Guild Wars 2

Recently it was said that the vision for Rangers was for them to be the best sustained damage. The problem with this is that with the relatively short cooldown burst skills of other classes, this results in Rangers just being less damage overall.

Therefore, I believe that some changes are necessary for Rangers to be the best “Sustained Damage”.

The f3 skill, “Return To Me” should allow the pet to evade for 3/4s on a 10 second cooldown.
While the reaction time on f3 has been improved, the pet is simply not responsive enough to avoid channeled, large, AoE attacks (which often do massive damage).
The only way to avoid these is to swap pets, which can be detrimental to strategy- through no fault of the player.

This change would make Ranger play much more interactive, with more of a sense of controlling both the character, and the pet, while also making the loss of pet damage output more of a factor of player ability than unresponsive mechanics. f1 and f3 micro will add a good layer of active skill as well.

Another option along these lines would be changing pet AI to avoid AoE fields when they have no target.

Increase the Sword 1 and Greatsword 1 chain skills damage by 5%

For sword and greatsword, the attacks (other than greatsword’s maul), lack weight to them. As a result, even though the damage is “sustained”, it’s comparatively less in most situations due to the low cooldown bursts of other classes.

Increasing the base damage or even better, the damage coefficients, on the attack chains would thus make Rangers more competitive in terms of sustained damage.

i really like the idea of evade on F3. But i think for most…rangers…here on forum it would be too skillfull to handle. i mean…they Need to see oh kitten a aoe…then they Need to press F3…then the pet is on their site and they Forget to press F1 to let the pet attack again.
Its a really hard L2P issue and most of them have no time to learn, because criticising the balancing on ranger is a full time Job! i personally think ist a great idea

while i agree that the base dmg of GS AA could scale a bit better with power (from all comparable GS AA attacks rangers has the smallest skill coefficient), I dont know if it is necessary for Sword. I´d rather upscale the Axe AA or what do u think?

I think the evade would be great even for new players because it would provide them with a clear function of what “Return to Me” can be used for, other than de-aggro.

It doesn’t necessarily add to the skill required to play ranger well, rather, I believe that it would add another dynamic to pet management as a natural extension of what is already in place.

Ranger sword is… Ranger sword. It loses out to warrior axe in terms of sustained damage while the Axe still has a large burst. The evades are rather finicky to use on sword as well- I find that between the leaps and precast time, hornet sting is fairly unreliable at best, while viper’s strike is not usually reliable for repositioning (its a good spot evade though!)
There at some good strategies with swapping to greatsword for evade, but they feel really forced.

Axe is interesting. It has really nice damage if you can bounce it between two enemies, and the weakness+chill on 3 is amazing. At the same time, if the damage is buffed, then the maximum potential of 2 hits on one enemy gains double the buff, and becomes that much stronger. It’s something to consider for sure- however, I find that axe already excels in certain situations.

You did bring up the damage coefficients, which I totally forgot about- increasing those rather than base damage would help immensely. With the relatively low damage coefficients on weapons, and pet damage that does not scale with gear, rangers get less stats from improving gear than other classes.

Auto evade on the F3 wouldn’t be bad.

Still need guard/active on a keybind.

Thing about sustained damage is that every class, with every weapon, does sustained damage. It’s called auto attack. That’s why it’s absolute madness to say the Ranger is supposed to be the king of sustained damage because that is saying the Ranger will never be a burst damage class…. I know that Rangers can do a little burst with the gs + signets + buffs. I can do a lot more “sustained” damage with my zerker warrior and axes with a good f1 burst + utility (I forget the name of it in a moment) than my Ranger could ever hope to achieve.

I’d really like to see the axe, in PVE, be a melee weapon. Only use I’ve ever found for the axe is tagging mobs for loot.

Ltomato.8649:

You did bring up the damage coefficients, which I totally forgot about- increasing those rather than base damage would help immensely.

Finally someone who gets it!!!

I see so many, pardon the label, idiots, that suggest time and time again that base damage or simply “tooltip damage” needs an increase, while in reality EVERYTHING is decided by coefficients. Raise a coefficient by just 0.05 or 0.1 and the result will be instantly noticeable ingame. It is that important….

As for thread;
Sword is almost fine. They did talk about introducing some sort of “fix” to the whole dodging issue during AA rotation, if they can make that work reliably, then the sword itself will be close to perfect.
Target tracking for #3 and some extra debuff on Monarchs Leap would be the final step in order to make it perfect.

Damage wise – it is ok, but it would have some more pet buffs in it. The pet might in the AA rotation is good, but it lasts a bit too low to fully capitalize on it and you are forced into a continuous rotation spam in order to maintain and or stack the might. Some sort of pet sustain boost from one of the sword skills would be wonderful, perhaps protection when using #3 or Regeneration when using Hornet Sting.

Sustained damage IS pretty good on ranger, but the traits needed to make this damage worthwhile investing in is too far spread out. A major cleaning should be done to the trait trees in order to bring sword, greatsword, axe and offhand weapons either in a single tree or two separate trees.

Axe mainhand AA could use a slight buff to either raw damage output, a pet boost and/or secondary function (boon removal/convert when traited? Perhaps remaking Honed Axes into something worthwhile). Either way, as is, the axe AA is floating between being average to potentially very strong. It is extremely situational as it relies on several enemies and/ or AI or hostile objects for it to shine. the axe mainhand just needs, a little bit extra.
Split shot is well. bad, and i would rather see it as a burst “chop” style skill applying 5 stacks of torment with a slightly longer cooldown then in its current form. The axe has the potential to be a “debuff” weapon, instead in it’s current form, it is simply not showing any distinct role and or function at all. It just has some of this and some of that while being good or even reliable, at neither.

Ltomato.8649:

Axe is interesting. It has really nice damage if you can bounce it between two enemies, and the weakness+chill on 3 is amazing. At the same time, if the damage is buffed, then the maximum potential of 2 hits on one enemy gains double the buff, and becomes that much stronger. It’s something to consider for sure- however, I find that axe already excels in certain situations.

I’d like to see the first axe bounce hit a bit harder than the following potential two bounces. So rather than a 33,33% split on each hit, it would be nice to see perhaps 50%, 25%, 25%, making it a bit stronger vs single targets.

F3 is a good idea but it could become spammable

F1 F3 F1 F3 to spam pet evade

And F3 is important for movement, you don’t want to put a cooldown on it…

rpfohr.7048:

F3 is a good idea but it could become spammable

F1 F3 F1 F3 to spam pet evade

And F3 is important for movement, you don’t want to put a cooldown on it…

The 10 second cooldown would be on the evade. So if it were on cooldown and you pressed, f3, the pet would simply try to return as it does now. The cooldown would also prevent the spamming you describe.

Think of it like the dodge roll stamina bar, but with only one segment. And once it’s depleted and recharging, it just pulls the pet back.

So say i’m running around southsun and my pet aggros onto a karka. I press f3, and the pet gains evasion for 3/4s while it’s coming back. In combat, you’d have to press f3 to dodge, then f1 again for the pet to go back to attacking.

Right now, in many fights, the walking of the pet just isn’t fast enough to get out of large channeled aoe attacks.

rpfohr.7048:

F3 is a good idea but it could become spammable

F1 F3 F1 F3 to spam pet evade

And F3 is important for movement, you don’t want to put a cooldown on it…

That shouldn’t be a problem. If you’re spamming F3 for pet evades you probably aren’t getting any meaningful contribution from your pet.

The main reason for this is that the pet return still isn’t responsive enough.

Try going to the training golems in PvP. stand a distance away, and tell your pet to attack with f1. Then use f3 when the pet is halfway at its target. The pet stands there for at least half a second before actually returning. If you have your pet attack, it’s unreliable at best. Sometimes it reacts quickly, sometimes it doesn’t.

If you’re fighting something like the Champion Ettin in the Uncategorized Fractal, that time + walking speed is all it takes for the pet to be smashed by a power attack, and there’s nothing you can do about it if your pet swap is on cooldown.

Ltomato.8649:

The main reason for this is that the pet return still isn’t responsive enough.

Agree, the pet is still not up to par. The main issues for me are that even ranged pets are useless in wvw, and F2 skills across the board are too slow, especially leap and cone skills.

The sword doesn’t need a damage boost. Its base damage and co-efficients may be nearly on par with the GS (in regards to the AA), but it has a much faster attack speed thanks to a lower casting time and after cast.

If anything, the GS auto could use a ~15% damage boost.

Also, I think that swoop should be given 10 stacks vulnerability and then maul loses its vulnerability but causes weakness on hit for like 3 seconds (since it has such a short recharge).

Soilder.3607:

The sword doesn’t need a damage boost. Its base damage and co-efficients may be nearly on par with the GS (in regards to the AA), but it has a much faster attack speed thanks to a lower casting time and after cast.

If anything, the GS auto could use a ~15% damage boost.

Also, I think that swoop should be given 10 stacks vulnerability and then maul loses its vulnerability but causes weakness on hit for like 3 seconds (since it has such a short recharge).

1h Sword can also maintain ~3 stacks of might on the pet without quickness which also improves overall ranger dps.

Sustained damage my kitten .