latlat.4516
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Posts posted by latlat.4516
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On 3/28/2024 at 3:27 AM, Coldtart.4785 said:
If sustain is going to be so strong that 4 support 1 damage
Delete any skill with a power coefficient over 1.5 and poof 4/1 are not runnable anymore.
Like someone said on a discord when everyone started the 4/1 meta: "this always has been the most efficient way to play. Having one dps able to do a 20k sure-hit has always been more efficient than having 2 dps that can't go over 10k in one burst".
Other, less boring solutions, include (re)adding big boon rip bursts to the game.
As for the "solution" of nerfing supports, it's actually only a solution because the 4/1 meta happened at the same time as anet nerfed the old scrapper and slightly buffed other supports. Top guilds were already running that comp before the chrono buffs, which only allowed it to be played by anyone. I'm very afraid that if you nerf support abilities too much, you will lock the game into having 4 /1 comps and nothing else.
The truth behind people running 4/1 is that it is the only solution to have everything a support can offer at your disposal (strong heal, barrier, stability, aegis, cleanses, resistance, rezzes, alacrity, quickness, protection, fury, might, ritual of the great dwarf,...). Frankly, you could stack 3 supports and you would still miss at least 1 of those... which means that if the opposing zerg has them all, it is at a tremendous advantage and will probably win.
The point of imbalance in there is that the same thing does not apply to damage. One player is enough to ditch out enough quantities of damage to compensate for having 4 supports.
So, in conclusion :
- if you reduce support without changing damage powerlevel, you just worsen the situation (maybe you will just force people to not go melee anymore since it will be death sentence... but pirateship metas are the worst kind of metas we've had in this game so far)
- if you reduce support and the damage power level of the same ratio, then you actually did not change the situation
- if you reduce power level and not support, you will give the possibility for people to make "pacifist blobs" that just can't be kkilled but won't be able to get kills unless 2-manning
So that leaves it at : reducing both support and damage, but reducing damage slightly more in order for a 3/2 group to be able to kill 4/1 and for 4/1 not being able to pass through the support abilities of a 3/2. This will also force guilds to make choice about what support aspect they want to leave out (since 3 supports can't really cover all aspects).
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On 3/9/2024 at 10:14 AM, Revolution.8425 said:
I need opinions
well ok
On 3/9/2024 at 10:14 AM, Revolution.8425 said:DPS can be high but the rotations are tiring and after a point feel unrewarding for the amount of fingerwork they require
not so much compared to any other classes
On 3/9/2024 at 10:14 AM, Revolution.8425 said:The specs in general have a low HP pool especially the Vindicator whereas switching to more defensive stats reduce the dps by alot
The only 2 classes that have a bigger hp pool than rev are warrior and necro... I don't know from what content you are talking from, but you should probably have a talk with your healers
On 3/9/2024 at 10:14 AM, Revolution.8425 said:Renegade utilities are slow, uninspiring and only good for spending energy to take advantage of Charged Mists trait
well they've been reworked since (and it was already annonced when you made this post).
On 3/9/2024 at 10:14 AM, Revolution.8425 said:Many abilities from the Shiro, the Demon and the Dwarf are NEVER used because of the exorbitant cost of resource and often along with the fact that they offer near nothing in PvE or PvP.
2 remarks on that note :
1. Dwarf utilities are all used in different settings. You litterally have a CC (which you are expected to use), the best stab utility in the game (which you are expected to use) and an upkeep skill (which you are expected to use for energy managment) (which also happens to be the best maintained damage skill for revenant in a WvW setting). The elite is the only known counter to the current WvW zerg meta. Demon is more niche (but it's not far from being the only viable option for cRev), and when you equip it, you are using all its abilities. For Shiro, you're either using IO or the rest of its kit. AAAND I hope you're not using impossible odds in PvP...
2. When you compare revenant as a whole to other classes as a whole, the amount of skills you don't use on other classes is far higher. You just don't notice it because you don't slot them. And since revenant has access to two times (3 times for vindicator) the utilities of other classes, I'd say being forced to take 1 or 2 that you will only use in specific situations is a correct trade-off.
On 3/9/2024 at 10:14 AM, Revolution.8425 said:CC outside of the staff 5 is nonexistent in the class
- dwarf chains
- demon pull
- ventari knockdown
- shiro elite (with stab rip on shiro if you play herald)
- glint elite
- kala has a daze
- axe 5
- hammer 5
- short bow 5
I mean, I didn't even count sources from the conditions, and rev applies a lot of them
Let's not forget the fact that revenant has the brutality trait, which can ensure a CC to pass against ennemies using stability if your timing is right
On 3/9/2024 at 10:14 AM, Revolution.8425 said:Sorry but the hammer is a complete waste of time to use. Idk what kind of use the designers found for the weapon...
Best ranged spike damage non-projectile weapon, maybe after mesmer's greatsword. I mean, this has been the go-to dps weapon in pirate ships metas from 2015 to EoD (with a few months of scourge-based pause in 2017)
Conclusion
Revenant is maybe not the "best class" ... but it's clearly not the "worse class". You clearly have all the tools at your disposal to do any content, be it PvE, WvW or sPvP.
What I can say maybe is that in competitive modes, rev asks you to be able to understand what your opponent is able to do to 1v1 them, just because you have a lot more planning to do with energy management and the fact that all your tools are not always directly at you disposal. Which means it's a very rewarding class to play in those modes.
In the end, you can find comments like you own in every class profession :
- thief and elem and guard will complain about low health bars, and probably other design choices specific to their classes
- rangers will complain about pet design that limits all specs except soulbeast
- inge will complain about being a flipper ball class in terms of balance
- war will complain about the design of some skills on greatsword, about the state of berserker (despite it being the only consistently played war e-spec)
- mesmer will complain about all their utility skills being niche
- necro will complain about their e-spec not being the ultra-top dps in every encounter
I mean, you can take it from this list that the game is in a very bad shape, and in some ways it is (just look at the WvW zergs). Or you can look at it as each class having a design flaws which comes as a trade-off from their strenghts -- which we all tend to forget about when talking about these topics.
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2 hours ago, Nassa.2175 said:
Ashes of Creation will be doing this
AoC is being designed around this. Your idea will just have the effect of spreading the whole WvW population from 5x4 maps to at least the double of that. Not mentionning most PvE maps are just not designed for competitive encouters.
2 hours ago, Nassa.2175 said:Let players earn that wvw map instance by map completing it in a pve only instance (account unlock)
straight up a bad idea.
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13 hours ago, Bastrii.3047 said:
Druid is not broken in output. Basing balancing decisions around non-essential numbers is how you butcher a spec. The overwhelming majority of heals that Druid produces is from passive healing through Regeneration. If you remove Regeneration from whatever healing numbers you have for all professions churning out heals, the healing difference is noticeable. But other professions provide consistent damage negation, auras, and barrier to compensate for this. If you nerfed Druid's healing potential to match any other profession, then their viability plummets dramatically.
Regeneration is not a make-all-break-all boon. In PvE, PvP, and WvW, regeneration will not save you if you have 2000 HP left. You should realize that actual health numbers are not as essential as how many actual hits you can take before you are dead.
If you have 22,000 HP, that could be a few dozen hits or several depending on the enemy's output. In raids and PvE, this is usually 3-6 hits, in PvP and WvW, it's better to track this as actual survival time due to attack speed variations and how professions operate/how conditions work. Regeneration does not restore a hit every second in PvE. It takes several seconds for a player to restore enough health through regeneration alone to negate an extra hit. In PvP and WvW, Regeneration may give you an extra 0.1 second alive every second it's active. Considering how most time to down is under several seconds without dodging or defensive play, this is entirely negligible healing. If you are being focused without defensive abilities, your health bar could vanish in as little as four seconds. An extra 0.4 seconds will not save you.
But boons like Protection give you an effective +33% flat health against Power damage, and Resolution grants the same effect for Condition Damage. Barrier is also affective health. Blocking through Aegis is affective health. Blocking through actual blocking is affective health. Other specs offer these in heaps and spades. Druid does not. Druid offers healing. Not barrier regeneration. Not resolution. They have great condi cleanse, but they also can't really reduce condi damage otherwise.
Druid is built around raw numbers. Removing the raw numbers aspect would be similar to removing Barrier generation from Scourge. You would be destroying the niche of the class without cause. Players have a misconception on what provides actual survival to a player, and we don't have tools to really show survival.
If you want to see the actual effectiveness of a healing spec, we need better tools to see this in-game. We need to be able to track effective damage reduction and time until death, not raw healing numbers. One of the only ways we can track actual effective healing output is through damage field testing on the Raid Golem, and the numbers and cooldowns aren't the same in this scenario. So we don't have actual tools to track survival in-game. Add ons are also ineffective for tracking survival, as they only provide raw data.
If we want to check actual survival rate, we would need a couple people to painstakingly get together on WvW, and have them wail on someone while a healer tries to keep them alive. The healer would need to be in actual gear set ups and know what they're doing. The player should be in average gear and an adventurer profession. The other players should have similar, average DPS outputs in WvW.
To perform the test, you would need at least 3 enemy attackers, one player on the healer's team to serve as a target dummy, and one person who has access to all support specs - or multiple people with access to all support specs, and knowledge on how to use them. You would need to make sure that the enemy players fight with the same rotation each and every time. You would also need a scenario where there is at least five allied players clumped together to test group healing and survival. This would be the only way to test actual healing effectiveness. Any other tool, calculator, or other method would no yield useful results. You need a similar scenario every time.
While you are mostly right in what you are saying here, some corrections though :
- the first healing spot for druid is not regen, it's glyph of the stars (even in normal version). If you play with karakosa and stone spirit, it's in the third position. And if you combine all AC abilities together, it's even the fourth spot.
- druid has a bit of utility outside of raw numbers nonetheless, since it has better stealth save than scrapper, and for smaller scaled content can stop stealth save *on target* with sic'em (which one of the 3 abilities in the game able to do this, albeit the least powerfull of those 3, but the only one on a viable support class)
- you don't test actual survivability in your scenario, even less in the current meta. The question behind survivability is not so much a question of "time before downstate" than a question of leeway. No support in the game have the ability to counter a bomb. It was not the case during the herald/scourge Era, nor during the zerker era and much less the case in the holosmith meta we have now. What you should mesure is the ability for your dps to be able to evade the bombing. All other damage is litteraly irrelevant, and if It were to kill someone is more indicative of the level of the support player than anything else.
That's even the reason I also said you are mostly right. The main aspect you should look to see if a class is "broken" or not support-wise is its ability to provide resistance, aegis, stability, stealth, quickness and alacrity in real situations.
While you can say that "health is a timer" in most mmos where the ratio damage/health of players is being pushed towards the health, it's not really relevant in GW2. Any average players can reach numbers where they can kill any class in less than 4 seconds, and if their target is being healed I guess it can go up to 10 seconds at most. And that's only using mean numbers you would find with something like a ranger barrage - which is a known bad profiled damage skill. Most of the time, you will find yourself against an holosmith's overdrive or a zerker's greatsword burst that will just one-shot you. No timer there, you just didn't dodge when you should have. This is the real reason druid is not as op as arc dps shows.
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If you are talking about WvW support, I'll ask you to consider this :
- auramancer has about he same cleansing potency as druid, with a bit less flexibilty but more precision its usage
- hvindi has the same healing potency as druid, a bit less cleansing power but can maintain resistance 100% of the time, which is more effective than any cleansing capacity
- the weak point of hChrono is that it is on the weak side healing-wise (because it does not have the riffle yet) , but otherwise can litteraly replace any other support class (including firebrand) and still keeping leeway to have additional utility.
- hScourge. Barrier, alacrity, and transfusion go brrr...
I'm not saying that druid is not an excellent class that has high numbers. But keep in mind that druid has near 0 resistance (7 seconds over 30), which is the current meta defining boon since we are playing with 1 dps per sub and you better make sure weakness and blindness does not affect its damage even for a fraction of a second.
Also arcdps is fine, but you need to critically think about it as well. Druid dispelling is strong phases where a pulsating AoE can tick multiple times (during crosses or in Chinese gameplay for example), which are situations that are enabled because there are a lot of hvindi and hchrono. So druid basically leeches its own numbers because classes with a bit less over cleanse potential allows for the dps to bathe in enemy bombing.
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On 1/25/2024 at 9:05 PM, frazazel.7501 said:On 1/25/2024 at 8:57 PM, aymnad.9023 said:
I am still strongly opposed to a firearm for ranger and interested in a magic /druidic one. A physical one like the incoming offhand mace is fine even if not the most interesting.
Fortunately, you are already getting this, and gaining a weapon that doesn't suit your class fantasy will not take away any existing option you already have.
The only reason you would find to want a weapon other than class fantasy are gameplay related... and ranger certainly does not need another projectile weapon in its kit . We already have LB (power), SB (condi), axe (mid distance both power and condi), half of OH dagger,m and half of OH axe, half of torch (the three of them having one melee and one projectile), which makes for half of the ranger weapons with at least half their kits based upon projectiles.
Not mentioning that often when you ask yourself if a class need a weapon for a gameplay related reason, you often wonder "what weapon can fit this niche that I want to cover ?" Rather than "what niche can I find for this weapon that I want ?". If both questions are fine to you, I hope you're not the kind of person to complain about fan service in other games.
Seriously, the only reason I see anyone would want a riffle on ranger is because they want a WoW hunter fantasy (TM) in GW, and don't want to understand that the day it will be delivered is the day anet stopped making an effort to fit marketed content of new paid expansions with the boundaries they set themselves.
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22 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:
Even in its prime 3 with siege could not hold 50 at bay.
yeah, and the game is better like that.
22 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:even before the boon age you could stand in do by simply using PVT
the time people used PVT gear was before the siege rework, when a single siege weapon could go far over 100k damage (maybe the AC could only go up to 72k over all its pulses), and even then with the knowledge of the game we have now I'm not sure we would have used PVT gear at all anyway.
Furtermore, and if memory serves well, there was at most 1 year between the siege rework and the introduction of minstrel gear, which rendered completly pointless the use of statistics like PVT. Your "before the age of boon" at most refers to this time frame, and it's a time when having boons or not was the difference between random pick ups and organized guild raids.
23 hours ago, TheGrimm.5624 said:Course in those days players were asking that PVT gear be removed since they couldn't be one shot like Zerk on Zerk could be.
Or maybe, just maybe, players finally understood that spezializing offers better results than every one being tanky.
But it has nothing to do with the matter at hand, which is "is boonball the worst meta yet ?", the anwser being clearly "no, even if it has not enough counters in the current balance".
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16 hours ago, apoko.5246 said:
what server was it that you had to wait in a queue, as stated only top 2 or maybe 3 servers get a queue at the weekend which yestersday was
Augury Rock on EU, litteraly a mid tier server
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11 hours ago, apoko.5246 said:
Really anyone actually play WVW the servers are dead majority of the time, only a couple of servers have queues, but sometimes in the week you can have less than 10 ppl on a map that is bloody stupid. As stated even if they merged 3 servers still not enough. The population on WVW has crashed
you say that, but I had to wait 15 minutes for a queue to drop yesterday in order to be able to play, it was not even prime time yet and all 4 queues were up.
Maybe you're just on server that was deserted recently due to a guild leaving ?
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19 hours ago, Kranlor Greyhelm.8417 said:
Why? Why is that reasonable? Why is the counter to a boonball another boonball?
Why shouldn't a boonball be beaten by 10 spread groups of 5? Why shouldn't 10 groups of 5 be beaten by a cloud? Why shouldn't a cloud then be beaten by a boonball? If you don't have some kind of choice, some kind of balance, something that encourages reactive, adaptable play, then ANET is basically saying "get in a boonball or kitten you".
I don't want to play in a boonball, I don't find that fun. If ANET persists with the "boonball or die" philosophy, eventually players like me will get the message and abandon WvW entirely.
I said "the expection is to counter a zerg using a zerg". Did not speak about boon balls. And if you're making that remark, then you clearly missed the point of my message. The point of that particular sentence is that it is a choice that I find reasonnable to not allow 3 players on siege to stop 50 players from playing. Nothing more.
The reason I spoke about the boonball earlier with my comment is that I stand on my point that I prefer boonballing to pirateshiping, but also that I also would prefer it they sped up a bit the fights as long as we stay in a melee meta. And doing that requires one thing : un-nerfing the boonrip.
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18 hours ago, urd.8306 said:
Pirate Ship was way more fun than Boonball, because things died and you had to be on the move to dodge the hammer. Now it's sitting, pulling and watching grass grow, while you are full protected from projectiles and even if you see a downstate it gets pulled back into zerg by Minstrel Scourges.
In pirate ship, 2/5th of the squad had something to do while the rest sit and watch just in case the ennemy would be bored with kitting and would decide on doing a stealth bomb more or less skillfully, resulting in your zerg just all backpedaling for 18 seconds. I don't call that "fun".
At least melee-range metas do require you to be very reactive, to know the difference between 240 and 450 range and actually needs you -and your support- to find your keyboards. The triple support compositions we have today is also a result of melee skills being tendancially more dangerous, meaning you need less dps players to generate downstates and more supports to survive. Also currently, engaged zergs have a harder time to disengage, which means that if you decided to go in-fight you have to commit. There's not as much of this "back and forth" that was just not fun.
Again, the fact that reacting supports, especially the chronomancer and the vindicator are so strong due to the boonrip being low in the current meta is the problem. But I prefer that over the time when you just stacked dps scourges and that was it.
8 hours ago, Rezzet.3614 said:simple solution would be rebalancing Siege , my biggest gripe with boonball meta is how boonballs can facetank 40 pieces of Siege at once, ontop of enemy attacks and still come out ontop if the enemy blob isnt as large or as coordinated , maybe make Ac's 5 skill pulse boon strip , lower 4's poison shot strike damage and reduce its cooldown so it can deny heal spam to a degree , simple solution right there
The conscious choice behind the balancing here is that you need a zerg to counter a zerg. Which is kind of a reasonable expectation.
1. if you can use 40 sieges, then you actually have the better option of engaging yourself rather than arrowcarting the f* out of your ennemies. Siege shouldn't be the most efficient course of action if you stack enough that you need a zerg to operate all of them.
2. Siege is mainly used in order to discourage groups to attack structure if they are not organized enough. The max I'd excpect out of siege is to slow down organized groups, not stop them. If you want that, you can still go and see how siege is done in Warhammer RoR and how castle sieges are about 5 people doing a QTE while the 45 other are just staring at their screen 50 meters back, because if the ennemy decides to use the oil they just one shot the whole zerg.
3. Adding a boon rip on a high cooldown for arrowcarts may be a good idea, though (btw, you can still strip the stab with the 2nd skill of the shield generator)
4. Poison won't reduce much healing if it's cleansed.
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Not saying the boon ball meta is good, but I disagree it's the worse one yet. Pirate ship scourge was boring AF. At least now, melee uptime is high, which I find far better.
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Tested it with our guild (WvW-oriented).
I don't know for PvE, but this weapon just is not supportive enough on bladesworn or berserker, and makes spellbreaker feel a worse version of greatsword scourge (heal or power).
I don't know the tooltip is incorrect or if there's a bug, but it indicates "3 unblockable" in WvW and only provide one per target (is 3 in PvE). I do admit that only one single unblockable in WvW, combined with the fact that the effect only procs on ally-targeting, makes the weapon really meh/won't use-tier. I still wouldn't use it in blobs -only in small scale- anyway, but I do admit I don't see much use for the weapon as currently. I could even stand a much higher cooldown, in exchange for more stacks.
The effects of the second skill are... how should I say... underwhelming ? At least make it a leap finisher, or something, because except moving, we don't get much from using it.
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So, we just finished our tests with my guild. For context, we are mainly WvW players and are seeing the weapons from this point of view. We did not exactly tests numbers yet.
The ranger weapons are about the only ones for which we don't have concerns about their real viability.
Both the dual masses and the mass/WH seem to be karakosa-compatible, which is actually more than enough to turn any weapon support-oriented. If I could make my chirstmas whishlist, I'd maybe ask for the condition-removal on the fourth skill to affect ally as well (even if when you only apply damage) and the heal on the second skill to become a barrier. But hey, good enough without that.
Also, thank you for not making the fifth skill static
(maybe the fifth skill on rev's shield next time ? :p). This was THE thing I was afraid of.Edit
I'll also add that I actually did not try to proc that force of nature buff, just used the mass for double-blasting with WH. I'm not really sure that buff is practical currently, as it requires too much time to build. I really hope it will either be subject to better quality of life or won't be taken into account when balancing the weapon effects
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8 minutes ago, Exo.2143 said:
Exactly, there are also both discord and ingame screenshots from those servers confirming that they are doing it on purpose
Funny, I have screenshots from AR discord that say the exact opposite. Maybe FSP is doing it on purpose, I don't know.
As long as you don't provide the so-called proof from both discord, I suggest people to take this message with a grain of salt
EDIT : and by "proof of match manipulation", I mean message where people say they target equal score in order to keep UW in T5. Not messages where people ask to "come play to even the score" because they don't want to be demoted.
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1 hour ago, Solene.3067 said:
It would be wise for ArenaNet to improve their algorithm to get better balanced matchups
your situation has about nothing to do with algorithm or match ups
There was a beta, the tiers were randomly assigned afterwards. You got in a situation where the 2 last servers above are not able to win against each other, for particular reasons (for example, the fact that French servers have much less activity during day time in summer, which means their ppt is not up to par to what they have to face). Which means that the current system's way of balancing teams -tiers- is not functionning properly as it should.
The only "algorithm" you have in there is the world linking, and at this point it's pretty much proven they are deciding on it manually. And honestly, who can blame Anet on that ? you have 15 teams to make and oddly 27 servers to make them with. You don't make a complex Lego construction with duplo pieces.
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I confirm Augury Rock and Far Shiverpeaks were tied for 2 weeks, which locks the t5 match up
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29 minutes ago, Demaria.3057 said:
nobody asked for alac scourge.
you are wrong sir, sadly. Scourge players asked for alac on scourge, and they got it. Maybe next time players will finally understand that all their dreams should not be reality.
30 minutes ago, Demaria.3057 said:Some class unique boons like alac or quickness should be exclusive to some classes and not all. this threatens the identify and uniqueness of ALL classes and specs.
Makes me think you actually did not follow last year's "balance philosophy". To sum up, the exclusiveness of those two boons specifically created problems with squad building, and jailed people to play classes they did not want to play, and countless friends of mine quit the game during the PoF era because of this specifically. Giving classes access to group-enabler boons is not a problem for "identity" as long as this boon is integrated in the gameplay of the spec you give it to.
There's really a problem with the way some players see the concept of "class identity". The class identity has two components in this game : theme and class mecanic. The rest is not hardlined into it, can be touched upon, and boons are not class mecanics, they are a standarized system for player-coop interactions.
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On 5/29/2023 at 1:34 AM, Arheundel.6451 said:
Even as full minstrel ...druid support still lags behind other support specs by 100x miles, which also has access to actual DPS that doesn't disappear as soon as more than 2 people show up to face your team, I still have to see a single commander in the whole game to drop anything to favour even a single druid....taking druid in your 50 man zerg is more of a charity act than actual necessity
Support druid out cleanse any other viable support class in the game (the only other class that can rival with it is tempest).
I agree for 50 men zergs. The thing is nowadays, if you bring any other support than a vindicator, you're shooting yourself in the foot. Any argument you can make up to exclude druid, you can make for any other healing spec in the game compared to vindicator.
But when "zergs" go below 30 men, coms can actually find very high value in druids. Scrapper is only better than druid in fights that are less than 10 seconds long -heal or cleanse metric- and bring the same utility. Tempest is better at healing -and has a rez- but is just a bit better than scrapper at cleansing, don't offer smoke fields and much less projectile denying ability from the moment and control if you don't play staff (if you play staff, you're worse than scrapper at cleansing - which is still enough but is not at the level of druid) and the druid is actually using the quick draw correctly.
My guild -20 men- played 3 scrapper and 1 tempest until a month ago. We started testing with 1/2 druid - 0/1 tempest and 2 vindicators, and we won't go back anytime soon. Actually, we also tested a bit with double supports to use more reapers in the dps slots, and found out groups with a druid didn't need it as long as the druid was a bit carefull with its cooldowns. Which I agree is not your every day Joe.
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18 hours ago, ventress.4879 said:
ng for Zerg stacking, either Druid or Stance Soulbeast
actually you should have both : druid if your comander has a firebrand to spare on you, stance share if you're put in the "no stab group".
Also, please note that SHSB/immobeast was a niche dps build up until some months ago. Now, it's just a sub-par herald, itself falling from grace slowly due to vindicators
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41 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:
A lot of the problems with pets could be fixed without turning pets into a copy of other classes
I'm not against this idea. Do you have any idea on how anet could do such fixes ? I'm interested in hearing them.
41 minutes ago, Zyreva.1078 said:(also being a bit more selfish and less grp oriented kinda fits the archetype
it may fit the archetype, but the idea is actually something that was ok in 2012. The thing is that ranger builds are becoming less and less relevant in any situation of competitive play as soon as you have more than a 1v1 involved. And even in 1v1 situations, it does not especially shine. Soulbeast is not even an option anymore in the 15v15 format. And druid is barely accepted in these format because of sic them.
I can see one e-spec being more "open world oriented". But saying the whole class is doomed to solo play because it fits the theme is kinda hard to accept.
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Introduction & disclaimer(s)
This is a post I'm thinking about making since the reveal of untamed. I've been really on and off about it because I'm not that sure this is the place for a peacefull and constructive discussion, but since we just got a near confirmation that the probability of having a new e-spec any time soon is low and there's a very small changes they will work on reworks, I think it's now or never.
Firstly, I'm not a professional game designer and me being a professional developper does not give much knowledge about it either. This post has not the objective to roast Anet's design choices/launch a drama or even claiming "something needs to be done". Game design is not a set of skill you can learn by merely playing a lot, even if it gives out intuitions. What I want to start is an open discussion about the design behind the ranger class. Read this more as an essay than a "rant", please.
As for my familiarity with the class, I'm at about 5k hours played in GW2, 3k8 of those on a ranger.
You'll see that I'll speak about some vague" concepts like "fun" and "interactivity". These concepts or often used for any reason and with a vague sense of what they mean. In the context of this post I'll be using them like this :
- "interactivity" : game mechanic that is based around the player actually pressing a button/making a choice and the player seeing the effect of their choice occuring in the game.
- "fun" : I define a 'fun mecanic' a an interactive mecanic that rewards and punish the player depending on the choices they made in a certain situation.
The base idea of the ranger
The base idea behind ranger is something akin to a wanderer using the environment to overcome challenges. To represent that, anet choosed to give it something that was unique to them until the mechanist : a permanent pet. We also have traps, survival abilities and summons as supporting tools (most of which actually date back to GW1). This makes the class unique since outside of elite specs, ranger must use summons to give significant support to their party - and it's the only class in this situation. All other summon core classes can choose (or not) to use their summon in group content. Ranger does not.
The limitation of summoning/pets
Well, you now might have an idea of where I'm trying to get : there is a massive problem with "summon" gameplay interactivity and the ranger is basically forced into it for group content by its core design. We'll touch on the subject of elite specs later.
While the "spirit" skill set might be a correct design choice to control "good and bad choices" (meaning = to give options you want players to use only in PvE), it still carries the limitation of actually locking the ranger out of group utility outside of PvE golem-boss situations, especially if no other group utility is provided. And outside of these spirits, core ranger utility options do not offer much utility/terrain control... except pet skill.
The pet current implementation is an aging idea from the early 2010's. It might be interesting for new and casual players as it provides a mecanic that can buffer early "challenges" but by the end of the leveling journey and when you start to do more serious content (like WvW or raiding), you select your pet mostly for its skill. Well, good luck getting accepted as a core ranger anyway, so you don't really. Not only that but this mecanic is kinda flawed on certain aspects : it's designed to act as sixth member of the group., yet the whole system of current days GW2 is based around 5-man groups. Which delivers its own set of problems in competitive contents where stealth engagement is a thing. But, and more importantly, the mecanic of the core ranger is the only profession mecanic in the game that scales poorly with the player skill level & game knowledge, and for multiple reason. One is that boons are not reliably applied to your pet (due to support priority), the other is that AI can only scale its abilities so much by itself. And with the modification on how the pet skills work (to accomodate golem skill usage), we now find ourselves with a very unreliable f2 skill. Otherwise said : most of the time for players, the pet is more of a liability you will keep in peacefull mode in order to be sure one of your skills will be usable when you need it.
So, to summarize : core ranger is held back in the group utility departement - base system of GW2 combat- by a skill set designed to only be used in certain specific situations and a profession mecanic that could just be absent from the game in most situations.
The elite specs
Despite this, ranger still sees play. Druid has been meta for multiple years in succession on top of recently seeing play in WvW squads, soulbeast is a correct damage dealer -versatile enough to be in the top professions to roam in- and untamed ... well is core ranger on steroids.
While most of these e-specs are actually very good and fun, they still are held back by the core ranger class - except soulbeast. This results in an interesting mix where the viability of the ranger's e-specs is carried by a specific gimmick.
For the druid, the gimmick in question varies depending on the content you're in. The support version is carried by its support bursting ability. The WvW roaming/condi version is carried by ancient seeds. Much like entangle, ancient seeds ability is not that fun to interact with, either destroying players that don't know how to counter it or rendered useless against the rest (I'm mainly mentionning PvP/WvW here because AS is not that usefull in PvE). But druid has a big problem that prevents it from getting higher in the tier list ladder, especially in WvW : the ranger pet. It can provide smoke field, but you have to stow it away before blasting (which is not bindable btw). It can provide some utility, but at the cost of being a killable independant unit. Which is highly problematic compared to the utility it actually brings, and brings up the actual cooldown of most pet skills to 60s -a cooldown comparable to the 3rd profession mecanic of guardians, but with much less impact. In PvE, it held its ground for very long - due to not having alternatives mainly- but now that real alternatives exist, we can see how it really fares, especially against AM. The irony in the situation is that AM has the same pet mecanic as the untamed EXCEPT that it is pulled up by the base engi kit.
The case of the untamed is clearer for most people when you see recent posting on this very forum : fervent force is just too powerfull of a passive trait to pass over it. And most viable builds of the untamed are actually enabled by its very existence. The untamed is supposed to be the "pet e-spec" of the ranger - and it at least partially fixed it. I use the verb "fixed" and not "improved" mainly because it actually allows the pet abilities to scale with player skill, which for me should be the baseline behaviour of a profession mecanic. And it's mostly with the spec you see the problem with core ranger : even that is not enough to save it. You can go to some high level performance after some training in PvE, and have some success in small scale WvW content/sPvP. But here's what we see : except the spirit + Fervent force combo, the untamed brings near nothing to a group. In other words, outside of PvE untamed are useless for their allies. Because it's made to enhance the core class gameplay, which is mostly built for solo play.
The case of the soulbeast is very different from the other e-specs. And if you've read until now, you might have an idea as to why I have this idea : soulbeast takes the pet out of the equation, and the "leader of the pack" trait allows to bring some group utility even when not playing support. This is not yet perfect, as the risk of making the soulbeast an unstoppable power house of damage and support mandated the devs to balance the beastmastery trait line and the command skills. This could be quite common as you cannot ask someone to see a problem with interactions not yet in the game when they designed the base profession to begin with - example with the first willbender beta and the aegis ball of death. But I do find interesting that the most popular ranger e-spec with the least limitations is the one taking away the pet and not needing spirits to bring real utility to the group. Color me surprised.
Conclusion and my 2 cents on the possible solutions
If you've read up until here, I think I've been clear : the pet - the very thing that set the ranger appart from other classes in GW2- is the main reason the ranger is held back in group content. The pet existing is what justifies the few "non-summoned group capabilities", and this absence is what locks the ranger e-specs into very specific locks when the e-specs can completly change the way the base profession is played.
Now let's see what's at the core of why the pet is a problem. There are 2 points : one, the pet is an independant unit (which means non-scalable) with its own life pool (which means unusable in competitive contexts). I see two kind of solutions for that : either we keep the pet as a permanent world object, but do something about skill scalability and stealth share, either we transform the whole mecanic.
There multiple possible solutions, here are some I've already though about, but these are probably dreams :
- making the pet untargetable, share stealth with the ranger, lower its non-skill damage and re-balance/revamp skills that rely on the pet being killable. This is the most simple solution yet
- changing the mecanic completly. A solution I like is to make the pet like Ventari's tablet -f1 is moving it, f2 is "species/beast skill" and f3 is "archetype skill", f4 is switch. It would no do anything passively anymore.
- doing something that would be a mix of Kalla's stance and the engi tool belt : two pulsating AoE skills we can select amongst a choice with more possibilities with unlocked pets
The advantage of the two last solutions is that it opens the mecanic to be modified by e-specs. It would open the "command skills" to be more of a supportive set. Druid could finally be freed of its "burst or nothing situation" with small cleansing/buffing cooldowns (at the cost of nerfing the CA and ancient seed maybe ?). Soulbeast can stay basically the same. And untamed could maybe get one more skill (so, second species sill for the ventari and a third selection for the tool belt). I'm purposely taking already existing design in the game and keeping the choice-from-unlocking-pets, in order to stay at most inline with things and ideas I know the dev team know.
Maybe some of you have differing opinions on the matter ? Are the pet and the lack of group utility not that much of a problem to you ? Do you see other ways to adress the problem (outside of "just play soulbeast") ?
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Another thing to remember is that "go see the wiki" is not really the GW2 equivalent of "google it".
It has already been said, but most of players understanding you are a new player will direct to the wiki, simply because most veteran gw2 players are using it on a daily basis and it is the best source of information you have. Directing players that may not know of its existence is seen as "the good answer".
Another reason you should not take it personnally people redirect you: chances are someone that will answer you just did a /wiki <page> to check their answer before writing it. I happen to do it often just to double check, even when I know the answer.
Finally, the example you gave is a bit odd. The chances of getting an infusion from a boss twice -even if possible- in the same day qualifies you to be one of the luckiest player there is - which means it's quite understandable the information is simply not available anywhere except in Anet's configuration files.
For your question, here's how I'd proceed :
#1 go to the infusion list, section Open World PvE related Infusions
#2 for each infusion, check where it is dropped
#3 then as follwo : meta event chests can be looted only once and direct drop are looted every time you kill the thing.
Either way, I think your question of "having a list that shows for each droppable infusion if could theorically be dropped multiple times a day" is far too specific to not asking a little bit of research on your or anyone's part that would try to answer your question. It's a bit unsettling to see you were expecting to find this information written somewhere, actually...
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5 minutes ago, Silitha The Mystical.5480 said:
In game mail? I never got one. just spam throughout my discord servers😅
there was one for the last beta, and every one got it. You probably didn't pay attention to it before deleting it
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WTF is Anet doing to WvW?
in World vs. World
Posted
I'm okay with what you said except this specific point.
1. I don't think people to do outnumbered did it for the pips
2. outnumbered pip advantage actually did favor some people just running around in the ruins and harassing anyone calling for the multi-map zerg to come and defend structure.
3. I don't think the outnumbered bonus should give an advantage, I think it should make killing a member of an outnumbered team less worth for the overnumbered.