Kilrik.6320

So here's what i got from going through WvW is not as fast as PvE for getting legendary armor. It is said that WvW takes longer but is easier by pip farming. Some say they are only in WvW for legendary and don't care for the game mode and want it to go faster. Others say they don't like any of the 3 modes of obtaining legendary and want a pve open world method. Many brought in math to compare the grind in obtaining leggys. Still others brought up I already got mine so what do I get if they change the system. My only question is why do you play the game? Gw2 does not have a vertical progression beyond level 80 and armor beyond ascended. The only benefit to legendary is the qol/convenience and/or skins. If you do not like the grind or find it grueling to play, then there is not much reason to acquire leggy. They will not improve your gameplay or strengthen your character. Many console games can be finished in less than 48 hours of play. MMORPGs are meant to be an ongoing/indefinite gaming experience. What happens when you have instant gratification by getting all the pretty skins and all the AP. My guess, you move on to the next game. Gw2 should be a marathon not a sprint.

Redo is like asking to win the lottery. Dreaming in that world, I would like to see what they set out to do reimagined for sure. I've posted in a couple other threads my problems with the spec and what I think they could do to fix it. Some of my suggestions are probably easier than others code-wise, but since this is beta and since once again ranger is presented lastly like druid, any and all revamps and changes will be spread out over the year(s). I will say IMO that given the sorry state of the spec, I suppose we won't have to worry about there being too many nerfs for a while, and over time those most persistent in trying to get the square wheels to roll, might stumble upon a moderately working Frankenstein's monster build. 🙂

I would be more willing to consider the Untamed elite viable if there would be three major changes 1. Make the toggle for leash and unleash a global cooldown like an engineer kit. Adjust the skill Cleansing Unleash accordingly. 2. Combine the 5 alternating hammer skills into 1, no changing between leash/unleash. Adjust the cd's as necessary for the combined skills. 3. The pet in general suffers from easy death in pvp/wvw. Soulbeast allows revives through merge, whereas core and Druid require more management through attk/call-back and pet swap. Since the Untamed spec focuses on the back and forth pairing, there should be more forgiveness for pets. Reverse the pet's f-skills for leash/unleash (leash skills would be Venomous Outburst, Rending Vines and Enveloping Haze, normal pet skills for buffed/unleashed pet). When the player is unleashed I think both dmg modifiers for the pet should be something like pet deals a mere 25 percent damage but only takes 25 percent damage, or alternatively has a more monstrous health pool similar to pve, or the Mechanist golem. With this the pet could be "saved" in situations where the cd for swap is ongoing and the elite could still function. The utility of the pet skills leashed would still function effectively and the player base may be alright with it as well for a trade-off since the pet is doing barely any damage. Additionally, the cantrip heal might might actually be usable if the pet has a large health pool during this exchange. The pet ai is and most likely will always be an issue that lingers for rangers, but as mentioned a million times in the Untamed thread, we need a more reasonable pet management system for Untamed. I unfortunately can't think of an ez fix for this one.

So got my answer or at least I'm satisfied with my findings.... Went to pvp tested on Indestructible golem with greatsword using only slash for 20 hits. I used basic 5% precision 209.9%, critical damage and 2,200 power using amulet of the valkyrie and dwayna rune to reduce rates of critical hits and gauge a more nominal physical damage. I did 3 tests- core, untamed leashed, untamed unleashed testing only the player damage. Builds were WS and BM all 2's for all 3. Core 3rd was skirmishing all 2's. Untamed all 2's for both scenarios. Core hits were: all 425 with one crit at 892 for an average of 448.35 damage per hit of slash. Untamed leashed player hits were: all 361 with 2x 758 crit for an avg of 400.7 damage per hit of slash (380.85 if only one crit and other hit was again 361-given probability of 1 in 20 being a crit) Untamed unleashed player hits were: 498, 503, 503, 508, 508, 508, 498, 488, 1026, 488, 498, 488, 488, 488, 488, 488, 488, 488, 488, 488 for an avg of 520.9 per hit of slash. Not much I can say to these results only that unleashed>core>leashed. If core is 100% baseline it would round to 116% unleash>100% core > 85% leashed (using the 380.85 avg dmg - 89% if 2nd crit in mix) SO THERE IS AN ACTUAL 30% DIFFERENCE IN PLAYER DAMAGE LEASHED VS UNLEASHED FOR UNTAMED! I ASSUME THE DAMAGE TAKEN MODIFIERS ARE LIKEWISE TRUE!

Point of clarification.... I think I am either reading this wrong or many others are... Vow of the Untamed: your outgoing damage and incoming damage are increased while you are unleashed. Your outgoing damage and your incoming damage are decreased while your pet is unleashed. Outgoing 15% Incoming 10% If core=100% does that mean the player unleashed= 115% dmg given and 110% dmg taken while pet is at 85% dmg given and 90% dmg taken. With the reverse being true on switch. OR since there is no neutral base point since untamed is either on or off for pet/player that the player unleashed= 115% dmg given, 110% dmg taken while pet is at 100% dmg given and 100% dmg taken. With the reverse being true on switch. Consequently, it could be stated in reverse. Player unleashed= 100% dmg given 100% taken pet 85% dmg given 90% dmg taken. One is compared to a neutral/core while the other is only compared to itself. Either way, the damage variation favors the player remaining in unleashed, since pets do not do nearly the damage a player does. Additionally, pets die so easily in pvp/wvw with reduced health pools from pve and all others stats constant. Untamed does not buff the pet beyond the simple unleash/leash concept. Therefore, imo for pet survivability it makes more sense to keep it leashed, so it at least takes less or normal damage. Funny doesn't Druid already reduce pet stats while Soulbeast only increases player stats with pet merge, it's basically variations of the same concept. It will be harder to test for dmg taken so I am going to try same stats core vs untamed leashed/unleashed for dmg against golems to compare the numbers using no precision to get a sampling of say 10 hits for the 3 diff variants. One problem I see is I still have to fill the third traitline in core so would/should I min/max it for a reliable score? I'll be back for findings.....

Best I found was to find 2 pets you like, and play it like core. Don't use the hammer stay in untamed as the player for the damage increase(and dmg taken increase) with the traits debilitating blows, enhancing impact, and ferocious symbiosis. WS, BM and UT with all core heal utility and elite. SotP elite for might, quickening zephr for speed of attk to keep up stacks for ferocious symbiosis and lb and gs for wep. The rapid fire and the barrage can keep 5 stacks ez. I tried axe main and offhand for extra strikes as well, it's doable. The pet attacks land better when you control them like the gazelle head butt. THE ONLY PROBLEM is tho it may be a workable build despite not using the f5, Core might still be better... 😖

What was said earnestly earlier, I saw as a joke just now, and thought maybe a troll thread until I saw the time it was posted.🙂

So far I think core is better. The toggle for the unleash should be reworked as well as the trait interaction. 10 sec is too long to have to wait to use normal pet skills. I was trapped too many times in wvw gated from using necessary survival ploys to negate damage or slow targets. Additionally being caught in untamed when 3 more guys arrive is not a pleasant encounter soaking up the extra multiples of their damage. As I said earlier, hammer is the only notable weapon that the spec focuses on and it feels clunky and slow imo with not enough mobility. The pet abilities while untamed are interesting especially as a gap closer, but since every new spec has seemingly spammable shadowsteps, it's a moot point. Once the pet ports to target, the target ports in your face and the dumb ai takes over as it runs back to target, perhaps even slower since there is not a direct attk target command for the spec (that and can't be creative by having pet attack a secondary target simultaneously). The PETS STILL DIE JUST AS EASY AND ARE LESS EASY TO CONTROL with untamed. No attk target/no recall to player commands. I was hoping that the spec would open up more pet options but this is definitely not what I foresee. Birds and such have the same health pool, same death cd and can potentially die faster if you use the cantrip heal or while they are untamed. The ai is not improved, but when player is untamed the control of pet's skills seem to react faster than normal ai at least. The tree skills are somewhat lackluster. Vitality is always a good thing, but when the player is untamed they take 10 percent increased damage, it sorta cancels out any benefit. Imo the cantrips are not worth taking over normal ranger skills. The utility skills offer only a condi conversion to vulnerability and no stun breaks. The elite is quite good, but only for defensive purposes with a longer cd than any of the norm rangers elites taken other than the spirit. I like restorative strikes and ferocious symbiosis for gms; however both are more effective when using weapons which strike quickly, so not hammer. Hammer could be used if multiple targets are in front, but the spec unless pure tank, would not benefit, and the tank option seems like others classes might still do it better ie. necro/guard. It's still super early, but I'm not seeing it.....

I sadly agree. This is ominous and similar to druid and the indecisive astral farce scenario they went through with so many different variations on gaining astral force. Then smokescale and bristleback which actually hit targets were nerfed within weeks. For a while, they even changed out the most useful f2 in the game (imo) on smokescale from smoke field to the smoke assault. Ranger was the side thought class in HoT. Which begs the question, will it be the same for this expansion? Concerning the other thought.... A beastmaster was an outstanding choice for gw1, where as it was said before, it could work since targets were more stationary. This game, the Ai seems similar to gw1, but players are constantly moving and shadowstepping. Since day one, I've seen countless videos where pets can't land a hit on a moving target that's moving at in-combat speed with no buffs, because of animation cast delays. The newer expansion pets are slightly better and they tried speeding up animations for all, but the pet mechanics are unreliable to this day for consistent damage and with their damage calculated in the overall ranger damage it's a net negative. So I would vote a BIG NOOOO on a beastmaster spec for gw2, esp if they intended to make an actual aoe wvw group useful ranger spec. Take the pet away completely for that. It would be cool to see a wvw group asking for rangers instead of constantly kittening on them in team chat. Roaming is fine, but group play might be fun without having to change professions.

If all the woe is from sic' em, just give it the treatment they gave to protect me and signet of renewal, where the full effects only work un-merged. The merged player gets no bonus damage from sic em whatsoever (and as before it would never make it on to any utility bar again). It would fall in line with protect me's no barrier and signet of renewal's no condi clear or extra health regen while merged. Leave the bonus stats to ferocious pets, maul, and worldly impact alone. Shaving the stat bonuses from the beastmastery line down is tolerable and by doing so makes other traitlines slightly more inviting. Smokescale is still the number one choice of most competitive and pve players even after the nerf to ferocious, and that is because it was never just chosen for the damage. It is more durable than many pets, has a smokefield for itself and player, connects with attacks and often with the knock-down and has useful skills while merged as well. Even if it was switched to one of the other archtype lines it would still probably be the number one choice, since it is arguably the only real working pet. I think it is fair to say the nerf to ferocious was pretty much a nerf for smokescale and since they have nerfed smokescale about a billion times already, they probably didn't want it to seem like they were targeting it again.

It's a cc and does no dmg other than one sec bleed really, but you may have noticed a 20 cd too at least. :/

Did not try on soulbeast, but on core ranger I got the barrier from protect me, and it proved very useful. :)

I agree with the addition that I predict the a/d is condi-based, since the axe was buffed for condi and condi overall was mostly untouched by this upcoming patch.

I thought it was as near to the perfect utility weapon ranger ever had before the change. IMO it was never meant as a melee damage weapon. Sword was for damage mitigation through evades and kite and most still chose gs over this version. From what I've seen, the new sword is played even less, since they took away the utility/kite, made a gated evade, didn't increase any damage to the weapon, and added training wheels fluidity to promote use in melee.... And most still choose gs over sword, including myself who played sword in most every build from 2012-RIP. At least my bolt looks good on my revenant.

Well, I was responding to the original poster concerning his/her want of additional nerfs to the already nerfed skills for ranger in the upcoming patch, but I will respond to your entry as well then. Apples and Oranges you might say, but with the patch, everyone gets a smaller apple or orange and ranger's orange has a few sections missing from what they had. We had 2 pets since PoF, if soulbeast had one pet from the beginning then I suppose it's as the old adage goes, "you don't know what you got...till it's gone" or maybe it's a line from a hair band song of the 80's. Either way I ramble on....wait that's definitely zeppelin. Schadenfreude- one of my favorite German words that might work here