Pet changes for group content.

[Beddo.1907]

One of the reason why ranger is problematic in group content comes from the pet:
-taking boons, buffs and healing that could be used on other players 
-dying way too fast
-being visible while the squad uses stealth (WvW mostly)

I'll try to remove or lessen those downsides with following ideas:
-Pet can no longer receive boons, buffs and healing from other players (The owner and the pet itself are the only ones who can apply those with skills like healing skills, Sic'em, Double Arc, Sharpen spines...). When Ranger receives boons(Fortifying Bond would need to be changed), buffs(like Vampiric presence, superspeed, stealth/reveal) and healing, the pet will receive a copy of it. This way 5 target effects apply to everyone in the party and the pet and ranger and the pet are always in stealth together.
-Pets in WvW receive a DR buff depending on the number of unstealthed players within 1600 range. The value per player is 5% for AoE damage and 1.5% for single target and condi damage, capped at 95% and 75%.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

Not a ranger main but one thing I saw engi getting that irks me about ranger pets is that the jade mechs can never be CC'ed anymore. Can ranger pets be CC'ed still? If so that is totally not right to me.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

3 hours ago, Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

Not a ranger main but one thing I saw engi getting that irks me about ranger pets is that the jade mechs can never be CC'ed anymore. Can ranger pets be CC'ed still? If so that is totally not right to me.

Yes, they can.

 

Mechs had breakbars, I don't know if them losing breakbars means they get CCed normally or not. I think they still can, but if they can't it's bad balance.

 

Not like this last patch was good balance.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

In PvE it can't be CC'ed:
 

Quote

• The mech's defiance bar is now locked so that it is no longer susceptible to control effects in PvE. It can still be controlled in PvP and WvW.

 

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

9 hours ago, Red Haired Savage.5430 said:

In PvE it can't be CC'ed:
 

 

Solar does what solar wants.

[Kodama.6453]

6 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Solar does what solar wants.

Well, the thing is that so much of mechanist's power budget is put into the mech that Anet basically has to guarantee the mech to function in PvE. If the mech doesn't work because it is always CCed, or dead, or in any other way dysfunctional then nobody would play the elite spec.

So honestly, giving it a locked break bar was a good call.

Edited July 8, 2022 by Kodama.6453

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

2 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Well, the thing is that so much of mechanist's power budget is put into the mechanist that Anet basically has to guarantee the mech to function in PvE. If the mech doesn't work because it is always CCed, or dead, or in any other way dysfunctional then nobody would play the elite spec.

So honestly, giving it a locked break bar was a good call.

Yeah but that's a big middle finger to other pet classes that also need their pet to do things.

[Red Haired Savage.5430]

2 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Solar does what solar wants.

We warrior mains know that all too well.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

5 hours ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Well, the thing is that so much of mechanist's power budget is put into the mechanist that Anet basically has to guarantee the mech to function in PvE. If the mech doesn't work because it is always CCed, or dead, or in any other way dysfunctional then nobody would play the elite spec.

So honestly, giving it a locked break bar was a good call.

Ranger pets can be. There's no lower CC timer for them, there's no immunity.

 

Mech should still be able to be CCed. Give it an actual drawback. Not necessarily a breakbar, just the ability to be CCed. Ranger pets don't have breakbars.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

Since mechanist is being brought up, how does boonshare work with the mech? Or stealth? 

I like the idea of whatever the ranger gets the pet innately gets, but I don't think they'll ever do it.  I mean, in the current state of the game they should just roll beastmastery into default behavior (pets are faster, more damage, etc. without using BM).  

A breakbar on a pet would be a great idea for WvW too because most people don't use CC anyway so they'd survive way longer, and at least it'd require some amount of CC'ing before just being pinballed everywhere.  

[Kodama.6453]

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Ranger pets can be. There's no lower CC timer for them, there's no immunity.

 

Mech should still be able to be CCed. Give it an actual drawback. Not necessarily a breakbar, just the ability to be CCed. Ranger pets don't have breakbars.

If a ranger's pet stops attacking because of CC, how much damage do you actually lose? 10%? 15%?

Meanwhile if the mech stops working, then there goes 50% or more of the mechanists damage out of the window. The mech contributes way more to the performance of the mechanist than a ranger pet does for the performance of the ranger.

If the mech would be that easily disrupted, then no one would play mechanist anymore. You are trading a very reliable class mechanic (toolbelt) for the mech. If the mech is interrupted and prone for every CC, then it becomes really unreliable. So why would you ever make that trade then? You would just keep your toolbelt with either holosmith for dps or scrapper for support. At least you can guarantee that your build does what it is supposed to do then.

The mech is still vulnerable for CC in competitive modes, which it definitely needs to be. But locking the break bar in PvE was a good decision to ensure that the mechanic is reliable in that environment and therefore actually usable.

[Kodama.6453]

58 minutes ago, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

Since mechanist is being brought up, how does boonshare work with the mech? Or stealth? 

I like the idea of whatever the ranger gets the pet innately gets, but I don't think they'll ever do it.  I mean, in the current state of the game they should just roll beastmastery into default behavior (pets are faster, more damage, etc. without using BM).  

A breakbar on a pet would be a great idea for WvW too because most people don't use CC anyway so they'd survive way longer, and at least it'd require some amount of CC'ing before just being pinballed everywhere.  

A mechanist has to take the shift signet for boonshare. It's passive makes the engineer share all the boons they gain with their mech. Which basically made this skill hard locked into your bar, since the boon share is pretty important for most builds to buff up the mech for best performance.

Stealth isn't shared this way, since it isn't a boon. You can just stealth the mech by having it included in the target cap of a stealth ability.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

38 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

If a ranger's pet stops attacking because of CC, how much damage do you actually lose? 10%? 15%?

Meanwhile if the mech stops working, then there goes 50% or more of the mechanists damage out of the window. The mech contributes way more to the performance of the mechanist than a ranger pet does for the performance of the ranger.

If the mech would be that easily disrupted, then no one would play mechanist anymore. You are trading a very reliable class mechanic (toolbelt) for the mech. If the mech is interrupted and prone for every CC, then it becomes really unreliable. So why would you ever make that trade then? You would just keep your toolbelt with either holosmith for dps or scrapper for support. At least you can guarantee that your build does what it is supposed to do then.

The mech is still vulnerable for CC in competitive modes, which it definitely needs to be. But locking the break bar in PvE was a good decision to ensure that the mechanic is reliable in that environment and therefore actually usable.

Mechanist is currently insanely broken because of how powerful the mech is. It needs some kind of drawback. There aren't that many encounters in instanced content that can even hit player AI.

 

Mechanist would still be insanely usable in PvE if CCing the mech returned. There is no reasonable excuse for it to be immune to crowd control effects- even if PvE is (mostly) cooperative, there's still balancing that needs to be observed, and it is currently not happening with mechanist.

[Gotejjeken.1267]

1 hour ago, Kodama.6453 said:

A mechanist has to take the shift signet for boonshare. It's passive makes the engineer share all the boons they gain with their mech. Which basically made this skill hard locked into your bar, since the boon share is pretty important for most builds to buff up the mech for best performance.

Stealth isn't shared this way, since it isn't a boon. You can just stealth the mech by having it included in the target cap of a stealth ability.

 

But without shift signet do mechs 'steal' boons like ranger pets? If not, I don't see why they can't just rework it so pets only get boons if you take Fortifying Bond.  

Stealth seems to work the same way on mech then as ranger pets, so why don't people complain about unstealthed mechs , or mechs ruining the target cap?  

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

Just now, Gotejjeken.1267 said:

 

But without shift signet do mechs 'steal' boons like ranger pets? If not, I don't see why they can't just rework it so pets only get boons if you take Fortifying Bond.  

Stealth seems to work the same way on mech then as ranger pets, so why don't people complain about unstealthed mechs , or mechs ruining the target cap?  

Even still, shift signet is amazing for mechaniat as it allows mechs to easily double dip on boons like might (that directly affect the base stat). Shift signet VS fortifying bond has a clear and easy winner, going to shift signet, and that's not even considering the active or the fact that you can trait mech signets to keep their passive after use (which is very strong for mechanist. Compare all core ranger signets to any individual mechanist signet- still no contest).

[Gotejjeken.1267]

13 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Even still, shift signet is amazing for mechaniat as it allows mechs to easily double dip on boons like might (that directly affect the base stat). Shift signet VS fortifying bond has a clear and easy winner, going to shift signet, and that's not even considering the active or the fact that you can trait mech signets to keep their passive after use (which is very strong for mechanist. Compare all core ranger signets to any individual mechanist signet- still no contest).

 

True, shift signet should have the WHaO treatement and only copy on active use and also not direct copy but rather copy a static amount.  I'm unsure why this hasn't been implemented yet--WHaO only direct copied boons for a few days before they changed it to what it is now.  

I mean, I don't care if they make it work exactly like WHaO where active shift signet use gives a copy of mech and engis boons to eachother--its just the passive as right now seems a bit too much.  

[Kodama.6453]

On 7/8/2022 at 11:45 PM, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Even still, shift signet is amazing for mechaniat as it allows mechs to easily double dip on boons like might (that directly affect the base stat). Shift signet VS fortifying bond has a clear and easy winner, going to shift signet, and that's not even considering the active or the fact that you can trait mech signets to keep their passive after use (which is very strong for mechanist. Compare all core ranger signets to any individual mechanist signet- still no contest).

Maybe you should test interactions before you are using them as arguments in balancing discussions...

Mechs don't "double dip" on boons like might. They just and only benefit from their own might, the power/condition damage the mechanist gets from might is not transferred onto the mech.

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

20 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

Maybe you should test interactions before you are using them as arguments in balancing discussions...

Mechs don't "double dip" on boons like might. They just and only benefit from their own might, the power/condition damage the mechanist gets from might is not transferred onto the mech.

I'm pretty sure it does... either way, shift signet is still incredibly strong to a bad degree. Rangers are forced to take the support traitline to get these boons onto pets, and mechanists don't need to take anything other than a utility to get it passively, with much stronger pets.

 

I don't think you realize just how big a gap shift signet makes between ranger pets and mechs- it's impossible to make an effective, pure DPS build for a pet centric ranger, partially due to where fortifying bond is and how little offensive potential the Nature Magic traitline brings. Not only that, but we cannot make a dps support hybrid other than something like alac untamed, because we don't have the supportive tools to make it work. Alac Untamed only works because of the incredibly broken trait Fervent Force that only isn't broken on something so bad.

[Kodama.6453]

52 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

I'm pretty sure it does...

I literally just logged in to test and make sure that I am not making wrong claims. The power and condition damage you get from might doesn't transfer over to the mech, so it can't double dip. It used to be able to do that during beta, but that interaction got removed.

Fun fact: The mech basically doesn't gain any stats except the ones from your equipment. Even stats you gain from your own traits, like chemical rounds or thermal vision, are not shared with the mech.

And this is just a thing that annoys me about balance discussions around mechanist in general. Way too many people are basing their arguments around made up stuff and they can't even be bothered to look up if the interactions really play out as they think (or god forbid even testing it in the game).

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

either way, shift signet is still incredibly strong to a bad degree.

Agreed, the signet is extremely powerful. And it got acknowledged by the designer.

The problem is that the signet is just a bandaid in the first place. A mechanic to share boons with the mech was needed, since the mechanist is extremely reliant on it for it's performance. But he didn't want to make that interaction baseline, so he had to slap it onto a utility like shift signet.

Then, even admitted by the dev, he buffed the signet into an extremely strong state just so mechanist players don't feel bad about the fact that it basically became mendatory on your skill bar. "You won't complain that you have to use this skill if that skill is extremely powerful".

1 hour ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

I don't think you realize just how big a gap shift signet makes between ranger pets and mechs- it's impossible to make an effective, pure DPS build for a pet centric ranger, partially due to where fortifying bond is and how little offensive potential the Nature Magic traitline brings.

The reason why a pet focused playstyle works for mechanist and not for ranger is not shift signet vs nature magic.

It's because the mechanist shares his stats with the mech, while all ranger pets have a predetermined stat spread. Even if rangers would get a shift signet equivalent tomorrow, their pets wouldn't get close to the damage or support potential of the mech. Because you still lack the ability to inject your stats into your pet.

[Beddo.1907]

8 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

The power and condition damage you get from might doesn't transfer over to the mech, so it can't double dip. It used to be able to do that during beta, but that interaction got removed.

That's correct, the scaling was causing problems and was inconsistent so they limited it to gear stats only.

9 minutes ago, Kodama.6453 said:

It's because the mechanist shares his stats with the mech, while all ranger pets have a predetermined stat spread. Even if rangers would get a shift signet equivalent tomorrow, their pets wouldn't get close to the damage or support potential of the mech. Because you still lack the ability to inject your stats into your pet.

This actually has another issue. Unlike mechanist, our pets don't benefit that much from support stats so pet having pure power/condi stats works better for support builds. So if we get pet stats based on our stats, druid dps will suffer even more (I wonder how it would work with the -20% stats). 
Also unlike mechanist we don't have traits that improve scaling to 100% on certain stats so that's even less control over that stats.

[enkeny.6937]

On 7/5/2022 at 3:31 PM, Beddo.1907 said:

One of the reason why ranger is problematic in group content comes from the pet:
-taking boons, buffs and healing that could be used on other players 
-dying way too fast
-being visible while the squad uses stealth (WvW mostly)

I don't know how it works in WvW, but in PvE you can at least try this:
1st: pets hardly die. Has AoE damage reduction and environment immunity. Yes it can die, but it is rare. If it happened in group content, you had bigger problems.
2nd: go and test the boon priority: as long as there are players, pet never get priority. Put down a spirit, blow your warhorn, as long as you not using nature magic and there are players in the area, the pet don't get boons.
you don't need in the party, stand next to the bank or other highly crowded places. 

[Zaret.1450]

On 7/10/2022 at 4:21 PM, Kodama.6453 said:

I literally just logged in to test and make sure that I am not making wrong claims. The power and condition damage you get from might doesn't transfer over to the mech, so it can't double dip. It used to be able to do that during beta, but that interaction got removed.

Fun fact: The mech basically doesn't gain any stats except the ones from your equipment. Even stats you gain from your own traits, like chemical rounds or thermal vision, are not shared with the mech.

And this is just a thing that annoys me about balance discussions around mechanist in general. Way too many people are basing their arguments around made up stuff and they can't even be bothered to look up if the interactions really play out as they think (or god forbid even testing it in the game).

Agreed, the signet is extremely powerful. And it got acknowledged by the designer.

The problem is that the signet is just a bandaid in the first place. A mechanic to share boons with the mech was needed, since the mechanist is extremely reliant on it for it's performance. But he didn't want to make that interaction baseline, so he had to slap it onto a utility like shift signet.

Then, even admitted by the dev, he buffed the signet into an extremely strong state just so mechanist players don't feel bad about the fact that it basically became mendatory on your skill bar. "You won't complain that you have to use this skill if that skill is extremely powerful".

The reason why a pet focused playstyle works for mechanist and not for ranger is not shift signet vs nature magic.

It's because the mechanist shares his stats with the mech, while all ranger pets have a predetermined stat spread. Even if rangers would get a shift signet equivalent tomorrow, their pets wouldn't get close to the damage or support potential of the mech. Because you still lack the ability to inject your stats into your pet.

theres a traiit line that increases pet stats, its beastmastery and it is where the trait to copy boonst to pets should be, with both things combined, plus having 2 pets while mec only has 1 pet, ranger would get much better pet wise, of course pets need some buffs but with the existing traits, if well implemented, and if they made untamed unleash buffs work on pets too, that would be a huge increase in viability.

[Beddo.1907]

10 hours ago, enkeny.6937 said:

2nd: go and test the boon priority: as long as there are players, pet never get priority. Put down a spirit, blow your warhorn, as long as you not using nature magic and there are players in the area, the pet don't get boons.
you don't need in the party, stand next to the bank or other highly crowded places. 

I believe it might be because on 10 target skills (mostly happening in WvW squad), which are getting removed so this point might no longer be an issue. The healing is harder to check in a large squad, because either the pet takes no damage or evaporates.
However the opposite where pet gets no boons is also an issue, since we lose stats. Currently the only way to fix it is by taking a support traitline in comparison to mechanist that can do the same with one utility skill that also does shadowstep.

Edited July 19, 2022 by Beddo.1907

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

3 hours ago, Beddo.1907 said:

I believe it might be because on 10 target skills (mostly happening in WvW squad), which are getting removed so this point might no longer be an issue. The healing is harder to check in a large squad, because either the pet takes no damage or evaporates.
However the opposite where pet gets no boons is also an issue, since we lose stats. Currently the only way to fix it is by taking a support traitline in comparison to mechanist that can do the same with one utility skill that also does shadowstep.

Not only that, but the utility skill also pairs well with the other mechanist signets and has a trait to make it never stop working 🙂 it's not like mechanist was super strong already or anything 🙂

 

[enkeny.6937]

I would also trade Signet of the Hunt for Shift Signet at any time.