Improving Untamed for WvW

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

Just now, Sandzibar.5134 said:

pet dies almost instantly when fighting 2+ enemies which spam aoe.. so basically all the standard necro / ele / engy / guardian builds you meet roaming in wvw.

 

its ok for 1v1s though. sure.

 

 

 

 

 

Honestly they need to give pets (playerAI in general but pets are what are mostly relevant here, maybe not mechs though bc of their bonkers stats) AoE damage reduction. Having no damage reduction AND no way to properly deliberately reposition your pet makes it impossible to keep them from going down and the 60s cooldown on pet "revival" is too harsh for when you're literally using your profession mechanic as intended, having it do something alongside you- there's no way you can even negate having a pet for any spec besides soulbeast, you have no way to perma stow and no way to stow in combat. Something to make it so pets aren't immediately blended when there's more than 2 AoEs it's going to inevitably stand in is direly needed or else we won't see much more druid play in wvw, and we won't see much zerg/blob play at all.

Edited December 30, 2022 by RainbowTurtle.3542

[Zaret.1450]

38 minutes ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Honestly they need to give pets (playerAI in general but pets are what are mostly relevant here, maybe not mechs though bc of their bonkers stats) AoE damage reduction. Having no damage reduction AND no way to properly deliberately reposition your pet makes it impossible to keep them from going down and the 60s cooldown on pet "revival" is too harsh for when you're literally using your profession mechanic as intended, having it do something alongside you- there's no way you can even negate having a pet for any spec besides soulbeast, you have no way to perma stow and no way to stow in combat. Something to make it so pets aren't immediately blended when there's more than 2 AoEs it's going to inevitably stand in is direly needed or else we won't see much more druid play in wvw, and we won't see much zerg/blob play at all.

For me pets should have several changes.

1 would be a reliable boon source, a trait in nature magic is far from ideal out of a healing build, moving the trait to beastmastery or as kodama said, to a signet(signet of rejuvenation was the name? not sure) , the one that gives passive healing, instead of that passive boons to pets would be better.

2 would be the nerf in pet health in wvw, im not saying that some pets should have 50k health like in pve but a pet with 10k is just the same as a rabbit out there, make it so the minimun is around 23k or so and the max is around 40k thatd help.

3 were basicaly talking about untamed here, as druid doesnt realy need the pet that much and soulbeast fuses with it and is more of an assasin tipe, so untamed is the one that would make use of pet  being better in zerg fights, thus untamed would need to hive something new to the pet, my take would be just adding it the unleashed buff, unleashed on the player gives a %dmg increase and while leashed you get a %dmg reduction, just give pet a similar effect but reduced, itd be somethink like youre unleashed and hit a 10% more while the pet receives 5% less dmg, and if youre leashed you receive 10% less dmg and pet hits a 5% harder.

This are all just pet changes, for untamed to be truly viable in a zerg fight, in my opinion, ambush skills should dissapear, instead make those skills replace the 2 skill on each weapon(except hammer, to make it unique), with this you get rid of all the problems linked to the ambush, limited time, slotted in the AA wich is bad, need to keep leashing and unleashing with an icd added.

With those skills being fixed untamed would get, more area dmg, as all ambushes are area skills, it would be smoother and more organic to just swap in and out of unleash as you only care about modifiers and skills, not caring about ICD and other stuff, and untamed would get access to boon strip, a more reliable boon strip than the actual one, not overpowered as necro, mesmer and spellbreaker still exist.

With that and pets changes untamed would be viable, 2 bubbles (unleashed pet and turtle), lots of roots and cages, pets surviving longer means more dmg being tanked by them and more probability of them being usefull on unleash state, good area dmg, hammer is great with cc and has good area. dmg itself, added to, say lb, sb or axes for long-medium ranges would be good, frost trap and spores also could add to the dmg in melee, and a decent boon strip, unleashed pet, and the new unleashed skills, sb would probably be good, lb could work, gs would be decent too.

Probably not a meta build but a viable one for sure id say. and its just changing a couple numbers and swaping a couple traits/skills, so id say its doable

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

Just now, zaswer.5246 said:

For me pets should have several changes.

1 would be a reliable boon source, a trait in nature magic is far from ideal out of a healing build, moving the trait to beastmastery or as kodama said, to a signet(signet of rejuvenation was the name? not sure) , the one that gives passive healing, instead of that passive boons to pets would be better.

2 would be the nerf in pet health in wvw, im not saying that some pets should have 50k health like in pve but a pet with 10k is just the same as a rabbit out there, make it so the minimun is around 23k or so and the max is around 40k thatd help.

3 were basicaly talking about untamed here, as druid doesnt realy need the pet that much and soulbeast fuses with it and is more of an assasin tipe, so untamed is the one that would make use of pet  being better in zerg fights, thus untamed would need to hive something new to the pet, my take would be just adding it the unleashed buff, unleashed on the player gives a %dmg increase and while leashed you get a %dmg reduction, just give pet a similar effect but reduced, itd be somethink like youre unleashed and hit a 10% more while the pet receives 5% less dmg, and if youre leashed you receive 10% less dmg and pet hits a 5% harder.

This are all just pet changes, for untamed to be truly viable in a zerg fight, in my opinion, ambush skills should dissapear, instead make those skills replace the 2 skill on each weapon(except hammer, to make it unique), with this you get rid of all the problems linked to the ambush, limited time, slotted in the AA wich is bad, need to keep leashing and unleashing with an icd added.

With those skills being fixed untamed would get, more area dmg, as all ambushes are area skills, it would be smoother and more organic to just swap in and out of unleash as you only care about modifiers and skills, not caring about ICD and other stuff, and untamed would get access to boon strip, a more reliable boon strip than the actual one, not overpowered as necro, mesmer and spellbreaker still exist.

With that and pets changes untamed would be viable, 2 bubbles (unleashed pet and turtle), lots of roots and cages, pets surviving longer means more dmg being tanked by them and more probability of them being usefull on unleash state, good area dmg, hammer is great with cc and has good area. dmg itself, added to, say lb, sb or axes for long-medium ranges would be good, frost trap and spores also could add to the dmg in melee, and a decent boon strip, unleashed pet, and the new unleashed skills, sb would probably be good, lb could work, gs would be decent too.

Probably not a meta build but a viable one for sure id say. and its just changing a couple numbers and swaping a couple traits/skills, so id say its doable

Druid's pet should absolutely be considered relevant. They need to buff the boon pets overall but we shouldn't just push the pet to the wayside just because the spec is so focused on healing.

 

Having a boon signet leaves it open to being considered too strong. Maybe I'm just wary of having another shift signet but it seems like people would complain about a boon signet of renewal in the same way they do shift signet, and the passive healing can be very helpful especially considering some of our traits have healing at interval in the same vein as signet of renewal. You can often stack them in a way that makes them actually quite powerful, since it's around 500 healing per interval.

 

We need a pet rework overall. Just doing something for untamed specifically doesn't help ranger pets as a whole.

[Zaret.1450]

18 hours ago, RainbowTurtle.3542 said:

Druid's pet should absolutely be considered relevant. They need to buff the boon pets overall but we shouldn't just push the pet to the wayside just because the spec is so focused on healing.

 

Having a boon signet leaves it open to being considered too strong. Maybe I'm just wary of having another shift signet but it seems like people would complain about a boon signet of renewal in the same way they do shift signet, and the passive healing can be very helpful especially considering some of our traits have healing at interval in the same vein as signet of renewal. You can often stack them in a way that makes them actually quite powerful, since it's around 500 healing per interval.

 

We need a pet rework overall. Just doing something for untamed specifically doesn't help ranger pets as a whole.

its true we need a pet rework overall, but this would be more of a patch till they come up with a good pet order sistem and a better ai.

for druid, pets like turtle or bear would be relevant, for cleanse, bubble etc, but those 2 examples already have good health so just boons and a bit more health would work as they probably work on passive mode in zerg fight, as for soulbeast it has irs pet merged most of the time so pet itself isnt relevant, while untamed expands pet comands and its mecanic involve both the pj and the pet, thats why i focused there, it is the most, beast master ranger.

as for the signet, ranger has traits that also give passive healing, so that signet pasive is kinda irrelevant, and its not like that signet is seen widespread, moreso a build would force you to choose, boons for pets, or maybe a skill to inmov enemies, or something else, think that pets arent as strong as mec and shift is also a tp, while rangers is a condi transfusion to the pet, it isnt as strong overall.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Gonna spitball an idea since Druid and Untamed could both benefit from this in a zerg scenario (especially Untamed with its offensive pet).

 

Make a baseline trait for pets: When 5 or more enemies nearby (240-450 radius?), Pet gains 90% dmg reduction and skills become uninteruptible (aka super stability). 

This would make the pet far tankier and capable of landing skills (so players can actually choose offensive pets whose skills might be useful outside of Unleashed mode) and doesn't make a nightmare for smallscale scenarios, since up to 5 enemies can melt through the pet, as opposed to having the ranger tank forever in smallscale. 

I think that would be the best take for it, tho the numbers can obviously change.

 

Edit: I personally envision Untamed fullfilling a spot of a mild DPS/Strip role akin to Hammer DPS SpB and making up for the potential lack of boonrip in potent Immob cover. 

Edited January 3, 2023 by Grand Marshal.4098

[Kal Durak.2830]

On 12/7/2022 at 5:21 AM, Acyk.9671 said:

Hello guys,

 

Since Untamed fails to meet the expectations we had for Ranger in WvW, I had an idea for a rework i would like you to consider.  I want to reduce the reliance of that specialization on the link  between F5 and ambushes by changing the mechanic without touching too much the gameplay.

 

1/ Unleashed Ambushes:

 

Now works on weapon swap instead of F5, adjusting the CD to 9sec.

 

2/ F5:

 

Make it work so it still affects cantrip utilities and traits but not ambushes.

Make it a kit that gives access to  the 4 "Unleashed Hammer" skills regardless of the weapon set equipped and not just hammer. It gives more options in melee and we don't have to worry about one weapon defining the sole design of the e-spec and simply being a more survivable ranger without it.

 

Joke post right?

[RainbowTurtle.3542]

16 minutes ago, DtenCfour.3567 said:

Joke post right?

People want a zerg capable ranger spec- myself included. We can't run in zergs without being effectively neutered because we have tradeoffs for our spec mechanic that comes in the form of some awful core skills with a few very high highs. Soulbeast was already our roamer, we didn't need a stronger roamer, and that's what untamed ended up being, not a zerg machine like it seemed like they were intending.

[Acyk.9671]

1 hour ago, DtenCfour.3567 said:

Joke post right?

joke post for a joke class

[Grand Marshal.4098]

I was playing some Hamm/GS untamed last night solo tagging some zerg content and whatnot. 

Its quite fun, quite smooth (outside of the pet micromanaging but ofc that also has some appeal to it) and can deliver some boonrip.

But kitten is it so weak as an alternative. Tying the boonrip to the pet is meh, ambushes are def the best part of this and for all its mods, Hammer does surprisingly meh damage in larger scale scenarios. I was running glass Marks/Wilderness/Untamed. 

The immob is potent, tho your best immob shares slots with a very good elite skill, should not be an issue with a FB ig. 

Still, Pet needs, as I said, a scaling dmg reduction with many enemies around it, to enable the landing of key skills and unleashed mechanics. 

Also, Hammer having some cooked-in boonrip in skills 4 and 2 would pair well with the CC from 3 and 5. 

My pets of choice are usually a drake for that occasional tail swipe that lands and crits with no weakness or rupts and bear cause of its endure pain. 

Overall, a single burst of F1, F2, F3 and a swoop with the GS ambush, with a cage or spore followup yielded me a decent 30 boons ripped with tightly stacked enemies. Was surprised tbh, but it's a burst, it's not constant, you really need to stick to the enemy for a constant removal and well, Untamed sure as hell isn't willbender. 

I really like the spec and think that it needs a chance. Soulbeast too btw, just give stanceshare more duration, it's quite good as a DPS/boon provider. 

[Acyk.9671]

On 1/4/2023 at 11:13 AM, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

I was playing some Hamm/GS untamed last night solo tagging some zerg content and whatnot. 

Its quite fun, quite smooth (outside of the pet micromanaging but ofc that also has some appeal to it) and can deliver some boonrip.

But kitten is it so weak as an alternative. Tying the boonrip to the pet is meh, ambushes are def the best part of this and for all its mods, Hammer does surprisingly meh damage in larger scale scenarios. I was running glass Marks/Wilderness/Untamed. 

The immob is potent, tho your best immob shares slots with a very good elite skill, should not be an issue with a FB ig. 

Still, Pet needs, as I said, a scaling dmg reduction with many enemies around it, to enable the landing of key skills and unleashed mechanics. 

Also, Hammer having some cooked-in boonrip in skills 4 and 2 would pair well with the CC from 3 and 5. 

My pets of choice are usually a drake for that occasional tail swipe that lands and crits with no weakness or rupts and bear cause of its endure pain. 

Overall, a single burst of F1, F2, F3 and a swoop with the GS ambush, with a cage or spore followup yielded me a decent 30 boons ripped with tightly stacked enemies. Was surprised tbh, but it's a burst, it's not constant, you really need to stick to the enemy for a constant removal and well, Untamed sure as hell isn't willbender. 

I really like the spec and think that it needs a chance. Soulbeast too btw, just give stanceshare more duration, it's quite good as a DPS/boon provider. 

The problem is not its potential, it's how reliable it is. That's why i say it fails to meet the requirement. The pet limits the possibility to do large scale in open wvw. On the other hand it's good in gvg. Maybe they should have made momentary pets for F1 2 and 3 and give the extended 3 pet skills to core so druid can extend the life of their pet even more. Anet is never going to make pets a selectable option from any traits that is pet's focused (3 to 6 per trait line) at this point in time.

We tried for years too make them expand SB stances but we lack a good choice of weapon for open wvw so wtv

To be honest i wasn't playing that much anymore, it was my last straw so f it

[Mell.4873]

I feel like Soulbeast is unintentionally a good Roamer since the whole stance mechanic lends itself more to Zergs rather than soloing other players.

Its only becouse you can abuse certain pet abilities that Soulbeast is any good roaming. 

 

My most powerful Build on Ranger is a duel Longbow Soulbeast where I lower the cooldown of barrage to 10 seconds so I can spam it. 

[Grand Marshal.4098]

Although Hammer and it's dual mode is fun *cough* the bug too *cough*, I can't stress enough how for WvW largescale, the dmg simply isn't there even for dual cast hammer skills.

Usually in DPS tests, Maul will most probably outdps top 3 hammer skills combined in terms of dmg, which it's fine for a CC weapon, but its second dmg oriented mode leaves things to be desired.

And ofc the idea of CC -> use appropriate hammer dps skill afterwards to maximize dmg on enemy under conditions, is by all means too restrictive for the weapon.

You can counter me on this, but making the hammer skills either independent cooldowns per mode or a "skill swaps to the other skill" like original Vindicator utilities might be better? Idk.

[Zaret.1450]

20 minutes ago, Grand Marshal.4098 said:

Although Hammer and it's dual mode is fun *cough* the bug too *cough*, I can't stress enough how for WvW largescale, the dmg simply isn't there even for dual cast hammer skills.

Usually in DPS tests, Maul will most probably outdps top 3 hammer skills combined in terms of dmg, which it's fine for a CC weapon, but its second dmg oriented mode leaves things to be desired.

And ofc the idea of CC -> use appropriate hammer dps skill afterwards to maximize dmg on enemy under conditions, is by all means too restrictive for the weapon.

You can counter me on this, but making the hammer skills either independent cooldowns per mode or a "skill swaps to the other skill" like original Vindicator utilities might be better? Idk.

My question is, is it easy to hit multiple targets with maul? i mean, on hammer from 2 to 5, maybe except 3, all skills have a decent aoe while gs has more movility, a block and maybe more dmg on maul, but it feels a bit more restricted in aoe, maybe im wrong.

As for the auto swap... it didnt feel right on vindi for 2 reasons, first because both legends dont have anything to do with each other, one heal and another dps, so it was a loss, and 2, because you didnt control it, i mean that maybe you want yo use a skill several times, or stay in a certain set and not the other, maybe i want to stay with hammer leashed and just cc and tank, or maybe i want to go full dmg, lets put another example, i usually use hammer 5 and then 3 to chain cc and then unleash and use 2 and 4  for dmg, if skills swapped by themselves those rotas would be much more problematic.

For me untamed is a bruiser tammer, meaning it is meant to be on the frontlines with the pet, and more than huge dmg it shoukd have good dmg and good utility.

Ambush skills are too unreliable, simply because they have a timed window of use, are slotted on the 1 skill and forces leash unleash rotations too much.

Pets AI and overall status, boon source, stats, and sinergy with untamed, is bad, too underwellming even if compared to mecs.

To solve this id slot ambushes on skill2 of the weapon, meaning gs would loose maul for example, but we would gain a more reliable boon strip, bigger area dmg and we can allwais use the old maul just leashing, with less dmg but its not that bad i think, lb, sb, axe, those weapons would also loose some dps potential, mostly single target dpg, but we would gain utility and aoe in a more reliable way.

For pets, we need more variety of comands, instead of attack and come back, commands like "stay close" so pet doest go further than 200 range from the ranger, "protect that areac, so you just target an area and the pet goes to a place and in a radius of say 600 it attacks anything that gets inside, i think just those 2 comands would make the whole pet management change a lot, for boons stats etc, maybe reworking signet of renovation, so it shares boons to pet on passive and active transfers condis to the pet, other option is just moving the trait in nature magic to beastmastery, because pets without boons will never be able to survive in zerg fights, lastly you can give an unleashed effect to pet, same as the untamed buff when unleashed and leashed, but reduced.

[Grand Marshal.4098]

4 minutes ago, zaswer.5246 said:

My question is, is it easy to hit multiple targets with maul? i mean, on hammer from 2 to 5, maybe except 3, all skills have a decent aoe while gs has more movility, a block and maybe more dmg on maul, but it feels a bit more restricted in aoe, maybe im wrong.

As for the auto swap... it didnt feel right on vindi for 2 reasons, first because both legends dont have anything to do with each other, one heal and another dps, so it was a loss, and 2, because you didnt control it, i mean that maybe you want yo use a skill several times, or stay in a certain set and not the other, maybe i want to stay with hammer leashed and just cc and tank, or maybe i want to go full dmg, lets put another example, i usually use hammer 5 and then 3 to chain cc and then unleash and use 2 and 4  for dmg, if skills swapped by themselves those rotas would be much more problematic.

For me untamed is a bruiser tammer, meaning it is meant to be on the frontlines with the pet, and more than huge dmg it shoukd have good dmg and good utility.

Ambush skills are too unreliable, simply because they have a timed window of use, are slotted on the 1 skill and forces leash unleash rotations too much.

Pets AI and overall status, boon source, stats, and sinergy with untamed, is bad, too underwellming even if compared to mecs.

To solve this id slot ambushes on skill2 of the weapon, meaning gs would loose maul for example, but we would gain a more reliable boon strip, bigger area dmg and we can allwais use the old maul just leashing, with less dmg but its not that bad i think, lb, sb, axe, those weapons would also loose some dps potential, mostly single target dpg, but we would gain utility and aoe in a more reliable way.

For pets, we need more variety of comands, instead of attack and come back, commands like "stay close" so pet doest go further than 200 range from the ranger, "protect that areac, so you just target an area and the pet goes to a place and in a radius of say 600 it attacks anything that gets inside, i think just those 2 comands would make the whole pet management change a lot, for boons stats etc, maybe reworking signet of renovation, so it shares boons to pet on passive and active transfers condis to the pet, other option is just moving the trait in nature magic to beastmastery, because pets without boons will never be able to survive in zerg fights, lastly you can give an unleashed effect to pet, same as the untamed buff when unleashed and leashed, but reduced.

I can see why that swapping skill thing would be a disadvantage def, it's just that in largescale you need to be quite quick and Untamed requires a third hand for me to play xD

Def need to get better.

But overall, yes, Hammer has great AoE, it's just that the numbers aren't there. A well placed Maul (with double execution) can yield up to 25k dmg depending on buffs and enemies. Maybe more, maybe less.

Hammer 5 I double cast for both blasts usually inside my unleashed pet F3 for the AoE weakness, I swap to double cast hamm 3 as you said and then usually do a double cast on 4, with 2 being the filler. 

It rly needs a good support to pull it through and even then Im sceptical of how the current iteration can be augmented more outside any aformentioned ideas (aka pet gaining dmg reduction when 5 enemies or more around it, potentially getting ambushes on weapon swap instead of mode swap etc).