meerfunkuhtron.9725

I'm not sure where to post this. Since this is specific to WvW fights, I figured this is the best place. This isn't a complaint post about the Mechanist, but rather I'd like more information on what I'm dealing with. Most of the time, this spec isn't too difficult to deal with. The mech can hit really hard (which makes my Ranger heart jealous - but that's a post for another day), but I'm able to put up a good fight even in matches I lose. However there's this particular build that I just can't seem to deal with. Apart from the mech having high damage, this build also has it so the engi is really tanky, and I'm also knocked back/interrupted in what feels like every 2 to 3 seconds. Oh and they also have high condi damage, but the condi doesn't seem to show in the beginning of the fight. It's almost like my health gets shaved off with normal damage and then when my health is low, I get finished off with the condi plus normal damage. When I'm able to take some health off the engi, they just heal back up and I can't damage them again for several seconds. Pretty sure they were running around with pistol (and most likely shield as a major source of the interrupts). I have an elite that gives me stability which I've used in these fights. I also have stunbreaks and cleanses. The only times my health suffers this much is if I'm fighting glass cannons (and harbingers with those darned elixirs). I am expecting this being a learn to play issue and I'd like to try out some strategies that other folks have used against Mech builds like this. Thank you~

If you don't have Weapon Mastery, as someone else mentioned, then yes you will have to play Reaper if you want to use the greatsword. But I would suggest actually trying out the class first before worrying about not liking it. If you end up liking it, great! You can keep playing it. If you don't like it, that's fine, because there are other classes out there that uses the greatsword which gives you a lot of chances to find what works for you. As we've said though, Reaper is a solid spec that resembles the Death Knight from WoW. Give it a whirl, then rinse and repeat if you find you'd like something else. Just make sure you're giving the classes a fair chance.

I liked playing with the devourer a lot, with their ability to dig underground to escape. I also used to run with spiders that did the immobilize (until I met the Jacaranda). I was using the electric wyvern as well, but then I started having issues with the skill delay. Which I've found to be more egregious for certain pets/skills than others. My jacaranda for example may get a small delay but more often than not, its skills fire off fine. As soon as I'd switch to the wyvern, the skill queue issue feels more prominent. Speaking of... I saw a similar advice from another thread and have been trying it out with the shark (which at the moment has the biggest issue with skill lag for me, aside from the wyvern). I haven't seen much of a difference yet, but I might just need to continue playing around with it. Maybe there's a sweet spot in terms of timing in between certain skills that I'm just not attuned to. Those changes have been needed for almost a decade, so I'm definitely happy to see them. Better late than never! Your last statement however makes it seem like we're asking for pets to be so OP that the pet might as well be another player. That is not the case here, at all. Asking for extra survivability for the pet, an integral part of a ranger's gameplay minus SB, is not a ridiculous ask. I just want to be able to actually have that aspect of my build available both in small scale and zerg fights, the same way all the other classes get to keep core aspects of their class with them at any given situation as well. I honestly love the turtle. Both for how it looks (I mean, the thing has a cannon on its back!) and more importantly, its higher survivability. But can we have the same functionality for other pets so we're not pigeonholed into ONLY using a small percentage of them? We have a menagerie, and I truly love playing around with different pets and their utilities, but since most of them blow up so easily, I'm discouraged from using them at all. The biggest concern for the pet's survivability that I've seen are: zerg fights and condition damage. Yes, my pets can generally survive small scale fights, but they've been deleted by harbingers and similar classes that can dish out high condi bursts in aoe's. And of course, there's the zergs. We're not asking for god-like buffs on these little guys. As mentioned in another comment, something like scaling damage reduction would help quite a lot. I don't think I've ever really wanted my pet to hit harder. Just a higher chance of survival than your average random ambient creature.

Very good points, and it's why I think it's good to have these discussions. I know, as I'm sure most of the folks here do, that as much as we'd like balancing stuff to be simple - it just isn't most of the time. A scaling damage reduction is where I've landed as well. It wouldn't be fair to have a flat damage reduction that would make the pet unkillable in small scale fights, just so they could be usable in larger ones. So making it scale based on enemies makes the most sense to me. This reduction could have the same behavior that some buffs and conditions do, wherein they get removed under specific scenarios (in this case, the Soulbeast merge). Same way that things like Sic 'Em gets removed when applied before merging, this buff should be automatically removed when merged.

For what it's worth, I already have those habits. Which are honestly a bit common sense, in my opinion, especially if you're doing anything competitive. Proper positioning and keeping a cool head literally won't solve pet's skills not activating or being delayed. The pet skill queue was introduced by Anet, which in turn landed us with a problem, and it's not due to players not positioning themselves well or spamming keys. In fact, people have recently been spamming the F keys AS A RESULT of the problem that Anet gave us, not the other way around. None of the examples I provided will disappear from better habits, which isn't anywhere close to an exhaustive list of the bugs and issues we have with the pet AI. Please don't give Anet an out, as your statements are giving the impression that everything is fine with this subject when, again, it is very far from fine.

Habit? Most of the bugs surrounding the pets are a crap shoot. Sometimes the skills will activate, sometimes they won't. Sometimes they'll actually target the correct entity, sometimes they won't. Sometimes the buffs they're supposed to give are actually given, sometimes they won't. I could go on. Like... how are you supposed to form a habit around situations that are completely inconsistent when forming a habit relies on consistency? We want Anet to continue working on the pets and make them better. I do not support the idea that pets are fine, and that we as a playerbase just need to work around the issues. We've been doing our best to work around this class' flaws in regards to the pets, and Anet needs to pull their weight on the subject.

Yup, I definitely understand that part. As mentioned, I've seen a lot of posts regarding player dissatisfaction over how squishy our pets are, while not finding much info from Anet's end. But I've also taken many breaks from the game, so I was wondering if they've said anything about it that I might have missed over the years. I'll have to keep practicing with the swapping, as I think I'm swapping them a bit too late. Thanks for the tips. I definitely think Soulbeast makes reworking the pets a bit harder. They really should have addressed this issue with pets when people started complaining about it, which was definitely before Soulbeast came to fruition (especially since it was their answer for player unhappiness with the AI in the first place). But I guess that's neither here or there at this point. I'll run around with the turtle a bit more. I did for a small amount of time and then really liked the land shark, so have been playing with that. As fun as it is to see that shark launch people, I'd prefer a pet that's alive XD My swap is a Jacaranda and I like it too much for now. If the pet actually worked more than half the time, I can understand that first sentiment. But the pet AI is broken in so many ways, I feel like asking for it to not blow up as soon as a heavy dps player sneezes at it isn't much of an ask lol

It sounds like you're giving up on classes a bit too early. You can't really get a good feel for them unless you've unlocked enough of their kit. This doesn't mean you have to level up all the classes to max from scratch before you can decide. What I did for myself, was find gameplay videos out there of people playing a particular class I'm interested in. If it looks good for me, I then look more into it to see if it has the right amount of complexity for me (through the wiki, posts of people talking about its rotations, or just more videos). If I'm still interested, then I'll give it a go in game and level up the class. Try different types of weapons. It's easy to unlock most of the weapon skills by just buying the cheapest ones available for the class from the TP and equipping them. Then run around with them and see how they feel. But keep in mind that weapons are but a part of a class' build, and that certain things like boons and traits can affect how one can feel. For example, you may find that a class may move too slow, but there's various things you can do to make it move quicker and be more fluid. When/if you've played the game enough, you get access to XP scrolls and tomes, which you can use for leveling other new characters when you'd like to try a new class. The PvP lobby is another way you can preview skills and traits that you haven't unlocked. You don't have to join a match or anything, just stay in the lobby and look at your character's traits and skills from there. I also liked the Deathknight from WoW, and I agree with the other person who said Reaper might be a good start for you. I'm not sure what you mean by this. You can change your class up pretty significantly since there's different components to a build: traitlines/specializations, the particular traits you choose, armor types, weapons, the runes and sigils you have for them, the utility skills you use, etc. You can change these up anytime, so you shouldn't worry about being "kept" to a particular playstyle. We even have build templates now that allows you to switch around between builds. For example, for my ranger, I have a build made for a Druid, Soulbeast, and Untamed. I have different armors for them, one for dealing condition damage and more survivability, and another that's focused on power damage. I have different skills for these, as well as weapons. All these play differently, and I switch between them whenever I want as long as I'm out of combat if I want to change things up. GW2 is far from a game that pushes you to only "master" one class and not change it up; in fact, it encourages the opposite.

Best way is definitely for them to say it in say chat that they'd rather do it solo, but that last point about wanting the loot would make people ignore the message. Especially since the request is sort of a weird one. Mechtec, if you want to solo bosses, you can jump into dungeons by yourself. Otherwise, if it's in open world, you'll have to expect that people will want to help/take part of the loot most of the time.

I stopped being active years ago as well, and would come back to check the game out then leave again. I came back a few months ago and decided to just find fun wherever I can in WvW, as I was really missing it. I think, first, I got to the point where I stopped expecting much out of Anet. Then I just went on to do what I've always found enjoyable, which is also solo or small group roaming and defending objectives. I've been having fun and haven't stopped playing for a few months now, which is the longest I've played since I stopped being active in 2017. So I'm not sure if this is helpful, and sorry if it isn't. I guess in a way, things haven't really changed in the general scope of things. There's still a lot of the issues we've been having for awhile now, but I can at least appreciate some of the communication from Anet's end. And there's still fun to be had in terms of roaming and defending (though the latter can really depend on your server/match-up and I'm not sure how Mag is when it comes to that stuff. I know for me, an issue I had was that people didn't care much about defending and I definitely can't defend by myself against 20. It's one of the things that made me log off but I'm glad that my server and our match-ups have been responsive in that regard). In terms of class, I don't play warrior but my personal experience is that I still see them a lot while roaming, though definitely not as much as I used to years ago. They're not as scary as before either, but I also still go against warriors (zerkers and bladesworns mostly) that could definitely kick my kitten just as well as willbenders can. Just probably tougher to pull off in comparison.

I'm not sure if this is better posted here or on the other sub, so I might move/repost if it's better discussed under WvW. As per the title, I'm wondering if there's been any reason given as to why pet survivability seems to be something Anet wants to keep low. The early December patch which was supposed to focus on/rework pets avoided it for the most part (or actually lowered it for some), even though it's one of the constant issues ranger players have been bringing up since the dawn of the game. I have a feeling that part of the answer is "it's not that easy to solve" but I don't think there was a time when Anet actually tried to give pets better survivability, have they? I don't really consider reworks on boons applied to pets as a part of this, since they don't mean much for the pet in terms of effectiveness/survivability... but maybe that's part of the problem. Anet thinks that since we can boon share regen and protection on pets, that they should live longer? Perhaps if we're talking about 1v1s that's more probable, though I've had scenarios where harbingers have killed them within seconds, so the issue honestly doesn't just come up in zerg fights anymore. Part of the reason I'm posting this here, is to see if any of my fellow rangers have any tips on keeping your pets alive? I take advantage of traits like Fortifying Bond to share my defensive boons which, as mentioned, doesn't do much for me in scenarios where pets typically get nuked. I have been a ranger since the beginning of the game, and this is something I have never gotten the hang of (discounting PVE of course) though I'm seeing other players say there's pet management tricks that can actually keep them alive even in dire situations like a 30-man blob fight (that doesn't involve being a soulbeast or simply not using your pet).

This made me sad and, of course, just really annoyed. They gave us Untamed, which is supposed to give you more control over your pet, and then they... broke our ability to do just that. Despite how sad the AI has been for our pets, I still love the mechanic wherein pet interaction is a big part of the gameplay. I don't want Anet to give up on ranger pets, but I swear, sometimes they truly make things worse so I'm always on the fence on whether I want their attention on something or if I'd rather them leave our class alone lol

I don't think "can't learn" is the excuse for older folks but we have to consider physical ability. As OP stated - reaction time. I'm not old, but I have bad wrists from various injuries that didn't heal correctly. My hands will sometimes be so stiff and hard to work with that even though my brain is saying "hit that key!" (which I have bound to my mouse), my hand just simply can't and I actually have to click the skill instead. There's dimensions to this. I wouldn't readily assume that someone just refuses to learn if they're having a hard time with something.

Would be really nice if we had these nice things with the pets that actually just worked XD I've gone into fights where I have to mash the buttons for their skills sometimes before they actually fire off. *sigh*

That is... silly 😆I can see what you're saying, and I'm wondering if other things can trigger this? I'll run around and pay closer attention on whether it happens mainly from dismounting or if I notice it happen other times too. Thank you for this info!

Tried looking this up and didn't see a topic on it. Also, I didn't put this in Bugs since I'm still gathering information to make sure it's not a user issue/lack of knowledge on my part 🙂 As per the title, I'm noticing what I consider bugginess of the Unleashed Ambush skills particularly in WvW, but I've also noticed it in PVE just in rarer occasions. And that bugginess translates to it... just not being there sometimes. What I mean is, I'll unleash myself while in combat, and I get the normal skill as opposed to the unleashed skill. It isn't happening all the time, but often enough to kitten me, as what I expect to happen isn't happening. I've done my best to pay attention to cooldowns while testing things, essentially waiting 10 seconds between me and my pet unleashing to make sure the unleashed skill is up. I've also tested jumping into fights with all cooldowns refreshed, making sure I'm in combat (as I wanted to make sure the cause of it not firing wasn't due to me not being considered in combat), and it will sometimes happen even in the beginning of fights. I have also witnessed this happen when I swap weapons- while of course having Let Loose traited. As mentioned above, in open world PVE where things are a bit slower, I notice this issue less but it still happens. In WvW where there's more instances of hectic fights, I definitely notice it happen a ton. So I'm wondering if others have experienced a similar issue?

I typed this up on Google docs 'cause I was moving in between so many windows, I didn't want to accidentally lose it lol So I just copied it from there.

I find this expansion particularly loud. I mentioned this in another post and afterwards, I realized that my partner has complained about it and people in map chat have also complained about it. So now I'm here to 1- see how people here in the forums feel about it and 2- share some ideas on how to alleviate it I guess. What I mean about the game being loud and messy is mainly in regards to all the talking and yelling that doesn’t seem to let up. You have a demon in your head, on top of other NPCs contacting you through comms for quests or conversations regarding the storyline, and that's alongside NPCs in the map for whenever an event is triggered. I remember several times wherein I didn’t catch what was actually being said about the story, because some other NPC would start yelling in the background or another one had decided to call through the comms. The overlap was just too much at certain points, and they’ll even cut each other out so I ended up missing out on dialogue completely (meaning the rest of the conversation was also cut off in the chat log). I honestly don’t know how many voices I can handle in my head. It just feels chaotic. I know I can choose the route of turning off all voiced dialogues altogether, but I'd definitely like to see a different approach, 'cause I do like that aspect of this game. Just not... this much. I also found that I was triggering dialogue that are spoilers in nature or otherwise just don’t make sense for my character, because the triggers seem to be location based as opposed to something connected to your progression. So not only was I getting dialogue for a future event in the storyline sometimes, I was also getting repeated lines afterwards as if none of those events had already happened. This doesn’t work well. Contributing to the dialogue annoyance for me is that the game is also visually loud, with tooltips constantly popping up whenever you hit a leyline or updraft before you’re able to master them, or whenever you got a special skill from certain events. I know these types of tooltips have been around for a bit, but I don't remember them being this unpleasant. I get they’re trying to give people clear guidance, but I am not going to stop and read some lengthy tooltip midfight. Some of these tooltips are also needlessly repetitive. Some suggestions: -I think the tooltips would be fine if they didn’t stay close to the middle of the screen, permanently waiting for the player to toggle them off. I could see a method wherein the tooltips pop up for 2 to 3 seconds, then get moved to the side of the screen as a question mark symbol or something. That way, the tooltip is available for you to read when you're ready to but without it crowding your view. It would also help if they didn't pop up each time you hit something that you've already encountered before. -For the dialogues, I honestly would just like for the comms chatter to be toned down. Allow us to get more dialogue and information through interacting with the NPCs, like we already do in some parts of the game. Reaching a point of progression doesn’t always necessitate NPC commentary (progress in my quest tracker would suffice!). And if I need to talk to an NPC, it would be nice if Anet gave us back the ability to initiate communication (maybe make the calling thing look different if people find the constant flashing to be obnoxious). That way, if there’s other types of dialogue or activities happening around me, I can choose to get to that part of the quest at a better time. A bit of a side note, but I do hope they add other types of quests in the future maps aside from group quests/events. I know renown hearts have been contentious for awhile, but I feel like Anet can keep those side quests without making them a requirement in any form. I just feel they add a lot to the storytelling. I’d like to see side quests that don’t have any markers on them at all, but are rather found if the player initiated dialogue with them. It’s something I’ve always enjoyed in RPGs like Baldur’s Gate, wherein players are encouraged to explore the game’s story on their own, and are then rewarded by either getting quests out of it or interesting dialogue. If Anet went this route, people who enjoy doing side quests can get their fill, while those who don’t find any fun in them can ignore them completely without any negative consequence. Anyway, that’s it, just some thoughts. I’m enjoying this expansion in a lot of other ways though. I'm especially intrigued by the storyline, the new enemies, and new environments we'll be seeing in the future. I’m willing to see where Anet goes with all this, but also would definitely like to see some things improved.

(Since there's a lot of pages of responses, I'm sorry if this is a repeat) Aren't there special effects on the weapons that go along with the elite specs? For example, only the Untamed can utilize the alt skills of the hammer when you go 'untamed' on your ranger. So in that sense, there'd still be a reason for a ranger to play Untamed with the hammer. From what I understood, all elite specs have some kind of special interaction with their corresponding weapons? If that's not the case, then I can understand this sentiment somewhat and would want Anet to make it so all weapons released with elites would have a special interaction with them. Though, even if that's not the case, I still wouldn't say they removed a reason for choosing specs, as elite specs are special on their own. I'm pretty sure a lot of folks through the years have been playing the specs without the weapons since not everyone liked the weapons the came with, and simply liked the playstyle of the spec itself.

Rift was fun when it was busy 🙂 And I feel like if Anet were to borrow ideas from that game, I wish they'd take a page out of its housing. Since that game actually had proper housing. I do think GW2 has had similar mechanics to these rifts even back then, just not to this extent I guess.

In terms of gameplay, my main issue is everything just seems a bit messy. I think it's because the zones are small but filled with activities. I don't mind having a lot of things to do on a map, but I do mind constantly being yelled at or, even if I turned the dialogue volume all the way down, I'm still getting consistent pop-ups. "You found a ley line!" Yes, I get it, learn the mastery. "Wayfinder! Help me with this..." almost every five steps I take. There doesn't seem to be enough of a breathing room for me to just take in the surroundings, explore, and do things at my own pace without some random dialogue popping up. Everything just feels so urgent, and the leisurely way of playing and exploring seems to have been lost on this one. (On a side note but connected to this, I know that a lot of people hated the renown hearts, but I feel like this is part of what those hearts achieved... you can have a zone filled with activities, but players do not have to hear anything about them or interact with them at all if they chose not to. Having static quests that you had to start on your own coupled with dynamic events made the maps and activities within them more flexible to fit people's varying playstyles, IMO.) Connecting this complaint to the stories, one of my main issues too is how often I would trigger dialogues that don't make sense for my character at all because she hasn't gotten to that portion of the story. I'd understand if the mistake is just on my end and I'm flying into maps I'm not supposed to, but the game literally tells me to wander around to close rifts before I could continue the story, which then leads me into accidentally triggering things I probably wasn't supposed to hear until much later. The set up for this doesn't make sense. I do find the story interesting so far. It's not the best story I've encountered here, but it's better than the previous ones for me (the PoF and EoD storylines just weren't my cup of tea). I don't mind the skyscale much either, but I also feel like people would feel much better about it if it wasn't such a big focus in this expansion. If there was something absolutely new for people to try or sink their teeth into (perhaps if we had a more fleshed out map that went along with the ones we currently have, or if we were introduced to completely new mechanics while still having the new flight training stuff in addition to all that), then it wouldn't feel so off. Idk. Since they're trying a new formula, I'm willing to give them some time and I'll have to see how things go after they've released further installments. I enjoy the activities enough, just definitely not how they're laid out. I hope in the next patches, they'll release maps that aren't so darn loud like I'm entering a bad webpage without an ad blocker so there's windows popping up and all the videos are autoplaying.

I can definitely see the main dialogues being a bit too "quippy" at times. During a lot of the eventful moments, I can agree that having snarky one-liners can be cut down. I'd appreciate it a lot more if they kept those types of lines among particular characters who we can expect those things from (like Chanach, or sometimes even Braham, simply based off of his personality). I think these types of dialogue never bothered me to the point of calling the writing "terrible", however, mainly because they balance it out with a lot of serious communication as well. Yeah, there's a ton of banter especially during heated moments, but there's also an ample amount of heartfelt or informational dialogue and the jokey parts never felt like they took anything away from those serious moments. I definitely won't say GW2's writing is a shining masterpiece. I think it's good at its base, and there's plenty of times when it falters. But I wouldn't say that the writers aren't taking themselves seriously simply because the dialogue is written with a modern tone and it inserts a lot of quips and jokes. I think there's a purpose for why it's written this way. Whether or not it's successful in that purpose is another story (something which I feel is more subjective), but I can still see the care being put in it.

Thank you everyone for your thoughts on this. It's really giving me a much better idea of what I'm facing with these classes, and therefore what to do in order to counter them (even if that means simply running away sometimes lol). And just to clarify, since I saw someone mention it--the situations I've been confused about were ones in which I was not seeing them evade, block, or be invulned. There weren't any visual cues, i.e. they weren't dodging, no blocking animation, no aegis shields, no texts. Only visual I saw was the light aura. And that their health were stubbornly at 100%. I didn't know that fly texts could sometimes not appear on screen though, so I'll test that out and see if maybe that's part of my issue. I didn't think about this because the texts seemed to work completely fine for other moments. For example, I remember fighting this one willbender, and I managed to get away from them during that "no damage" timeframe. When I started hitting them again afterwards, I then saw their aegis shields and block fly texts. So my assumption was that there was a certain period where they were somehow just not being damaged by me without needing those other statuses. If it is a text issue though, then that would explain a lot O_O In any case, I will be doing a lot of learning and testing based on what I've seen from this post so far. It seems like I can at least try something on willbenders, so I'll start with them while accepting that I just can't touch auramancers at this point in time lol Thank you again for all the feedback!

The last sentences here were definitely what I was thinking. We know that ranger has been suffering since the dawn of GW2, partly due to the pet AI. I feel like giving us more control over what our pets are doing (not just a small percentage of it) would fulfill some aspects this class has been lacking. And I agree as well, that Untamed would lose its main value if the pets behaved the same way. This is a thought for a different thread, but I was wondering how big of a positive effect it would have if unleashed skills had some diversity. Similar to how some skills and traits are exclusive to particular pet types... Untamed could have different unleashed skills depending on the group that pet belongs to. I'll keep a look out for that rework. Kind of scared, but hopefully we actually see improvements.

If this has been brought up before, I apologize. And to clarify, the pet skills I'm talking about are not the unleashed skills (which I certainly believe should stay with Untamed), but rather the "normal" skills. The ones that our pets already do but specs outside of Untamed can't control, save for one skill. I've been playing around with SB and Druid lately, and one thing I keep wishing for is the ability to control the other skills for my pet. It's something I've actually been wanting for awhile and (iirc) other players were suggesting back then as well. Mainly for the obvious reason of having more control and pet interaction. Any thoughts on this? Has Anet mentioned anything about possibly making that feature standard for ranger?