Guild Wars 2

I know it draws a lot of hate especially on low or mid tier skill levels (top tier actuallly considers it bad and kind of respects if you can play it efficiently). One thing is for certain though. It is very fun to play and for the first time I feel like ranger does something that no other class does in the same way. Sure, there is a lot of direct dmg on thief and mesmer as well but not on that high range and projectile/LOS based.

Question is how can we further improve the playability of power ranger and I am not speaking about buffs but rather changes that finetune it for different skill levels (optimum would be changes that make it harder to play on low/mid tier but actually help on high tier).

There are currently 2 main variations:

• signets which is really somewhat a one trick pony but certainly the highest possible dps with nearly no condi cleanse
• survival which has more interactive utility skills and is slightly more balanced between offense and defense which is why I think it might be a more fair/healthy build when it comes to playstyles

What ranger lacks compared to the very viable thief and also mesmer are mobility (thief being way better and mesmer having portal), utility (refuge and portal) and disengage potential but here I would say ranger isn’t that much worse – mainly the matchup vs thieves would have to improve.

It is basically the unmatched thief mobility and the lack of certain key skills that puts ranger on a lower tier. Entangle adds high team fight potential but I feel if we had 1 more survival skill with some nice disengage potential or team utility then ranger would be fine.

Opinions/ideas welcome. Btw I think power ranger is NOT toxic for the meta and actually balancing out build variety. They provide a counterweight for glass specs and brings more direct dps into the meta.

A competent Power Ranger is actually one of the hardest classes to duel in general. Pets provide amazing CC + respectable damage, combine that with reliable burst from 1500 range and very good kiting abilities and yes they are very difficult to beat.

If you are a necro, you have zero gap closers and the ranger simply kites and outranges you.

If you are a thief or a mesmer, autos do like 3K damage every time unless you spec tankier. However, in group fights these two classes can take down a ranger rather quickly

Guardians and Warriors are for the most part full melee so they have to get close to you.

I feel like Eles and Engis have the best tools to fight them.

The ranger has excellent disengage in mobility, can’t really argue that they don’t. It is just the PvP environment is not conducive to a Ranger’s strength, and highly exploits their weaknesses.

A Power Ranger’s strength is the long range burst damage on the Longbow, however most engagements are inevitably had much closer than the 1,500 range. A big ranger strength is kiting as well. PvP maps are much more restrictive than open fields like in WvW, which allows them to kite multiple enemies better. Also, alot of these maps have terrain in which you can hide behind, which acts to further shut down the Longbow. Also they are a class that is vulnerable to focus fire. Although they have tools to mitigate it, you can only equip a few of them at a time and conditions seem to hurt Rangers alot. Classes like Mesmer and Thief have on demand stealth and teleports. Engis have a block every 20 seconds and lots of Grenade pressure if people get too close. Eles have lots of sustain, teleport, and a bit of everything in general to help them survive. Ranger’s lack inherent survivability mechanics.

I think however, if they gave the Ranger’s more utility, and made their pets more functionally useful and made them work better they could be in a very good spot. This would also make them more useful in WvW as well too. I also wouldn’t be opposed to having LB rangers being harder to play for low to mid-tier players.

I agree on most of what you said, especially the improving pets part.

If we look at pets from a trinity point of view we have:

• actually decent Control pets with dogs/spiders
• somehat decent DPS pets with birds/felines although competent players will find it rather easy to avoid pets, AoE attacks etc could help here
• horrible defensive/support pets

Now you could say that an actually useful brown bear that manages to somewhat help the ranger stay a live could certainly helpt a lot. I don’t think there should be too influential skills like damage absorbs because it is hard to tell where it comes from on pets but they could give every bear f2 some kind of actually decent condi removal or protection. Also would not hurt if one pet could provide a 3 sec stealth on f2. Or maybe they could create some kind of http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Unsteady_Ground with an attack.

I agree that there is so much they could do with pets, which include providing great utility for the ranger. However in WvW Pets pretty much insta die, if ANet could somehow find a way to scale up vitality and toughness according to the amount of enemies within a certain radius, it would be fine. But for now, utility would have to come through ranger traits and the utility bar.

Perhaps even tap into to the more "druid" aspect of the ranger and provide things like AoE Healing, more Water fields and overall party boosts. This is where I think Spirits should come into play. A possible direction ANet could go is to have the spirits provide better/lots of utility for up to 10 people in a radius. Of course spirits would suffer the same fate as pets do now, which is why ANet could do something similar to what i suggested. Maybe something like, a spirit provides a 50% chance on hit for up to 10 people to cast Lightning Strike, or a spirit a 25% chance to proc AoE chill. And also have them move by default instead of having to trait for it.

Just something unique, basically.

The problem with the ranger is the mobility. Everybody able to escape from a ranger. In wvw where everybody run a mobil build we are a one trick pony. Kill enemy within a sec or he is nowhere or stand in our face.

I somewhat agree and somewhat disagree. The Ranger has always been a pretty strong dueling class. Power Ranger not so much, but condi certainly. But as a power Ranger, they can certainly hold their own against most of the non-meta builds. I’d argue that 00606 thief builds, medi guards, cele eles/engis, and the like (these builds tend to be more mobile than Rangers or provide significant sustain+range damage) present significant problems, but this is still all related to dueling.

It’s group play the Ranger really suffers. If they worked better in groups they’d be more common in the GvG and PvP scene. Part of it is the lack of mobility/escape options as mentioned, some of from an outright lack of utility (or unreliable utility since the bulk of it’s on the pet), and some of it is the niche the power Ranger fills just isn’t valuable in the current dynamic of the game (ranged single target burst).

Personally, I think the group utility angle is the one most in need of repair. At least then we’d some some Ranger, regardless of spec, start to show up in the meta in WvW and PvP. The mobility/escape issue is kind of unique to LB/GS play imo.

Would simply changing Healing Spring to a ground targeted AE do the trick for group utility? At the very least it would allow non-melee oriented builds to provide onpoint/melee train support. The lack of strong onpoint/melee train utility is probably the largest thing holding back Rangers atm imo.

What about changing the Two-Handed trait to provide the fury bonus to the group? While it may promote passive play, the uptime is still only about 50% (or that should be the goal anyway) which is similar to what other classes can provide to their groups.

What about making Maul a blast finisher? A blast and leap finisher while also having your own water field is quite a lot for a single class. But Engis can do this too, right (I don’t have an Engi)?

Alternatively, what if making maul a blast finisher was dependent on a trait? Like a Nature Magic trait that gave all ‘animal’ attacks a unique bonus. By animal attack I mean things like Maul, Swoop, Serpent Strike, etc. Not necessarily a blast finisher in each case, but something more group oriented.

They could also start by making Search and Rescue a viable option. Rezzing an ally without disabling yourself could be huge but they crippled the skill so much that it is unusable. Shouts in general could be more group play oriented playstyle for ranger, it just needs some more help in terms of viability.

Spirits can’t be the only ranger build that somewhat offers team support.

It also would help if we had an utility skill with comparable utility to shadow refuge or portal.

My super summarized version so that I don’t type a novels worth of text is this: shouts need a total overhaul, as well as traps.

Shouts need to be more support/group support oriented (super basic example would be to have pet effect and boon giving effect of each shout like “protect me” also giving AoE protection or Regen, or Sic’ Em giving AoE might/fury, etc).

Traps just don’t mesh well with the skirmishing line at all. The either need to do better direct damage or be able to supplement direct damage better (cripple and apply vulnerability per pulse maybe, just examples) or the traits need to be swapped out, although people always think to swap them to WS which is the worst possible line to swap them to when the best swap would be to swap Survival of the Fittest to Skirmishing and either two-handed mastery or more preferably the dodge blind/poison cleanse (too tired and late for looking up traits). I want to see them remove boons too, but ranger design seems to be centered around allowing our class to let boon heavy classes run rampant against us.

Spotter would also be better off in a Skirmishing adept slot too, but then again, ANet seems dead set on standing firmly by their “ranger players will never be 100% happy as far as we can help it” stance.

You may hate me for this but try playing Necro. I main that job but have been playing Ranger and it feels like a party.

Ranger definitely needs more incentives for alternative weapon loads lIke sword torch but, overall, Ranger feels a lot more capable. It can even get *gasp* auras! Necro cannot leap or twirl at all so fields are close to useless, with the exception of the low dps staff attack combo.