OGDeadHead.8326

Yes, seen that too. And F1 shouldn't even be possible to use unless the pet is in range. They sure got a lot of things to fix still...

Since ranger is not Mirage, it doesn't have to be the same. Half the times it bugs out as well, making it very clumsy to use. The time window should be extended.

Indeed. Simplify the hammer and be done with it. I don't like dual skillset at all. It feels like the weapon is working against itself, like so many other things with this spec. That way it should be a lot easier to balance as well.

Hammer skills: - They still all feel a bit too similar to each other. The leap should probably be changed to another skill with a shorter cd. - It seems it's too easy to not get the ambush skill to work correctly Ambush skills: - The time window when they are available should be increased - A clearer tell on the 1 skill when they are available would be nice Pets: - They should use their regular skills automatically when unleashed - Have the option so set pet skills to autocast - Enveloping Haze would be nice if the pet teleported back to the ranger and triggered the spore cloud there Cantrips: - Perilous Gift should grant the same effect to the pet - Exploding Spores are still way to hard to land the knock down effect General: - A visual tell on the character if it's in unleashed state (while the previous effect was a bit too much to some people, removing it completly wasn't the right way to go imho)

I'm not really sure. I really like the mixed approach for pet unleashed state, but how do you implement that on the regular skills? That's the main issue.

The issue with pet abilities and the lack of their autocast should be high priority for the next (?) beta imho. There are a lot of things going on with this new spec, and of course it's new to all of us, but still, the option to set pet abilities to autocast needs to be implemented for those of us that are not comfortable keeping track of each of their abilities, and this is especially true for the short cd ones. This spec has a lot to keep track of: are you or your pet in the unleashed mode? Are the ambush skills available now or how long was it since I used it last? And so on. Micromanaging every single pet ability feels like a bit too much for an old grump like me 😉 I don't want to see it go away, just allow players to choose.

Oh the joy, if that could have been an option for 'stow pet' instead...

I for one want to clarify - I too think the changes are good (well, let's try them out live to really see), but sill, the point made by Heimskarl Ashfiend above, and which I supported, imho is a valid one. Tbh, what we [seem] to get now i core ranger +++, instead of opting for a completly new way of approaching how to play this class. To each to their own, but personally, when I saw the release I was at first actually hoping for a worthy succesor to the bunny thumper, and as soon as I realized that's not going to happen, I was hoping for a true pet focused elite spec, as in, quite the opposite of Soulbeast. As for now, this spec is core+++. I'm pretty sure they are going to slap on some drawback, but imho it would have been better if the core gameplay and HOW you actually play this class would have been altered in a much more profound (and interesting) way.

Yes indeed. They could however have thought about a few options to have made this spec a bit more about the pets and their role. For example, have the three major traits actually be about boosting the pet, the middle row focused more on group support and the bottom row focused on the ranger. That's probably how I would have tried to go about it. Three very different styles, with the option to mix between them. For pets, they could have added things like gaining stability, transfer conditions to their opponent, gain evade frames when the ranger dodges, life stealing, reduce damage taken from conditions and 'splash' damage, and so on and on. But yeah, I get it. People hate being killed by 'ai', so there's that.

This, right here, is 100% true. They fell short of the mark to improve power and utility of the pet, so they decide to boost the ranger! Hilarious logic right there. The increase in utility I guess they think about when having access to all skills of the pet, fine, but like I and many others have said before, this will lead to more micromanagement to keep up with current efficiency of pets, in short, more work for the (almost) same benefit that we already have. Of course there are some really nice things that opens up with full control: - You can make sure that birds never again use the useless Quickening Screech - You can land that Tail Swipe when it's actually wanted - You can land the awesome Harmonic Cry when YOU want to (this pet skill is likely to get nerfed one way or another) - and so on But pets won't use their original skills in unleashed state at all (efficiency loss), and many will be hard to micromanage because of short cooldowns of skills (again, efficiency loss). * I'd like to remind the devs yet again - implement this: Pet Selection Screen

This is key. While the option to be able to control ALL attacks is good, I'm pretty sure that most players will find it to be fiddly and won't use it much, meaning a loss in effectiveness. See my post above, that's something that needs to be implemented (and in all honesty, it should have been implemented years ago, as a core feature).

Arguing that the velocity increase on longbow = dps increase is flawed, since it is not really measurable, unless longbow before that change missed ALL the time, and afterwards hits ALL the time. You could say it helps to keep dps up (or higher if you will), but unless my prior statement is true, you can't give it a fixed % increase value.

With the new option available to us to manage all pet skills ourselves, I for one would like the option to be able to set one or more skills to autocast, on a per pet based basis. Pretty much as show on the screenshot on the link below. Pet Selection Screen I also think this should be a core feature available to all ranger specs.

And when was that? Oh, you mean pirated games? Afaik, manuals for games were a thing even in the old C64 days...

I'd say that to some degree depends on whether you have your pet out or not.

I like this idea, in some form. I think that it should affect both ranger and pet. 10% on ranger I guess is ok, but for the pet I think they could up it to 15% at least (possibly higher), and evaluate how that would affect self sustain for the pets.

Actually, they do, but 90% of the time it's about nerfing the old to give way for the new. So I'm expecting Soulbeast to get nerfed even further to make the new spec look more interesting. That's the Anet way of doing things.

Hm, no. Just give them evade frames instead of a dodge roll, or it will be annoying for several reasons (interrupting big attacks, dps loss and so on).

Amen to that.

You nailed it pretty much. Unleashed pet not using their normal skills besides the autoattack have to be a dps loss. I think that the unleashed pet should have the special F1 and F3 abilities, but the F2 ability should be a boosted version of their normal F2. Just a few examples of "boosted F2" abilities, what they could be for the unleashed pets: Smokescale F2: Smoke Cloud + deal damage to enemies within range of the cloud Jacaranda F2: Jacaranda's Embrace + bleed damage River Drake F2: Lightning Breath + daze foes that are hit Tiger F2: Furious Pounce (grants fury) + bleed damage I hope you get the idea. Or, use the unleashed F2 in combination with the pets normal F2, that could also work.

When pet is in unleashed mode, it seems you can't trigger certain traits like "Beastly Warden" for example. Which of the unleashed pet skills is supposed to be the equal to the F2 pet skill?

Anet should be better at implementing what was wished for.

Indeed. For all I care, they could get rid of the hammer unleashed skills altogether, and keep only the "normal" skills (damage needs to improve then). Honestly, I think the whole Unleashed mechanic needs to go back to the drawing board, or remove the cooldown when switching (balance/remove switch traits). The mechanic feels counterproductive towards itself with the current implementation.

I play my ranger main 99% of the time I put into this game. I tried the Mechanist in PVE just now and holy kitten this thing rips through PVE content like a warm knife through butter. I almost don't have to even think about what I'm doing, I threw together a random build and tried it out - everything just melts with zero effort. Compared to our ranger elite profession, where you have to press a ton of buttons and switch between modes and micro manage pet swaps, pet skills, unleashed and so on so forth... in shorth triple the effort for less than half the benefit. OMG if this stays the way it is now! For pvp though, I'm not sure at all about the Mechanist, it may very well be too slow there?

Most fun with the Untamed so far: The teleports (both for pet and ranger)