Criminal.5627

The Untamed "unleashed" pet buff needs to do more to make an unleashed pet significantly better than a core ranger's pet. Also in retrospect to all of the Ranger pets, at this point they all seriously need to have stat sharing with the ranger being played going forward as a base mechanic and might need to have base damage of attacks adjusted based on hit rates of each class of pet (spiders for example need a significant damage increase as slow projectiles and low hit rates, or frankly just make all pets melee if it is easier). The performance of the mech belonging to the Mechanist shows that Ranger pets are vastly under preforming for the Untamed and in all ranger specs when compared. Ranger pets do not get including or gain any benefit from group buffs where the mech of the Mechanist does due to the stats on the Mechanist being altered by the buffs, which by proxy, alter the stats on the mech thus improving the mech indirectly and passively. Ranged Pets also should have different unleashed skills in my honest opinion as they don't stick with moving targets to utilize rending vines with the 180 radius as the auto attack they use is a ranged attack and they do not give chase even when teleported at a target that is mobile.

Improving the player damage by 25% does not improve anything because it does not offer any synergy with any mechanic that the Untamed has in the toolkit. That is essentially it. It would be comparable to something like buffing the Necromancer staff skills by 25% damage with the reasoning of improving the use of the staff over other weapons for in-game content. Farther thoughts below from based on the perspective of having a main character as a ranger since the betas in 2012. Currently there is no way to compete in a pve aspect on damage or utility due to the short windows of assassinate skills, the pet gaining no real advantage over a core ranger pet while unleashed (the damage output of an Unleashed pet is abysmal and we should not pretend it is more than it really is, the jag even with the ferocity bonus from "stalking" only crits around 13K avg while unleashed with the beastmaster trait line), the heal skill, utilities, and elite are all selfish skills that do not promote synergy with a group of other players preventing it from being beneficial to 5 or 10 man content (even as a tank, other classes are preferred due to the sharing of boons and ability to incorporate support roles into their toolkits), there is no core ranger offensive elite that can carry the elite spec by offering unique boons in group play or adding to the synergy of a group as "Strength of the Pack" would be good if it shared across the entire 5 man party but the entire elite is made irrelevant as in any 5-50 man groups you will already have the boons provided by this elite by a support role ally that can keep them up with more consistency than the ranger elite can, the pet is still not responsive to stopping attacks when using the return command even while passive (try doing the Zen Daijun's maze solo and enjoy the experience of using Venomous Outburst on your target after loosing your pet in the maze somewhere to only watch your pet run off after being teleported to your target and you spamming return and it being on passive). Even the trait line has no synergy with other trait lines. There is no improvement with two handed mastery causing an effect on hammers, Moment of Clarity does not work on multi hit skills like the assassinate skills. even the assassinate skills vastly under preform and are difficult to pull off for even a low end payout. There is also almost no reason to maintain a constant swamping of the unleashed buff to trigger the assassinate skills as the pet does not gain any significant damage increase from a core ranger pet by being unleashed and the ranger loses 25% of their current damage output. The CC in the toolkit is great don't get me wrong, the survivability is great too... but that is not what this game is built off of, there are timers we need to make within the game and there are other players we need to cooperate with in order to do a vast majority of content. The argument that Untamed should not be able to do DPS because it is a Survival kit and the Soulbeast was already the dps toolkit for ranger is as flawed as saying the Willbender should not be able to heal or dps because both the Firebrand and the Dragonhunter toolkits were designed to be a support kit or a dps kit, or that the Catalyst should not be a dps spec because the Weaver was a dps spec. The lack of options for any viable DPS spec that does not also rely on the Soulbeast is also disheartening for the majority of content. Weirdly enough, there are players that actually enjoy "pet classes" and would rather see the pets for rangers function well and be able to use them well for big payoffs, but that is not a possibility in the current standing of the game. The engineer Mechanist already has better pet integration than the ranger pets by allowing stat sharing in order to boost the effectiveness of it's mech while ranger pets are locked into stat sets that don't always make sense for the individual pet to have. Another significant advantage of the stat sharing with pets is that the pet gains benefits from boons on the player from due to the sharing of the core stats instead of excluding the pets from benefiting from group buffs and boons. So the mech of the Mechanist gains benefits from group buffs on the Mechanist without having to do anything additional where the pet for the Rangers, regardless of spec, gains no benefit as they are not included in the distribution of group buffs, and the ranger, if wanting to offer any of the boons they have to the pet in order to increase the effectiveness of the pet, needs to sacrifice their heal skill and incorporate it into a rotation which already puts them at a survivability and dps disadvantage. There is also a Wide range of pets that nearly every spec of the ranger does not even touch in all/most aspects of the game because other pets have significantly better utility or combat opportunities that they offer (this is akin to playing pokemon and having all of those pokemon you never use or interact with sitting in one of your storage boxes on the pc for the life of your save game). The dumb thing is that it wouldn't take much to fix the seldom used pets such as the majority of those that are ranged by adjusting for the slow and hard to hit projectiles, by making them seriously hurt IF they hit. we are at the point in the game where we should be seeing pets hit 16K or more, base (non-crit), in pve, to maintain a level of competition with other classes. Another thing about ranged pets though is that they don't function well for the Untamed's pet skills when they are unleashed when there is any movement by a foe as their auto attack is ranged and besides Venomous Outburst they will not maintain a distance to have a payoff with either Rending Vines or Enveloping Haze. I also get Soulbeast was weak on the launch of PoF, and druid had a decent condi build after a few patches, but it has been a consistent thing for rangers to be under powered at the launch of an expansion and it is really a labor of love to stay with it while watching other classes show their flexibility and greater effectiveness for months or longer, repeatedly, on each expansion. I am also still not over the healing output nerf that druid took with the current state of other support classes considering it may now be something that will possibly hurt the standing of players that main a ranger from being able to get into high end content should the effectiveness of spirits diminish as those boons are essentially why they are desired at this point as a heal ele can far outpace a druid in heals and there are other options for 5 man might. Additionally, I am still not over removing the ability of spirits being able to walk and fallow the ranger around as that was the first change that outright killed an entire, viable, well preforming, core ranger condi spec in pve, pvp, and wvw. Frankly I know there needs to be a lot of work at the base level and up, if anyone wants to try to list possible "fixes" to specific things we struggle from here, be my guest. I just hope things balance out in the end.

The Avid Seitung Province Fisher achievement is not tracking with fish caught after completing the Seitung Province Fisher achievement.

Make it more tempting and more rewarding for individuals that can do the mechanic successfully by rewarding the first player to make it back to the platform a buff that gives them 100+ fold, damage modifier; while at the same time, once the first person makes it back to the platform, all other players that were in a green circle and in wisp form are instantly defeated. Allow the fight to progress to the next phase as soon as that first individual makes it back onto the platform and the others become defeated. The larger damage buff needs to stroke peoples egos and make them want to get it so they can brag/crush the dps readings. The damage buff would need to also be large enough to make up for and offset the mechanic that relied on many other individuals also needing to get current damage buff. This would in essence remove instances of individuals standing in the green circles, being turned into the wisp, and not finishing the mechanic in its entirety and dragging down entire map metas from being able to even have a chance at succeeding. As it is if both phases are taken by individuals that do not know how to complete them, the meta is unrecoverable and all time and effort could be wasted by one random individual because they never make it up to the top in under 2 min each time they pop. You could even add a debuff to standing on the green circles that is long enough to ensure that different players get an opportunity to try to race to the top for that monumental damage buff and the same person does not always end up being the one to get it each time it pops in every meta. This would also remove any possibility for individuals to grief a map meta event as well which is what some population of the player base has been suggesting. This would be a change that would make the wisp phase more engaging while less punishing to all individuals and the effort/progress made on said map meta. The current setup is similar to how when Tequatl was updated and individuals would get on the guns and not use them to keep the bone armors from stacking up on Teq resulting to random players being able to completely undermined any group organization and all map wide efforts made. I do enjoy the mechanics as they are though... it is just not everyone is good with jumping puzzles and strangers are not caring about the organizational efforts made by others. all it takes is just that one person to take off 4 min from the entire meta currently. Reading map chat after failed metas is becoming increasingly toxic and as things stand not many individuals will be wanting to repeatedly engage in the current meta as it stands after they complete their siege turtle mount. It would be a different scenario if the entire meta could be run as an instanced 50 man squad event. That is just my take though and my idea on a solution. not to mention a multiplier buff to all damage for one individual should theoretically be easier to tune up or down if it is too excessive or under preforming with the encounter and keep it from being an instant win situation where squads want a particular profession/build and become hostile if anyone else gets it.

The Blinding Outburst trait does not seem to be increasing the damage of Venomous Outburst by 25% as stated by the trait in open world. At the vary least it seems very inconsistent for a 25% increase and the skill text does not change to show the 25% increase.

But i mean it is important, if you dodge blowtorch you only take the burn stacks for the ticks you don't dodge. Saying something is good because you look at the whole of the picture doesn't mean that the individuals pieces are not flawed. Or like saying that a dark image looks beautiful on a monitor but when you switch to an image that is white you realize every 20th pixel is dead and black on the monitor. Another example is saying that Torment from Harbinger Shroud is overpowered right now because the six stacks of torment it applies at once can do 30,341 damage. However that 30,341 damage is only done if your target stands still and it is done over 20 seconds. Each individual tick of torment is not 30,341 dmg, but is only 893 dmg to unmoving targets and most players would clear that torment off of them well before those 20 seconds were up. Ancient seed only does 1 sec of immob per tick over 5 seconds of ticking, and that is the important thing. It is not 5 sec of immob on impact. A player would literally have to sit in it for 5 sec without using any tools at their disposal to get out of it for the immob to last 5 sec. Most players would honestly dodge it to begin with, use a skill that removes effects of immob on them so they can run out of it, or just swing their weapon once and only be caught by one stack. Taking ancient seed to begin with also means dipping into the druid trait line of which there is not a whole lot of offensive ability there so it is not likely that people that have it even have expertise to make the immob last longer than 1 sec a tick. If you are talking about immob on npcs there is way better skills/traits that give much longer lasting immob than ancient seed.

To be honest, I was kind of hoping that the balance update would reduce the duration of aegis that guardians apply since they can repeatedly spam it which has put all areas of game play for Guildwars 2 in the position that mechanics are being ignored by guardians being able to pop abilities that can keep a party safe for multiple seconds from what would otherwise be mechanics that would have to be dealt with or they would wipe the party. Even how Guardians can apply stab for extended periods of time is excessive. Druids only have access to one real source of party stability and that is from using the grand master trait for spirits (Nature's Vengeance) and the spirit of nature. The stability spirit of nature offers is not great either, it is only 6 seconds of one stack of stability (only 3 seconds if you don't have gear with Concentration), costs you the use of the utility to revive downed party members to do it, and it has a 40 second cd.

pretty sure the tendril for ancient seed only has like 2k health, I am sorry but if you cant take the time to click on it and auto attack it you really don't have room to complain it is a 5sec imob that is also why this skill sucks in anything that is not 1v1 as it will instantly die due to cleave and aoe dmg from any group fight that occurs.

Actually I dont believe pets in pvp ever had that much health. Even now bears have the highest at 30k and most other pets have 22k, with all of the abilities that cleave and aoe, and back then I believe pet health was even lower as offensive pets just got boosted up to 18k health around then, pets melt. They don't dodge out of the way and when anet allowed pets to evade when you dodged you had to use your dodge as well to keep your pet alive which meant that you might not have it when you needed it. There was more risk reward instead of the facerolling that is common in gameplay now since the power creep started.

I just want to remind you that any ranger besides soulbeast actually has less damage on weapon skills than any other class in the game. All of the ranger core abilities were created with the idea that pets would be doing some dmg and the stats of pets were originally created to be on par at lvl 80 with a character in full rare gear. Pets have not been updated for a very long time either, in fact they have been nerfed more recently than they have been updated which puts core ranger much farther behind any other class's dmg output with the casual damage creep that has occurred in this game meaning that unless you take Soulbeast for the added stats from merging with your pet and the additional skills from merging with your pet (as relying upon the pet to be soul responsible to hit every attack off CD and stay on it's target is very unreliable) the ranger is currently unable to be competitive in any pve activity for damage output. Condi Druids are not even competitive with condi soulbeasts for being close in dps. Yes, rangers have access to some things that make them mobile or more durable in pvp, but the thing is rangers don't have the ability to exceed in all aspects of pvp the way other classes do atm such as solo roaming, 1v3 skirmishing, or solo area denial. Currently in pvp rangers mostly excel with being backup to at least one other person or roaming with a small group of teammates. Pets were also never immortal in pvp, and for a long time they were constantly targeted and one shot by bosses in pve (same with necromancer minions, lead to the jellyfish boss becoming immortal in fractals if it eat a ranger pet or necro minion, good times). The Jaguar was the only pet to land high crits like that because of it's F2 gave them +25% crit hit chance and +375 ferocity and stealth, you also had to hit a utility CD and hope that the idiot that was coming to attack you stood still which they typically did as warriors using 100 blades. So 2 cd's to land high crits on a full glass cannon warrior. The bird spam was annoying yes when that all happened, but it should also be said that the birds were able to do more damage than any of the rangers other attacks or abilities while keeping swiftness up to more reliably hit targets in contrast to almost any other pet. The birds should not have been an outlier in pets and should have been how other pets functioned on a base level and then pet damage should have been looked at and balanced to each individual pet species to keep them all similarly viable (looking at you spiders and devours). Out of "ancient seed, entangle, jarakanda F2, pet damage, longbow range come to mind." the only thing that benifits a ranger as far as the individual playing the ranger is the longbow range. Ancient seed and entangle are only good to use if you have teammates around that can take advantage of it as the roots can be killed pretty quickly from any aoe or cleave dmg. The Jarakanda is overall an overall underwhelming pet with one good ability and pretty much nothing else to offer during combat, it is the land jellyfish. Pet damage is underwhelming for the lack of reliably being able to land hits on CD (seriously go look at old ranger forum posts prior to soulbeast being a thing, people kept begging for anet to get rid of pets for being so unreliable instead of trying to fix them as well as frustration with lower weapon damage on skills). Even the long bow range is negligible boon when you take into account of being able to LoS or strafe most situations besides barrage. Really anything besides soulbeast from ranger is not in a great place across the board right now. As it is, even the druid glyph utilities are mostly crap and have been so ever since they got rid of glyph of enhancement; spirits are overwhelmingly preferred for druids to take in 19/20 encounters. Nothing from Druid or core Ranger screams they are in a good place and anyone who played ranger long enough to remember more than playing soulbeast in all aspects of the game. Those that do remember past issues with ranger balance were not exactly thrilled with the lack of attention to core ranger and druid from the last balance patch. Maybe the expansion will fix the serious issues and Soulbeast will no longer be what rangers are required to fall into in order to be competitive in all areas of the game. Maybe pet stats will start to actually scale with gear (instead of a lvl 80 ranger in greens and a lvl 80 ranger in full ascended/legendary having pets with the same stats) and maybe their AI will be able to land hits reliably instead of interrupting its self.

The thing was it was still hard to get pets to hit regularly, the pathing on pets was and still is bad, Jag was good in that you could stealth it so they had a hard time avoiding it, but someone who is aware of where the ranger pet is can usually out run the pet attack animation to the point that when the pet stops to attack it missed, or strafe the pet attacks so they never hit. Really the reason why it was nerfed was because of people running glass cannon builds thought it was unfair that they had to worry about something attacking their flank while they tried to burst down the ranger in a few seconds (while not having to pay attention to things that are not players) it was part of the old original meta of bunker builds, bunker burst builds, and skirmishers. The dumb thing is that old balance patching to bring things inline with stuff that is no longer in the game never gets revisited with the removal of stats, runes, and sigils from pvp. For instance the way spirits used to fallow you with the grand master trait is one of those over balanced things that should probably be revisited as it was the ranger's bunker build that required stats that no longer exist in pvp and would benefit multiple other areas of gameplay once again.

So why did Pain Absorption on revs get 5 seconds of Resolution from transferring one condition from allies to self but Signet of Renewal for rangers that transfers 13 conditions to either the pet or to self still has no Resolution but has 2 seconds of Resistance? Using Signet of Renewal is currently a death sentence for soulbeasts and pets please fix

The last time we had a balance dev main a ranger and pet damage and health were boosted the damage was nerfed less than 10 days after being implemented. Even when we had a dev the buffs we got were short lived because people complained they couldn't kill us easily anymore. Was fun for a short time though, take beast mastery trait line, bring the jag, sent it into prowl + sic em, and it would crit someone that was running glass cannon 12-16k while in prowl with sic em. I miss having a dangerous active pet.

It could be the tank build or what ever but it would be fun to have hammers and combined attacks with pets be a thing that allows superior control over foes than what we have now... also Bunny thumpers were one of the fun builds from gw1!Any ways, guys and gals start your speculations of what is to come!

The bug still exists today. The visual bug has now officially existed for 6 years.