1st Day Feedback On Untamed

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

Getting straight to what's important:

1. Untamed plays like a Core Ranger with heavy drawbacks. Absolutely no new flavor in dynamic or anything beneficial about this spec over Ranger, Druid, or Soulbeast.
2. Hammer needs a CC on the Unleashed kit so it can maintain its trait design flow. It also needs a bit more damage. Right now both kits are useless and don't stream well with anything. It's almost as if it was designed to avoid being able to combo anything. Using Hammer feels like pushing random buttons with no pathways for landing important chains.
3. The new utilities may as well not exist. We have JI like teleport that isn't even a stun break, that cannot be used for anything important because Untamed needs to set up for damage combos with counter-offensive successive strike play. It cannot teleport in at something and unleash a massive instant cast or animation stacked burst like a Core Guard or Herald. We have a new full condi clear cantrip which is essentially the same thing as the core signet full clear, which there is no reason to have two of these. We have a sort of half powered Dragon's Maw like utility that also serves no purpose because Rangers already have a lot of Entangle, which they don't need to sacrifice a utility slot to use. The cantrip heal is also weak when put next to Troll Unguent or We Heal As One. These utilities need a straight rework, not just buffs.
4. The Unleashed mechanic is incredibly unintuitive and simply does not stream well for combo play in any way shape or form. A Core Ranger easily outplays Untamed in this regard. The Untamed has way way too much unnecessary micro-management added to it. First of all, the pet's Unleashed skill kit is virtually useless and a waste of time to even push the buttons to use those skills. They don't stream well with either power or condi play. Second of all, making it so the Untamed has to micro-manage even the pet's basic intrinsic skill kits was a bad idea. At first I was excited about this feature, because I figured higher skill cap Ranger players would be able to create higher precision play. However, in reality during actual application, I found this to be very problematic not because there are too many buttons to push, but that you can't push multiple buttons at the same time to be able to control yourself and the pet at the same time. This is difficult to explain, so please try to follow me here -> An Elementalist as example, has 4 attunements that create 4 different weapon kits during play. The Elementalist is one vector source where all these skills are coming from. So although he is cycling quickly between all those skills, he can do this with only 1 thumb on a game mouse by moving that 1 thumb very quickly to hit skills in succession, one by one. But with the Untamed, you have to worry about your skill combos and the pet's skill combos. While playing a Core Ranger as example, when I swap to Smokescale, he automatically Smoke Assaults in at someone and then does a knockdown. While he is doing that, I can be putting all my speed button pushes into my character's combo chains. But with Untamed, I would have to play a big game of finger piano to achieve the same result. Come to find out, this is incredibly difficult to actually do because of the two vectors and their positions to worry about, yourself and the pet. So I have to pay attention to my positioning and timing with my character's skill combo, while also paying attention to the pet's positioning and its timing. It's like playing two characters at the same time, while using only 1 thumb to do it. It is impractical to maintain precision play while doing this. It's too clunky and it doesn't feel fun to play at all. Furthermore, for how difficult it is to run this, there is no benefit for doing so. Core Ranger, Druid, Soulbeast, they're all stronger because the designs stream better. Not sure what to suggest here without suggesting some kind of a massive overhaul that I know isn't going to happen. I think Unleashed shouldn't have CDs. You should be able to swap it on demand, like an Engi swaps kits. This would probably be a good route to take for beginning to clean up this mechanic.
5. When you first look at Untamed specialization and read the traits, you think "Oh man this is gonna be awesome with Marks mods" but it doesn't work out. You have to use Beast Mastery and take Lesser Quick Zephyr trait to make the Marks mods tick. The problem here is that you can't take Marks & Beast & Untamed without ditching Wilderness, and then you have no Fury for Remorseless proc and no sustain. So if you take Wilderness, then you get no Beast Mastery / L Quick Zephyr, and then the reliability of pets hitting with Marks mods just drops through the floor. Of course if you take Wilderness & Beast Mastery, then you get no Marks mods and damage drops through the floor. If you try to run condi, Untamed just isn't built for it. We have a big problem here because it's not good at dealing Power DPS, it's not good at dealing Condi DPS, it's not as good at survival as other Ranger specs, and it brings nothing important in the way of team support or even as a team fight presence. Aside from this massive list of in-depth suggestions I could make, I'll go ahead and toss a few catalyst suggestions that could be quick fixes to at least begin to make this specialization somewhat viable for use in competitive modes: 1) The pet's unleashed skills need serious buffs to be worth the clunky micro-management of it all. 2) The trait that grants the Untamed Quickness each time he disables a foe, should also grant that Quickness to the pet, so we have a method of replacing the Quickness that is lost from not being able to take Beast Mastery. This way the Untamed could run Marks/Wild/Untame "which is the only realistic way to have damage & sustain" and do it while having a method of being able to land practical pet strikes with Marks mods. 3) The Hammer needs a CC added to the Unleashed side kit, and a general damage increase.

There are a lot of other comments & suggestions I'd like to make, but I feel these are the most important things to note first and foremost.

[Arheundel.6451]

 

Quote

Can't wait to 1v5 kids with this spec.

If that hammer provides a lot of CC, a meta spec will likely look like Hammer/Greatsword and bring Spike Trap for the extra AoE CC to fill in any gap in CDs between Hammer/Greatsword. You'll also want to bring pets with a lot of CC. This spec will be able to perma juggle anything in a 1v1 on node, outside of things with pulsing Stab like a FT Engi or Lich. And keep in mind Marks mods that activate while CCing opponent will constantly be triggering. This spec may have enough CC to make Ranger actually good in team fights.

This elite spec will likely release in an OP state unless they pay attention to this thread NOW and double check the CC output before release.

Edited Saturday at 06:02 PM by Trevor Boyer.6524

..Yikes....This post completely contradict what you stated before, it puts the validity of your "feedback" into question to say the least.

If anything I question Anet ability to make good use of this forum "feedback", stepping away from the "auto-play" mode of PoF elites was an amazing achievement and I salute the devs for that, that PoF balance was off the charts in terms of OP broken mess and it is  something this community is accustomed to and now won't move away from.

I pray this time around Anet will stand their ground and don't give in, sending us back in time with the EoD release

 

Edited October 27, 2021 by Arheundel.6451

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

45 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

 

..Yikes....This post completely contradict what you stated before, it puts the validity of your "feedback" into question to say the least.

If anything I question Anet ability to make good use of this forum "feedback", stepping away from the "auto-play" mode of PoF elites was an amazing achievement and I salute the devs for that, that PoF balance was off the charts in terms of OP broken mess and it is  something this community is accustomed to and now won't move away from.

I pray this time around Anet will stand their ground and don't give in, sending us back in time with the EoD release

 

Not sure what you're talking about. My prediction of how the spec would run was actually highly & incredibly accurate, considering I had to make that speculation based off a vague trailer and 1 sentence from a dev saying "Hammer will have CC".

You're comment about "Stepping away from auto-play of PoF" as if to encourage that Untamed was mechanically functioning the way a class should function is some of the most ignorant experience-lacking misinformation I've ever read in this forum, especially considering the design behind "Mechanist Pets".

Go play the beta before coming to the forum to drop responses on it. Thanks.

[Arheundel.6451]

1 hour ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Not sure what you're talking about. My prediction of how the spec would run was actually highly & incredibly accurate, considering I had to make that speculation based off a vague trailer and 1 sentence from a dev saying "Hammer will have CC".

You're comment about "Stepping away from auto-play of PoF" as if to encourage that Untamed was mechanically functioning the way a class should function is some of the most ignorant experience-lacking misinformation I've ever read in this forum, especially considering the design behind "Mechanist Pets".

Go play the beta before coming to the forum to drop responses on it. Thanks.

..my comments always ruffle some feathers of a fragile ego, but...no need to turn every thread into a school yard. Your prediction was off the mark like similar predictions done for willbender and catalyst and that's the reason it didn't blow out of proportions like the drama loving queens of this forum wanted.

 

At first glance your "suggestions" aim to remove the hard decisions a players should make before coming up with a chosen playstyle, for example :" The problem here is that you can't take Marks & Beast & Untamed without ditching Wilderness, and then you have no Fury for Remorseless proc and no sustain "....it's not a problem, it's called opportunity/cost , a concept highly disliked by the gw2 community...used to busted specs that do it all with few button press, where they get all goodies in a single buid...like Boonbeast-holosmith-scrappers-core necro etc etc...all builds played by the sycophant crowd .

 

Your initial assumption about the spec...was wrong...your list of suggestions is equally as wrong as they aim in removing deficiencies from the class, which are always needed to balance specs...

 

Sorry for those who wished for the GW2 version of a pokemon trainer...but we need balance and that's something wished by the majority..of which this forum is certainly not a part of.

 

 

 

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

..my comments always ruffle some feathers of a fragile ego, but...no need to turn every thread into a school yard. Your prediction was off the mark like similar predictions done for willbender and catalyst and that's the reason it didn't blow out of proportions like the drama loving queens of this forum wanted.

 

At first glance your "suggestions" aim to remove the hard decisions a players should make before coming up with a chosen playstyle, for example :" The problem here is that you can't take Marks & Beast & Untamed without ditching Wilderness, and then you have no Fury for Remorseless proc and no sustain "....it's not a problem, it's called opportunity/cost , a concept highly disliked by the gw2 community...used to busted specs that do it all with few button press, where they get all goodies in a single buid...like Boonbeast-holosmith-scrappers-core necro etc etc...all builds played by the sycophant crowd .

 

Your initial assumption about the spec...was wrong...your list of suggestions is equally as wrong as they aim in removing deficiencies from the class, which are always needed to balance specs...

 

Sorry for those who wished for the GW2 version of a pokemon trainer...but we need balance and that's something wished by the majority..of which this forum is certainly not a part of.

 

 

 

Few things for you and anyone else who isn't familiar with Ranger play or GW2:

1. Rangers need Marksmanship and Beast Mastery together to be able to wield Marks mods in a practical manner, they go hand in hand. Without Beast Mastery there is no Marksmanship. They also need Wilderness Survival for the Fury procs and general survivability. A Core Ranger can take all 3, which allows it to function. A Soulbeast can get away with not taking Marksmanship because the entire Soulbeast line is an alternative DPS line that offers slightly higher DPS with a bit more mobility, at the cost of sustain, but it still has to take Wilderness/Beast Mastery. Power Druid setups are dead. Druids need to focus condi or hybrid power/condi setups that look like Wilderness/Beast/Druid or sometimes stranger setups like Skirm/Wilderness/Druid, but they must take Wilderness for the survival. Do you see what's happening here? You have to take Wilderness Survival on any Ranger build in competitive modes or the builds will not function, they will not be balanced. Wilderness Survival is essential for tying any build together so that it functions. Without Wilderness Survival, Fury procs are too infrequent, there isn't practical cleanse, and you have bad CDs on the important skills. Builds without Wilderness Survival aren't even viable in middle tier play. Now that you understand this, let's move on to 2)
2. Untamed is not like a Soulbeast. The Untamed specialization line is not an adequate substitute for the loss of Marksmanship. This means that the Untamed cannot get away with running Wild/Beast/Untamed. Since all Rangers NEED Wilderness Survival, that means that we are looking at mandatory needing to take Wild/Untamed. You would want to Marks with that for damage, but Marks is simply impractical to use without Beast Mastery and you can't take both or then you won't have Wilderness. With Untamed you are choosing between having damage and really bad sustain/utility with Marks/Beast/Untamed, or you are choosing having sustain & utility but bad damage with Wild/Beast/Untamed. There is no condi version of this, as the Hammer is clearly designed as a power weapon. Even if you were to choose to use Shortbow and some other condi set, nothing else in the Untamed line works with condis, it's all designed around power and CCs. Condi is not an option on Untamed, so we are forced to choose between Marks/Beast/Untamed damage with no sustain/utility, or Wild/Beast/Untamed sustain & utility with no practical damage output. I know you're thinking: "Well these are choices! Go damage or go sustain! but not both!" which we all agree with that kind of moral principle game design standpoint. But this is not where GW2 is my friend. To say that about Untamed right now, shows that you have no idea what you're talking about and haven't play tested anything. What I'm pointing out here, is that regardless of this sound moral principle in game design, Untamed doesn't have enough damage to be able to sacrifice sustain like that, and it doesn't even have enough sustain to sacrifice damage like that, considering that most other specs in the game right now have both damage and sustain and even utility & team support. Untamed as a spec is just weak and underperforming vs. other specs in play right now. In fact, it's looking like most of the EOD specs are ending up this way. If you had cared to go in game and actually test something before speaking morals & philosophy to me, you'd be agreeing rather than arguing.
3. Upon this, the spec in general streams poorly. The general design is just flawed from the ground up compared to even the initial releases of Core Ranger, Druid, and Soulbeast. Untamed is going to need attention to become a functional or even desirable spec to play. Trying to argue with me about this does nothing but expose how little you know about Ranger or even GW2 in general. I mean you want to talk about balance & choices to be made, but you were unable to identify even basic information about how our current intra-class dynamic functions in terms of what is mandatory to take as traits, and the distinction between "choices" and "things that are simply designed poorly and not viable".

Why don't you go ahead and log-in and actually play some beta 3 before making your next response. ~ Thanks

Edited October 27, 2021 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Arheundel.6451]

43 minutes ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Few things for you and anyone else who isn't familiar with Ranger play or GW2:

1. Rangers need Marksmanship and Beast Mastery together to be able to wield Marks mods in a practical manner, they go hand in hand. Without Beast Mastery there is no Marksmanship. They also need Wilderness Survival for the Fury procs and general survivability. A Core Ranger can take all 3, which allows it to function. A Soulbeast can get away with not taking Marksmanship because the entire Soulbeast line is an alternative DPS line that offers slightly higher DPS with a bit more mobility, at the cost of sustain, but it still has to take Wilderness/Beast Mastery. Power Druid setups are dead. Druids need to focus condi or hybrid power/condi setups that look like Wilderness/Beast/Druid or sometimes stranger setups like Skirm/Wilderness/Druid, but they must take Wilderness for the survival. Do you see what's happening here? You have to take Wilderness Survival on any Ranger build in competitive modes or the builds will not function, they will not be balanced. Wilderness Survival is essential for tying any build together so that it functions. Without Wilderness Survival, Fury procs are too infrequent, there isn't practical cleanse, and you have bad CDs on the important skills. Builds without Wilderness Survival aren't even viable in middle tier play. Now that you understand this, let's move on to 2)
2. Untamed is not like a Soulbeast. The Untamed specialization line is not an adequate substitute for the loss of Marksmanship. This means that the Untamed cannot get away with running Wild/Beast/Untamed. Since all Rangers NEED Wilderness Survival, that means that we are looking at mandatory needing to take Wild/Untamed. You would want to Marks with that for damage, but Marks is simply impractical to use without Beast Mastery and you can't take both or then you won't have Wilderness. With Untamed you are choosing between having damage and really bad sustain/utility with Marks/Beast/Untamed, or you are choosing having sustain & utility but bad damage with Wild/Beast/Untamed. There is no condi version of this, as the Hammer is clearly designed as a power weapon. Even if you were to choose to use Shortbow and some other condi set, nothing else in the Untamed line works with condis, it's all designed around power and CCs. Condi is not an option on Untamed, so we are forced to choose between Marks/Beast/Untamed damage with no sustain/utility, or Wild/Beast/Untamed sustain & utility with no practical damage output. I know you're thinking: "Well these are choices! Go damage or go sustain! but not both!" which we all agree with that kind of moral principle game design standpoint. But this is not where GW2 is my friend. To say that about Untamed right now, shows that you have no idea what you're talking about and haven't play tested anything. What I'm pointing out here, is that regardless of this sound moral principle in game design, Untamed doesn't have enough damage to be able to sacrifice sustain like that, and it doesn't even have enough sustain to sacrifice damage like that, considering that most other specs in the game right now have both damage and sustain and even utility & team support. Untamed as a spec is just weak and underperforming vs. other specs in play right now. In fact, it's looking like most of the EOD specs are ending up this way. If you had cared to go in game and actually test something before speaking morals & philosophy to me, you'd be agreeing rather than arguing.
3. Upon this, the spec in general streams poorly. The general design is just flawed from the ground up compared to even the initial releases of Core Ranger, Druid, and Soulbeast. Untamed is going to need attention to become a functional or even desirable spec to play. Trying to argue with me about this does nothing but expose how little you know about Ranger or even GW2 in general. I mean you want to talk about balance & choices to be made, but you were unable to identify even basic information about how our current intra-class dynamic functions in terms of what is mandatory to take as traits, and the distinction between "choices" and "things that are simply designed poorly and not viable".

Why don't you go ahead and log-in and actually play some beta 3 before making your next response. ~ Thanks

You can pat yourself on the back all you want, believing to be whoever or whatever...I don't care, I have simply used your post as an example of what forum "feedback" is about. I am looking for balanced gameplay, and the closest balance this game can have it's from the core aspect, everything after that has been an asinine powercreeping.

Anet with EoD is trying to dial back with the powercreeping and that's a very smart decision...no matter what some..."forum guru" would think otherwise

[Lucentfir.7430]

7 minutes ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

You can pat yourself on the back all you want, believing to be whoever or whatever...I don't care, I have simply used your post as an example of what forum "feedback" is about. I am looking for balanced gameplay, and the closest balance this game can have it's from the core aspect, everything after that has been an asinine powercreeping.

Anet with EoD is trying to dial back with the powercreeping and that's a very smart decision...no matter what some..."forum guru" would think otherwise

I wouldn't be surprised if the entirety of the powercreep criers are 2013 core purists, or just parrot what their favorite content creator says as absolute fact. Half the time people that want to say "but power creep" never elaborate any points, or grab the lowest most obvious hanging fruit like Scourge and Firebrand. Power creep is always going to happen when you add new things to a game, unless you intentionally make them suck. A smart decision would be to hire a actual gd balance team rather than a balance individual, and put in the work to actually going over every class closely rather than blanket nerfing everything and intentionally breaking things with promise of fixing it later with less than ideal resources. 

[lightDestroyer.1265]

1 hour ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

You can pat yourself on the back all you want, believing to be whoever or whatever...I don't care, I have simply used your post as an example of what forum "feedback" is about. I am looking for balanced gameplay, and the closest balance this game can have it's from the core aspect, everything after that has been an asinine powercreeping.

Anet with EoD is trying to dial back with the powercreeping and that's a very smart decision...no matter what some..."forum guru" would think otherwise

So, by your logic,  don't give your feedback too.  No one wants it either. Whatever you believe yourself to be,  your opinion is irrelevant as everybody else's you think of. No one cares what "you" are looking for either. I am simply using your post to show how important some people think of themselves. 

I am also using your post to show other people, how there are some people who keep demanding and wanting balance for all elite specs of professions with their core but can't seem to use their brain to understand that it is not going to be possible. 

Edited October 27, 2021 by lightDestroyer.1265

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Arheundel.6451 said:

You can pat yourself on the back all you want, believing to be whoever or whatever...I don't care, I have simply used your post as an example of what forum "feedback" is about. I am looking for balanced gameplay, and the closest balance this game can have it's from the core aspect, everything after that has been an asinine powercreeping.

Anet with EoD is trying to dial back with the powercreeping and that's a very smart decision...no matter what some..."forum guru" would think otherwise

 

Except that adding a bunch of new underpowered specializations into a world of strong specializations isn't balanced. And no matter how hard you want to win this forum argument, you aren't going to convince anyone that it is.

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Lucentfir.7430 said:

I wouldn't be surprised if the entirety of the powercreep criers are 2013 core purists, or just parrot what their favorite content creator says as absolute fact. Half the time people that want to say "but power creep" never elaborate any points, or grab the lowest most obvious hanging fruit like Scourge and Firebrand. Power creep is always going to happen when you add new things to a game, unless you intentionally make them suck. A smart decision would be to hire a actual gd balance team rather than a balance individual, and put in the work to actually going over every class closely rather than blanket nerfing everything and intentionally breaking things with promise of fixing it later with less than ideal resources. 

Exactly.

He doesn't provide any mechanical in-game discussion whatsoever to supplement his statements, only moral debate from an inexperienced standpoint which lacks understanding on the state of the game and how it actually works in application.

He's the kind of guy that sees two people standing in a garage discussing what's under the hood of a car, so he chooses to walk over and start an argument about the paint job.

Obnoxious.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Trevor Boyer.6524

[Downstate.4697]

Sounds like ranger is too reliant on beastmastery and wilderness survival considering its in almost all build variations. Anet should take a look at that first imo

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

14 minutes ago, FrownyClown.8402 said:

Sounds like ranger is too reliant on beastmastery and wilderness survival considering its in almost all build variations. Anet should take a look at that first imo

I'm not disagreeing with you, but that's just the way all the classes are. That's nothing unique to Ranger.

[Leonidrex.5649]

1 Hammer is bad
2 Untamed pet is broken as kitten and doesnt work
3 It lacks sustain and cleansing
4 If you try to fix any of these issues you give up all the damage and mobility
5 Outside of GS ranger doesnt even have all that good CC to make any use of CC trait, GS CC is easy to avoid too, then ( singe hammer is dog kitten ) you gonna take what? longbow? I guess spike trap is usable, but I dont know about giving up entire utility slot for 1 CC with 0 damage or utility on 20s cd.
Solutions.
1 fix the pet
2 give hammer mobility and evasion/block/barrier
3 either give the untamed damage or cleansing/sustain It either needs to be able to survive without WS or be able to deal damage with it, which is not the case right now.
4 reduce unleash CD, its just a fun limiter, nerf the traits on unleash if you think they get too strong.
5 Make the ranger able to force pets to autocast certain skills, I shouldnt have to constantly make sure that pet is using its 6s cd skill that is slightly stronger then basic attack, If anything it doesnt make sense for UNTAMED to be able to mind control the pet but whatever.
Spec is dead on arrival, im off to play lost ark yall have fun

[Exile.8160]

11 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

Getting straight to what's important:

1. Untamed plays like a Core Ranger with heavy drawbacks. Absolutely no new flavor in dynamic or anything beneficial about this spec over Ranger, Druid, or Soulbeast.
2. Hammer needs a CC on the Unleashed kit so it can maintain its trait design flow. It also needs a bit more damage. Right now both kits are useless and don't stream well with anything. It's almost as if it was designed to avoid being able to combo anything. Using Hammer feels like pushing random buttons with no pathways for landing important chains.
3. The new utilities may as well not exist. We have JI like teleport that isn't even a stun break, that cannot be used for anything important because Untamed needs to set up for damage combos with counter-offensive successive strike play. It cannot teleport in at something and unleash a massive instant cast or animation stacked burst like a Core Guard or Herald. We have a new full condi clear cantrip which is essentially the same thing as the core signet full clear, which there is no reason to have two of these. We have a sort of half powered Dragon's Maw like utility that also serves no purpose because Rangers already have a lot of Entangle, which they don't need to sacrifice a utility slot to use. The cantrip heal is also weak when put next to Troll Unguent or We Heal As One. These utilities need a straight rework, not just buffs.
4. The Unleashed mechanic is incredibly unintuitive and simply does not stream well for combo play in any way shape or form. A Core Ranger easily outplays Untamed in this regard. The Untamed has way way too much unnecessary micro-management added to it. First of all, the pet's Unleashed skill kit is virtually useless and a waste of time to even push the buttons to use those skills. They don't stream well with either power or condi play. Second of all, making it so the Untamed has to micro-manage even the pet's basic intrinsic skill kits was a bad idea. At first I was excited about this feature, because I figured higher skill cap Ranger players would be able to create higher precision play. However, in reality during actual application, I found this to be very problematic not because there are too many buttons to push, but that you can't push multiple buttons at the same time to be able to control yourself and the pet at the same time. This is difficult to explain, so please try to follow me here -> An Elementalist as example, has 4 attunements that create 4 different weapon kits during play. The Elementalist is one vector source where all these skills are coming from. So although he is cycling quickly between all those skills, he can do this with only 1 thumb on a game mouse by moving that 1 thumb very quickly to hit skills in succession, one by one. But with the Untamed, you have to worry about your skill combos and the pet's skill combos. While playing a Core Ranger as example, when I swap to Smokescale, he automatically Smoke Assaults in at someone and then does a knockdown. While he is doing that, I can be putting all my speed button pushes into my character's combo chains. But with Untamed, I would have to play a big game of finger piano to achieve the same result. Come to find out, this is incredibly difficult to actually do because of the two vectors and their positions to worry about, yourself and the pet. So I have to pay attention to my positioning and timing with my character's skill combo, while also paying attention to the pet's positioning and its timing. It's like playing two characters at the same time, while using only 1 thumb to do it. It is impractical to maintain precision play while doing this. It's too clunky and it doesn't feel fun to play at all. Furthermore, for how difficult it is to run this, there is no benefit for doing so. Core Ranger, Druid, Soulbeast, they're all stronger because the designs stream better. Not sure what to suggest here without suggesting some kind of a massive overhaul that I know isn't going to happen. I think Unleashed shouldn't have CDs. You should be able to swap it on demand, like an Engi swaps kits. This would probably be a good route to take for beginning to clean up this mechanic.
5. When you first look at Untamed specialization and read the traits, you think "Oh man this is gonna be awesome with Marks mods" but it doesn't work out. You have to use Beast Mastery and take Lesser Quick Zephyr trait to make the Marks mods tick. The problem here is that you can't take Marks & Beast & Untamed without ditching Wilderness, and then you have no Fury for Remorseless proc and no sustain. So if you take Wilderness, then you get no Beast Mastery / L Quick Zephyr, and then the reliability of pets hitting with Marks mods just drops through the floor. Of course if you take Wilderness & Beast Mastery, then you get no Marks mods and damage drops through the floor. If you try to run condi, Untamed just isn't built for it. We have a big problem here because it's not good at dealing Power DPS, it's not good at dealing Condi DPS, it's not as good at survival as other Ranger specs, and it brings nothing important in the way of team support or even as a team fight presence. Aside from this massive list of in-depth suggestions I could make, I'll go ahead and toss a few catalyst suggestions that could be quick fixes to at least begin to make this specialization somewhat viable for use in competitive modes: 1) The pet's unleashed skills need serious buffs to be worth the clunky micro-management of it all. 2) The trait that grants the Untamed Quickness each time he disables a foe, should also grant that Quickness to the pet, so we have a method of replacing the Quickness that is lost from not being able to take Beast Mastery. This way the Untamed could run Marks/Wild/Untame "which is the only realistic way to have damage & sustain" and do it while having a method of being able to land practical pet strikes with Marks mods. 3) The Hammer needs a CC added to the Unleashed side kit, and a general damage increase.

There are a lot of other comments & suggestions I'd like to make, but I feel these are the most important things to note first and foremost.

Welcome to every other elite spec (minus engi shocker)

[Nighthawk.2401]

12 hours ago, Trevor Boyer.6524 said:

First of all, the pet's Unleashed skill kit is virtually useless and a waste of time to even push the buttons to use those skills

Huge disagree here, there's a boon rip (/corrupt with trait), which combos easily with the f1 pet blink, and the f3 is a projectile block that lasts several seconds, which can be huge against any ranged class. They're not like... broken abilities, but they're not so bad that you shouldn't be using them either. 

 

I agree with literally everything else you said, the class feels like trash, I'm amazed they don't get any new stun breaks. Like really?

I'm disappointed that with this much CC they won't get the damage they need to be viable.

And worst of all is that the CC is just straight worse than existing immob-spam druid/SB options, because all of the non-immob CC on Untamed is just blocked by stability, and you have to give up some seriously decent options from the other elites just to swap to these dazes/knockdowns instead. 

And yes, I found that trying to play "two characters at once" microing between pet swaps, and 9 pet active abilities, on top of all of my own character's options was definitely rather difficult to adjust to now. I'm very much not into this unleash mechanic as is.... especially because:

Pet positioning management/micro was removed :c

Why remove the ability to command your pet to move in and out of fights freely? This was a huge part of helping your pet survive for longer in fights, and Anet removed both keybindings with this beta. I really would like to have those back, and to also keep the option to stow the pet when trying to stealth too.

 

Edited October 27, 2021 by Nighthawk.2401

[Trevor Boyer.6524]

1 hour ago, Exile.8160 said:

Welcome to every other elite spec (minus engi shocker)

lol I thought the same exact thing. Of course it would be Engi that gets the raid boss pet. People complained and overexaggerated the strengths of Ranger pets for so long, but this Mech thing quite seriously is almost equivalent to the threat range of Svanir when you engage it in combat, and even Svanir doesn't have a break bar the size of a dungeon boss.

 

@Nighthawk.2401 Let me elaborate a bit more on what I meant by "useless unleashed pet skills". Ok so an Elementalist for example, is designed from the bottom up to cycle through attunements & skills as quickly as possible. From day 1 release its weapon skills were designed like this and it run smoothly. The Ranger however, is more like a Warrior in the aspect that its basic foundational weapon skills and even pet skills, are more designed to be used situationally. In other words, you don't spam skills as quickly as you can on a Ranger or Warrior, that gets you into trouble misusing your CDs. But this new Untamed unleashed system is encouraging cycling through unleashed skill kits as quickly as you can like an Ele, to try and get your bang for your buck out of the specialization design. This is problematic because it gets a Ranger into trouble. The Core Ranger foundational mechanics do not mesh well with a new system that encourages skill cycling like this. And due to the 9s CD on unleash swaps, you can't even access these skills reliably when you need to, when you are playing counter-actively. It forces you into this Ele like gameplay which just doesn't work out well when attached to Ranger. Furthermore, the skills they chose to add as those pet unleash skills are not good for cycling like that.

 

1. You have a small vuln stack it deals with a pet teleport that you can't follow up on because the unleash will be on a 9s CD when the pet lands, so he'll be stuck in light auto attack mode after the tele lands. You could wait to use that tele until right at the end of the unleash CD and then swap out of unleash and make a Gazelle do its Headbutt as example, but it's a lot of micro-management to be constantly dumping at least 50% of your focus and finger movements into your pet's combos all of the time so that they can be useful. That makes the Ranger player prone, even good ones. There is too large of a margin of error for fumbling with this, and again that is because it is TWO things you have to focus on. I don't think people who haven't play tested this yet, are understanding what I mean by that. When it's TWO characters who are walking and moving around and changing positions that you have to control like this, it's just not practical. It's a lot different than finger piano with a single character vector, such as with an Ele and its smooth cycle, or a Holosmith with multiple kits that don't even have CDs, that can turn on or off at leisure to immediately readapt on-demand for what it needs to be using.
2. You have a 2 boon removal which doesn't equate to much because the Ranger has no other boon removals to follow up with that to make it count for anything, and any Ranger player knows you can't afford to be stacking Revo/Absor sigils on your weapon sides. This may be cool in fractals for removing Prot off a boss, but it's rather useless in pvp. Comparably to other classes that rock boon removals or boon conversions, they'd need to buff that skill so it went 4 boons deep on the removal for it to really matter. Especially considering how boon heavy this game is anymore. While play testing I just began to ignore this skill because using it was so unimpactful that it was worth more to just ignore it and focus on the use of other skills. For these kinds of boon removals to be useful there needs to be 2 or 3 of them on a build, or at least a single skill that goes 3 or 4 boons deep when used, like when a Thief steals. I mean when you're cycling this skill against a Support Guard or a Prot Holo or something, it isn't even beginning to scathe the boon stacks they are able to propagate.
3. Then we have the proj null skill, which is nice but it's not really exactly something that you want to rush rush cycle before swapping every 9s. Proj null fields are those type of counter-active skills I was talking about where you want to wait to use it so the CD isn't wasted and you don't get baited into burning the CD. Just not good for cycling like this.

Futhermore, now we have THREE THINGS to be worried about cycling on Untamed. We have the CDs on normal weapon skills including normal Hammer skills on a 9s CD. Then we have the normal pet skills on normal pet swaps 15s CD. And then now we have unleashed pet skills and unleashed hammer skills on another 9s CD. If all of these skills were designed like Ele skills from the ground up, it wouldn't be such a big deal. But the Ranger & pets skills are all designed to be more like a War's skills, including the new things they added with Untamed. All of this stuff is not good for cycling, but rather for waiting for counter-active play, which is something that is incredibly impractical to do when you're worried about 3 lists of things that need to be toggled that all have CD limitations. It feels like no matter how you run the class, it's clunky and has no synergy with itself. That's what I meant when I said it doesn't stream well. It's way way too much micro-management for skills that should be being used counter-actively and not in a cycle spam, which will get you in trouble while misusing CDs.

Not trying to argue with you. Just clearing up my point made for any devs reading this.

Edited October 27, 2021 by Trevor Boyer.6524