Guild Wars 2

1. Pets:

a. Decrease cast time of F2 abilities. They should be on use and the cast animation should be cosmetic only. Wolf howls, Moa screeches, etc. should cast while pursuing target.
b. Similarly, pets should move while attacking. This is improved from release but still an issue.
c. Better diversity of support skills. Perhaps add damage/support roles to pets so you can have different F2 abilities based on the role you choose.
d. Consolidate pet specific traits and move many of the pet centric traits into BM. BM currently has very, very underwhelming traits like intimidation training, vigorous training, and compassion training. Eliminate these traits and move Some of the pet specific traits out of the other lines will free up space to add more compelling traits.
e. Give the pet the displacement buff when the Ranger dodges. Why this isn’t in already is beyond me.

2. Weapons:

a. I was pleased to see they are working on MH Sword 1. Free it up so ranger can dodge during animations will help greatly.
b. Add a shot, similar to the scout weapon 4 in The Snowball Madness, to the long bow. Chargeable cast time, increased range and damage based on how long you “draw”. Hunter’s Shot or Knockback Shot would work.
c. Remove bleed from SB 1 flanking and just have it increase base damage when behind. Have SB 1 apply the bleed regardless of position if not.
d. Add blind or torment to Hunter’s Call.
e. GS – Maul add blast finisher.

3. Traits:

a. Remove Signet of the Beastmaster and make all signets affect the Ranger. This was a poor design from the beginning and it’s time to change it. This is one of the most common requests from rangers. If not – then all cooldowns on signets need to be dramatically decreased.
b. Consolidate Eagle Eye and Quickdraw and have EE apply to Shortbows.
c. Get rid of Trappers Defense. Consolidate with another trap trait or eliminate it.
d. Consolidate Martial Mastery with Keen Edges or Offhand Training or all three.
e. Move Empathic bond down the trait tree. Like many have said it’s the best condition removal we have and it hurts to invest so much in the tree to take it.
f. Hide in Plain Sight. Get rid of it or allow us to move or reduce the cooldown.
g. Consolidate Nature’s Vengeance with Spirits Unbound and give another nature magic GM trait.
h. Perhaps rework Evasive Purity to remove more conditions (cripple, immobilize, chill) to make it more desirable. Move it to Grandmaster if this is done.
i. Consolidate Concentration Training and Expertise Training and move into BM.
j. Carnivorous Appetite should also heal the Ranger.
k. Companion’s Might should also apply might to the ranger when the pet crits (put in ICD).
l. Merge Pet Prowess and Agility Training.
m. Merge Trap Potency and Trap Expertise

kyubi.3620:

Melee evade should remain the acrobatics thief speciality. Simple

Simply wrong.

Part of the reason melee Ranger is so fun is because of the evade available. Melee Thief is fun, sure, but not nearly as fun as melee Ranger.. Thief is my 2nd favorite class to play behind Ranger, just wish it wasn’t built out of tissue paper.

4. Skills:

a. Give Troll Unguent Stability or Protection or some other buff
b. Give Heal as One Stability or Protection or some other buff (I like the idea of it giving the heal on attack buff to pet and ranger)
c. Have Lightning Reflexes remove immobilize
d. Get rid of Sharpening Stone. It’s a terrible utility and one that no one takes. Either rework it to provide some other measurable buff like might stacks, torment, increase pet damage, something, anything, or scrap it.
e. Storm Spirit. Get rid of the Swiftness on Hit and have it grant fury or might.
f. Signet of Stone: Remove Toughness and have it provide a flat damage reduction like the warrior or guardian signet. Have it break stun.
g. Give all shouts a buff when used AoE . Protect Me – Protection, Sic ‘Em – Swiftness, Guard – Stability, S&R – Regen or Aegis
h. Have Sic ‘Em grant stability to pet. It should basically be an unstoppable machine when this is active.
i. Have Protect Me reduce incoming damage to the pet so it’s not a Kill Pet Now button.
j. Have S&N give a revive speed bonus to pet
k. Have Guard reveal stealth in the area.
l. Reduce cooldown on Frost and Fire Trap. Allow fields to persist. Perhaps allow traits to give boons when in field (stability, protection, condition removal).
m. Add a utility (or Elite) that allows the Ranger to summon both pets at once. It was in the early alpha but never made it to live. It would be fun.

5. Mechanics:

a. Normally, I’ve been against getting rid of the pet or making it permanently stowable, but after each content release in GW2 it has made me admit that the pet is a liability at worst case, dead at best. Giving a flat damage bonus – 10% or so, when the pet is perma stowed will eliminate the frustration of running around with a dead pet during big boss events or high level content. The bonus should not be significant enough that rangers always go without a pet, but won’t completely penalize the ranger during the AoE fests like the wurm fights. Furthermore, this bonus won’t apply if the pet is dead. It will require the ranger to stow the pet away, out of combat, thus requiring some forethought on the player’s part.
b. Add roles or stances to pets. I’ve mentioned this above. Some pets can have multiple roles, but can only pick one at a time. For example:

1. A bear can be both support (tanky) and damage. He gets different F2s based on the role and his stats will change to compensate for the role switch. In support Role he has his normal condition removal F2, in damage role he has a charge/stun. His other abilities are different too so it no longer has endure pain or the regen and gets damage abilities.

2. Stalker can be damage and support. In damage he has a might giving roar in support he is more tanky and his F2 is a damage evading ability. He also gets skills like the bear regen on attack skills.
c. Make pet names stick when swapped out. Very annoying mechanic and if other games have figured this very basic mechanic out, surely Anet can.

Big Picture (Improve):

1. Ranged Damage increase (too many classes can get into melee too fast)
2. Pet F2 Timer reductions (especially if some of the animation issues can’t be fixed)
3. Pet and Ranger Stat improvements (especially if rangers don’t get full benefit from stats because of pets).
4. More Defense (especially condition removals and retaliation)
5. Secondary healing improvements
6. Greater access to fields and finishers. Ranger is especially short on finishers.

Reduce:
1. Ranger has too many sources of immobilize
2. Ranger has too many active evades even after vigor nerf.
3. Ranger can be too passive play style (Spirits/Shortbow)

[PVP]

Big Picture (Improve):

1. Ranged Damage increase (too many classes can get into melee too fast)
2. Pet F2 Timer reductions (especially if some of the animation issues can’t be fixed)
3. Pet and Ranger Stat improvements (especially if rangers don’t get full benefit from stats because of pets).
4. More Defense (especially condition removals and retaliation)
5. Secondary healing improvements
6. Greater access to fields and finishers. Ranger is especially short on finishers.

Reduce:
1. Ranger has too many sources of immobilize
2. Ranger has too many active evades even after vigor nerf.
3. Ranger can be too passive play style (Spirits/Shortbow)

[/PVP]

So, just so everyone clear these things make no sense in PVE since they have little to no relevance Bombsaway clearly meant these changes for PVP.

For god sake don’t say any thing more about what they should fix. Every time they touch the Ranger they break it a little more. Just leave it stapled and glued together while it still holds.

I posted this a while back

Figure i’ll post it here again

Bears

A. Brown Bears
Shake it Off – Cures 3 Conditions Now
Bite – Casts Regen on itself (No Change)
Slash – Applies 1 Vulnerability to the Target for 5 Seconds
Defy Pain – No Change

B. Black Bears
Enfeebling Roar – Strips 2 Boons from Targets in 600 Radius (20 Second Cooldown)
Bite – Steals 2 Boons from the Target (25 Second Cooldown)
Slash – Applies 1 Vulnerability Stack to the Target for 5 seconds
Defy Pain – Converts Conditions on itself into Random Boons (45 Second Cooldown)

C. Polar Bear
Icy Roar – Converted to Icy Charge, Now Bullrush’s the target leaving behind a Frost Field (Think Burning Speed from Elementalists, but Frost Instead), Chill Increased to 7 Seconds. (20 Second Cooldown)
Bite – Immobilizes the Target for 4 Seconds
Slash – Applies Cripple to the target for 3 Seconds.
Defy Pain – Changed to South Paw, Knocks the Target on the Ground for 3 Seconds. (30 Second Cooldown)

D. Arctodus
Rending Maul – Change to Protective Stance, Absorbs 15% of damage done to allies in the area for 8 seconds, 30 second Cooldown.
Bite – Changed to Intercept, Charges the Ranger and Takes the Next Hit intended for him.
Slash – Applies 1 Stack of Vulnerability to the target for 5 seconds.
Defy Pain – Changed to Bodyguard Splits damage between Ranger and the itself for 5 seconds – 30 Second Cooldown.

E. Murellow
Poison Cloud – Change to Sickly Aura – now transfers 2 conditions from itself to enemies in a 600 Yard Radius every 2 seconds for 10 Seconds. (25 Second Cooldown)
Bite – Now Applies Poison and Weakness for 10 seconds (25 Second Cooldown)
Slash – Applies 1 Stack of Bleed for 5 Seconds to the target
Defy Pain – Changed to Disease Prone – Converts Boons on itself into Conditions (25 Second Cooldown)

As you can see, I’ve Made Each Bear Unique and Have a specific thing they’re good at.

Brown Bears being the Standard Bear, Black Bear Being all about Boons, Polar Bear being all about CC, Arctodus be all about Protecting its master, and Murellow Being all about Spreading Conditions.

This was an idea i was working on pets, I only did bears

Beastmastery

Major Traits
_______________
—Adept Traits—
Speed Training – This Trait has been combined with Commanding Voice
New Trait Added
Pet Cemetery – Whenever your pet dies, The ghost of said pet will now follow the target who killed him for 15 seconds in an unwavering rage.
Master’s Bond – This trait has been redesigned, Now increases the pet attribute by 1 for every second the pet is active in combat for a max of 25 stacks, Decays at 1 stack every 2 seconds outside of combat. Resets on Pets Death, or Pet Swap.
Shout Mastery – This trait has not changed.
Compassion Training – This trait has been combined with Carnivorous Training from Skirmishing Line, Now grants the pet health whenever it critical hits, This is based off the pet healing stat
Commanding Voice – This trait was combined with Speed Training, It now reduces pet cooldowns by 20%
Mighty Swap – This trait now grants the Ranger 3 Might stacks on swap along with the pet.
_________________
—Master Traits—
Rending Attacks – This Trait hasn’t been changed.
Stability Training – This trait has been removed.
New Trait Added
Psychedelic Truffle – The Enemies face now looks like a giant truffle to your Pig, The Pig Gains the ability to strip 2 boons from the target for 10 seconds on crit after using its (F2), 1 Boon goes to the Pet, the other goes to the Ranger.
Intimidation Training – This trait has been redesigned, Now causes the Spiders (F2) abilities to Cripple the Target, Now causes the Canines (F2) to cause 7 seconds of Weakness to all enemies hit by it. Bears (F2) ability now grants Aegis to all allies around it in a 360 radius for 5 seconds.
Vigorous Training – This trait has been redesigned Birds/Jellyfish Grant Vigor on Swap for 5 seconds, Moa’s (F2) Abilities are now Blast Finishers.
__________________
—Grandmaster Traits—
Zephyr’s Speed – This trait has not changed
Natural Healing – This trait has been redesigned it now applies to all allies in a 360 radius around the Ranger and Ranger Pet, The Ranger and Ranger pet no longer have a passive regen from this ability. To get the Regen from this ability, they must be within radius of one another.
_________________________

Minor Traits
Instinctual Bond – This trait instantly summons the pet to you on death, causes the pets next attack to daze for 1 second, grants the pet 3 seconds of quickness.
Loud Whistle – This trait has not changed
Nature’s Wrath – This trait has not changed.

Nature Magic

Major Traits
____________
—Adept Traits—
Circle of Life – This trait has been redesigned, Causes a Healing Spring on the area of the death of the Ranger and the Ranger pet.
Concentration Training – This trait has not changed
Nature’s Bounty – This trait has not changed
Spiritual Knowledge – This trait has not changed
Strength of Spirit – This trait has not changed
Nature’s Protection – This trait has not changed
___________________
—Master Traits—
Nature’s Vengeance – This Trait now also causes the pet to leave a combo field based on which spirit died, Stone Spirit leaves a Smoke Field, Frost Spirit Leaves an Ice Field, Sun Spirit Leaves a Fire Field, Storm Spirit Leaves a Lightning Field.
Evasive Purity – This trait has not changed.
Two handed Training – This Trait now also grants Might for 5 seconds on critical hit attacks for Greatsword/Spear
Enlargement – This Trait has been removed
New Trait Added
Reflective Personality – Whenever you Block or Reflect an attack, You Enrage your pet causing it to grow in size, and grant fury/might for 5 seconds to those around it in a 360 radius. This has a 1 Second ICD.
_________________
—Grandmaster Traits—
Spirits Unbound – This trait has been redesigned, Spirits can now move freely, Whenever a spirit dies it removes 2 condition from allies in a 360 radius around it. This opens up Condition Removal for Spirits specs, and Makes Ranger spirits more useful for zerg fights when following the ranger. It also keeps with more Active Control.
Nature’s Voice – This trait has not changed.
______________________

Minor Traits
Rejuvenation – This trait has not changed.
Fortifying Bond – This trait has not changed.
Bountiful Hunter – This Trait has been redesigned, you and your pet now do 2% extra damage for each boon you have.

Wilderness Survival

Major Traits
______________
—Adept Traits—
Soften the Fall – This trait has not changed
Healer’s Celerity – This trait now grants 5 seconds of stability along with swiftness on reviving a target
Shared Anguish – This trait has been redesigned, This now grants the pet Aegis for 10 seconds whenever it receives cripple/chill/immobilize. This has a 30 second ICD.
Vigorous Renewal – This trait has not changed.
Expertise Training – This trait has been changed, Now increases the pets condition damage by 30 each time it applies a condition for a maximum of 25 stacks, This Decays at 1 second very 2 seconds outside of combat, This resets on Pet Swap or Pet Death.
Wilderness Knowledge – This trait has not changed.
__________________________
—Master Traits—
Offhand Training – This trait has not changed
Oakheart Slave – This trait has not changed
Hide in Plain Sight – This trait now allows you to move while Camouflaged, 30 second ICD still in effect.
Martial Mastery – This trait has not changed.
________________________
—Grandmaster Traits—
Empathetic Bond – This now transfer’s a condition to your pet whenever you evade an attack, This can only happen once every 2 seconds (So a bunch of people spamming attacks don’t instantly removal all conditions on you), This removes the Rangers more passive condition removal, and instead moves it towards a more active role. Things like Lightning Reflexes, Shortbow, Sword/Dagger become condition removal abilities.
Barkskin – This trait has not changed.
__________________

Minor Traits
Natural Vigor – this trait has not changed
Companion’s Defense – this trait has not changed
Peak Strength – This has been changed to 80% health.

Skirmishing

Major Traits
_______________________
—Adept Traits—
Pet Prowess – This Trait has not changed
Sharpened Edges – This trait has been increased to 2 seconds duration.
Trapper’s Defense – This Trait now also lays frost trap along with spiked trap
Primal Reflexes – This Trait has not changed
Companions Might – This Trait has not changed.
Agility Training – This Trait has not changed.
__________________
—Master Traits—
Carnivorous Appetite – This trait has been combined with Compassion Training in Beastmastery line.
New Trait Added
Excessive Baggage – You now drop a random trap at your location when you dodge, This has a 15 second ICD.
Trapper’s Expertise – This has been combined with Trap Potency
Honed Axes – This Trait now grants the Ranger 5 seconds of might on axe critical hits, increases axe critical damage by 10%. This opens up Axe/Axe Builds to multiple specs.
Quickdraw – This Trait has not changed
__________________________
—Grandmaster Traits—
Moment of Clarity – This Trait has been redesigned, Currently this trait is ok only if you’re Asura and have access to Technobabble, Making a Grantmaster trait reliant so much on a racial ability is silly. Keeping with granting Rangers more Active Condition removal this trait now removes 2 Conditions from the Ranger when he Interrupts a target. Dazes and Stun Duration are increased by 50%. This makes weapon attacks such as the longbow knockback, path of scars, shortbow and great sword dazes as active condition removals for the Ranger.
New Trait Added
Flight Control – This Trait has replaced Trap Potency which was combined with Trapper’s Expertise, This Trait increases Shortbow/Axe Mainhand range to 1200.
_________________________

Minor Traits
Tail Wind – This trait has not changed
Furious Grip – This trait has not changed
Hunter’s tactic – This trait has not changed

Marksman

Major Traits
__________________
—Adept Traits—
Steady Focus – This Trait needs no change
Malicious Training – This Trait needs no change
Keen Edges – After recent patch, this Trait is now perfect
Signet Mastery – This Trait has been combined with Beastmaster’s Might Trait
New Trait Added
Poison Tipped Arrow – Longbow/Shortbow now has a chance on crit to apply a 3 second Poison to the target
Predator’s Instinct – This has been changed to a 3 second immobilize when the target drops below 25% health.
Beastmaster’s Bond – This talent now also grants you 3 seconds of stability when your pet reaches 50% life.
_____________________
—Master Traits—
Spotter – This Trait no longer needs a change after the last patch
Piercing Arrows – This Trait has been combined with Eagle Eye Trait
New Trait Added
Horn Mastery – Hunter’s Call now Dazes the target for 2 seconds, Call of the Wild now grants 10 seconds of Retal to your pet.
Beastmaster’s Might – Has been combined with signet mastery trait, now grants 20% reduction in signet cooldowns along with the 3 stacks of might for 15 seconds.
Eagle Eye – Now grants shortbow/longbow/harpoon the ability to pierce target’s, increases Longbow/Harpoon Range, Increases Longbow/Harpoon damage.
______________________________
—Grandmaster Traits—
Signet of the Beastmaster – This Trait has been redesigned, Signets no longer require this trait to grant the active to the Ranger, This opens up Signet usage to other builds as currently most don’t even pop signets they have due to it only working on the pet. This Trait now Coverts 1 condition into 1 boon on the ranger, and 2 conditions into 2 boons on the Ranger Pet on Signet Use. This change gives the Ranger ranger more active condition removal instead of relying on passive condition removal.
Remorseless – This has been redesigned, Your pet now consumes a condition on itself every 5 seconds, Causes your pet to have a 15% chance to cleave on critical hits, Your pet now applies 5 stacks of Vulnerability on its next attack each time it consumes a Condition.
________________________

Minor Traits
Opening Strikes – Alpha Training has been combined with this trait.
Alpha Training – Your pets opening strike now grants 3 stacks of might to all who are 500 radius around him.
Precise Strike – This Trait has not changed

I did these over 2 months ago, I think 3 or 4, i think they used some of the changes, and some wouldn’t work anymore

I apologize for my moment of frustration earlier in the thread. Though I must say I am happy to see I am nowhere near being the only one who has been agitated on this level about it. Despite my plans to try out other classes some, I still have much love for my ranger and the ranger class/community, and will log in to solo roam quite frequently. I hope all who are fed up with the comments from those like us would also understand how frustrating it is to see a peak, and be wanting to climb up to it.. knowing that you can reach that summit with other classes, but always being held back from doing so on ranger for the same tired issues that have plagued the class since launch. You can come close, but that last mile always being impossible to bridge.. that’s a frustrating feeling.

But as I also said that others have picked up on, the biggest agitator in the ranger class at this time is probably the lack of reply from the devs. Pretty much the last thing they said on the pet topic was that fixing pet AI could break the game and it would not be approached at this time, but there’s been absolutely no word on any plans of any bandaid fixes for the pets, or general improvements that they need separate from AI fixes to meet their expectations anyways (Ie. distance closers on melee pets, moa heals becoming a controllable skill, and various other logical changes). The countless good suggestions in various threads receive no commentary while various other threads in correspondence to other classes on what I daresay are vastly insignificant and inferior issues in comparison, continue to fetch replies from devs.

From my time working in customer service/customer relations, one of the worst things and I emphasize this, THE WORST THINGS TO DO.. was to agitate angry/upset customers with lack of communication or lack of sympathy in regards to a defective or even a perceived to be defective product. People have invested money and ESPECIALLY, time into their rangers. People are frustrated, angry and that is the natural human result for anyone who invests a great deal in a product that does appear to have defects it was not supposed to. (In this case the ranger class.) Even if their job is development, when you are replying to paying customers with a COMPANY TAG on your profile in a forum in regards to these issues, you are performing CUSTOMER RELATIONS. In these positions, most people are trained to give ear to the customer, and to agreeésympathize with the customer even when they are off-target simply to diffuse the hostility/anger. There has been next to no inkling of such replies from Jon Peters or anyone replying to ranger threads. It’s always a post along the lines of “Have you seen the ranger pvp participation numbers?”, “Condi and support builds are quite effective right now.”, “This is something that cannot be fixed at this time.”, “We do not approach modifying traits in that way. We take one step at a time.” That is not how you handle customer relations. If you did that in a store, you’d see your customer stomping out furious and telling all their friends not to shop at your location/buy your product. Many modernized businesses even record such instances in their systems and consider such as a build up/factor in “LOST SALES” and the employees that handle such situations too poorly and too often are liable to lose their jobs in a competitive environment where there’s plenty of others out there who could answer in a way that much better appeases your customers simply by using a different tone.

So defend them if you will, the ranger class and all classes are customers, and this is not how professionals handle customer relations. That it is being done over an internet forum and not face to face should not change that fact. If in my current employment I replied to angry customers in a fashion like Jon Peters I would get an ear full from my supervisor and an eventual inevitable pink slip if such patterns continued. The distance that’s built up between the ranger community and the balance team doesn’t have to be this great gulf that is today. And believe it or not, its not solely the ranger players that created it. Some simple customer service skills could easily diffuse the agitation that plagues us.

Heal as one really really realllly needs a buff. It is literally just a bland healing skill with no function whatsoever. I’ve suggested multiple times that it be modeled after Rampage as One, maybe something like this.

Heal with your pet, gaining protection. For the next x seconds, you and your pet grant health to each other when attacking.

Detharos.3157:

From my time working in customer service/customer relations, one of the worst things and I emphasize this, THE WORST THINGS TO DO.. was to agitate angry/upset customers with lack of communication or lack of sympathy in regards to a defective or even a perceived to be defective product. People have invested money and ESPECIALLY, time into their rangers. People are frustrated, angry and that is the natural human result for anyone who invests a great deal in a product that does appear to have defects it was not supposed to. (In this case the ranger class.) Even if their job is development, when you are replying to paying customers with a COMPANY TAG on your profile in a forum in regards to these issues, you are performing CUSTOMER RELATIONS. In these positions, most people are trained to give ear to the customer, and to agreeésympathize with the customer even when they are off-target simply to diffuse the hostility/anger. There has been next to no inkling of such replies from Jon Peters or anyone replying to ranger threads. It’s always a post along the lines of “Have you seen the ranger pvp participation numbers?”, “Condi and support builds are quite effective right now.”, “This is something that cannot be fixed at this time.”, “We do not approach modifying traits in that way. We take one step at a time.” That is not how you handle customer relations. If you did that in a store, you’d see your customer stomping out furious and telling all their friends not to shop at your location/buy your product. Many modernized businesses even record such instances in their systems and consider such as a build up/factor in “LOST SALES” and the employees that handle such situations too poorly and too often are liable to lose their jobs in a competitive environment where there’s plenty of others out there who could answer in a way that much better appeases your customers simply by using a different tone.

So defend them if you will, the ranger class and all classes are customers, and this is not how professionals handle customer relations. That it is being done over an internet forum and not face to face should not change that fact.The distance that’s built up between the ranger community and the balance team doesn’t have to be this great gulf that is today. And believe it or not, its not solely the ranger players that created it. Some simple customer service skills could easily diffuse the agitation that plagues us.

This, so much.

Soilder.3607:

Heal as one really really realllly needs a buff. It is literally just a bland healing skill with no function whatsoever. I’ve suggested multiple times that it be modeled after Rampage as One, maybe something like this.

Heal with your pet, gaining protection. For the next x seconds, you and your pet grant health to each other when attacking.

I’d just like it if it cured a condition or two.

Jaysin X.6740:

Soilder.3607:

Heal as one really really realllly needs a buff. It is literally just a bland healing skill with no function whatsoever. I’ve suggested multiple times that it be modeled after Rampage as One, maybe something like this.

Heal with your pet, gaining protection. For the next x seconds, you and your pet grant health to each other when attacking.

I’d just like it if it cured a condition or two.

That’s actually all it needs. Heals you, and cures 2-3 conditions. It’d be very tempting to take after that change, if only for the condition cleanse.

That would be redundant – healing spring already has that functionality and stronger. What would rock for me is putting some mights on it, since that’s one boon ranger himself is a bit short on. Or protection.

Make Heal as One into a Pet Shout

About utilities, I’d just like :
- The stun breaker from Signet of Renewal is moved to Signet of the Wild, because :

• Right now, you have to waste a Stun breaker to clean conditions on you
• It’ll synergize well with Signet of the Beastmaster in Signets based Power build.

- Traps become more power based with 3 damage/condi pulses each, because :

• It’ll open diversity for trap build so you can go Condi/Trap or Power/Trap

- Spirits ’ actives don’t go full cd when the spirit is interrupted, because :

• it’s not supposed to act like that…
• Spirits become nearly useless against CC spam builds.
• Their actives are already on pretty long cd.
• I don’t think that’ll be OP, because you’ll still be able to interrupt Spirit of Nature rez.

- Sharpening Stone receive of buff. Right now, it’s a very weak utility, because :

• even if I understand it can be used to condi burst someone (+ 600 DPS during 5s full condi geared)… that’s not a strong burst

- “Search and Rescue” is changed to an other shout because it’s bring nothing…

- “Guard” becomes a real shout ie. with no cast time, because :

• it’s already easy to have perma regen/swiftness on a ranger so that won’t make it OP. Moreover I think these 13s on Nature’s Voice were choosen on purpose to achieve this perma regen/swiftness with “Guard” and Shout Master.

RyuDragnier.9476:

Jaysin X.6740:

Soilder.3607:

Heal as one really really realllly needs a buff. It is literally just a bland healing skill with no function whatsoever. I’ve suggested multiple times that it be modeled after Rampage as One, maybe something like this.

Heal with your pet, gaining protection. For the next x seconds, you and your pet grant health to each other when attacking.

I’d just like it if it cured a condition or two.

That’s actually all it needs. Heals you, and cures 2-3 conditions. It’d be very tempting to take after that change, if only for the condition cleanse.

But if it did that then it would literally be an exact copy of the warrior heal mending.
It should work in the same manner as RaO, as in, provide a defensive boon and then a unique buff.

meikodesign.6471:

About utilities, I’d just like :
- The stun breaker from Signet of Renewal is moved to Signet of the Wild, because :

• Right now, you have to waste a Stun breaker to clean conditions on you
• It’ll synergize well with Signet of the Beastmaster in Signets based Power build.

- Traps become more power based with 3 damage/condi pulses each, because :

• It’ll open diversity for trap build so you can go Condi/Trap or Power/Trap

- Spirits ’ actives don’t go full cd when the spirit is interrupted, because :

• it’s not supposed to act like that…
• Spirits become nearly useless against CC spam builds.
• Their actives are already on pretty long cd.
• I don’t think that’ll be OP, because you’ll still be able to interrupt Spirit of Nature rez.

- Sharpening Stone receive of buff. Right now, it’s a very weak utility, because :

• even if I understand it can be used to condi burst someone (+ 600 DPS during 5s full condi geared)… that’s not a strong burst

- “Search and Rescue” is changed to an other shout because it’s bring nothing…

- “Guard” becomes a real shout ie. with no cast time, because :

• it’s already easy to have perma regen/swiftness on a ranger so that won’t make it OP. Moreover I think these 13s on Nature’s Voice were choosen on purpose to achieve this perma regen/swiftness with “Guard” and Shout Master.

Oh absolutely. Shouts are just another example of how awful nearly every single one of our utility skills are. But unlike some of the others that are at least passible when you invest 30 points to make them slottable, shouts never live up to anything.

Guard in particular is only ever used because you went Nature’s Voice. Would you ever slot it otherwise? Sic ’Em is only used in PvE even with the stealth detection. Search and Rescue is bugged more than it works.

When you look at the shouts of other classes they bring insanely valuable utility and compliment the class. For the Ranger they bring absolutely nothing unless you trait them, and even when traited they bring the least useful forms of utility a class can bring because everyone brings the same thing.

Just sort of thinking out loud here, as it were, but…given that it has been acknowledged that some of the pet AI is not optimal (eg the delay on F2 skills when not underwater) and that this is tied into the general AI so very difficult to fix; and that as pointed out earlier in the thread, pets are not scaling with improved gear so rangers will be falling behind somewhat as we move into ascended gear tiers, would it not be a possible ‘band-aid’ fix to simply reduce pet damage across the board and increase ranger weapon/trap damage accordingly? This would leave our core mechanic intact whilst closing the gap somewhat since the proportion of our damage would be stacked more on the rangers ourselves, and would then scale with gear properly.

Apologies for the incredibly long sentence, hopefully you understand what I’m saying!

Let me give a good taste of Anets balance..
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March VS http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Oakheart_Salve

2 skills that are simiral..
The first tho is an adept while the second is master———-Warrior wins
The first also reduce the duration while the second its doesnt————Warrior wins
The first gives 3 sec of regen on a 10sec CD while the sec gives 5s on a 15 sec CD——-Warrior wins again…

There are more traits like this..I seriously believe that Rangers are the trashcans of every idea they had for other proffessions…

Dev1:“how about might on crit?this would be awesome for Warriors, they will become beasts.”.

Dev2:“Y sure great, test it and put it in asap”

Dev1:“And what about Rangers?”

Dev2:“oh whatever give em something for their pets, it will miss most of the times eitherway, im playing with my warrior now, leave me alone”

Dev1:“Can you please tell me how to name it?”

Dev2:“Companions might, something similar with the Warriors awesome Forceful Greatsword trait, but give it to their pets only so it wont matter, they are fine”

And this is why no dev is playing Ranger..

Dardamaniac.1295:

Let me give a good taste of Anets balance..
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Dogged_March VS http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Oakheart_Salve

2 skills that are simiral..
The first tho is an adept while the second is master———-Warrior wins
The first also reduce the duration while the second its doesnt————Warrior wins
The first gives 3 sec of regen on a 10sec CD while the sec gives 5s on a 15 sec CD——-Warrior wins again…

There are more traits like this..I seriously believe that Rangers are the trashcans of every idea they had for other proffessions…

Dev1:“how about might on crit?this would be awesome for Warriors, they will become beasts.”.

Dev2:“Y sure great, test it and put it in asap”

Dev1:“And what about Rangers?”

Dev2:“oh whatever give em something for their pets, it will miss most of the times eitherway, im playing with my warrior now, leave me alone”

Dev1:“Can you please tell me how to name it?”

Dev2:“Companions might, something similar with the Warriors awesome Forceful Greatsword trait, but give it to their pets only so it wont matter, they are fine”

And this is why no dev is playing Ranger..

This is sad to say, but your probably right ;(

And here we are again giving em constructive feedback..Like we did in the past….And they say that they want us to be constructive and kitten to be heard by them……..

WHO IN THE NAME OF DIANNA SAID CONSTRUCTIVLY TO THEM “HEY GUYS ADD ANOTHER SPIRIT IN THE HEALING SPOT, WE REALLY NEED MORE SPIRITS”?

Eternal Facepalm for these devs, its a shame since the designers did a great job………

Im done with being constructive..i payed for this kitten and i cant enjoy this glorious combat system cause Devs are keep adding boring stuff in it……

Dardamaniac.1295:

And here we are again giving em constructive feedback..Like we did in the past….And they say that they want us to be constructive and kitten to be heard by them……..

WHO IN THE NAME OF DIANNA SAID CONSTRUCTIVLY TO THEM “HEY GUYS ADD ANOTHER SPIRIT IN THE HEALING SPOT, WE REALLY NEED MORE SPIRITS”?

Eternal Facepalm for these devs, its a shame since the designers did a great job………

Im done with being constructive..i payed for this kitten and i cant enjoy this glorious combat system cause Devs are keep adding boring stuff in it……

Sorry, but they may say they are looking for constructive feedback but if you look at the threads they are posting in, none of them has any constructive feedback in it. So far we have red tags on 1 warrior thread, 1 thief thread, 1 engineer thread, 1 necro thread, and 2 mesmer threads. None of them has any real constructive feedback in it, mostly just arguments as to what’s overpowered and what’s not. From all the threads I have read on here so far, we have one of the most constructive threads. Not only that but look at all the threads on the first page, we have the 3rd most replied to thread on the first page, 1st being Josh Davis’s thread of the live stream and a thread for warrior’s having the best land speed which is full of arguments and warriors claiming they are the easy bags in WvW (what a joke). Yet, with all of this constructive feedback on this thread, the warrior one will probably see a constructive reply before this thread does. (I say constructive just to keep out any smart-kitten dev’s from poping in here saying something silly like, guess your wrong).

One problem I see, going forward, is scaling. As gear becomes better (ascended weapons and armor) our pets will be less effective than they were a few months ago. Bosses and events will be balanced with ascended gear in mind (or at least the majority of people in full exotics) and our pets don’t have a way of scaling up.

Our BM trait line has the Empathy attribute that increases pet stats, perhaps making Empathy scale with our own attributes passively (without investing in BM if we don’t want to).

One stat comes to mind as a universal between all rangers, regardless of build, and that is our armor class (NOT Toughness – that’s different). Our armor goes up numerically depending on the color of armor we wear, as we gear up to exotics and beyond that number goes up. Having a ratio of armor:empathy will also increase the pets stats as we gear up. There’s no way to increase the scaling beyond just acquiring the best armor you can in each slot. This is a fair way to passively increase pets stats as the ranger improves his gear and takes on new content.

Slotting points into BM will, of course, make for a better pet, but that’s the way it should be and it can be balanced to accommodate for the increased pet stats gained through armor.

It shouldn’t effect sPvP at all and in WvW it will make pets far more survivable and less
frustrating and give the ranger another reason to gear up.

Thoughts on this?

I think the key with ranger is to do a lot and then tweak it back down (much like you did and should be doing with Warrior).

This class needs some major tweaks. You run far more of a risk doing too little over too much time.

Lobo.1296:

One problem I see, going forward, is scaling. As gear becomes better (ascended weapons and armor) our pets will be less effective than they were a few months ago. Bosses and events will be balanced with ascended gear in mind (or at least the majority of people in full exotics) and our pets don’t have a way of scaling up.

Our BM trait line has the Empathy attribute that increases pet stats, perhaps making Empathy scale with our own attributes passively (without investing in BM if we don’t want to).

One stat comes to mind as a universal between all rangers, regardless of build, and that is our armor class (NOT Toughness – that’s different). Our armor goes up numerically depending on the color of armor we wear, as we gear up to exotics and beyond that number goes up. Having a ratio of armor:empathy will also increase the pets stats as we gear up. There’s no way to increase the scaling beyond just acquiring the best armor you can in each slot. This is a fair way to passively increase pets stats as the ranger improves his gear and takes on new content.

Slotting points into BM will, of course, make for a better pet, but that’s the way it should be and it can be balanced to accommodate for the increased pet stats gained through armor.

It shouldn’t effect sPvP at all and in WvW it will make pets far more survivable and less
frustrating and give the ranger another reason to gear up.

Thoughts on this?

It’s a good idea but you still have one major problem that this does not solve. The pet does not hit a moving target. Because of this we are handicapped in the damage department by 30% base, more if you factor in new gear such as ascended armor for people with a zerker build for instance. Now, there is a way to have both, a pet doing damage and the ranger having full 100% of their damage.

First, you have to remove direct damage from pet, give the ranger full 100% control over their damage.
Second, you leave the pet in the game as a utility, providing boons, and whatever effects they give. So your bear still remove’s effects, your dog still does knockdowns, your birds will still do bleeds, and so on.
Third, By buying into the beastmaster trait line you can add damage to the pet, this will make the beastmaster trait line viable for people who want to be a beastmaster and not just a ranger. Make it so you have to apply 30 points into it. This way you only have 40 points left so you can’t really go full zerker plus pet damage since full zerker requires 30/30/x/x/x.

In a way this is like a win/win scenario for ranger’s who want pets and ranger’s who do not want pets. Does anyone find any faults with it?

Akisame.9508:

It’s a good idea but you still have one major problem that this does not solve. The pet does not hit a moving target. Because of this we are handicapped in the damage department by 30% base, more if you factor in new gear such as ascended armor for people with a zerker build for instance. Now, there is a way to have both, a pet doing damage and the ranger having full 100% of their damage.

First, you have to remove direct damage from pet, give the ranger full 100% control over their damage.
Second, you leave the pet in the game as a utility, providing boons, and whatever effects they give. So your bear still remove’s effects, your dog still does knockdowns, your birds will still do bleeds, and so on.
Third, By buying into the beastmaster trait line you can add damage to the pet, this will make the beastmaster trait line viable for people who want to be a beastmaster and not just a ranger. Make it so you have to apply 30 points into it. This way you only have 40 points left so you can’t really go full zerker plus pet damage since full zerker requires 30/30/x/x/x.

In a way this is like a win/win scenario for ranger’s who want pets and ranger’s who do not want pets. Does anyone find any faults with it?

I like your ideas. My suggestion was just how to scale the pet up, not fix the glaring attack animation and F2 cast times. That’s already been discussed by smarter people than me.

Imo the best way to customize/scale pets would be to give them ‘pet gear’, where you can equip them to fit certain roles better, or improve them in their ‘intended’ role. This would also allow them to be improved as better levels of gear come out.

Ofc, then you have the issue of having to fill a decent number more armor slots then other people, which could be fairly expensive.

Fermi.2409:

Imo the best way to customize/scale pets would be to give them ‘pet gear’, where you can equip them to fit certain roles better, or improve them in their ‘intended’ role. This would also allow them to be improved as better levels of gear come out.

Ofc, then you have the issue of having to fill a decent number more armor slots then other people, which could be fairly expensive.

Ouch, more crafting? I barely want to craft my ascended gear now It’s a good idea, reminds me of my necro in Everquest where you would buy summoned armor from a mage (I think it’s mage) and give it to pet to beef them up, and you can also give them summoned weapons but once the pet died you lost all of the armor and weapons you gave it. But I don’t think it will work out with the way GW2 is layed out

While I’d be fine with having to gear the pet (not in ascended mind you), is it really worth discussing ways to fix the scaling issue so long as the pets remain useless overall? ANet could decide to give us explosive collars that we could detonate on F2 that would kill players in 1 hit and I’d probably still rarely get the chance to use it because the pet is dead 99% of the time in WvW and the F2 button would go over after the opponent has killed me or ran away.

I’m all in favor of explosive collars mind you… but if they don’t work, why bother?

Atherakhia.4086:

While I’d be fine with having to gear the pet (not in ascended mind you), is it really worth discussing ways to fix the scaling issue so long as the pets remain useless overall? ANet could decide to give us explosive collars that we could detonate on F2 that would kill players in 1 hit and I’d probably still rarely get the chance to use it because the pet is dead 99% of the time in WvW and the F2 button would go over after the opponent has killed me or ran away.

I’m all in favor of explosive collars mind you… but if they don’t work, why bother?

In a way your right. Since our pet’s can’t hit worth a lick, we should worry about that aspect of pets first. However, it doesn’t hurt to review all aspects of the pet. For instance, I have been pushing on removing pet damage since day one and giving that damage to ranger. After reading Lobo’s post, for some reason, I thought of using the trait to give damage back to pets. Don’t ask me why but it just popped into my head. I don’t think I’ve mentioned that before because I didn’t care for the pet and by reading his post I realize that some people want the pet mechanic.

Some people might have great idea’s which you might be able to tweak or add it to one of your own idea’s to make it more complete.

My only questions is, how do you put the explosive collar on the birds? And will the explosion be big enough if it’s on the bird?

Just had a thought about our regen signet versus the warriors. Why the heck is there such a big difference? Without healing power our base regen is like 64 a sec but the war’s is 400?!(360ish after the balance change) Is it because we have other sources of regen in our traits?

ha if that is much to you tel me what do you think about this thief’s trait

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow%27s_Rejuvenation

I don’t really think this is fair either

truth about the signet is it was nerfed post beta because ranger in beta where prety much like the current HS warrior are. You could outheal anyone just with the healing signet. I just wish they gave back the 300 per second and made this signet usefull for more then just the active again. This would give ranger a somewhat sharpened edge in pvp. This is one of the change that was done in beta that makes little sense now that we are down to behing reduced to this.

Sasajoe.1509:

ha if that is much to you tel me what do you think about this thief’s trait

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Shadow%27s_Rejuvenation

I don’t really think this is fair either

Yeah wth? I just did a test on the build editor. Having Healing power over 1000 only gets us 125 a sec. I just don’t get it.

kyubi.3620:

truth about the signet is it was nerfed post beta because ranger in beta where prety much like the current HS warrior are. You could outheal anyone just with the healing signet. I just wish they gave back the 300 per second and made this signet usefull for more then just the active again. This would give ranger a somewhat sharpened edge in pvp. This is one of the change that was done in beta that makes little sense now that we are down to behing reduced to this.

So they nerfed it on the Ranger cuz it was op, then gave the exact same power to the Warrior? I don’t even…

Jaysin X.6740:

kyubi.3620:

truth about the signet is it was nerfed post beta because ranger in beta where prety much like the current HS warrior are. You could outheal anyone just with the healing signet. I just wish they gave back the 300 per second and made this signet usefull for more then just the active again. This would give ranger a somewhat sharpened edge in pvp. This is one of the change that was done in beta that makes little sense now that we are down to behing reduced to this.

So they nerfed it on the Ranger cuz it was op, then gave the exact same power to the Warrior? I don’t even…

Stop right there! Don’t think about! You’ll only hurt your brain. No sensible person can think backwards like the dev’s do. Trust me, it doesn’t make sense to the entire world but it makes sense to them. Don’t hurt your brain, we need good ranger’s out there!

yea they did… in Beta i ran ranger in pvp. the class was somewhat king because you could outlive other player and abuse longbow wich somehow felt better back then (or maybe people just sucked at fighting longbow ranger and axe ranger) Pet also dealth better damage so you did got hurt a lot when the pet scored hits, mainly because smart people used cripple or axe freeze a lot (ran axe horn ranger or longbow with cat in pvp before and did tons of kills now its just a very bad idea) along with battle rune and kept weapon swapping.

what i wish they gave us back from the beta is the signet heal and the pet damage. I guess their reason for nerfing the signet is because its a utility and not a direct healing spell. In wich case if they wont give it back the way it was they should totaly remove the healing from that signet and replace it with a passive bonus to both the pet and the ranger damage or condition damage.

In beta i could overheal people damage from dodging and signet regenerating alone coupled with heal as one now id need the spirit elite + the regen and my healing spring to even get any close to that, while the warrior gets to heal near 1000 damage per second and over if they run healing banner adrenal healing and signet at the same time. I find this highly disgusting.

In Beta, Ranger’s also use to put out more damage then they do now it seems. It wasn’t just the healing. Then they changed everything around in ranger like two weeks before going live and never tested it and we’ve been broken since. It would be nice if they would revert ranger’s back to the way it was in beta because it seemed more rounded out then it does now. Although the pet AI would still suck

Ya that’s the main reason ranger was underdog from day1.
The only easy time I have been as a ranger is beta, a spirit GS ranger is just invincible, melt everything in sight. I guess Jon peter must be face-rolled by ranger for too many times then he decided to nerf ranger to the bottom.

Akisame.9508:

In Beta, Ranger’s also use to put out more damage then they do now it seems. It wasn’t just the healing. Then they changed everything around in ranger like two weeks before going live and never tested it and we’ve been broken since. It would be nice if they would revert ranger’s back to the way it was in beta because it seemed more rounded out then it does now. Although the pet AI would still suck

Wow, thanks for all the continued discussion and responses, there have been lots of good and interesting suggestions.

Also, thanks to Xsorus for porting your entire suggestion list into this thread. There are lots of great suggestions and I really hope that somebody is taking notes for the devs.

@Signet of the Wild discussion;

It either needs a higher base heal, or a better scaling coefficient. Currently, it is just absolutely underwhelming, especially when other classes can gain much better passive base heals through certain traits or skills.

That being said, because SotW is a utility slot skill that doesn’t require traiting for the heal to be effective, and still leaves access to our dedicated healing slot for an active skill, I think there is a fine line between where it is at and where a new base and scaling coefficient could be.

Currently, the heal at its base at level 80 is 62 health per second with a .06 scaling coefficient.

Assuming a fairly basic amount of max healing power (PvP anyhow) is around 1200, that means with 1200 healing power, you only get 134 health per second, or an additional 72 healing per second on top of the base.

Honestly, I think the scaling coefficient should either be increased to .09, or the base heal amount should be increased to around somewhere in the high 80ish or 90ish range, 98 being maximum base heal.

Anyhow, that’s just my take on that particular issue.

I’m underwhelemed by the spirit of nature elite. Small radius of healing, doesn’t seem to scale with healing (if wiki is right), 25% uptime, and all that is supposed to take a slot reserved for rampage as one or entangle. I expected better.

Spirits are worthless in PVE…. excluding certain dungeon situations and world boss situations. I tried that spirit of nature and that is completely worthless.

And that’s why it needs buffing, least PvE. Giving its passive heal 1000 range and 120 sec cooldown (given its cd starts after it dies) would be a good start.

A start, yes, but still wouldn’t use it.

Well this would require some more tweaking i suppose. For example making the spirit untouchable, like guardian spirit wepons at gw2 start. You would then have guarantee it stays up for you no matter what. Something to match the rampage as one guarantee of happy mayham with stability.