The Ace.9105

This mode is fun. However, it will never be for the casuals. It's long way to balance the game to a state where actual casual gameplay becomes viable if there's old players who have played this game as a job for the past 10 years existing in pvp (some of them have also done permanently bannable offenses but gotten off of those somehow). This game is way too fast and spammy for most of the gw2 player base outside of that 1% who do pvp and even for most of those players. In pve, it's even a challenge to do dps against golems so there's no hope vs real players who know their stuff. About the mode itself: Outside of obvious stuff out of prototype things like map polishing etc., I think the mode needs to have 5 man que and some kind of score based on how much the node has been pushed. One interesting thing could be a point cap of 500 where pushing to the end gives you full points but pushing the node gives you points like a node normally does in conquest so that in the end the one that pushes the longest, wins. If balance would favor casual playstyle even being viable, there could be more discussions about how to balance the mode in design but currently it's really hard to do because there's no "casual" existing in pvp at all.

None of the other classes except mechanist have a pet that deals extra damage on top of the max output damage of their character (used to be different in the past and part of ranger damage was on the pet but isn't anymore). In pve the pet basically never dies due to the 95% damage reduction and in wvw/pvp there's a counter mechanic of killing the extra damage output. That counter mechanic got removed for soulbeast and untamed too.

The amount of skills and the efficiency of added things doesn't matter here. The fact that classes don't get elite specs that could include things to a class got replaced by only weapons and the new mechanics are tied to those. Releasing ranger pets from an elite spec expansion is okay because of the elite spec that becomes the new ranger spec. Adding a weapon doesn't make it a new spec, it's only a weapon. As long as you tie something to the weapon, it's fine. I am 100% sure if revenant would exclusively get a new legend with a weapon expansion you'd be here complaining about it. After all, legends were always added with expansions.

That is the mechanics of added damage from the npc. Not sure if that's weakness tho. There are specs that don't have the extra damage coming from the pet on top of their rotation.

Pets do take 95% reduced damage in pve tho. In pvp you can reset the pet on soulbeast and untamed and killing the pet is a counter mechanic sometimes to the builds that are insanely strong usually.

Initial core class design is different, if ele only had 10 weapon skills over 4 attunements while wielding a spear then fine. Soto had no elite specs and instead of getting only 1 weapon, ranger got 2 weapons that gives them big form that has buffs and a skill reset so technically 10 skills.

It doesn't matter if what is added has a high impact or not, something has been exclusively added. Pet is a ranger class mechanic so how would you expand the other specs mechanics? Obviously adding a new legend would be a pretty big thing but adding a new f skills that you can pick for every class could be an option for example. Previously when rangers have been getting new pets it has been part of the elite specialization releases that are now absent and replaced by weapon releases that everyone gets but the pets are not tied to the new weapons and are available on every ranger spec regardless of the weapons in use.

Yes!

I don't enjoy playing as ranger but now it gets more for no reason at all while others just get new weapons. It feels like you should swap to ranger just cause it's the class that stays updated the most.

It's not bad necessarily. What is bad is that only ranger gets that and others don't.

In pvp the ranger does 100% and the pet deals 25% on top of that.

If a new pet summon would be tied to the weapon I'd be fine with it like the new warrior skills are tied to the spear mechanics.

I am not full of "core" mechanic, it's the other guy talking about pets being the core mechanic of ranger and not introducing new pets denies the core mechanic of ranger.

I do agree with this.

And that's tied to the new weapon which is fine since everyone else also gets the weapon. If you think ranger should get more pets should mechanist get a new mech then?