Untamed Feedback Thread

[mistsim.2748]

59 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

Thanks for sharing this. I ran into a few Untamed on the way to my squad, and I was stuck on my Herald's zerging spec. I easily dispatched the Untamed on my mostly-zerker build. They just couldn't do anything. No damage, no CC, no sustain. As demonstrated in your clip, the hammer actually does nothing. I think you swung it maybe 3 times. I had the same experience when testing. That's the biggest takeaway for ANet - don't bother with anything else until you've revamped the hammer. 

Rough times man.

[Andy.5981]

20 hours ago, Daddy.8125 said:

i've done my ranger up entirely on Greatsword + Dagger/Axe and havent found myself dying for being perma melee with enemy monsters :P. i mean we really arent that squishy.

Sort of defeats the whole object of a new weapon spec don't you think. GS, Dagger/Axe are pretty nasty weapons and can dish out plenty damage. Go play with the Hammer and get back to us....

Oh by the way what game mode were you playing in?

Edited October 27, 2021 by Andy.5981

[Delgato.9015]

A large part of why I enjoy gw2 is it's aesthetics. My characters are beautiful, the animations are beautiful, the world is beautiful, most enemies are beautiful in their own way. The untamed is the first part of gw2 that I truly cannot say is beautiful or at the very least fits it's theme.

Why does my ranger look like he's wearing the world's ugliest morph suit when he's unleased? Why is the effect so opaque and gross?

Why does my wolf have cartoonish fart clouds all over him when he's unleased?

Why is the colors pallet of the spec diarrhea themed????

I do not care if it ends up being the strongest, most useful, fun build in all of gw2 history, I absolutely refuse to subject my characters to this.

[Tungsten Monarch.6058]

The largest issue I see with the Elite Spec Untamed, is a lack for a need for specific pet diversity. That means your selection of Pet is almost irrelevant outside of pets with high toughness and health. So, I recommend the following.

 

For untamed Pet

• Get Rid of the three Untamed skills, and just dramatically enhance the present pet skills already assigned to the Pet. Try +50% pet skill effect or damage.
• Increase base pet attack. Try +50% damage base and decreasing attack speed to ¾ seconds, hitting up to 5 targets at close range or doing either impaling up to 3 targets, or an AoE 130 Radius that affects up to 3 targets for pets that deal ranged damage.
• If a Ranger wants his Pet to deal poison damage, he has wilderness survival.

 

For untamed ranger

• Give the Ranger Stability when wielding a Hammer like an Engineer has stability while wielding a flame thrower when untamed to encourage it’s use.
• Grant him a condi removal of 1 every 3 seconds while untamed.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Tungsten Monarch.6058

[Puck.3697]

27 minutes ago, Andy.5981 said:

Sort of defeats the whole object of a new weapon spec don't you think. GS, Dagger/Axe are pretty nasty weapons and can dish out plenty damage. Go play with the Hammer and get back to us....

Oh by the way what game mode were you playing in?

well i PvE and PvP with my ranger 😛

i cant see how Ranger gets more squishy with added vitality tho :P.. Untamed just does no dmg xD

[mortrialus.3062]

My first impression is that all unleashed pets having the same skills is pretty lame.   While ideally all unleashed pets should have unique skills, at the bare minimum the five soulbeast pet categories, Stout, Deadly, Supportive, Versatile, and Ferocious, should all have their own unique untamed skills. 

[Draeyon.4392]

The untamed Unleash Pet skills need to work for the ranger as well honestly.

 

Either that or make Unleash Pet form summon the pet back to you so you both fight together side by side (and the pet unleash skills work with the ranger as well).

The teleport could teleport both of you to the same target, the boon rip is cast at the ranger as well and the ranger should get a smaller gyro like version of the Haze.

 

 

Some constructive feedback on how to make this spec better.

 

Also give us back the keybinds for pet attack and Callback. I don't mind having 8 keybinds solely for my pet skills.

[Jheuloh.4109]

This feedback is based on open world PVE and instanced gameplay.

 

The Good

 

• - Commanding all 3 pet abilities is a most welcome feature. This does admittedly get tedious when you're dealing with creatures that have short CD abilities that are just flat damage bonuses, though I'd consider an acceptable trade for being able to command things like the drake's blast-finisher or wyvern's wing buffet.

•  
• - The F1 ability for the Unleashed Pet, Venomous Outburst, is a wonderful addition to the pet tool kit. The Smokescale doesn't have such a monopoly on mobility anymore. For me personally, Venomous Outburst and full control over the pet's abilities is worth the price of admission.
•  
• - I think the consistent spell list for the Unleashed pets is a good thing. While pets were initially sold on being a variety pack, that's where a lot of the historical imbalances come from. Having a consistent spell-list, especially that teleport granted by Venomous Outburst, helps level the playing field as far as mobility is concerned.

 

The Bad

 

• - Attack My Target being replaced by an ability means that you are dependent on having an ability off cooldown to direct the pet to a target. This isn't a breaking issue as it can be worked around by using a low value ability as a functional equivalent, but it's not particularly graceful and is against the spirit of allowing the player full control over the pet.
•  
• - For how heavily focused The Untamed is on disables, the Hammer only having its disables available while the pet is Unleashed feels unwieldy. Perhaps if it was the case that disables were stronger while the pet is unleashed it would be more palatable.
• It's clear that Unleashed Pet = CC and Unleashed Ranger = damage. The cooldown on swapping Unleashed seems just long enough to get in the way of that intended back and forth play, rather than serving as an aid to it.
•  
• - The passive +/-15% damage dealt and +/- 10% damage taken modifier for Unleashed feels so small as to be functionally invisible and conceptually comes off as very arbitrary. Were it me, I'd treat Unleashed as damage resistance for the pet to give it a chance at surviving focused fire and a damage boost to the ranger. The description for Vow of the Untamed is also awkward.
•  
• - The Hammer's knockdown and Daze available feel difficult to utilize due to the lengthy wind-up times and the fact that they're only available with the Unleashed Pet. The disables available on other weapons and utility skills are more reliable.

 

The Ugly

 

• - The Unleashed pet's abilities feel like just a small splash of damage in practice and the additional effects don't sufficiently offset that. Between the low base damage, underwhelming utility (Venomous Outburst excepted), and the -15% damage output imposed on the Ranger, in PVE I found myself gravitating towards keeping Unleashed on the Ranger at all times unless I wanted to reposition the pet or damage an enemy's break-bar with the Hammer.
•  
• - Natural Fortitude and Unnatural Traversal read like they were short changed on time or creativity. Unnatural Traversal is also wholly invalidated by the Greatsword and Sword. Unnatural Traversal I believe could be redeemed by either bolstering its secondary effect or lowering the baseline cooldown to 15 seconds.
•  
• - This requires more investigating, but at present it seems Exploding Spores doesn't reliably knock-down targets, even when factoring in the presence of break bars or stability.

 

Verdict

 

When it goes live I'll almost certainly be playing the Untamed through thick and thin, but someone less sentimental about the animal companion and more interested in asking "Is it good?" has very good reason to steer clear of Untamed.

 

It has a good core to it with Venomous Outburst and full command of the pet abilities, though tends to get in its own way with excessive modifiers, technical limitations, and under-tuned values. I had no trouble playing mainline PVE with the Untamed, but I wouldn't touch it for WvW or sPVP as it does nothing to address the issue of pets melting under focused fire in WvW, nor the brutal cooldown multiplier for swapping a dead pet, nor their difficulty with attacking a mobile target (Venomous Outburst excepted.)

Edited October 27, 2021 by Jheuloh.4109

[Xionor.8963]

I'm disappointed by the visual skills of the hammer. They are all just "hit the enemy with your hammer" except for the 4. Even the vanilla greatword has a lot more visually impressive skills than this addon weapon. Give the 2nd hammer skill some vine attack or something like the 4th of the druid staff skill and replace in my opinion the 3rd or 5th hammer skill with the cantrip that summons spores or change the visual effect to something with thorns/vines/spores.

 

Giving up your hammer CC when you become unleashed feels like you're giving up too much.

 

As a power soulbeast I can use axe/axe, sword/axe, dagger/axe, greatsword and longbow. I feel like the untamed is based too much one the hammer as it has 10 skills. Paired with the visually unimpressive skills makes the spec more boring.

 

Nature's binding is useless in most pve content. Give it some CC that works with the fervent force trait or increased damage against trapped enemies.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Xionor.8963

[Kaliwenda.3428]

Being able to use the hammer is a fun change, I'm ok with that.

My big disappointment is the visual effect..the particular shade of green that was chosen is an immediate turn-off to me.  It reminds me of fetid swamp water or toxic algae blooms.  It's practically the same color as the spooky green glow at the Mystic Forge right now, or the haunted doors.  Slimer green.  Yuck.

At least with the soulbeast aura, my outfit is unchanged and you can still see the colors.

The untamed effect turns my character into something that to me looks hideous and unhealthy.  I hope it can be tweaked before release.

As it stands now this is not a spec I have any desire to play.  Not only because of the visuals, the pet controls seem very limited compared to all I can do in soulbeast mode.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Kaliwenda.3428

[Shrapnel.7249]

The momentum is probably rolling too fast in the current direction, but I have an opinion that I’m curious if others feel the same. Currently the pet being in unleashed gives a buff to the pet and replaces its skills. However, the skills themselves are not damage based skills (a tele, a boon rip, and projectile hate). Would it not make more sense to be able to use your (now manual) pet skills while your pet is unleashed? Smokescale, birds, felines, drakes, jacaranda, etc would all benefit from the damage buff and actually be a blast to use their skills while unleashed and buffed. When the ranger itself goes unleashed and gets the power buff, it would make sense for the pet to then have the (current) unleashed skills to help support the ranger in its endeavors. I don’t know if this would be an easy fix or even possible. But I feel it would be a lot more intuitive than the current situation, provide actual benefits for the pet to be in unleashed (where right now, aside from the skills, the pet is the same bad AI), and give you a reason to want to unleash both ways.

[planetarian.9154]

What I like

1. Pets target an enemy for attack when you attack even without striking the enemy

2. Pets change target when you change target and attack even without striking the enemy

3. We can now control when pets use their attack skill

 

What I don't like 

1. Pets change target when you change target and attack even without striking the enemy which basically means you can't attack two separate enemies

2. Attack command for pet was remove

3. Return to me has to be clicked for it to work

4. F5 unleashed pet makes pet lose their attack abilities

6. Without return to me there is no way for us to interrupt our pets from casting a move if we suspect a dodge. 

5. I might want my pet to automatically use his attack abilities without me pressing a button

 

Recommendation would be to add Attack My Target/ Return to me to the Misc. control option in setting. We already have Ranger Pet Combat Toggle in MISC. 

Remove F5 for this spec and combine [Venomous Outburst] + [Rending Vines] as an F1 skill for all pets in this trait line. The other pet skills will be F2, F3, F4. 

Combine [Enveloping Haze] with [Mutate Conditions] and increase the cool down and field duration and replace it as a utility skill. 

We currently have two modes we can set Pets on Avoid Combat and Guard. We need a third mode which basically let's us toggle which skills we want pets to automatically use. 

Change the way Attack My Target works. Now when you use Attack My Target you can attack a separate target and pressing F1-F4 focuses on the target that was set by Attack My Target. Return to me stays the same, but additionally it removes the Attack My Target and has Pet switching targets with you. 

[Gyousa.5609]

Weird suggestion, but I think it would help plug the holes in the weird fantasy/gameplay of Untamed.

 

Something I really want Untamed to have is a kind of metronome effect to it, where you bounce the Unleash effect back and forth at a rhythm or at particular moments with specific intent instead of defaulting to sitting in whichever is most beneficial to your situation.

We're harnessing the primal power of our bond to nature, and the current fantasy we were sold just doesn't hold up to the gameplay. Give Untamed some kind of momentum, flavour it with some kind of primal emotions that connect us to both our pet and nature.

There should be some kind of effect that rewards you for swapping, because the new skills are unfortunatley not impactful enough. Imagine some kind of stacking buff that causes your unleash to do something immediately when you or your pet become empowered. The stacking effect could be charged by the Unleashed. 

e.g. I Unleash myself.
Every attack I land while I'm Unleashed generates a stacking buff.
When I Unleash my pet, that buff causes a special attack, or effect, or *something* to happen with increasing intensity based on stack count around my pet.

And similar for vice versa, perhaps with a different effect. 

This also allows the Unleashed mechanic to interact with the rest of Ranger's kit and not force you to use the Hammer to get anything out of it. It has synergy with weapons like longbow and axe that are capable of generating a large number of hits in a short period of time, which I think can make some fun dynamic gameplay moments that Unleashed is sorely lacking.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Gyousa.5609

[Rinaldhi.9826]

12 hours ago, Lazze.9870 said:

 

None of the skills are labeled Beast skills, so..

I mean, they gave us a trait to modify the F1 to blind, when we literally have a blind on Beast skills in Beastmastery.

Classic Anet as far as ranger goes.

But why? If the unleashed pet skills won't be considered beast skills what's the point of even unleashing the pet since it won't trigger the other traits. I hope they fix this or I'll be sticking with my soulbeast or even consider switching to mechanist. Now that they removed the F1 - attack and F3 - return commands, I realize how critical those 2 are.

[Pheex.8932]

The untamed mode visual character effect - green vines around the character - looks absolutely horrendous

[Valrynn.1702]

Heya team, gonna try and supply some feedback for the Untamed from what I've played so far, which was quite a few hours last night. 🙂 Overall I think the class has a fantastic theme and mechanic, however, it doesn't feel quite there yet for me, but it's close.

 

Unleashed Pet:

• I must admit I was a little disappointed when I realized that the pet skills when unleashed are all the same for all pets. It would be nice to have a few different skills, at least for each type of pet. Birds, Cats, Dogs, etc. It would make for a much more intuitive and engaging option for choosing which pets you want to bring with you and unleash.

• The hammer skills are fun however, it would definitely be nice as I believe some have mentioned to have at least 1 traversal skill in the hammer kit. Sure we could pair it with Greatsword and get a leap, but I think hammer could benefit well from a traversal skill. Sure there's the utility skill that ports you and pet, but 1 more on the hammer kit wouldn't break it and would help close the gap sometimes. I personally have messed around with Hammer / Axe/torch to benefit from all those conditions and I've had fun but getting to my prey, has been an unnecessary challenge.

 

Visuals:

• I know this is just personal opinion and taste, but when I unleash my pet(or myself), I want it to be an exciting action to perform. Something that looks and sounds like my pet is now going to shred things. Based on the Class icon released which looks like a pet with armor. I was expecting the pet to have a visual of some kind of growth and change to it. The viney skin we see in the video, to me, doesn't really represent an Unleashing of power. Vines typically represent a constricting of things. I know that would be a great undertaking art-wise to do something for each animal. But even if the pet grew in size, and/or had a visual similar to Holosmith or even something akin to the Exo  Mount Skins I think it would be amazing visually. This would apply to the Ranger themselves as well obviously for the unleashing.

• Also, I think the color palette feels very drab. Especially since we're going to Cantha, which with all the artwork and places we've seen so far has such a beautiful palette. I understand Echovald is more of a dingy "Degobah" kind of place, but with all the Jade magic we're seeing it feels like maybe the Unleashing could be a bit brighter and more meaningful looking.

 

That's all of the feedback I can muster at this point in time. I'll play around more and see what's what.

 

Thanks for all your hard work. You all rock!

Oh one more thing.
For the pet, being able to use all the pets skills is amazing. However, Losing the basic pet attack and return to hot keys doesn't feel quite right. If you can make sure to include that so I can hot key those again in Untamed spec that would be great. Maybe  you did and I missed it in settings, but at least the return to option is kind of crucial.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Valrynn.1702

[mari.6394]

18 hours ago, Dahkeus.8243 said:

The heavy gas swamp green theme of this elite spec is really off-putting. This alone makes the entire spec undesired less to play.

Agree 100%, it looks disgusting- not nature inspired. It is more fitting to necro. I was beyond disappointed with the visuals. I actually like to see my pet looking healthy not emanating toxic gas.
Hammer feels slow, clunky and massively un-fun. 

[Sir Vincent III.1286]

Visual

- Unleash Pet/Ranger is really clunky. It's hard to tell which state I am in since the icon is too small/similar. A glowing pet portrait will help a ton when unleashed. A glowing health bar for the Ranger.

 

Hammer Skills

- All the disable skills are in Unleash Pet (UP), while all damage vs disabled is in Unleash Ranger (UR). If the idea is to UP->disable->UR->big_dmg .. then this execution failed. Each hammer skill has casting time and the Ranger has only 1.5s window to do the combo. I don't see any other skills or pet skill that can combo with this, so I'm not sure what you expect me to do with this kit. This is just too much hassle than its worth.

- One pet can combo with UR Hammer skill is the Iboga pull skill -- that's it. Even then, it's really tiny window. /sigh

 

Skills

- Perilous Gift -- yeah...I'm sticking with Heal as One. If the integral theme of this spec is to bounce unleash between you and your pet, then why would I drain its HP? Not only that, it has a 30s CD with no other effects. There's not even any traits that boosts Cantrip as Resounding Timbre boosts Command skills. PG is not a good skill.

- Exploding Spores -- this is PvP and PVE Boss useless. All it can do is deal with trash mobs, but you're better off just bashing them with your hammer. In other words, it looks cool, useless, but cool.

- Mutate Conditions -- nobody in the right mind will use this stupid skill. Might as well let the Necro convert them to boons rather than trying to get myself killed. There's also Signet of Renewal -- if the point of Perilous Gift is to kill off my pet, might as well load it conditions before it dies.

- Unnatural Traversal -- this skill should be a CC or a stun break. Speaking of stun breaks.../crickets.

- Nature's Binding -- this is just a rebranded Ring of Warding (Guardian Hammer #5) and it's not even that great. The Guardian Hammer skill can trap up to 10 targets and last 1s longer. Sure RoW is smaller in radius, but that's perfect since it puts them all within the hammer range.

- Forest's Fortification -- this is a good tanking skill, but this is a DPS Elite Spec. This skill is so out of place.

 

Traits

- Vow of the Untamed -- "...incoming... damage is increased when you are unleashed"; "...outgoing...damage is decrease when pet is unleashed." WTF is this? So you give the Ranger a hammer but they have to wrap themselves with thorny vines.

- Top Row -- all these traits trigger when disabling foe, otherwise they do nothing else. The fact that some traits give different boons depending on the state is confusing since the disabling skills are only when UP is active. There's no disabling ability during UR.

- Mid Row -- I understand that this is beta, but what's up with all these useless traits?

- Bot Row -- come on Anet, really? These are ELITE spec traits? Tell me you're not done with the Ranger, because this is just sad.

The hammer damage is great but that's as far as this spec goes. If I receive a package labeled Soulbeast and another package labeled Untamed...the Soulbeast package will take two people to carry inside while I punt the Untamed package into the living room.

EDIT: I forgot to mention, Untamed is half-a-spec when not using hammer since none of the other weapons flips depending on the unleashed state. This is really a bummer.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Sir Vincent III.1286
addendum

[Benkorah.6048]

I am primarily a pve player.  Ranger isn't my main, but it's one of my most played alts.  I tested the spec in special forces training area, Metrica Province DWM, and Tangled depths, with primarily Berserker gear, though I also messed around with Viper's.

 

The Good:

1.  Untamed essentially feels like an elite version of core ranger, which in my opinion is exactly what ranger needed, since the other 2 elite specs seem to turn ranger into something entirely different.

2.  The hammer feels good to play - especially the unleashed version.  The concept of switching to defensive mode while working on a breakbar and then going damage mode when the bar is broken also seems good (mostly).

3.  Normally, I don't gravitate toward utilities that just deal damage, but that cantrip with the exploding spores both looks great and feels good to use.

4.  The moa heal might actually be useful now that I can control it.

5.  As simple as the unleashed mechanic is, it will take some time to master its use, and easy-to-learn-but-difficult-to-master is a good thing as far as I'm concerned.

 

The Bad:

1.  The damage increase from unleashing the ranger only applies to power damage, which limits build diversity.

2.  I found that it took everything on the hammer and then some to break a defiance bar, and then I unleashed and all my damaging abilities were on cooldown, because they were the same as my cc abilities.  Feels bad.  If we're meant to be adapting roles on the fly, then maybe it's fine, but the spec seems to be designed to capitalize on cc, but it takes everything you've got to actually cc anything in the first place.  Or maybe it's a pvp spec.

3.  **Several traits say that they give effects when disabling an enemy, but the effects are given when a disabling ability is used on an enemy, regardless of whether the enemy is actually disabled (i.e. the trait activates when doing defiance bar damage, or even when the defiance bar is recharging).  I suspect this is intended, since there is a similar trait on core ranger which does the same thing, but the tooltip is misleading.**

4.  For damage-oriented pets, I don't really want to micromanage their abilites.

5.  **comment withdrawn, as it was based on a false assumption.**

Suggestions:

1.  Allow the damage done/taken tradeoffs to apply to condition damage as well as power in order to promote build diversity (although taking less damage while doing full condition damage could also be interesting...).  Possibly also allow "Ferocious Symbiosis" to affect conditions.

2.  Allow players the option to revert the pet controls to their base functionality, rather than always having full control.  Better yet, provide a separate checkbox for each pet, so I can control when the moa uses its heal, but the iboga can just do its thing and deal some damage for me.

**Edited negative comments 3 and 5**

Edited October 29, 2021 by Benkorah.6048
Some of my feedback was based on false assumptions, because I misunderstood the tooltips.

[quick.7361]

Ranger Main from Day 1 of GW2. 

 

This experience was so bad I quit playing it after 5 mins. Very disappointed :(

[Xanadrine.4352]

I honestly think having the pet skills out so we can use them when needed is a nice thing. But consider making unleashed a big cd that will when used effect the ranger their pet and their stats and all the weapons they are using. I do not think having this swap back and forth is going to work well. Also only having hammer as the only weapon to unleash makes the spec hamstrung. Unleashed should be the core of the elite, not the weapon. Just those little changes would make vast improvement in gameplay for untamed.

[Daywalker.9710]

Thought I'd share my thoughts on the untamed. Overall, I really like the idea. The hammer skills are great and really fun, but the mechanic leashed/unleashed needs a bit of work. The unleashed pets gaining cool new abilities is brilliant but I think more of a variety would be better considering we have range based pets, melee pets and maybe a heal pet (jacaranda? Idk lol). The main concern for me is the unleashed mode for the hammer. It needs to either somehow work with other weapons or be reworked.  For example, I really like the idea of it enhancing its user either through our abilities or even boons .It doesn't necessarily need to have new flashy skills or animations. It just needs some sort of pay off when changing away from your pet to make it work with any weapon you use. Thanks for reading 🙂

[Kitrace Starbird.1742]

Not sure if already mentioned but I don't have time right now to scroll through the long list.  Here's hoping ANET's reading all of them.  Of the 2 or 3 pages of comments i've skimmed none so far mention that NONE of the traits offer any incentive to buff either the spec weapon, the spec mechanic, or buff the new utilities.  Druid has primal echoes to lower staff c/ds and daze on weapon swap to staff and Cele shadow and GoTL which buff (i.e. incentivize player to use) the cele avatar state and skills.   It also has a glyph trait.  Soulbeast has a stance share trait (weapon trait got cheesed since there was already a dagger trait within WS).   I understand that the whole point of Untamed buffs or debuffs the (HAMMER only) weapon but no trait to incentivize using cantrips?   Also none of the hammer skills synergize with the pet.  All of the other weapons have one skill that affects pet.  

 

I've noticed that ranger stats affect the unleashed pet skills, but do not affect regular pet skills.  Not sure how I feel about this, part of me feels that ranger stat should (as in always should have been) affect regular pet stats to some degree, but we know that pets are already pigeonholed in their "type" (ferocious, versatile, etc) so I'm not expecting this to change.   Would be nice though.... 

 

As already mentioned, many of the traits seem really underwhelming from a PvP perspective.  And no gap closer with the hammer makes it hard to play.   PvP unleashed hammer 2 skill is almost HALF of what it is in PvE.   With the amount of aegis/invuls/blocks/blinds that get pooped out by other classes (guardians, looking at you), I'm not sure why Anet seems so hesitant to give rangers nice things in PvP, since it feels like half these skills wouldn't hit anyway.  

 

Much agreed about pet control and lackthereof.  Wish they could go and make F1-F3 available to ALL ranger specs.  Need keybind to recall pet.  Also probably would be remiss if I didn't mention that it would be nice to actually be able to see boons/condis on pet without having to click on them....... but that's been on the ranger wishlist since launch, right?   Probably a bad time to also ask for fortifying bond to finally be removed from nature magic and baselined to ranger as part of the core pet mechanic...... 

 

Overall, I want to like the spec, and I'm very appreciative of finally getting some access to boon strip/convert.  I also like where Cal was going with saying the goal of Untamed was to get rangers into the melee team fight for PvP but right now, I'm not seeing it happen with what we have today.   Unleashed skills for all our weapons, please!  Ele has 20+ skills for every weapon, right??

[Substance E.4852]

10 hours ago, OGDeadHead.8326 said:

Anet should be better to implement what was wished for.

How?

People wanted "a knockdown spam damage train" which was never going to happen, not after hard CC had all it's damage removed and Anet repeatedly nerfed away any hope of ranger pets having good pvp damage

A weak hammer and a pet that doesn't do much of anything impactful is exactly what they would deliver

I'll be rather surprised if they manage to salvage this without having to change the entire concept from the ground up and make us into Ritualists with boon dispensing spirit pets or w/e

[Draeyon.4392]

Alright, time for Hammer and Utility suggestions/feedback (from a mostly WvW perspective)

 

Utilities:

• Perilous Gift (Heal) - I'm torn on this. On one hand, I like the death invuln, on the other I hate sacrificing my pets health. Would honestly have preferred a Defiant Stance/Facet of Light type of skill for the pet so good pet positioning rewards the ranger.

 

Mutate Conditions - This needs to be looked at. Having a 2nd charge as a cantrip with reduced condition cleanses 5 cleanses (or 3 cleanses with 3 charges even) would make this skill much more functional in competitive gamemodes.

 

Unnatural Traversal: As it stands, I wouldnt slot this skill. It honestly doesnt do enough.

900 range. Requires target. 40s cooldown if you dont hit your target and 2 stacks of vulnerability make it really lackluster.

Increase the range to 1200, make it a ground target for mobility purposes and possibly add a stunbreak since no new Untamed skills are stunbreaks.

 

Nature's Binding: Honestly, I think unstruck enemies should be affected by it. Area denial fits really well with core ranger Survival skills. Also the 3/4s wind up is too long.

 

Exploding Spores: Could use a 2nd charge. Not entirely sure on this skill.

 

Forest's Fortification: Reduce the CD, it is way too long. Add a stun break if this is a defensive skill. I would also remove the CD reduction through striking enemies and add a group AoE effect to it instead.

 

Hammer Skills:

Had a paragraph written about these but a summary of it is better.

The damage is too low, the CDs and cast times too long and just under-performs.

 

 

TLDR:

Untamed is a mixed bag. A few skills look promising but unpolished though it faces the same problems as core ranger, not just from pet AI problems, but from a directional standpoint. Doesn't really do anything well. Why bring one to focus on CC? Immob Soulbeast is easier to hit with, does more damage and is overall easier to actually play.

 

Also, PLEASE stop trying to make Ranger the jack of all trades. It isn't and this espec just feels underwhelming because of it.

Edited October 28, 2021 by Draeyon.4392