Rhailex.2513

Sorry for late reply, but I feel like I need to reply to this. People are used to a certain amount of rewards for doing X, Y and Z content. If you suddenly spend twice the time for the same rewards as currently, people will be outraged, not to mention they will flock to other types of content. It's a delicate balance and simply because it "used to be like that" it doesn't mean that's how it should be now. Same can be said for PvP (wether it's good or bad); When game was released, there were 9 professions, no specializations. You only had to care about wether it's a condi build or power build, other than that you knew roughly how your opponent's class plays. Today you have 9 professions, with 3 elite specs each, each with at least 1-2 builds, not even mentioning core spec builds (that are viable on many professions). That's at least 27 builds, more realistically at least 60 builds that all play differently.

I'd like to have a larger skillbar without making every other ui element take up 25% or more of my screen space. It's difficult to glance at the cooldowns and such in pvp for instance because the skillbar becomes so small on higher resolutions. For example: Interface Size: Normal Skillbar Size: Larger If you put "Skillbar Size" on "Default", it would be the same as Interface Size.

If you would get banned for that, then I would have been banned a hundred times for grabbing a cup of coffee and relying on my ranger's pet to defend me while I'm afk for 5 or so minutes. I have no doubt that anet is very careful about it because why would they ban someone who honestly just goes to take a kitten or grab a fresh cup of coffee but never actually afk farmed, ever?

I mean, look at vindicator, then. It's at 42k. The spec can generate 25 stacks of might alongside quickness and fury in open world with just a few trait changes. While halving the damage would make a lot of instanced content more interesting, it would also make them longer and would require anet to basically double the rewards for each. Then you'd have the next problem with the weeklies for each raid instance. Should that be halved if you double the individual rewards? A lot of smaller problems arise.

They only see those few and how much damage they are dealing, not how much time and investment it takes to actually learn to use the spec efficiently.

...since there obviously must be a reason they do it, right? Edit: Same goes for buffs and just changes overall

Look, I didn't even mention GPU in my last reply... Also, I didn't say to perfectly optimise the engine. Smaller optimisations are enough, just to bump up the fps. It doesn't necessarily have to be the code in the engine, it can involve optimising some maps. I suspect Amnytas is very low FPS simply because there are a lot of floating islands, so you can't really use occlusion culling like in normal "whole terrain" maps where things are usually hidden behind mountains/hills. But even then, standing up high somewhere in other maps won't bring you down to 20fps. Also; Standing up high on a tower where no other players are loaded or anything is happening just shows that it's not a CPU/GPU bottleneck, but the engine itself that bottlenecks.A CPU or GPU bottleneck would be either of them being maxed out to 100%. But they aren't... And to be honest, this is pretty extreme when the FPS dips from an excess of 120fps to 20fps in popular places. You can always optimise, that's how it works in programming. I don't even know if they have any of the original developers still in the development team. If they don't, then it would be extremely difficult for someone to get onboarded, learn the ins and outs of the engine and start optimising. Probably not deemed worth the time for a senior developer to spend months on getting familiar and then months on just optimising wherever performance can be gained.

I'm not someone who is expert in how optimisation would affect long-term profits, which I understand they need to take into consideration. So all I can base this next part on is my own experience and people's who can't afford a medium/high-end gaming pc; Optimisation, i.e. squeezing out some more frames, would improve it also for a lot of other people who are used to playing below 20 fps during meta events and in e.g. Lion's Arch. If they have a better experience, they will likely play for longer and spend more time in the game and be more likely to swipe their cards or buy expansions. The game is getting a lot of praise and there are a lot of new players all the time in the starter zones, but it makes me wonder what their reaction is when their mid-range PC can't even push the game above 20-30 fps when they finally get to the epic meta-events and such that the game offers. And yes, my CPU is showing 30-something % utilization, where one core usually sits at ~70%. Still, just that should be saying something. I'm not expecting it to be optimised to run at 60fps in any situation, but at least 30+, around 40 fps would be completely fine. Considering that you can set player model limit & quality to "Lowest" to gain a bunch of FPS in a lot of other places, some just can't be helped as even when put everything to it's lowest, it only changes by max 5 fps.

Standing in Amnytas, high up on the tower the the SW mastery point; no players loaded, just the environment, I am getting around 25 fps. https://imgur.com/a/xtD3XDd - A picture of settings and CPU/GPU utilization I'm playing with a Ryzen 9 and RTX 3080, pretty much maxing out most games at 4k (!!!) and 60 fps. This is ridiculous, makes me not want to play the game because it's straining my eyes. At 24 fps and even lower when the meta event is going, you can't even follow an object on the screen because the frames are so scarce. And this is an occurance in other places too. Can't imagine how it is for a lot of other people who have budget PCs and can't afford something better to maybe push their fps from 10 to 20.

I can't for that specific matchup but I know for a fact that the amount of rank points you gain or lose is also biased by the odds of winning based on which profession/specialization you're playing. If you matchmake with a profession that on average suffers the most losses in comparison with other professions, the matchmaker will try to match you with people to balance that and the other team will also be balanced towards your team. Now if you, already in a match waiting for the cooldown, then swap to a profession that has a much higher win ratio, the odds of winning for your team goes up significantly. If you lose the match with high odds of winning, you will lose more rank points. But if you win with high odds of winning, you will gain less than what you would've lost. With theory & logic aside, my empirical evidence is from when me and a mate were playing both soulbeasts in ranked pvp. While we would win a lot of matches because of the disgusting delete-burst of 2 soulbeasts, we would gain like 8 on wins and lose like 15 on losses.

RIP Math Grim: 433 wins | 197 losses | 630 matches; 31% loss rate or 69% win ratio Doze: 198 wins | 86 losses | 284 matches; 30% loss rate or 70% win ratio

Just adding my experience here... I've been PvPing in this game quite a bit more than ordinary casuals... I am a casual too but my first account (release to 2 years after release) had thousands of hours of pvp, esp on Ranger alone. Today I am still PvPing but I only have 1.2k matches and rank 81. Win ratio is just above 50%. So with that out of the way; I lean heavily towards playing what's fun and that's usually ranger builds that are a bit off-meta, so I never cared much about having high win ratio or getting to plat. I want to have fun 🙂 The huge threshold is Gold 2 and Gold 3 for me, depending on day and how far into season we are. At that point, you pretty much only see meta builds and people play very differently than what you get matched with while Gold 1 and below. It goes from being matched with just ordinary pvp players (conquest matches all day every day) to getting matched with people who take their time to duel, study other professions, knowing current meta-builds of all specs, etc. Interestingly, people get less toxic the higher rank you get. Some examples of stupid things I see people do at and below Gold 1; Skill reading. You can usually just auto-attack a person or use a cheap, somewhat higher damage, skill and they will waste both their dodged just like that. You can also just use a gap closer skill and the automatic reaction is to dodge. Zero reactiveness when attacking. I can literally activate a 50% damage reduction skill and if possible put protection on myself and just stand still while someone is whacking me with their burst, because they have no idea about how to read the situation from the first moment when their attack hits with 500 damage instead of 2-3k. What happens then? They are running away while I'm bursting them to death. Zero reactiveness when defending. Same as above. Most players try to guess when they will be CC'd, usually wasting their stun breaks when it was an extremely short CC or they "think" they will be CCd. Some skills apply CC on you repeatedly, which means a stunbreak without an evade frame won't help you because you'll get instantly re-CCd. Very low map awareness. I can't explain this... Isn't it common sense to zoom out so you can see the whole map (i.e. all 3 points)? Roamers/side-noders thinking that the only responsibility they have is running around fighting outside points and refuse to adapt to the team they have. The typical "What the kitten are you guys doing, I'm kiting 3 people at their point". Most somewhat good players can kite 2-3 people for half a minute maybe, heck, I've done it on untamed for a whole minute, but it doesn't mean it's useful if the team doesn't know about your plan. If the other 2 opponents are picking your team off one by one, there is no point in this tactic. People not understanding that holding 2 points is in majority of matches BETTER and EASIER than running to FAR and trying to hold that. Most often it results in getting wiped and the enemy taking over all points. It's mostly enough to DECAP their far, becuase this will bait one of the opponents to go cap it, putting them out of the team-fight at mid, giving YOU time to pick off their support before the capper joins at mid... ETC ETC ETC

I mean yeah ranger has one of the best weapon designs on greatsword, but it's only used in PvP. Even ranger is heavily outdated in some aspects. Look at the utility skills, half of them are NEVER used because they are just bad. I fear that in the future they will also make some kind of "Skill-mastery training" that will open up elite spec utility skills to the whole class. The weaponmaster training should've come with a traitline rework for every elite spec to make each spec's weapon unique/special to them in some way. All this, what you said and the rest of the forums are what's pushing me away from the game, because people are telling the truth. I loved playing vindicator or revenant in general after being a ranger main for a long time, but holy kitten... The difference between pvp revenant & pve revenant is so huge. Vindicator healings skills are 30s in pvp and 10s in pve. You can't play it in both gamemodes without ruining your muscle memory or "feel" for the class.

Mist Swing: 1.0 * 25% from traits 1.25; Changed to 0.7 * 40% from traits 0.98. New damage with traits is worse than old damage without traits. 1.0 / 1.25 -> 0.7 / 0.98 I'll use the same calculation for the rest, but only write the numbers. Mist Slash: 1.1 / 1.375 -> 0.8 / 1.12 Arcing Mists: 1.3 / 1.625 -> 1.2 / 1.68 Mists Unleashed: 2.0 / 2.5 -> 1.6 / 2.24 Overall a huge nerf to vindicator greatsword as now you'll be forced to use the 2 damage traits to match the pre-nerf damage WITHOUT traits. However, utility skills will do considerably more damage now since the traits went from giving 25 damage bonus to a whopping 40%. Problem is that since vindicator will become more legend-heavy, it will suffer from energy management problems. The utility skills were just that; utility. Now they will be used much more frequently because they deal a ton more damage. The lack of pvp changes don't bother me. Vindicator in general is almost a different class in PVP (just look at the healing skills having 30 sec CD in pvp vs low 10 sec in PVE)

Like other non-untamed specs, we should be able to pick which skills we have when ranger or pet is unleashed.

I mean, what's the point of the aegis if you can't even use it reactively?

Wait, you're telling me that you don't bring a single CC / Block in your build to survive? No wonder people die so easily. The ranger's strength is the duration of their burst. One Wolf Pack is 6s long and Sic'Em is 10 seconds. Sic'em grants 25% more damage Hunter's Call applies 16x Vuln if all hits hit, that's 16% more damage from everything In total, if you don't dodge the initial burst, you'll take about 50%-60% bonus damage from the ranger. If you're glass cannon, then RIP. That's what glass cannons are. Have you seen the kind of burst Vindicators can do in less time? They can even shadowstep 1.2k range through walls/obstacles... Even in Battle of Kyhlo they can shadowstep from outside the building to the mid point. The only change I'd do to soulbeast are these two: Tone down Sic'Em damage buff. It's a skill that's in literally every single build. It lasts 10 seconds and you activate it as soon as you start damaging someone. You only have 18 seconds left before you can use it again after it expires. Increase the "Strike Interval" time for One Wolf Pack to 1/2 or even more to reduce the number of bonus 1.5k crits it gives. I could only get about 8-10 extra hits from this, technically you can achieve more if you have more hits to dish out. But even 10 extra hits is roughly 15k added to everything else. I am pretty sure this skill is wrongly balanced, as in PVE the strike interval is 1 second VS PVP's 1/4 second...

If you queue up with 2 soulbeasts in a party for ranked, you will most likely be matched with a team that also have 2 soulbeasts. The system keeps track of which specs perform.

So your example on "every build" is only bladesworn? Is that what you base your whole thread on, one elite spec of one profession?

Low CD leaps and if you use a bird as secondary pet instead, then yes you lose damage, but you can get into a teamfight, do your burst, down 1 or even 2 people and then instantly disengage because you have Bird #1 leap 1.2k range, GS leap, sword 2x leaps and suddenly you're already decapping their point. Then you can get back to mid in mere seconds. Now do that with axe 😅 Can't tell you how many times I saved my own skin just because of the high number of leaps... Not to mention teammates' lives with the 4k heal on the owl.

Reading all this about soulbeast meanwhile oneshotting people faster as vindicator after porting through a wall 😐

Yes, but that being like that for years doesn't change the point. SB pretty much has 2 extra bursts now with sword & hunter's call.

If you do it right, you can get in a lot more hits by using smoke assault after hunter's call is finished. The seriously busted part is that hunter's call applies 16 vuln for 16% damage, plus sic'em 25% damage for a total of 41% bonus single target damage. If your burst fails, you can still un-merge during smoke assault. Smokescale will most of the time use the knockdown skill, allowing you to either trigger a stunbreak from the opponent or allow you for some sword damage before you swap to GS right after Warhorn 5 that applies a daze and sets you up for Maul -> 5 -> Maul... Another option is swapping to boar while merged and using the 3 sec aoe knockdown there. If THAT still fails, you got the greatsword block -> knock for another attempt at Maul. There are a lot of "backup" plans in the meta build.

I just realized this while looking at the wiki to figure out how to counter Soulbeast meta without having a 6 seconds of block/evade in case I missed something about the skills; If it makes any difference, Ranger has been my main for thousands of hours. TLDR; End of TLDR; No need to read further than this unless for meta build discussion The bulk of the damage comes from One Wolf Pack hitting for roughly 1.5k each hit with Sic'Em (which lasts 10 seconds) and Hunter's Call that adds 16 vulnerability for 16% more damage, then you also have all the might & fury you get increasing it even more. Even if you miss Hunter's Call, One Wolf Pack & Sic'Em is still active and you can use a lot of other skills to continue the burst. You can even opt for a bird as the second pet instead of the boar and then you got yourself a 1,200 range leap that puts you out of most players' range in addition to the sword/gw leaps. On top of that the owl has a 4k+ heal. I've numerous times kited multiple people from one end of the map to their home point, simply by alternating GS Block, Evade, Smoke assault, Griffon stance, dodging, sword & bird leap near indefinitely. The build is fun as hell but it seriously needs a bit of toning down on the speed if how fast you receive damage.

I really enjoyed fervent force hammer ranger. You had the option to chill or try-hard with all the CC CD reduction. And just being able to use it for everything else on the ranger was really fun.