It wasn't an argument, it was a flat out statement and prophecy, or am I not allowed to express an opinion without directly providing evidence for or against? I've already given valid reasons for it to stay pages back.
You really haven't, at least not in this thread. You jumped on someone's case about how there
has to be a compromise to your liking and you won't entertain any other notion and then literally told someone else to fuck off, whether he deserved it or not. The closest you got was saying something nebulous like "ranged sometimes saves teammates and doesn't get credit for it" and that "without stun some weapons are useless", which on the first account isn't something I'd call a valid reason for it to stay and the second sounds like an exaggeration, also ignoring some other aspects of the game's balance.
I think I can respond in kind to those who simply state "Just remove it and we can talk about anything else later".
Okay, fair enough...
Who is being dismissive here? The guy who posted valid reasons in support of his position, or the guy who ignores those posts and jumps on the one post out of dozens that elaborate in detail with supportive arguments that I've made on the umpteen threads on this topic to tell me that I'm being dismissive? Well helllooooo kettle.
I wouldn't exactly call what you said here "valid reasons in support of [your] position" though. I haven't ignored what you said in
this thread, those posts are exactly why I am on your case about it when you keep posting the same kind of shit over and over again. If you have to be repetitive to make a valid point and repeat what you've said elsewhere, at least you're not being repetitive and being an unreasonable asshole for no apparent reason besides "their opinion is wrong because they complain the loudest!"
As for the balance team, I've seen the thought processes shared a hell of a lot more with Tydeus and he is making logical arguments. But it still appears to be that the balance team is only considering what the anti-XXX lobby suggests and not some of the better solutions proposed by several members of the community (I'm not just talking about me). There have been several excellent proposals that have gone ignored (no, I'm not going on a forum hunt for them now, they will pop up again.) Additionally, other complaints are ignored.
This was my point: They may
seem to be listening to people you don't want them to, but the balance team is not just cherry-picking bad ideas to implement off the forums. They, Tydeus in particular, are actually testing out issues and discussing proposals (much more than ever before) based on what they're
seeing before implementing anything. They're actually looking at what is broken and seeing if they can come up with ways to make it better (and not just pointing to issues and saying "FIX NOW", which is what the majority of forum rumbling amounts to).
I think I have plenty of cause to have my opinions. 
Maybe, but eventually you'll only seem to state them by boiling them down to "they're bitching, therefore I will bitch in the opposite direction just as loudly" which leaves us arguing in circles about something else.
Now is the time to be productive. Here's what I know about the way stagger works, please correct me on any of this information should it be false.
What is stagger? When a player receives damage their character enters an animation for being damaged* (usually strike or strike2). "Stagger" is a separate animation (strike3) which is sometimes called instead of the other animations. Strike and strike2 have a duration of 0.5 to 0.6 seconds depending on hit location. Strike3 has a duration of 0.9 to 1.3 seconds depending on hit location.
*These are only confirmed for being true for polearms (with the exception that strike3 is no longer called). What exact the animations a ranged hit calls are unknown to me as of now, and it would only be an assumption that they have the same durations.
PolestaggerTriggered by a damaging melee hit with a polearm.
Has a 50% chance to call the longer animation. (unsure on the threshold for damage needed to cause it)
Has been removed from cRPG on all WSE-enabled servers. Ranged staggerTriggered by a damaging hit with a ranged weapon.
For bows and crossbows: If pre-armor damage is above 25 has a 30% chance to call the longer animation.
For throwing: If pre-armor damage is above 15 has a 40% chance to call the longer animation.
As you can see, currently it is easiest to cause stagger by using a throwing weapon, and, at that, faster throwing weapons are particularly suited to taking advantage of it.
Polestagger was advantageous in that one could take advantage of its triggering by landing a followup hit with certain weapons. Ranged stagger is advantageous in that it is caused by attacks unable to be manually blocked (i.e. without a shield). Both were/are extremely powerful in team situations.
Polestagger was unceremoniously removed
with patch .286. No major balance changes were made to polearms until months later when four new polearms were added
with patch .0.2.9.0. Several months after that, certain polearms received
nerfs, followed by some specific polearms receiving significant buffs during patch
.2.9.3.2. The most
recent changes to polearms have been a mix of nerfs and buffs.
Why does this matter? Because it is likely that polearm balancing did not generally take polestagger into consideration (with a possible exception of some of the "significant buffs" mentioned that may have been given to some of the weapons that felt the loss of polestagger the most). It leads to the question of whether or not ranged balancing is taking ranged stagger into consideration. If it is like polestagger was, it is an added benefit certain classes are getting on top of the statistical ways they're balanced. We'd like to think that it is part of the big picture the devs and item balancers have, but what significant impact would be made if ranged stagger
were taken away, and how can we try to weigh it against statistical balance?
Let's compare it with other types of stuns:
On its own, a normal damaging attack will interrupt a player from blocking, chambering an attack, swinging his attack and will usually slow his movement but does not root him in place *edit: unless it is a polearm that isn't tagged with knockdown or a ranged weapon.
Knockdown is a percentage chance based on
weapon weight and raw damage dealt to stun an enemy for a longer period of time than normal on a successful hit with certain specific weapons. It is enabled on weapons which can be manually blocked without a shield (although some knockdown weapons can crushthrough), and the
maximum chance of it occurring on the heaviest weapons is 29.7%, with 5% less chance for every 1 less raw damage dealt below 40. A player who is knocked down is unable to attack, block or move normally during its duration. It lasts longer than the stagger animation, but it is now possible to roll away during knockdown by double-tapping A or D, potentially avoiding an incoming followup attack.
Horses can also trigger the knockdown animation by riding over another player. The knockdown animation seems to be the same or is at least similar to the knockdown caused by weapons tagged with knockdown, and you can roll away in the same fashion during it. I'm unsure of the specific mechanics that cause a horse charge to knockdown (whether it's based on damage or something else), but it is an unblockable attack that must be lined up correctly to trigger, and the horse's speed must be past a certain threshold (unless the speed is only significant because of the damage it contributes). Ways to stop it from occurring beyond avoiding a direct hit from the horse are to stop the horse by rearing it (with thrust from a polearm 141 length or longer), to kill the horse outright or to use terrain and scene objects to avoid the paths of horses. A horse-mounted player can not typically take advantage of a knockdown he causes directly to land an attack (unless he has a projectile weapon), but can often land a hit while bumping a player, whether the attack knocks down or not.
Stagger is a stun that stops a player from blocking, attacking or controlling movement during its duration (stagger will often have some kind of momentum of its own attached to the stun - I am unsure of what causes the direction and distance of the movement).
Kicks are a special attack which cause a player to suffer the stagger animation, or at least a very similar animation. Kicking roots you in place and prevents you from blocking and attacking normally for the duration of its own animation. The chance of occurrence is guaranteed if the kick lands, but a kick must be properly aligned with a player in order to land on him. Kicks allow players a chance to land a hit with melee weapons on a target successfully hit with one. Every player in the game can kick, regardless of build or weapon used (but not from horseback!).
Polestagger represented an opportunity to take advantage of your opponent when they had already made a mistake - that is, to land an extra hit upon its trigger with most weapons it was attached to. It was enabled for every polearm in the game that was not tagged as a knockdown weapon. Unlike knockdown weapons, polearms as a whole were almost assuredly not balanced around the presence of stagger.
Ranged stagger is a chance for an increased stun against enemies a possible great distance away by an attack that can only be blocked with a shield. It is enabled for every ranged weapon in the game. Ranged players cannot take advantage of a stagger they cause directly to land another shot, except possibly in the case of the fastest throwing weapons. It is questionable whether or not the items it is attached to are balanced taking it into account.
edit: forgot to include nudges. More information about them can be found here:
http://forum.melee.org/guides/nudge-guide/
For my opinion, I am not a fan of ranged stagger. Nobody likes being stunned. It currently has the highest chance of occurrence of any weapon-based stun in the game (unless you count horses). It is enabled for three classes of weapons universally. There is no defensive maneuver to avoid its results like there is with knockdown. The only active ways to avoid it are the same as they are to avoid any ranged attack: to try and dodge it, to hide from it behind scene objects or terrain, or to invest in shield skill and a shield to use and block in the direction of the person shooting. I feel that ranged stagger simultaneously presents too big of an annoyance and group benefit when enabled and won't change the way that ranged players operate or significantly impact their individual performance should it be disabled or nerfed somehow.
I was not a fan of polestagger, either, and I was very glad to see it gone, despite being mainly a polearm player. Ranged stagger is presently, in my mind, not as problematic as polestagger was, but there are several things that make it nearly as bad or worse in other ways. If ranged is to be properly balanced (and I
mean balanced, not nerfed), I feel that ranged stagger ought to be removed as a difficult to quantify x-factor. With all this in mind, how drastically would the game really change if ranged hits only stunned for around half a second every time instead of sometimes stunning for around one entire second?
Poll