Core ranger is broken

Avatar.3568 · April 7, 2020

@Crozame.4098 said:
@"shadowpass.4236" said:
\o/

So broken in ranked means not broken at all. OK, I see your logic....He also mentioned that pet dmg is broken....

Hey says, if you want that pets are alive you need deer or smokescale and dmg is gone, so yes

Pet dmg broken, for the pets that do not live more than 5 sec

zipiyzape.3781 · April 7, 2020

I tried it in a couple of random unranked matches and in a few instances my tiger hit for 11k, I do agree that it's overtuned at the moment, and the ranger itself has too many defensive options for how much damage it deals

that being said, I don't believe it's that broken, I still prefer to play against this than the abomination that mesmer was a couple months ago

Crozame.4098 · April 7, 2020

@Avatar.3568 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@"shadowpass.4236" said:
\o/

So broken in ranked means not broken at all. OK, I see your logic....He also mentioned that pet dmg is broken....

Hey says, if you want that pets are alive you need deer or smokescale and dmg is gone, so yes

Pet dmg broken, for the pets that do not live more than 5 sec

If you run a test, and the null hypothesis is the average seconds of pets that can survive in 1v1s is less than 5, I think that's clearly not true.Maybe true for 5v5s, but not sure. However, for a core ranger, if you don't know when to let your pet to follow you back or swap pet. Then I think its also the l2p issue.

Brujeria.7536 · April 7, 2020

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@"cptaylor.2670" said:
@Miellyn.6847 said:
@Brujeria.7536 said:Yeah, the pets need a damage nerf, this completly slipped trough.
Also please, for the love of god, remove the random CC / knockdowns some pets have. Its totally fine if its a comanded skill that does CC, but random CC on an AI Pet is just so unfun and wrong on many levels. There is a good reason we dont have % chance evade or miss in this game. Its like playing the lottery.

There is no random CC. The pets use it as the first or second attack after switching and on cooldown afterwards. Most of them have also an obvious animation that is easy to dodge. And pets miss around 80% of their attacks anyway if you keep moving...If you get constantly CCed by passive pet skills it's a player problem, not the game.

“An obvious animation” Who has time to look at pet animations when you’re busy watching the ranger and trying to dodge a knock back, maul, stun, or interrupt their heals?

I guess that works if you’re playing something that can just absorb constant damage and save dodges. But it isn’t realistic. To me all the tiger animations look the same. I think one has a charge up but it’s near impossible to keep track of the animations if you’re on something that isn’t bunker or that doesn’t have excess dodges.

Who has time to look at phantasm animations when you're busy watching the mesmer? Plenty of people do. It's a L2P issue on your end and this lazy mindset of complaining about stuff that has visible animations (that are long enough you can react to) means that you just need to actually spend effort to try and improve your knowledge of this matchup instead of just making excuses.

Simply put, fighting a ranger requires you to deal with the pet in some way. You can:

Kill it after the pet swap to shut the core ranger down
Use terrain to make the pet path around obstacles and never be able to hit you
Do neither of these, decide to take the fight against the ranger while letting the pet freely damage you, and have to dodge the important pet skills

No its not as easy as that. Ranger pets actually are durable vs. condition damage. IF the pet is about to die its just swapped with very little cooldown and no actual downside for the ranger.

No, they aren't. At the best the ranger has 15s in between swaps. If something like a Condi Mallyx were to focus any pet, it dies in like 6s. Pets cannot dodge or block or evade or cleanse themselves. Of course things are different between bronze 1 and legend tier, but if you're playing at around gold 3 or higher, pets die to damage to when focused, power or condi.

It strongly depends on the class the ranger fights against. Sure you can kill the pet, but you invest a lot of cooldowns in doing so if you want it to die quickly enough before the swap occurs. If you invest these cooldowns you have less tools to fight the ranger, and also executing the condition bomb onto the pet takes time in which the ranger himself has free DPS time on you, including knockbacks, dps, roots, etc. The ranger even can build for full offense, it does not matter, you dont have the ressources to take down both if the ranger knows his skills. He wont stack on the pet, if you focus the ranger he will kite / block / disengage while the pet is on you and you are forced to hold the point or to decap. Also keep in mind, pet swap has no cooldown once the fight starts in most cases, meaning IF you focus the pet, he just swaps before it dies (clearing all conditions for whatsoever reason in the progress) and then he has a fresh pet, and you invested cooldowns to kill it. There also is no counterplay as in "dont use the cooldowns, bait the pet swap" because sinply put you wont pressure the pet quick enough, while the ranger works on you.

You dont have the resources to dodge the random pet skills that crit for too much damage as you need those to dodge the important ranger skills.

No, that's bologna. In the case of Core Ranger, without Soulbeast line/pet stats bonus/Sic'Em, every skill on LB does trash can damage, and only maul on GS side does any significant damage at all. If you are having problem preserving dodge rolls and other defensive CDs between dodging 1) Maul and 2) Obvious Pet animations, you're doing something wrong. Seriously, most things in play right now can face tank & heal through EVERY attack a Core Ranger does, outside of Maul/Pets, and stay at 90% health or above. Slow down in your 1v1s, pay attention, dodge what needs to be dodged, eat the small damage. That's how you do it.

Getting crit by pets for 3k without any cooldowns, on simple AAs on a regular basis isnt small damage. Again, you cant focux the pet without taking huge punishment from the ranger. If you blow your cooldowns on the pet the ranger will engage and even if you kill the pet he just swaps to the next one, the increased cooldown even if you kill a pet does not matter as the ranger will win the 1v1. Of course some classes do have an easier time of doing this or of killing the pet, pure power dps does it much quicker but also then you leave yourself open retaliation by the ranger. There is no real counterplay here no matter how you put it.

Its not the same with phantasms, these are summoned and do their thing, but summon them means the mesmer must use a skill, you know exactly what is going to happen and when its going to happen on a cooldown basis, based on the weapon of the mesmer. It also has clear animations and calls. Ranger Pets attack all the time.

^ No. There is so much wrong with this statement that I'm not going to take the time to comment on it.

You also cant use terrain, as again, you have 2 focus points, kite the pet and the ranger decaps / caps a point, cap a point yourself and the pet is on you and the ranger attacks you from afar.

This is getting ridiculous. You guys are beginning to embellish these ranger pet stories as if the pets are raid bosses or Rodan or something. Come on man, if you're LOSing and a pet follows you over there while the Ranger is capping, if you can't DPS that pet and kill it in about 4s, you're a bad player.

Yeah? Id like to see how you kill a pet in 4s with a condition spec. Its not possible, maybe for a burn guard, but even then he needs to invest a lot of long cooldowns in order to do so.

The pet damage is broken and unjustified high no matter how you look at it.

You know what I think? I think that the knowledge & skill based perceptions of forum users speaking out about balance lately, is degenerating.

People are forgetting the difference in dynamic and how it adds up, between: 1) Burst 2) DPS "damage per second" 3) Reliable/Unrealiable damage. In years past, we had more veteran players playing at higher skill caps who understood the game better. These players would better notice the relationships & differences between the aforementioned 3 aspects. In years past, when players would discuss "damage output on a build and if it were too high or not enough" they would discuss aspects such as:

How it has Burst every 20 to 30s, but how after that burst was used, the rest of the build dealt so little damage that was unreliable "not so easy to land or secure" that it could barely pass as attrition.
How a build may have no real burst, but how it had strong attrition or sustained damage output. They would point out despite the lack in bursting, the build was actually dealing more damage over the course of a 1v1 or even team fight than the burster, because the damage was distributed across the entire build and everything it did, rather than just 2 skills. They'd discuss how those sorts of builds were ultimately better than bursting gimmicks because the damage couldn't be so easily avoided by any player, even those with great awareness of telegraphed gimmicks.
How a build may have low attrition value but that it is super reliable because everything it does is an AoE with little to no animation that hits everything in a team fight. And due to this build structure, the damage is still good even though it's low, because no one can avoid it. Over the course of time, this type of damage output ebbs away at a team fight and those types of builds often get top damage stat because of how much damage they are actually dealing over the course of time with highly reliable attrition spam.

The 1) is very typical of current Core Ranger. The 2) is very typical of current Holosmith. The 3) is typical of current Core Necromancer.

Honestly, no. The pets crit on a regular basis for 3 -5 k with normal attacks. Its not "burst damage" but its very high, consistent damage without cooldowns or meaningfull calls. The burst do come from the cooldown skills sure, but that does not in the slightest mean that the consistent damage is low by any means. Even a longbow built for damage does damage. Factoring the design of conquest which consists of holding points turns this into the real problem.

But right now, and I don't know quite exactly why it is, the bulk of forum users aren't identifying any of this ^ All they see is 1 large number appear on their screen, just 1. If they see that 1x large number in a combat log THEY FREAK OUT and have to come into this forum and explain how ungodly and powerful w/e build it was that hit them with that 1 number. It doesn't matter if the next 1v1 they take has a build that is steadily consistently pumping out twice the damage output in half the amount of time, as long as that build doesn't hit some single strike large number once every 30s to 60s, they're ok with it. The players who come to this forum lately, seriously only see large numbers. And they disregard the idea of "l2p". No really, they completely ignore the things that they need to do, to play their own class correctly and how to play against another class correctly.
It's like all of a sudden, people's idea of balance, is for everything to feel and look exactly the same. Players just want to walk in at each other in very specifically close to light mid range, and see the same kinds of numbers popping above each other's heads, no more and no less than the other, and have to put forth little to no effort to actually stop and think about "Am I supposed to be LOSing this or using a defensive skill on it?" "Should I save my skills for when I bait his skill CD?" No, they just want to be able to spam attacks and spam defenses with as little thought attached to it as possible, and have things somehow pan out to be "balanced" within that region of skill cap like that.
I don't know man. Lately the bulk of this forum is speaking a different language in terms of balance than the older players.
Scares the #$%^ out of me tbh.
You play this matter down. Of course the burst comes from key skills, but the damage between these burst skills, due to the broken pets, and no counterplay attached is too much.
You have a limited amount of resources if you want to kill things quick, kill the pet quick you invest your cooldowns, which results in pet swap (next one has longer cooldowns) but you just shot your bullets and now have to face the ranger GS burst + the new pet (all while the former pet and the ranger was pressuring you with damage)
You decide to kite the pet to avoid its damage which means the ranger, between mobility and blocks usses the terrain against you and you either wont cap the point or give up the cap
You decide to go for all in on the ranger, qhich most of time does not work because he has way better mobility and a pet that deals constant high damage. You cant kite the pet while dealing meaningfull damage to the ranger while factoring in blocks and the random CCs the pet does in the meantime.

No matter how you turn things around, no matter how you invest your ressources, unless you are a full bunker class you wont cap / hold a point if a decent core ranger is duelling you.

Brujeria.7536 · April 7, 2020

@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:See how ranger main defend their classes and teach others how to counter ranger is hilarious. Just dodge the correct skills and eat the correct skills, isnt this true for all classes? or spend 6 seconds or more to focus the pet can kill it easily, oh we have 6 uninterrupted seconds to do that and the ranger is not going to stun or do dmg me during that 6 or more seconds. Oh, and we need to focus on weapon swap, weapon abilities, random pet cc, and pet utility, while checking for minimap to check the overall situation. Against other classes, we at least have 2 things less to worry about.

It may be hard for you to believe this, but this whole vs. the pet & ranged damage thing, is actually the #1 l2p issue in this game, as very obviously indicated by how ranger is powerful in low tiers, but not viable at high tiers.

If you want to win against rangers, don't take for granted the advice being given to you from old ranger mains. They're being completely serious with what they are explaining to you.

Well guess what? They nerfed scourge to the ground in 2 game modes because people wouldnt learn to not stand in the red circles. The new red circles are called pets, and they stick to you, this is way less of a l2p issue then scourge was and everybody knows what happened.

Brynioch.1873 · April 7, 2020

@Brujeria.7536 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:See how ranger main defend their classes and teach others how to counter ranger is hilarious. Just dodge the correct skills and eat the correct skills, isnt this true for all classes? or spend 6 seconds or more to focus the pet can kill it easily, oh we have 6 uninterrupted seconds to do that and the ranger is not going to stun or do dmg me during that 6 or more seconds. Oh, and we need to focus on weapon swap, weapon abilities, random pet cc, and pet utility, while checking for minimap to check the overall situation. Against other classes, we at least have 2 things less to worry about.

It may be hard for you to believe this, but this whole vs. the pet & ranged damage thing, is actually the #1 l2p issue in this game, as very obviously indicated by how ranger is powerful in low tiers, but not viable at high tiers.

If you want to win against rangers, don't take for granted the advice being given to you from old ranger mains. They're being completely serious with what they are explaining to you.

Well guess what? They nerfed scourge to the ground in 2 game modes because people wouldnt learn to not stand in the red circles. The new red circles are called pets, and they stick to you, this is way less of a l2p issue then scourge was and everybody knows what happened.

There is a difference between complete point control via AoE and single target burst. Projectile hate also doesn't help against shades and can't be killed.

shadowpass.4236 · April 7, 2020

@Crozame.4098 said:
@Avatar.3568 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@"shadowpass.4236" said:
\o/

So broken in ranked means not broken at all. OK, I see your logic....He also mentioned that pet dmg is broken....

Hey says, if you want that pets are alive you need deer or smokescale and dmg is gone, so yes

Pet dmg broken, for the pets that do not live more than 5 sec

If you run a test, and the null hypothesis is the average seconds of pets that can survive in 1v1s is less than 5, I think that's clearly not true.Maybe true for 5v5s, but not sure. However, for a core ranger, if you don't know when to let your pet to follow you back or swap pet. Then I think its also the l2p issue.

If you can't cripple/chill/immobilize/cc an AI running away from you, it's more of a L2P issue on your part than anything else.

I hard countered Helio's core ranger on stream and he was using the meta knights raven + tiger build. Once I killed both pets (and kept doing so), he was completely useless as long as I kept him in combat.

shadowpass.4236 · April 7, 2020

@Brujeria.7536

There's a risk/reward associated in killing the pet. However, particularly for you, because you seem to be playing condition necro, your weakness uptime from Weakening Shroud should render the pets' damage very low. Your movement impairing conditions should make it much easier to kite the pet as well. You also have the option to take CPC if you want to hard counter the longbow and greatsword (projectile denial, weakness + poison in melee range).

But yeah, regarding risk reward. You have to weigh your cooldowns and consider what the situation is before deciding whether or not to kill the pet. The payoff for killing it means that you lock the ranger out of a significant portion of his boons, offense, utility, cc, and condi clear for a full 48 seconds on the meta core ranger build with beastmastery. Killing the first pet also makes killing every subsequent pet, much easier. By doing so, you force the ranger (which already doesn't have very strong node presence) to play defensively, avoid as much damage as possible off-node, and kite in an attempt to break combat.

If you think this reward is worth spending some cooldowns for, you might risk taking more damage or losing the trades in the moment. However, it will pay off heavily in the long run if you execute this strategy correctly.

And, as a class that has historically not performed well in larger fights due to the nature of our pet class mechanic, is it really that unfair that we gain some 1v1 potential and single target burst in exchange?

Crozame.4098 · April 7, 2020

@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@Avatar.3568 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
\o/

So broken in ranked means not broken at all. OK, I see your logic....He also mentioned that pet dmg is broken....

Hey says, if you want that pets are alive you need deer or smokescale and dmg is gone, so yes

Pet dmg broken, for the pets that do not live more than 5 sec

If you run a test, and the null hypothesis is the average seconds of pets that can survive in 1v1s is less than 5, I think that's clearly not true.Maybe true for 5v5s, but not sure. However, for a core ranger, if you don't know when to let your pet to follow you back or swap pet. Then I think its also the l2p issue.

If you can't cripple/chill/immobilize/cc an AI running away from you, it's more of a L2P issue on your part than anything else.

I hard countered Helio's core ranger on stream and he was using the meta knights raven + tiger build. Once I killed both pets (and kept doing so), he was completely useless as long as I kept him in combat.

If you can't cripple/chill/immobilize/cc an AI running away from you, it's more of a L2P issue on your part than anything else.In most cases, one can run away or use movements. But not always. rangers and pets also have stuns. Also, this is not a pure 1v1 scenario.

I hard countered Helio's core ranger on stream and he was using the meta knights raven + tiger build. Once I killed both pets (and kept doing so), he was completely useless as long as I kept him in combat.Using Slb right? Slb is also very strong. and Slb has 1-2 more stuns on the merge pet skills right? And again, it would be much more convincing if you use some other classes do completely counters Helio.

Trevor Boyer.6524 · April 7, 2020

@Crozame.4098 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:See how ranger main defend their classes and teach others how to counter ranger is hilarious. Just dodge the correct skills and eat the correct skills, isnt this true for all classes? or spend 6 seconds or more to focus the pet can kill it easily, oh we have 6 uninterrupted seconds to do that and the ranger is not going to stun or do dmg me during that 6 or more seconds. Oh, and we need to focus on weapon swap, weapon abilities, random pet cc, and pet utility, while checking for minimap to check the overall situation. Against other classes, we at least have 2 things less to worry about.

It may be hard for you to believe this, but this whole vs. the pet & ranged damage thing, is actually the #1 l2p issue in this game, as very obviously indicated by how ranger is powerful in low tiers, but not viable at high tiers.

If you want to win against rangers, don't take for granted the advice being given to you from old ranger mains. They're being completely serious with what they are explaining to you.

It may be hard for you to believe this, but this whole vs. the pet & ranged damage thing, is actually the #1 l2p issue in this game, as very obviously indicated by how ranger is powerful in low tiers, but not viable at high tiers.Holo is more OP, They both should be addressed.

Yet, not a single thread has been written about Holosmith, despite obvious recognition that it is significantly stronger than Core Ranger, in high tiers and low tiers.

This is the shiny glaring point that needs to examined and understood by everyone participating in all of this ranger nerf debacle.

I've explained it several times now in this forum. It is a cross between a l2p issue bump in the road between mid tiers to high tiers, and a psychological effect where players feel like they are unfairly being 2v1d when the opponent visually has an AI with them, regardless of actual damage output/sustain comparisons, or mechanics involved. Example: A Holosmith could run 10 rounds of 1v1 practice with a Core Ranger and win 9 of them. But that 1 round where the Ranger's pet actually hits with its CC/Damage at the right time and downs the Holosmith, it is common that because it was an AI that did it, the Holosmiths walks away thinking: "That was dumb. Pets are OP and shouldn't deal that kind of damage. I'm going to go onto the forum and tell everyone how OP pets are." Then when he gets to the forum, all the while in his zeal as he complains about the pets, he forgets to mention to others or even recognize himself, that in all reality & practicality, he was able to beat the Ranger 9 out of 10 rounds because his own class pumps out twice the actual damage per second, has better chase potential, more CC, stronger stealth disengage/resets, and better raw sustain factor in general. <- But all of that is OK, because it wasn't an AI that did it.

I've been saying it for years now in this forum, people need to make a very clear distinction between "When something is actually over-powered" and "When something is annoying or undesirable design" because that distinction matters for discussion. Look, its no mystery that most Guild Wars 2 players hate big burst archetypes, no matter how effective or ineffective those builds actually are. What's important is that players participating in these discussions are able to make the distinction between "If it is actually overperforming" or "If it's just obnoxious design". This way, we can all give greater feedback on how to actually correct a design problem, rather than nerfing something to a point that it is no longer usable.

@Brujeria.7536 said:
@Trevor Boyer.6524 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:See how ranger main defend their classes and teach others how to counter ranger is hilarious. Just dodge the correct skills and eat the correct skills, isnt this true for all classes? or spend 6 seconds or more to focus the pet can kill it easily, oh we have 6 uninterrupted seconds to do that and the ranger is not going to stun or do dmg me during that 6 or more seconds. Oh, and we need to focus on weapon swap, weapon abilities, random pet cc, and pet utility, while checking for minimap to check the overall situation. Against other classes, we at least have 2 things less to worry about.

It may be hard for you to believe this, but this whole vs. the pet & ranged damage thing, is actually the #1 l2p issue in this game, as very obviously indicated by how ranger is powerful in low tiers, but not viable at high tiers.

If you want to win against rangers, don't take for granted the advice being given to you from old ranger mains. They're being completely serious with what they are explaining to you.

Well guess what? They nerfed scourge to the ground in 2 game modes because people wouldnt learn to not stand in the red circles. The new red circles are called pets, and they stick to you, this is way less of a l2p issue then scourge was and everybody knows what happened.

Yup 100% agree.

And every single veteran player, right down to the last one of us, all agreed that Scourge did not deserve that nerf. That's the very same people now, who are saying that Core Ranger is simply not the overlord that everyone is making it out to be. But rather it is an archetype with high effectiveness at low tiers, and low effectiveness at high tiers.

The point being here is that everyone really needs to identify where the balance begins & ends, and why it begins & ends in the way that it does. If everyone can do this, we can start having productive discussion on how to properly fix the problem, rather than so quaintly tossing some primeval nerfing towards Core Ranger's damage coefficients AGAIN, which if nobody noticed, doesn't seem to be changing the fact that Ranger is super effective in low tiers and bad in high tiers. The problem keeps persisting and we see the same damn complaints season after season after season, despite nerfs to ranger for like 6x seasons in a row now. Why? Because what's going on aint got nothing to do with pet damage. This is a l2p on the side of the community's bell curve & bellow players.

I'm sorry, but this whole complain event vs. Core Ranger Pets is every bit of a l2p issue as learning how to target and stay targeted on a Mesmer through its clones.

shadowpass.4236 · April 7, 2020

@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@Avatar.3568 said:
@Crozame.4098 said:
@shadowpass.4236 said:
\o/