Maximum Potato.5923

I've been playing for almost ten years, and in that time I've provided feedback on Ranger throughout most of its life. I wrote in-depth posts on Druid feedback pre-HoT, and have done similar for Untamed each time feedback is requested for the class. I've spoken to other players in the community and discussed the positions classes are in, and what they need to succeed, and tried at every opportunity to make my voice heard to the development team. Now I'm not vain enough to think my ideas are perfect, but in all my years of play, I have never once seen any of the ideas I've brought forward acknowledged, let alone implemented into the game, and outside of a clogged profession thread every time a new elite spec releases, there's very few clear ways for players to communicate with developers. I've been playing fractals since HoT, I've raided for almost 3 years, I do EoD strikes on the daily, but am I to assume that my opinion isn't relevant because I'm not a streamer? I, and many other players, have been trying to provide feedback for years, and after discussing with guilds what Ranger needs to succeed for months, I'm left with a bitter feeling that I've put more thought into the balance of my class than the actual developers have. I must confess that after today I don't intend to provide any feedback going forward, because it takes me a long time to plan out and articulate my findings, and quite frankly, I don't think it's ever been read. To be brutally honest, I don't think any member of the team is even going to read this post.

First of all, I really enjoy Untamed. The concept of shifting power between the player and the pet feels very fluid once you get used to it, and is a lot of fun in practice. However, I feel the class has a number of problems both conceptually and mechanically that are holding it back. 1. It has no clear identity. Is it a brawler? A pet themed spec? What does the embodiment of the Echovald Wilds mean? What do we do? 2. It has no group support that can't be done better by Druid or Soulbeast. 3. Hammer has the only full set of unleashed abilities, making this weapon absolutely core to the spec. As hammer is a CC-focused power weapon, this restricts the number of builds the untamed can spec into, since hammer is so vital. 4. Now that pets are front and centre again, we're seeing the problems with the pet mechanic, a system that has aged poorly as player power levels have increased. I think a number of these issues can be resolved simply by giving all weapons Unleashed attacks on all their skills, just like Hammer does. This will not only make the spec feel more complete, but provides an opportunity to add power to various builds. You can improve DPS by adding damage to unleashed sword, greatsword, and offhand axe, and create more powerful condition options by adding unleashed skills to axe, shortbow, and dagger. Hammer could stay virtually unchanged here, as its current damage levels feel appropriate for a more CC focused weapon. In terms of group support, this can be addressed by adding unleashes to Warhorn - perhaps adding some Alacrity to Call of the Wild? The key advantage here is this allows you to tweak the numbers on every weapon skill Untamed has access to, without affecting Druid or Soulbeast. This helps ensure that weapon tweaks made to buff Untamed don't send Soulbeast over the edge. Secondly, the pet mechanic. While I feel DPS on pets should be looked at overall, the fact that we have to spec into Nature Magic, a support based traitline in order to share boons with our pets is crippling. I propose moving Fortifying Bond from nature magic to beastmastery. This won't entirely fix pets, but it will improve their DPS by a good chunk (which makes sense in Beastmastery, a traitline focused on pet DPS), and hopefully provide more realistic numbers for their potential damage output, allowing for more suitable tweaking in the future. Another issue is the lack of a trait that effects Hammer. While fervent force addresses cooldowns, its nonspecific to hammer, and not having a trait for this feels very strange. Logically it would make sense to put this trait in the Untamed trait line (I suggest adding this to Enhancing Impact, a trait that encourages interrupts, something hammer already does well). Alternatively, expanding Two Handed Training in the Beasmastery traitline to affect Hammer would make Beastmastery a very satisfying traitline for power builds; Trapper's Expertise for frost trap, Two Handed training for Hammer, and Honed Axes for Sword/Axe would feel really great; every trait would be impactful. If this trait ends up in the Untamed traitline, I would recommend renaming Two Handed Training to "Greatsword Training" instead to avoid confusion. In terms of skills, the cantrips overall feel really good, and I really like how they have meaningful counterplay in PvP, but also require forethought and positioning to use properly in PvE. Some minor gripes; Perilous Gift: Super fun, but I miss the pet interaction this skill had in the beta. I feel like having it give you a fraction of your pet's health (but not draining it) would helped give the class some identity as a Ranger and their pet working together. If people fullhealing from bears are a problem, perhaps reduce the number it heals by. Forest's Fortification: I love the way this skill works. Superspeed feels awesome, and seeing that cooldown drop rapidly in combat with multiple enemies feels brilliant. The problem is that everything this trait offers is defensive in nature, which would be fine, except untamed has no offensive elite skill right now. Strength of the Pack is a marginal DPS boost for the pet for a short period of time, and is a woefully inadequate solution to the pet boon issue. Given the similarities between Forest's Fortification and SotP, I think it'd be super cool to update Strength of the Pack, and give it a refresh mechanic similar to Forest's Fortification. In order to bring pet DPS up, perhaps give pets a 25% damage boost while SotP is active - this would give Ranger a solid offensive choice for an elite skill, and depth to the way the skill is used, and help to boost pet DPS all at the same time. Since this is a core Ranger change, it also means future elite specs can be given defensive or utility elites without leaving the class starved for DPS options. Untamed, mechanically, is not good. But it does feel good to play. What it needs is more - more direct damage, more condition damage, more support, and a pet worth shifting some power to mid-fight rather than just to activate unleashed ambushes. I can see it becoming one of Ranger's most iconic specs, but in order to do that work needs to be done on not just the Untamed traitline, but also some of the mechanics of core Ranger that it relies upon.

I don't, thanks for pointing that out!

Just putting in my 2 copper here - I had all achievements from Act 1 before the patch, and now I'm at 18/19. No achievements are showing up as incomplete. I have all the achievements in Act 3, and from what I can see nothing in that tab has changed. Hope this helps!

Agreed. A bit less visuals on the ranger and a bit more on the pet would go a long way to making things prettier.

Untamed feels like a really strong concept for an elite spec, and I really enjoy what it brings to the table in terms of its interactions with its pet and the benefits it gains from CC. That being said, the spec has a number of problems right now, many of which are linked to the fact it relies on pets which have been sorely neglected for a number of years. These are just preliminary thoughts from an afternoon in PvE - I'll post more once I've gotten a better feel of the class, but these are my first impressions. Basic mechanics - Having control of all pet abilities is a godsend. While I understand this isn't appealing to all players, those of us that now want to fine-tune our pet's actions in combat now have the ability to do that. There is the slight drawback that many pets have either clunky or boring skills built into their kits (Felines lack any hugely impactful skills, and all of Bristleback's skills boil down to 'Shoot The Thing'). Adding a bit of oomph to pet skills we previously couldn't control will help with this. - We no longer have the ability to recall, stow, and direct our pet to attack on our hotbar. Placing the stow pet option in the pet menu is something, but doesn't allow us to do this quickly. Please allow us to keybind attack, recall and stow pet. - Unleashed as a mechanic feels like a great concept, however it just doesn't feel good to use. Warriors going Berserk or other classes entering their shrouds feels like a big move, but I don't get that same feeling from Unleashing. I'm not entirely sure how to fix this, but adding some weight to the attacks might help with this - Guardian hammer comes to mind. Weapon and Pet Skills - The unleashed pet skills feel interesting. While I've not used them extensively quite yet, having a blink in the kit really helps to make sure they hit their mark. The interactions with disabled enemies and addition of a projectile block is nice too! - Hammer's autoattack chain is bland and unintuitive. On stream you mentioned it was the standard hammer combo, but other weapons have much more interesting auto chains attached to them - greatsword restores endurance, sword has a cripple, dagger's got backloaded condi damage - we can afford to give this some love, I feel. Adding weakness or cripple to the auto chain would give it more flavour, and allow interaction with other traitlines like Marksmanship's Predator's Onslaught. - Wild Swing's super neat. It comes out quick, and I love the damage bonus on disabled enemies. Cripple feels a little flat, but 5s cripple on a 7s cooldown is still pretty decent. - Overbearing Smash is...fine. I never used it much in PvE, but I imagine the boonstrip will see good use in PvP gamemodes. The double daze is a welcome addition for breakbars too! - Savage Shockwave is challenging to get good use out of, as the channel time and time for all three waves to come out mean that enemies will usually have gotten out of your CC by the time it finishes. This can be circumvented by precasting, but makes you extremely readable in PvP. A shorter channel time would make this less obvious and simpler to use. - Thump's a decent skill. A Blast finisher is always welcome, though Might and Fury are pretty low value boons for Ranger, since we already have so many other ways to access them. The skill itself doesn't really have a lot of 'OOMPH' for a 5 skill, either. This might be a bit nuts, but it would be fun to see it drop the boons, but in return do like 20% more damage for each enemy hit. Really give it that earthshaker feel. Utility Skills - Perilous Gift is NUTS and I love it. It has the potential to be the strongest burst heal in the game by a huge margin, but can also go so, so wrong if you misuse it. It's got some great counterplay in that other players can burst the pet to reduce the heal, but there's not much visual cue it's going to go off. A tether between the Ranger and pet, similar to Druid's Glyph of Unity, could help enhance visual clarity. - Exploding Spores: A CC utility is great, but this skill is really unreliable. Landing all spores is difficult unless you're inside an enemy's hitbox in PvE, and even then the knockdown isn't consistent. A larger radius, or shorter arm time would make this much more reliable. - Mutate Conditions: Not used this much yet, but I love it on paper. Ranger needed a solid condition cleanse, and I like what this brings to the table. - Forest's Fortification is a great survivability tool. No complaints here. Traits - Debilitating Blows is probably great if you're good at the game. Vulnerability and Weakness are a dime a dozen in PvE though, so not much use there. I've got no issues with it being a PvP focused trait. - Cleansing Unleash: 1 condition every 10 seconds is not enough. Nothing wrong with the concept of this trait, but we need it to cleanse more. Either up the number of conditions cleansed, or allow us to transfer unleashed forms more often. - Blinding Outburst: This is a common problem that a lot of traits in Beastmastery have - adding conditions to pet abilities is extremely low value. For this to be worth taking, it needs to do more. This would be a great trait to combine with a reduced cantrip cooldown. - Natural Fortitude: This trait's as boring as they come, and in its current state offers no player choice or interaction with other traitlines or stats. I also feel personally that Untamed has enough survivability coming from other parts of its kit. This may be a bold suggestion, but I'd scrap this entirely and make the master minor trait allow your pet to benefit from your stats. This opens up a huge variety of build options, increases pet DPS and survivability, and allows players to customize their pets to suit their own needs. It also makes choosing pets more about the skills they bring rather than what stats they have, which I feel is a much more exciting system to play with. Enhancing Impact: I like the quickness on this trait, since it allows you to close out fights once you get the upper hand. 3 seconds of stability feels weird though - if we've just disabled the enemy (usually for 2 seconds, given our stuns), then what do we do with 3s of stability? May be more useful in PvP where stunbreaks are more of a problem. - Vow of the Untamed: I like the theme of this, but I feel it's lacking some punch. Also, not sure if this is a bug or not, but Vow of the Untamed doesn't provide any benefits to your pet. Given the intention of us apparently sharing this power with our animals, I feel it'd make a lot of sense for this buff to be passed back and forth. - Fervent Force: As others have said, this trait is bonkers. The amount of recharge reduced needs to be brought down, as in its current state its far more powerful than any of the alternatives. Reducing cooldowns makes this effectively a CC, defensive, and offensive trait choice all in one. - Restorative Strikes: Looks really strong on paper, but is much less impactful in actual play due to the rather middling damage Untamed brings to the table right now. I've heard players are unhappy with the damage the Untamed does in PvP specifically, so this trait could be quite weak in the environment it's most required in. - Ferocious Symbiosis: I love this concept so much! I really feel like I'm working in tandem with my pet with this trait. Unfortunately, it's currently bugged and pets do not get the boon - once this is fixed I'll be really excited to use this. As a closing thought, I like Untamed. It brings some interesting concepts to the table and many of its traits deliver well on its theme, however it's currently held back by middling damage on hammer and a reliance on extremely outdated pet mechanics. A significant number of the spec's issues can be fixed by addressing the issues facing pets, which include: - Pets not being affected by quickness. - Pets being unable to land attacks on moving targets. - Pets often stow themselves upon changing builds or entering and leaving water. This problem is particularly crippling with Soulbeasts, who gain no stats from the stowed pet. - Pet damage has been a victim of powercreep. They do around 500-1000DPS now at absolute best, which was low back in the day, but is all but entirely negligible now. Pet damage needs to either be buffed, or they need to be moved entirely to being CC and utility companions.

I don't usually comment on things like this, but I feel I should add my opinion to the pot, for feedback purposes. As many before me have stated, I believe this is a prime example of predatory business practices, and is clearly designed to squeeze as much money as possible out of the playerbase for the content produced. Moreover, it edges on straight up gambling, which is dangerous territory in its own right and can cause serious problems for players who actually suffer from addictions to this kind of thing. There is some over-dramatization going on for sure, but this is definitely not a player-friendly way of implementing new content. Don't get me wrong, lootboxes can be fantastic - I personally think LoL and Overwatch have great lootbox systems - but the way this has been done looks like a ham-handed attempt to cash in quickly without researching how to make the system rewarding and non-exploitive, which is really, really dissapointing, simply because of how player-friendly your company has been for a long time. Kind of feels like breaking a bond of trust, honestly. Moving past the financial aspect of things, I think this has done some long-lasting damage to the game's community as well. The GW2 playerbase, which we were proud to call one of the friendliest MMO communities at the time of HoT release, is now bickering and infighting both in and out of game because of something as trivial as skins - I've seen players being bullied and demonized simply because they have mount skins, which is disgusting. It's completely divided the playerbase. It's also resulted in you guys getting some pretty bad press recently too. I'm no finance expert and far be it from me to tell you how to run your business, but I'm going to assume that several articles and videos calling ANet a predatory company 2 m=onths after the release of an expansion pack can't be good. I don't really know how to fix it at this point - I honestly think a lot of the damage is done. But please, learn from this. We know, you're a company, you have families to feed and wages to pay. We're happy to give you money, but give us the ability to buy what WE want with our money, rather than forcing us into half-baked loot box gambling. The last couple of months have seen more and more gem store content, and now paying money isn't even guaranteed to give players the loot they want anymore. It's been agonizing to watch a game I love so dearly degenerate as much as it has recently.