Nature Rituals and Trapping

After perusing the forums about Ranger(y) stuff for a little while it got me to thinking about Nature Rituals and Traps.

Why do Nature Rituals take so long to put down? What was the original purpose of them taking so long and what would be the best way to handle them now?

Ritualist Spirits, while they serve a different purpose also outshine Nature Rituals because the way they function only serves the team controlling them. Nature Rituals affect both teams for better or worse. Do these factors make Nature Rituals obsolete?

Ask yourself a question. If you are in a pug and someone pings a few Nature Rituals and/or Traps; does he get a spot on your team? On my team? No. Even if he/she has 1 trap or 1 Nature Ritual, others on my team are going to raise objections. And they would have a valid point.

Trapping(Specifically talking about trapping for a team, NOT a gimmick). I think Trapping sounds great when you are talking about what a Ranger can do, but when you play one? Not so much. Especially now with PvE only skills such as YMLaD, FH!, Tryptophan Sig that can cause some of the same effects you would want out of a trap, but in a Shout and even an unremovable Signet form.

Why have traps stayed the same?

This isn't a, "Rangers need a buff" thread. I don't think they do. I am asking SPECIFIC questions about Nature Rituals and Traps and why people here think they haven't evolved to keep up with the meta. Would a 1 second cast Nature Ritual or Trap be over-powered? Or would a 1 second cast Nature Ritual/Trap be more in line with today's meta-game?

The main purpose of Traps is pressure, mostly through conditions. Powercreep has made pressure/conditions obsolete, and therefor also Traps.
Nature Rituals are not necessarily bad, but the entire teambuild must be tailored around them, and PvE is so easy that such a hassle is simply overkill.

No, a simple reducement of the casting time of Traps and Nature Rituals wouldn't made them in line with current meta.

Ranger spirits and traps are very outdated. They haven't seen updates because the profession is apparently low on the priority list. Dervish is in the works, and there's a huge thread of people calling for paragon next, so I doubt the community will see a major overhaul to the ranger for a long time.

The issue with traps is that they are balanced around the possibility of many of them being stacked on top of each other, so now you have to stack many of them on top of each other for them to be effective. I hope eventually they make traps un-stackable so only one can be in the same spot at any time, and they can then improve the effectiveness of them.

The issue with nature rituals is that they always affect both sides. In PvP this is unpredictable, since it could, out of completely random and uncontrollable chance, end up benefiting the enemy just as much or even more so in the case of beneficial spirits.
With detrimental spirits, it could just end up being a waste.
In PvE, it's simply unnecessary to put in all of the effort required to build around it.
And in general, it's just far too much of a hassle, since you have to build your entire team around their use. And then if someone just kills the spirit, it could cripple your entire team.

Ritualist spirits are what Ranger spirits should have been, and now it's too late to make that transition because they would just be a copy.
I think that's what they're doing in GW2 though; giving Rangers the Ritualist-style spirits.
The more you dig into that game, the more abandoned this one seems... I wouldn't really care, if not for the fact that it could easily be half a year at least before it's released <_< We might not even see it before spring.

I don't know if traps could ever be useful again, even with a short cast. But I really think spirits with short casting and only affecting allies or foes (depending on the effect being positive or negative) could really find some use again, without being overpowered at all.
Why are these skills like this? Correct me if I'm wrong, since I didn't play from day 1, but I think originally they were good enough that way, before ll this powercreep spreading. Maybe with a short recharge etc they could have been a little OP? No idea, just trying to think. What I don't understand is why they didn't change them in time as they did with the rest of the game. They really look like like fossils that can't adapt to today's environment, sadly.
And another doubt is: why did they improve traps and spirits for gw2 use (I'm lead to think so, as I don't think they would have put something that bad in a new game without making it better) while they never cared to touch them in the current game?

I don't think spirits were ever used, In the beginning a lot of people may have played with them before realizing how hard they sucked, but I don't think they ever got real use. I really think Ritualists were a mistake, since they are an entire profession based around a single ability-type possessed originally by Rangers, and by adding them they royally screwed that aspect of Rangers, since they are unlikely to ever have their spirits work in the same improved way.

Traps got some use for quite a while. I'm not certain, but I think they all either got nerfed after people started building teams to stack masses of them, or they simply chose to leave them behind in the idiotic power-creep.

They might be able to save Nature Rituals by continuing to have them affect both sides, but changing them to affect each side in different ways.

yea traps did get a nerf. there used to be a way for only like 2~3 ppl to trap the entire underworld(before dhuum).
And i agree ritualist are what rangers needed to be but never could be. The ability to connect w/ the spirtis i guess is different but still(one connecting w/ nature the other kinda forcing the spirit from the grave) rangers should have been ritualist but less spirit oriented.

But yes, nature rituals for pve do kinda show what some stuff was like back in the day. And im not really sure just making them cast faster could help them become useful. i mean imagine trying to trap the afflicted and one monk uses draw conditions? well there goes your traps conditions leaving w/ the rather sad damadge factor.

Most Nature Rituals still have specific effects that Ritualist Spirits dont do.

To make them useful again, rework them to be like Rit spirits, it doesnt matter if they have the same base functionality, because most nature spirits already have uniqe effects.

Also splitting the effects on the nature spirits might also be viable, a positive effect for the team casting it and a negative effect for all foes in range.


Although, I always laugh when I fight Kournans.... I tend to run 2-3 Warriors between myself and henchmen/heros, and infurating heat just makes me laugh, im like... YAY, free Adrenaline! and it almost always does more good for me than it does for them.

And.... I remember when I really hated Wardens in the Factions days.... their bars were built for synergy with their rangers nature rituals, and it was a pain to deal with. Wardens, along with Jade Brotherhood, were pretty mean during most of Factions until powercreep, and then NF/Heros, sorta hurt them.

Dammit. I had a whole damn post and I closed it out.

In brief:
Nature Rituals suck in PvE because they're mostly focused around condition-spreading, degen, damage conversion, heal reduction, +health, and ENERGY DENIAL. These are bad because most conditions suck, are already easily spreadable, or wound be devastating if they got on your backline. Degen is just terrible. Damage is converted to elemental, which sucks. Heals are used by humans more than mobs. +Health just makes fights slower. Energy denial in PvE is counterproductive, useless vs. mobs, and slow.

Nature Rituals suck in PvP because they are the epitome of Build Wars.

Traps suck in PvE because they're stackable, so they have to suck.

Traps suck in PvP because they're slow, easily interruptible, and have long recharges. However, they're okay in HA because HA maps suck.

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Faster cast times would only help out rituals like Winnowing and FW. The rest are too broken to be helped out by number reduction.

Faster cast times wouldn't help traps at all. Dust Trap and Smoke Trap might see use with short cast times, but they require investment in a shitty attribute and still have long recharges. Also, Smoke is elite and Dust costs lots o' energy.

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In a way, I'm against making rituals only affect one side, since the possibility of backfiring adds a layer of strategy. However, it really only causes build wars situations, so I'm kind of for it at the same time. An alternate strategy could be just making rituals less build wars-y. Nature's Renewal, for example, is one of the most build wars skills in the game. While it can be killed, its effect completely eliminates certain styles of play and a team with NR can avoid its downsides with the correct builds. Winnowing, on the other hand, is not a build wars skill (though its effect is still too minor to be good, IMO). It might give one side an advantage, but it doesn't destroy certain teams.

I would love to see traps more like their GW2 counterparts (more powerful, but non-stackable).

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Rant:
And rangers do need a buff (though realistically, they probably won't ever get one). In fact, they need a buff more than any other PvE profession. The only things they're optimal in are useless in PvE. Pretty much all of the super-para-fans in the aforementioned thread are mildly retarded; half of them think paras should have awesome single-target damage, AoE options, awesome party healing, and awesome party defense. Hell, there were even some super-mesmer-fans who were saying mesmers should have nuking capabilities a while ago. Dervs aren't even underpowered, W/Ds and A/Ds are just overpowered. IMO, all eles need is an intensity buff, but Anet disagrees apparently.

Paras have Imbagon. I know it might get boring, but one overpowered build is better than nothing. Eles have ER. It doesn't fit their role and doesn't work in some areas, but that's also better than nothing. They also have blindspam and wards, which are actually pretty good (better than anything rangers have). Dervs have nothing optimal, but that could be easily solved with an AoHM change. Their dps is still better than rangers in almost all situations. Rangers have spike builds (that's it), which have significantly less synergy with party buffs and have significantly lower dps than melees unless you're in an area with shittons of snares and really spread-out mobs. Anyone who thinks rangers don't need a buff either doesn't play ranger or gets carried by their heroes and just thinks they're doing something effective.

/catchbreath

The real problem is that there is no love for the Ranger/Trapper within the team at Anet. There has been continued and over-egged support for other solo builds - Sins, Sliver, Spirit Spam etc. - for a long time now, however, for some reason, that a Ranger could solo using traps was deserving of being nerfed into the stone age.

Many of the nerfs were focussed on PvP or on farming, but things like the AoE nerf, loot scaling and changes to EW etc. were poorly targetted and have not been addressed since their implementation.

It's sad that Anet continue to support cookie cutter builds but won't sensibly redress the over-nerfing of the Ranger and it's subclasses. UW trapping, trappers in the Deep and Stygian Veil and general PvE trapping/farming at least required a little bit of skill - more than rushing into a mob and keyboard mashing anyway :S

Some were, but they were nerfed because of it.

The effect of Nature Rituals was map-wide, originally. Kinda like the environmental effects in DoA. Only one skill could remove them, Unnatural Signet (which had a casting time of 15s).

The only Ranger Spirit that still sees any play today is Frozen Soil, and only in areas where foes tend to come in mobs with healers and rezzers. In other words: only in a couple of Dungeons, Charr Territory, and the odd War In Kryta quest.

Traps see no play at all to this day.

Pets, and with it the entire Beast Mastery attribute, see no serious play as well to this day, apart from the few beastmasters in RA, and myself in PvE because I <3 my Stalker.

This basically translates into 48% of all Ranger skills being completely obsolete, not because they have bad numbers, but because they fail intrinsically, because the entire mechanic behind it is outdated, neglected, and obsolete. This is sad, and is also a sign of poor design at this stage.

I guess when you have a development team each team member has their own favourites so you get a kind of balance, where each member pushes their own agenda.

When you have a team of 1 or maybe 2 then if they don't like something its unlikely to get any work done on it, or at the very least get put back again and again in favour of "more important" items.
I believe its called prioritising at least that's what all my bosses called it.

Yes it would be nice for there to be a little time spent on revamping traps, they did do a pretty good job with beast mastery that makes it a viable build now in spite of my previous misgivings.

If you developers are working on trapping could you please give rangers the ability to spot/disarm traps, anyone who spends their life setting them should have a chance of detecting them.
The temporary nightfall mission skill where you could disarm traps would do the job.

Gonna concur with rose and xiaquin, in pve to run trappers, its too time consuming for the benefits. Why setup traps and pull foes when you can just drag SoS spirits around or drop a ton of DwGs and come out just as well. Traps are still powerful, they're just not time-efficient.
Trappers in PVP are still kind of viable, but they tend to get attached to gimmicky builds. Sync with a buddy and run two trappers on the Kurz side in FA, and you will see the benefits of trappers.
Don't have much time to write so just a quick thought on nature rituals. The effects of nature rituals makes them very hard to balance imho. If EoE only did damage to foes it would be beyond O/P and required by every group. As it is, it is still an incredibly powerful skill, it's just that in most situations the risks outweigh the benefits.

This sparked my interest.

This is for both PvP and PvE:

Good Skills: Apply Poison, Barrage, Burning Arrow, Charm Animal, Comfort Animal, Crippling Shot, Debilitating Shot, Distracting Shot, Edge of Extinction, Enraged Lunge, Expert Focus, Frozen Soil, Glass Arrows, Lightning Reflexes, Magebane Shot, Melandru's Shot, Natural Stride, Needling Shot, Never Rampage Alone, Penetrating Attack, Point Blank Shot, Prepared Shot, Savage Shot, Scavenger Strike, Sundering Attack, Zojun's Shot

My definition of a good skill is a skill that can be extensively used in more than one arena (PvP) or several areas (PvE), performs well, and excels at its intended function. A niche skill like BHA or Nature's Renewal is not a good skill. This list is debatable, obviously, but if anyone makes their own, they'll probably find that theirs isn't much different.

By my definition, there are a total of 26 good ranger skills, which is 18% of their total skills. 16 of those apply to PvP (high and low-end)(11%) and 15 to PvE (10%). The rest of their skills are pretty bad/'meh' (Pin Down, most preparations, BHA, NR, QZ, Traps, etc) or absolutely terrible (most nature rituals, most bow attacks, most beast mastery, etc). About 53% of ranger skills were terrible, by my definition.

QFT.

The idea of giving Ranger/Trappers the ability to detect/disarm traps was floated a few years ago but fell on deaf ears.

The bias toward certain solo-builds is really honking this lifelong Ranger off. The idea that the Anet "developers" will happily support me playing as a R/Rt with an SoS build (aka no Ranger skills at all) but continue to ignore/nerf the Trapper sub-class is simply ludicrous. Since the advent of the RoK/AoE nerf/bug trapping has become largely inefficient anyway - add the EW nerf and even the fun days of 3 man UW trapping are long, long gone.

I'd love to pull and trap the entire Raptor cave in much the same way as the Ice Trolls, but what's the point for 6 or so drops once the RoK/AoE nerf has taken more than its fair share

I really like your thinking on this. Possibly making some spirits ONLY work for the team using them and others like Edge of Extinction keeping their risk/reward flavor intact.

I agree with some of the other comments as well. I think lowering the casting times would have people start bringing traps/nature rituals back into play. It would also help in RA too because if I want to bring spirits on my bar and two rangers happen to be on the other team, then I feel compelled NOT to use them. As it is now, I don't ever bring spirits into RA for that very reason. It's a shame too because it limits which skills are available to a Ranger. Snare is a perfect example of a low energy cost trap that causes aoe cripple but is looked down upon because its a trap.

Just a quick FYI so you know where I got my percentage from.

I counted all the skills in Beast Mastery, all Nature Rituals, all Traps, and all skills directly affecting these three subjects (Trapper's speed/focus) as being intrinsically obsolete.

Power creep has a lot to do with this. There have been nerfs, some very harsh to ranger spirits, but traps and rangers were well balanced in prophesies only days, now they are junk due to power creep in the game. And as Bob said, the loot nerf disproportionately made trappers useless because of the careless bodged implementation.

Power creep making conditions less useful is what has affected traps. I think that if there was just a mass nerfing (please anet, please!) of the powerful direct damage skills, conditions would be more useful.

As for spirits, I would suggest lowering all of their casting times to 3 seconds, making them last indefinitely till killed (ie, they dont die on their own when their time limit ends) and making their effects slightly more tailored to PvE through skill splits. Im not asking for a huge change in functionality, and i think some like winnowing and favorable winds would be fine with their current functionality. For example, I would like to see brambles inflict bleeding and a small amount of piercing damage when a someone is knocked down. Conflagration could cause all fire damage to do like 4 extra damage (kind of like the fire damage version of winnowing). Energizing winds could make it so that all skills, regardless of energy cost, cost 5 less energy and recharge 25-50% longer (this might need some tweaking). An elite ritual, like Famine, could have its functionality changed so that it does x damage to creatures each time energy is drained from them. There are all types of cool functionalities that nature rituals could have, and i hope that anet works to make some (particularly the elites) useful in PvE.

You can actually "disarm" traps by triggering them and backing out of the aoe without being affected by the trap; so this concept is already possible.

Ah, you younguns don't remember the glory days?

Back when spirits used to effect the entire map and cause DP?

Back when a Winter ranger was needed in the Fire Isles?

I do!

Traps/Spirits used to be kind of over powered. EoE bomb anyone?

I remember getting INSANE lag in HA battles against spirit spamming rangers many years ago. You used to be able to put up a barrier of spirits, heck if I can remember what we called that build. Plus I remember all the trapping builds in HA, like good 'ol fashion Iway and VIM ("Victory is Mine!").

I think trapping and spirits got nerfed back before skills were separated by PvE/PvP and were never looked back into.

I remember this. Actually, if I remember correctly, people didn't just want winter, other rangers would actually run traps there, and pull aggro. I was just a simple nuker at the time.

Cool excerpt from the GW2 Interview with Eric Flannum about Rangers:

"Q: How is large the area of effect for a ranger’s spirits and traps? Do they affect allies only or enemies as well?

Eric: We’re still balancing the numbers, so I can’t really give exact ranges for spirits or traps. Whether a trap or spirit affects allies, enemies, or both is based upon the individual spirit or trap in question. For example, Sun Spirit only buffs allies."

One of my colleagues just started playing GW1 PvE and made a ranger. I explained to him how weak they are in comparison to the rest of the other professions, opening up gw wiki, pointing out the proof... yea... Now, he made a new mesmer while his ranger now collects dust.

Echo-Arcane Echo-Dust Trap-Barbed Trap-Tripwire-Serpent's Quickness-Quickening Zephyr-Energizing Wind

Sigh - remember the days? SQ and QZ to lay as many traps as possible as quickly as possible then EW to mitigate the energy cost.

Killed by the EW nerf - rest in peace, echo dusting

Trapping is still pretty effective, there is a new UW SC featuring them. Being able to instantly kill important opponents is strng.

I noticed that new UW trap team thing too. Traps aren't bad or in need of buffs, it's just that they don't have what it takes for having a whole build around them in general PvE play.

Rangers are overall fine though, but I guess a couple bow attacks could use reverting in PvE and those spirits are crap. Winds is nice for Assault on the Stronghold, but that's not technically a ranger skill.

"Proof", or your own version of it? How about you let him do what he wants instead of form the same bias you have? No one would argue that the ranger needs a big update, but they are far from "weak".

Indeed they are not weak... Some updates would be nice.
I always try to make some new teams with my hero's so I can use them all.
This week I did some WiK bounty quests with my Necro.
with sec prof ranger. I used. SS, Ebon Battle Standard of Honor,Technobabble and Predatory Season + some other skils.
With that I had 2 Hero rangers with Barrage, one of them using Favorable winds.
And the other had Winnowing They both used poisontip signet and
had healing springs and defence skills. My last hero was Master as a
Ne/Rt healer and I had a Hench healer. I did the last Bounty Starting From LA
to get to Aleasio. And it went very wel. I used a summ stone for some extra.
Sometimes you have to take it slow to regen the monks. But it was fun.
I'll think with one guildy which is using also 2 rangers and a heal monk where he can be what ever he want. You would have a very nice team on your hands.

Simply put, there are 3 things that Anet could, but won't, do to restore the Ranger class to a level playing field:

1. Restore PvE skills so that a Ranger/Trapper using Ranger skills is of more utility and playability than a R/Rt running SoS and not a single Ranger skill.

2. Admit or acknowledge the RoK/AoE bug or botched implementation and fix it.

3. Provide 2 new skills - Discover Traps and Disarm Traps

Which of these are likely to happen, realistically? None of them

I always hope for nature rituals buff and revisit trap.
But it seems that dervish and paragon have priority.

Yes I'm very sure.
Why??? ... cause I playd it for a week with good results.
I don't say it is as fast such as for example. glaive, disc. spirits or what ever.
But it is strong and it works.

You don't have to play the usual builds which are used by the most to be effective.
Random made up team builds can be strong to and are often more fun because you need to think more. That might be hard for the lazy ones

In regards to a few comments about beast mastery: You can do over 100 dps with a pet build, right up there with spirit spamming and AoHM scythes. That +33% damage update goes a long way, but I don't think many ever tried it out. Even the developers (other than WiK, which featured any and every type of build) didn't seem to like pets too much. Beast Mastery is one of the least used attributes for PvE enemies, considering all of the rangers out there.

Otherwise, the mention of traps and spirits for the GW2 ranger left me a bit cold, since they don't work too well in GW1. Traps can do decent damage when stacked and condition spam, and I enjoy using them in h/h sometimes, but there's no way I'd ever get a pug to let me spend 60 seconds setting up traps, and then get a warrior to lead enemies into them.

That's the problem though. They aren't bad for GIMMICK builds. I want them to see use for actual balanced team builds. If you look at my OP you can see what I mean by this. If you decrease the casting times and weaken/strengthen some of both(traps/nature rituals) to counter running them solely as gimmicks, it would give rangers a better place in the game.

They should reduce the casting time, recharge and cost of traps BUT then limit the total number of traps that can be set by the players (similar to spirits) so that rangers can actually get them up quickly/in-battle but cannot abuse it to stack a billion traps to omfg pwn everything.

Don't really have a suggestion for spirits because nearly all of their effects are rather undesirable. No one would use them even if they only affect ally/mobs.

Use Barbed Trap on a normal Ranger and put it on strategic points (such as chokepoints) and you'll see they work just fine. This won't work in PvE obviously but then again, PvE is nothing but piling up as much damage as possible anyway.

Why does everyone want a Disarm Trap skill? I don't see the appeal.

100 dps is nowhere close to the dps of scythe builds, even vs. a single target. The strength of spirit spamming is in its bodyblocking, not just the dps (and its dps is ranged, anyway). And, if I can get 150+ dps from a turret build, why would I want a BM build that has 100 dps, is also single-target, isn't ranged, and is more clumsy due to having a pet?

I've tried it out. 33% is nothing compared to Asuran Scan.