I don't think making them glyphs is a good solution. In my opinion, the Unleash Ranger needs to have an intrinsic effect regardless of build or further traits. With the current design, there is an argument for only unlocking the first 4 traits of Untamed and never unlocking Vow of the Untamed or the further cantrips/grandmaster traits/trait options. It is a poor argument, but because Vow of the Untamed is a trade-off to your stats dependant on your mode you can't disable, there is an argument to not unlocking it so you don't suffer those side-effects and giving you the freedom to swap who's unleashed without hindrance. In practice, that's mostly an increased damage taken penalty while the Ranger is unleashed, since Ferocious Symbiosis mostly counteracts the strike damage dealt reduction of unleashing your pet. But hopefully my point is clear there. It's possible for Unleash Ranger to have no intrinsic effect on any build that lacks the hammer. Giving unleashed skill variants for the non-hammer weapons is just the logical conclusion. On the stream they mentioned they were considering changing the skill 1 of the other weapons. I think that would be enough and minimize the extra work, but unleashing the "basic" might not be the most interesting idea. Longbow gets inverted damage scaling? Greatsword... Gains something different to Endurance on the third hit? Axe now bleeds? Shortbow now is stronger from the front (unlike the rest of the skills). It would probably just end up being "damage numbers go up". The other one I think is reasonable on the surface is unleashing all disable skills. But if we remove Hilt Bash, Counterattack Kick, Point Blank Shot, etc. then we remove almost all ways to trigger the Unleashed Ranger half of Debilitating Blows and Enhancing Impact. I would replace two skills on any given skill bar, one for each hand or two on two-handed weapons. Unleashed Barrage for example could block projectiles with the rain of arrows instead of cripple and Unleashed Point Blank Shot could have a longer cast time and deal devastating damage instead of a knockback. Sword could replace skill 1 with the old Slash Kick Pounce, gaining higher potency to compensate the loss of flexible movement (because I will never stop missing Kick and Pounce). Unleashed Bonfire could have lower base burning duration, but gain an overall increased duration against disabled targets or make additional strikes against targets disabled within the circle. I think a more curated approach is what's needed.