Ambush skills, I foresee this issues happening already.

[anduriell.6280]

The same as i wasn't wrong about how bad was the untamed just by looking at Anet's presentation, i can foresee some future issues with the ambushes. If this is not addressed before the beta goes out it will make the ambushes mechanics feel clunky and undewhelming. And when i say underwhelming i mean nobody will make actual use of them. 

* Ambushes Cooldowns. As the post explains those are supposed to have an addtional CD. That would be fine but it may  cause 2 serious issues in usability:
- If the cooldowns aren't very short it will cause the issue that the player will not know when those are ready to use. Which directly impacts below point. 
* Ambushes effect duration
- CmC said the ambush window will be around 3 seconds. That is definitely too short as Ranger's hard hiting skills are on "long" casts / chanelling skills (rapid fire, Maul, Wirling defense..) Anet should have had learnt about this already when they had to extend the duration of Quickdraw because it wasn't long enough to allow some skills to finish. 

So because the player does not know when ambushes are ready and most hard hitting skills have a windup phase what is going to happes in players will switch and use maul/RF/whirling deffense and lose the window of oportunity to cast ambushes. The bigger the CDs of those ambushes the more irrelevant they will become. 

So:

* Ambushes need to have a very short CD and be balanced around that while still providing significant effects.
OR
* Ambushes will need to have some kind of visual indicator where it shows the untammed when the skill is ready for use. 
AND
* Ambushes window of effect needs to be much larger than 3 seconds. It needs to match up and be longer than current duration of Quickdraw effect window. 

If ambushes will be usable just for the 1% of the players on a 1% of the situations i think that will be a waste of development time. 

 

 

[Beddo.1907]

Indication and duration are getting on the feedback thread as soon as I confirm it in beta.

I think 5s would be just enough to start the channeling, finish it and start the channeling of the skill (Longbow).

I expect the cd to be 10s.

[Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582]

Mirage's Ambush attack window is only 1.5s, I wouldn't expect it to be much more than that.

As for not knowing if it is available, I would really like to see the Ambush recharge be shown with a gold border like an ammo skill recharge on the auto attack chain.

[InsaneQR.7412]

A visual indicator would be nice tbh.

Not only for how long its available but also when its available again.

 

Something like a boarder as mentioned by @Heimskarl Ashfiend.9582 . Similarly to the guardian boarder outline when your justice is active. And when activated it could be similar to mirage visual cue but more greenish.

 

 

[Aleksander Suburb.4287]

That is indeed a problem. But as I understand, the ambush skill will only appear after switching to unleashed mode and not while staying in this mode. So there is no accidentally activating of this skill. 

[Zenith.7301]

Not unique to rangers. Anet does not allow add-on's like Weak Auras in WoW to help track unintuitive cooldowns (try tracking cooldowns on your necro shroud, for example; try tracking elementalist's attunement specific cooldowns). This makes it a game of a mental clock that's not very efficient for most players in the hectic nature of a fight.

 

So Anet needs to work on better tracking tools for important class cooldowns and opportunity windows if they won't allow third party add-on's to assist with this,

 

Same goes for autoattack chains, with the visual overload of most fights it's pretty difficult to keep track and not interrupt your autoattack chain unless you stare at your action bar for the icon of the third part of the autoattack chain.

[HotHit.6783]

If I've understood the patch notes correctly, then the 3s window more than enough. The Ambush only activates when you Unleash Ranger, which means you are in full control of the effect triggering. In other words, the problem Quickdraw had is likely not relevant. A shorter duration is fine, just like with Mirage's Ambushes.

 

The problem with the shared cooldown is caused by the Unleash swap cooldown being too low. If they're once every 20 seconds, the 10 second cooldown would cause that to line up. With the current cooldown at 1 second, a tracker around skill 1 or the Unleash button like others described would be nice. But having to keep track of too many hidden cooldowns is nothing new for this game.

[Dadnir.5038]

Ambush cool down: I don't see a need for that. "Unleash" should be the thing that rule how often you can use and ambush. And while 10s was to long previously, 1s is probably to short as of now. The sweet spot should probably be around 3s.

Ambush effect duration: I'm pretty sure the remainder of the visual effect while you unleash yourself is enough as a visual cue. Isn't 3s the time the poo is said to stay on the Unleashed? You don't even need to look of your buff bar (Not that you're likely to not use an AA within 3s of unleash, anyway).

[Levetty.1279]

There is a little buff that tells you when you can ambush.

[Danikat.8537]

The only issue I've had with ambush so far is that I'm not used to swapping to a different skill set then letting the auto-attack go. Normally as soon as I swap I'm trying to do something other than auto-attack (like activating beastmode on a soulbeast then pushing F1 or F3 straight away) so at the moment I'm often preventing the ambush skill from firing until it's too late because I'm doing other things first.

But that's just a matter of learning that when I'm playing unleashed I press F5 then give it a second or two before doing anything else, just like I learned to push it then immediately push something else with other specs.

[anduriell.6280]

8 hours ago, Danikat.8537 said:

The only issue I've had with ambush so far is that I'm not used to swapping to a different skill set then letting the auto-attack go. Normally as soon as I swap I'm trying to do something other than auto-attack (like activating beastmode on a soulbeast then pushing F1 or F3 straight away) so at the moment I'm often preventing the ambush skill from firing until it's too late because I'm doing other things first.

But that's just a matter of learning that when I'm playing unleashed I press F5 then give it a second or two before doing anything else, just like I learned to push it then immediately push something else with other specs.

There is teh little buff which fixes the issue with the 10s internal cooldown.  The fact it triggers like an autoattack i think is fine, it allows you to use it right away keeping the combat flow.  

Unfortunately the 2 seconds duration is not enough. If you cast Maul just after swapping stance, the animation for the ambush happens right after maul but the skill actually does not triggers. 

If the Ambush activation time would be longer, i think 5s like @Beddo.1907 pointed out would be a sweet spot. I Just was experimenting with GS and Hammer, i guess barrage or rapid fire. 

 

[Brynioch.1873]

5s window will probably never happen. You are not supposed to use Barrage before the ambush skill. There was a reason they changed the unleash CD to 1sec, just like Mirage you are supposed to use it almost immediately.

[Danikat.8537]

2 hours ago, Miellyn.6847 said:

5s window will probably never happen. You are not supposed to use Barrage before the ambush skill. There was a reason they changed the unleash CD to 1sec, just like Mirage you are supposed to use it almost immediately.

I agree. I wasn't complaining that I want to use another skill first, it's just a habit I need to break (or rather adjust, it's still useful in other situations). I'm not used to the auto-attack being something I want and not just a way to fill gaps when I'm slow activating other skills or they're on cool down. 😄

[Aleksander Suburb.4287]

You can just switch to long bow, fire your barrage, switch to unleashed and fire your ambush ... The weapon switch has nothing to do with the small ambush time window

[anduriell.6280]

5 hours ago, Aleksander Suburb.4287 said:

You can just switch to long bow, fire your barrage, switch to unleashed and fire your ambush ... The weapon switch has nothing to do with the small ambush time window

That is not a solution, it is a workaround to an awful design. It doesn't only happens with barrage, Maul is long enough to miss the window. 

You can be midcasting the skill, do the feral swap and still miss the window. I won't explain why anybody would want to swap in midcast.

And the solution is pretty simple: Extend the window to 5 seconds. 2s doesn't work with ranger if you are not only autoattacking. 

 

[OGDeadHead.8326]

8 hours ago, Miellyn.6847 said:

5s window will probably never happen. You are not supposed to use Barrage before the ambush skill. There was a reason they changed the unleash CD to 1sec, just like Mirage you are supposed to use it almost immediately.

Since ranger is not Mirage, it doesn't have to be the same. Half the times it bugs out as well, making it very clumsy to use. The time window should be extended.

[Donut.6914]

The only problem I have with the ambush CD is that I don't actually know WHEN the skill is off cooldown, because there is no visual indicator. As others have said, the duration that the ambush skill stays active shouldn't be a problem because you should be timing your unleashed state to activate right when you want to use the ambush skill. But some kind of visual indicator that the ambushed skill is ready is needed so that we can time our unleashed rotation around it. 

[Gorem.8104]

The thing I find funny about Ambush skills is that, you know that if you see a Ranger unleash, to interrupt them then. A cast time, and a visual effect telling the world "hey guys, interrupt me now" 

[Danikat.8537]

21 hours ago, Donut.6914 said:

The only problem I have with the ambush CD is that I don't actually know WHEN the skill is off cooldown, because there is no visual indicator. As others have said, the duration that the ambush skill stays active shouldn't be a problem because you should be timing your unleashed state to activate right when you want to use the ambush skill. But some kind of visual indicator that the ambushed skill is ready is needed so that we can time our unleashed rotation around it. 

There's a buff to show you when the ambush skill is available. It's been mentioned several times in this thread already.