Sebrent.3625

I think what you may be liking is you can control 100% of who is on your team ... or at least 50% ... versus 20% to 40% of your team in 5v5.

Agreed. Reward behavior you want ... you didn't idle and actually played ... here are your pips, etc. Punish behavior you don't want ... you idled instead of playing ... no pips for you and here's a long dishonor timer. Right now these people laugh at being reported because they don't think it does anything. Currently, I believe them as in past seasons I've seen the same afkers multiple games in a row in a single night where the whole team reports them and nothing happens. It's feels like reporting is a placebo for the ones doing the reporting.

Trying to get some good 2v2 matches in. First game, guy gets steamrolled by other team in 5s and then just afks the remaining rounds of the match. I report for him being idle. Second game, I'm matched with this same guy. He afks all rounds. I report and block him. Third game, I'm matched with this same guy again. Perhaps ... take into account that blocking is an indication of not wanting to be matched with the person. Perhap ... let's finally do something about people just idling in pvp.

I agree that Continuum Split is an issue but with more of an emphasis on how it makes it harder to balance it. Anything you give to the Chronomancer, they can potentially use it twice in a short[er] window. That's complicates trying to balance it. As far as an identify for Chronomancer ... time based themes one could do: - Slowing time for enemies (slow / chill / cripple) vs speeding up for allies (quickness / alacrity / swiftness / superspeed / vigor?) - Stopping/interrupting time (dazes, stuns) - Rolling back time ... abilities with two parts so you can teleport back to where you were when you first used it ... like Thief has in ridiculous abundance just from its core. - Adding time (increase boon durations) ... Subtracting time (decreasing condition/CC duration)

From a high level I like it. Thematically it is cool (I liked your theme of aging the mind vs aging the body). I also think it's intelligent in that it gives more options in the usage of these skills. Options are a good thing IMO. They empower the player. Some may hate one of the options, but if they like the other, they may still use the skill. Those that like both options are simply thrilled. Then those that hate both, well, might also hate the current no option impl too ;-) I think there is a precedence for having this sort of functionality in the mesmer already as well with the way temporal curtain has a secondary activation to it for the pull. As far as the details of what they actually do, I think we could dig more into that for the sake of balance, usefulness per game mode, etc.. Some people really like to apply chill as it interrupts your opponent's timing on their skills as well as movement and is killer to movement when combo'd with cripple. Others will look at it possibly from a raiding perspective and not be big fans.

That's a fair point on the stability unless they simply haven't gotten around to it for PvE, but that's just a theory and I have nothing else to support it. If it were to provide stability, do you think it might be better to have it provide it on spirit activation instead of on pulse? 30% uptime has a pretty high chance to not be there when the party truly needs it. Even with 100% boon duration it's 60% which still leaves a sizeable window.

I was testing by myself and then used it in my static's strikes yesterday. I used 100% boon duration with Harrier stats and Superior Sigil of Concentration Traits that mattered: Marksmanship: Clarion Bond to provide Might/Fury/Swiftness (and Regen w/ other trait) Nature Magic: Windborne Notes to have better uptime on warhorn for Might/Fury/Swfitness (and Regen) Nature Magic: Nature's Vengenace for alacrity, etc. on spirits Then I was using: Water Spirit, Stone Spirit, Sun Spirit, Frost Spirit, and Spirit of Nature With this setup and using warhorn and pet swap on cooldown (with a good bit of buffer room), I was able to maintain 100% uptime on: Alacrity, Fury, Might x15, Protection, Regen, Swiftness, Vigor A potential issue I saw was one a fellow in our static ran into as he tried out Druid where he'd move out of range of the spirits and they'd disappear. This was a problem for him on Kaineng Overlook as you transition between the two rooftops.

I think this has two parts to it: (1) Do they want to continue to allow parties to continue to ignore CC mechanics with stability coverage? (2) If they did add stability to the Spirit of Nature, what should the min/max uptime be for the stability be? Side notes: (a) The trait also makes the spirits last longer. (b) The non-elite spirits are providing a pulsing boon already independent of the trait. It allows for alacrity on the active.

That is interesting. I'm curious to see the results when someone plays with it more and runs the numbers. The idea that it would lose some DPS over taking more damage-oriented utilities is simply a known; other classes make this tradeoff too when comparing their straight DPS vs their DPS + X builds.

To each their own. I'd rather try something hoping things change than throw my hands up and give up. Apparently they are already working on this idea, so that's something to look forward to. With respect to whether or not the devs listen to players on the forums, I think one of the issues is that so many posts on the forums are dramatic, exaggerated, etc. brain dumps with horrible grammar. The more that is true, the less motivation anyone has to use them, including devs. Several players have often mentioned that they don't use the forums for this very reason. If we improve the quality of posts or at least have higher quality discussions bubble to the top and not get derailed, I imagine we'll see an improvement.

@Gotejjeken.1267I'm curious if they'll push Ranger to one of the pet specs (core or untamed instead of sb) so that we'll maybe see a Tiger for 100% uptime on Fury; largely independent of traitlines. ./shrug Will see how things shake out in the coming weeks after tomorrow.

@RainbowTurtle.3542 ./shrug ... they might. In that post that was shared from reddit, they mentioned doing the same for Mechanist, so we'll simply have to wait and see ... though Mechanist does have multiple F-key skills @Gotejjeken.1267I will always ask what someone is basing something off of. There are lots of claims all over the forums often not backed up with anything. I prefer to ask for the substance behind stuff :-) As far as optimism ... if you talk to me about my thoughts on the current balance patch you might not say the same ... I have no clue what direction they were trying for there ... hoping they fix that as we just lost a guy from our static because it annoyed him so much he's taking a break from the game :-/ But back on topic ... I'd rather try to drive clear, healthy discussions so that perhaps the devs will see them and use them instead of things like "More Proof ANet Hates Mesmers" and "Ranger is Depression" which, to be nicely, have a very poor signal-to-noise ratio ;-)

I hope the reasoning for these changes is actually sound and the path forward clear as I believe the reason for the negative feedback is that the perceived effects of these changes run counter to the goals stated by ANet as well to counter to what is actually played by players in raids, strikes, etc. (ex: Warrior's crit compensation being put in the Arms traitline and Elementalist's crit bonus only working while in air attunement). I still look at these patch notes and people's reviews of them and agree that there does not appear to be a clear vision and that some seem to run contrary to stated goals. I do not like that. I'd prefer to think that there is a clear vision and these are not a miss in that direction.

@Beddo.1907It's not about trying to make Untamed more bland. It's about improving the overall Ranger pet mechanic (and it looks like pet mechanic in general as that Reddit post mentioned Mechanist as well). If you improve that core mechanic, that then frees up Untamed to provide more some other way(s) to become "less bland".

@Donut.6914Oh, nice! It doesn't look like we'll have to wait that long for this given the statements in what you shared: It looks like the Untamed-specific mechanic changes/improvements are what are later out in their schedule. Thanks for sharing this.

Regardless of core/espec ... If I take spirits, it's likely to provide boons including alacrity so I'm likely taking Nature Magic as one of my traitlines so that I can take the GM trait Nature's Vengeance to provide alacrity and longer boon durations from Spirits. Since I'm taking Nature Magic, I have to choose between the Master traits Evasive Purity, Spirited Arrival, or Windborne Notes. If I took Spirited Arrival, I could accomplish with minimal effort 100% uptime on Fury and Vigor just from pet swapping in combat. Given that, why would I want to take Sun Spirit (Vigor) or Storm Spirit (Fury) ?

@Donut.6914& @RainbowTurtle.3542 maybe you both have crystal balls and know for sure that something will/won't happen soon/ever ... but I don't think that's helpful whatsoever to discussion. The point is "do you think this would be a worthwhile change to have?" or "would you enjoy this change?"

Two pieces to this suggestion: (1) Give full control of Ranger pet skills to all Ranger specs the way that currently only Untamed has. This not only gives players more control over their pets' skills, it also gets rid of the scenario where the hotkeys for pet attack/return change depending on which Ranger spec you're playing. (2) Allow players to set Ranger each individual pet skill to autocast or not. If set to autocast, the pet will use it on their own like they currently do for non-Untamed specs. If set to not autocast, then it's the same way they work right now for Untamed. This gives players options over how much they want to micromanage their pet across all specs. This gives more pet control to all specs while making the Untamed more playable for people who feel overwhelmed by the extra pet micromanagement. It also reduces the needless spamming of some pet skills that have super low cooldowns and are simply extra damage. Thoughts?

Yeah, I generally try to avoid being negative ... but my initial impression of this can be summarized with a "wth". My only hope for Mesmer not coming out worse from this is that some numbers not shared in those notes or changes they left out are going to come to light Tuesday and/or some folks smarter than me will find some diamond among what looks like a dung pile.

What is the logic behind these changes? (1) Well of Action : Now provides Superspeed to allies on the final pulse instead of quickness. When I want superspeed, I don't want to have to wait 3s for an AOE to end with me in it. (2) Well of Recall : Renamed Well of Senility. Now removes two boons from enemy targets on the final pulse instead of providing alacrity to allies. So now we have an AOE on a 25s cooldown that pulses chill and last pulses removes 2 boons ... or I could've just taken Null Field which lasts 2 seconds longer and removes a condition and a boon per pulse instead of 2 boons only at the end. These bother me doubly so because the Mesmer forum has said many times over that one of that community's biggest annoyances with wells is how they don't apply particular effects until the very end ... and it's not as if those effects are some big powerful effect.

Does it seem like Engineer, Guardian, and Necro got pretty well buffed without having to pay for it ... while others have to pay tradeoffs? That's my initial impression from reading through this and that doesn't make sense to me given that those 3 classes are already doing quite well in all game modes ... dominating even.

Any exceptions to this in your mind? (Condi Soulbeast? non-Cele Druid?) What about Core or Untamed?

Well, the festival ends in 7 days, so it looks like for some reason it wasn't sold this year

@Gotejjeken.1267I'm not following you on "you can reduce the CD by a lot by healing your own pet." Quick Draw for 2 1,200 range leaps would definitely be nicer than 2 600 range leaps. However, you are giving up on the extra crit chance from fury, extra fury application, and extra ferocity to get that. We're also talking about a 66% reduction to 20s which is going to leave you still waiting over 7s for the cooldown ... putting you at worse than traited sword and almost as long as untraited sword. Agreed on Refined Toxins. That should be sufficient in WvW since its ICD there is only 5s instead of the nerfed 15s in PvP. The Staff root is nice, but they have Entangle, Ancient Seed, and Jacaranda's Embrace providing 3 entangles. A 4th immobilize might just be trolling at that point ;-) So, now in this conversation you've talked about burst as non-ranger and now enjoying kiting and heals from Staff which is Druidonly and running condi as Druid. What is it you prefer to run w/ Ranger instead of what that gamer posted in their video?

@Gotejjeken.1267I'm often the same way with pets. I feel that having a good bit of CC alone is invaluable with any class I play and that being able to CC someone with the pet thus enabling it when I'm out of weapon range, line of sighting, CC'd myself, etc. is even better. I've actually been eyeballing the Sword on Untamed with Electric Wyvern as this gives you [Wyvern Lightning Assault for the Daze and Lightning field] --> [Ranger Monarch's Leap to daze the target with w/ Leap Finisher + Lightning] --> [use unleashed sword attack for another daze] ... just as something to play around with if nothing else. For pet burst I generally rely on that if I'm melee (pet swaps and immediately casts a non-F2 tail swipe [Drake] or other ability) or very fast F2 like double bird pets (especially with Quickness). Otherwise I think the burst is good range or melee with Untamed due to the greater control. As far as Sword vs Staff ... Staff has a longer movement skill with 1,200 range Ancestral Grace vs Monarch's Leap 600 range ... but Ancestral Grace has a 20s base cooldown while Monarch's Leap has an 8s base cooldown and comes with Serpent's Strike for an extra evade and poison application. You'd also have to short the use of Ancestral Grace's range to make use of it with the Smoke combo field for stealth. I think Monarch's Leap is more versatile in this case. It can even be better if after you've leapt an enemy leaps on you as Staff is now stuck with them on them but Sword can Hornet Sting to evade and get some space as well as immediately refresh Monarch's Leap. The Sword also comes with an off-hand so now you have a redundancy while locked into that weapon set for finishers with the combo field for stealth which is what it seems they went for here (along with perhaps extra daze, boons, and easy to hit ranged attack that provides vuln). So I don't think the Staff would be better than the Sword here. ... Greatsword I'd say competes far better. Built-in burst with Maul, Hilt Bash, Maul. The leap moves farther and evades at the end of it so it's useful even at close range into a target for the evade. I'm a big fan of the block and its kick as well. I think the Greatsword has far greater burst potential due to the one combo and then it comes down to block & evade vs evades and whatever offhand brings to the table which could be more evades, mobility, some range, or CC and burst as well. I do love Sword+Axe / Greatsword in a build with surges of Quickness and some CC to help make them eat Whirling Defense.