Ranger - Untamed - Ambush and Pet Skills Suggestion to Dev Team

[CombineFiftyFour.1632]

Good day!

I've been playing Untamed Ranger elite specialization for 4 months in the open world and instanced content (Dungeons, Fractals, Raids and Strike missions) now and while it has been a good breath of fresh air after playing without a pet for years, I've noticed that some of the Untamed mechanics are not really fun to interact with - new Ambush and Pet Unleashed skills.

Please allow me to share it but please keep in mind, that everything below is only related to PvE, I'm not playing PvP and WvW at all.

 

 - Ambush skills -

The skills itself are great, the visuals are awesome and effect - especially with a trait that enhances them - is meaningful. However, in order to use the Ambush skills, player is required to switch from DPS state to Defensive state and then back - this is incredibly annoying and counter-intuitive (if I want to use high-damaging skill, I need to switch from DPS state to Defensive state and then back).

 

My suggestion is to make Ambush skills activate upon Pet skill use - the default F1, F2 and F3 ones and keep the internal cooldown (it is 15 seconds as of right now).

This will make it much easier for players to access the Ambush skills and will keep the gameplay consistency (use damaging skills in DPS state, no need to activate Defensive state).

 

- Pet Unleashed skills - 

The issue I've noticed with Pet Unleashed skills is that while they are doing great damage and have no cast time, they are activated in Defensive state and as a player I'd expect them to do something more defense-related - like CC, boons, breakstuns, healing. They do have additional effects if the enemy is in disable state and this should synergize with hammer CC skills, but sadly this type of gameplay is simply too fast, requires a lot of presses per minute and leads to frustration.

 

My suggestion would be to modify the Pet Unleashed skills - lower the damage they do, but compensate with something defense-related (aegis? breakstun? CC? boons?). I think that cooldown for Unleash Ranger and Unleash Pet should also be increased - this will make it a commitment and will prevent class from becoming too powerful.

I understand that the idea behind Untamed was to make a class that promotes high APM gameplay with quick switching between the DPS and Defensive states with massive CC potential, but despite the high benchmark numbers, in its current state, Untamed has a number of frustrating caveats and requires adjustments.
I believe that making Ambush skills more easily accessible and making the class less reliant on quick switches between DPS and Defensive states (with modified Pet Unleashed skills) will make it much more enjoyable to play. As of right now, a lot of players in open world are skipping the Pet Unleashed state all-together, while in instanced content Untameds are a rare sight to see - with some of the players resorting to using macros to achieve efficiency.

 

On a side note, I'd like to mention the Hammer on Untamed - I strongly believe that flipping skills between 2 states is not really pleasant to play either and it would have been great, if Ranger Unleashed hammer skills had the same effects as Pet Unleashed, with Pet Unleashed improving the effects even further (with the increased CD for both Ranger Unleashed and Pet Unleashed switch skill in mind) - that way hammer skills will have something more than all 5 skills being used for dealing damage - a good example is greatsword, which offers a variety of effects for many gameplay situations.

 

Thank you so much for your attention!

Sincerely,

CombinE54

[Beddo.1907]

1 hour ago, CombinE FiftyFour.2547 said:

My suggestion is to make Ambush skills activate upon Pet skill use

Some pet skills need timing or the pet decides not to use the skill due to being 1 unit too far from the target or a small pebble being on the way. I think I'd rather stay with the current one over this one, until a different change.

1 hour ago, CombinE FiftyFour.2547 said:

this will make it a commitment and will prevent class from becoming too powerful.

No this will make the espec even more annoying to use, because of the states.

The entire issue with Untamed is just Ambush skills, Hammer skillsets, Unleash buff, Pet skillsets, Traits and Utilities being tied to ONE BUTTON. All espec mechanics depending on just one button is a big source of APM, causing the spec difficulty to raise without sufficient rewards for it.

To fix it we need to cut down on the f5 dependence without just moving it to a different button and causing one issue to be less problematic by adding a different smaller issue. Also Pet Unleash skills should be buffed for PvE, but not by spamming effects on them.

[Mell.4873]

I think a good idea which was brought up in another thread was let the pet Unleashed skills change based on pet Type like Soulbeast. Here are some of my own ideas:

• Stout, F1 should be another boon strip, F2 damage immunity, F3 is now a projectile reflect
• Deadly, Add bleed, F3 should have a bleed charges like Sharpening Stone
• Versatile, F2 should have pulls to mimic the soulbeast version with F3 being a root
• Ferocious, Switch out all the Condition damage to Power, F3 could be a lighting storm
• Supportive, All healing and condition cleanse skills with the same F3 projective block.

A few things to add, F1 should always be a Teleport and F3 should be some sort of consistent AoE but not always a projectile block. A cool idea along with this is much like Soulbeast merges provided stats well the Unleashed pet could have a slight bump to its stats based on the pet type.

 

To answer your question we need to have more choices to compensate what we are lacking, like defensive or damage which will help with the complex Untamed rotation.

Edited October 16, 2022 by Mell.4873