Guild Wars 2

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

Come to Anvil Rock, we have a few spirit zoo rangers. I run one sometimes depending on the group I’m running with.

and

Bumped For Great Justice!

Akisame.9508:

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

I think that this is probably the best solution, although it would either need to be a PvE only change, or the spirits themselves would require some serious adjusting due to PvP/WvW purposes because right now the only counterplay outside of interrupting the spirit is to kill it, and either way, the spirit would need to be able to be targeted.

Every single spirit would have to be tweaked and toned down in order to make this possible.

Now, there is a strong argument with comparing them to warrior banners, and the honest answer is that I can’t make excuses, and that I have no idea what ANet was thinking making persistent AoE buffs that can’t be targeted. There is literally zero counterplay, which defeats the idea of even balancing a game to begin with.

The one thing I can say though is that I think it would make the Trait Spirits Unbound near useless outside of PvP, and in PvP it would only be used to get the spirits close enough to use their active skills.

Anyhow, yeah, I really wish I could pick the devs brains about that decision (banners versus spirits), because from the outside, it just looks like a silly balance decision.

I agree with JCbroe. If you change the spirits to be like banners they’ll need to be redesigned too heavily. With banners, their impact is strictly to the stats. They don’t have as large an impact as what the spirits provide. This is why I have no problem with how banners work.

I personally feel they should have always been ground targetable so you could choose where to pop them and then moveable with traits.

Alternatively, I say do away with spirit mechanic entirely. Change it so they give an ‘aura’ around your normal pet that do everything spirits do. When activating the spirit, your pet simply ‘sheds’ the spirit where it’s standing and the spirit does its activated ability and dies and is put in a XX second cooldown.

If your pet dies, the spirits are shed there and go off as if they were activated and go off and die wherever your pet was killed.

If you swap pets, the spirits are shed off wherever your pet was and they explode and die same as the above scenarios.

Now this could turn your pet into a grenade of sorts, but at this point the spirits have been so heavily nerfed their active abilities are kind of meh.

So this method leaves in effective counter play because you can kill the pet. It removes all the screen clutter because the spirits are just ‘auras’ on the normal ranger pet. We can go back to letting the spirits be permanent passive benefits. Their activated abilities could be improved some since they’d die and go on cooldown once used. And it changes nothing in WvW since the pets and spirit will remain useless.

Seems like a win all around.

Well i got some ideas of my own, like a true genius should;>

Spirit of nature should be 120 sec duration, 120 sec cooldown starting from the moment it’s summoned (so 100% uptime). OP? Would be if not for one little catch..
Using it’s active – condition clense and revival will cut it’s life by 30 seconds each time it’s used. So either regen all the time, or condition clense and revival but at price of losing some of that regen.

As for spirit being untouchable or not…hm hard choice here. I would say this one spirit should be untouchable (it’s elite after all!) looking at how warrior’s battle standard is. Buf ofc that’s subject for further discussion.

As for binding spirits as pet auras, i’m not too sure about that. I got to like those little tree fellows following me around, but sentiments aside, many rangers complain about pets dying in most stupid ways, so putting that functionality on a pet..not sure if it’s an improvement. What i do agree on is spirits being targetted casts. Banners are. And if you wanna move the banner you just pick it up, not trait for it. Also if fights goes on for longer then one minute, then casting a spirit in a safe spot might become anything from dps loss (running to safe spot for cast) to mission impossible (no safe spots cause boss is aggroed on you). Unless making it a targeted cast, and a fast one.

Akisame.9508:

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

I see them on occasion and just feel bad for them. I figure eventually they will learn that bloodlust points =/= spvp cap points.

Just want to comment on this thread – and discussion in general.

We’re doing really good here chaps. Good discussion, good ideas, not alot of bickering. People adding to ideas etc.

Well done – and lets keep it that way.

Personally, i would prefer if spirits were changed this way;
No uptime timer, only healthbar
Very high toughness and HP in WvW only
Instead of having a active skill, you change between two passive skills with a long CD (20-30 seconds) on swapping. For instance; Frost spirit would either grant 10% bonus damage, or X% chance to apply chill on attack with X seconds ICD.
Natures Vengance is changed to reduce CD between swapping passive abilities and increase the passive effect by 50% (burning does more damage, 15% from frost instead of 10%, you get it)

I’d also love for the water spirit to apply a large, instant cast AOE waterfield (480 AOE) for 4 seconds. The direct heal is high but pulses 4 times, one pulse each second. ""IE; Healing (4x): 8000"", This means, to get full heal you need to stay in the field. It cleanses all conditions on allies upon triggering the healing.

Prysin.8542:

Personally, i would prefer if spirits were changed this way;
No uptime timer, only healthbar
Very high toughness and HP in WvW only
Instead of having a active skill, you change between two passive skills with a long CD (20-30 seconds) on swapping. For instance; Frost spirit would either grant 10% bonus damage, or X% chance to apply chill on attack with X seconds ICD.
Natures Vengance is changed to reduce CD between swapping passive abilities and increase the passive effect by 50% (burning does more damage, 15% from frost instead of 10%, you get it)

Hmmm.. I’d entertain it. I’d at least try it out, but not sure for PVE… Cause I highly doubt they’ll split spirits from wvw and pve.

I’d also love for the water spirit to apply a large, instant cast AOE waterfield (480 AOE) for 4 seconds. The direct heal is high but pulses 4 times, one pulse each second. ""IE; Healing (4x): 8000"", This means, to get full heal you need to stay in the field. It cleanses all conditions on allies upon triggering the healing.

See, if they did all that, then I would run water spirit for certain encounters… it would actually see some use instead of 0% of the time that it sees now.

thefantasticg.3984:

Prysin.8542:

Personally, i would prefer if spirits were changed this way;
No uptime timer, only healthbar
Very high toughness and HP in WvW only
Instead of having a active skill, you change between two passive skills with a long CD (20-30 seconds) on swapping. For instance; Frost spirit would either grant 10% bonus damage, or X% chance to apply chill on attack with X seconds ICD.
Natures Vengance is changed to reduce CD between swapping passive abilities and increase the passive effect by 50% (burning does more damage, 15% from frost instead of 10%, you get it)

Hmmm.. I’d entertain it. I’d at least try it out, but not sure for PVE… Cause I highly doubt they’ll split spirits from wvw and pve.

I’d also love for the water spirit to apply a large, instant cast AOE waterfield (480 AOE) for 4 seconds. The direct heal is high but pulses 4 times, one pulse each second. ""IE; Healing (4x): 8000"", This means, to get full heal you need to stay in the field. It cleanses all conditions on allies upon triggering the healing.

See, if they did all that, then I would run water spirit for certain encounters… it would actually see some use instead of 0% of the time that it sees now.

you may have misunderstood me, the idea behind the WvW only part is that current spirit HP is fine in PvE/PvP, however the AOE spam in WvW among the humongous number of people playing there are simply too much for the current spirits. So they would need a massive WvW only HP and toughness buff to be more reliable and user friendly, instead of being gimmicy.

More HP and thoughness dont fix anything. It would help at the moment, but what if there were new runes, or new weapon sets, the HP need to be increased even more.
And what about wvw roaming? The spirits cant be killed.

whyme.3281:

More HP and thoughness dont fix anything. It would help at the moment, but what if there were new runes, or new weapon sets, the HP need to be increased even more.
And what about wvw roaming? The spirits cant be killed.

So? A spirit build isn’t going to win against most wvw roaming builds anyway. If it could people would be using it already. We all run condi/regen tank because it’s just better, not because of the mortality of spirits.

Substance E is right. The spirit builds are almost totally geared towards support. They have next to no real use outside of group play. Sure in havoc teams they would be strong, and spirits would possibly be impossible to get rid of, but then again, the portion of WvW play that can be considered group play, would be so small and so insignificant in the shadow of the zerging.

In the end, the norm within WvW is zerging, therefore, all profession balance regarding supportive functions should be balanced entirely upon ZvZ with 30 or more players in each zerg. Not GvG or 5v5.

I can just see it coming one of these days.. the future of the ranger class.

“We have decided to change the perceptions of the ranger class, and focus all the ranger damage into the pet. For a long time the pet was thought to be a burden, and now it will be the key to your success. To support this changer, the ranger has had all his attacks and evasive utilities removed. The ranger himself will take up a purely support roll from here on in, with all of his 1-5 keys adding various buffs to the pet.”

“.. Unfortunately, there are no plans to change AI at this time, or introduce gear scaling for the pet. We’re going to see how this change goes for a year and then decide whether we should add a separate heal for the pet or a tied-to-ranger evade.”

And then, in the coming months after..

“We have come to understand the dangers in WvW zerging of the ranger class essentially having disposable drake bombs and suicide assault pets available every 40 seconds. Now to accommodate for the recent pet changes in terms of balance, the pet swap cool down will be increased to 180 seconds. We believe this change will encourage the skillful use of pets and encourage more rangers to use their f3 key in major battles.”

Ranger Armageddon is coming, one way or another.

Detharos.3157:

I can just see it coming one of these days.. the future of the ranger class.

“We have decided to change the perceptions of the ranger class, and focus all the ranger damage into the pet. For a long time the pet was thought to be a burden, and now it will be the key to your success. To support this changer, the ranger has had all his attacks and evasive utilities removed. The ranger himself will take up a purely support roll from here on in, with all of his 1-5 keys adding various buffs to the pet.”

“.. Unfortunately, there are no plans to change AI at this time, or introduce gear scaling for the pet. We’re going to see how this change goes for a year and then decide whether we should add a separate heal for the pet or a tied-to-ranger evade.”

And then, in the coming months after..

“We have come to understand the dangers in WvW zerging of the ranger class essentially having disposable drake bombs and suicide assault pets available every 40 seconds. Now to accommodate for the recent pet changes in terms of balance, the pet swap cool down will be increased to 120 seconds. We believe this change will encourage the skillful use of pets and encourage more rangers to use their f3 key in major battles.”

Ranger Armageddon is coming, one way or another.

That wouldnt happen ever, as that means they have to change the AI to make it happen. Not to mention rebalancing all pet stats.

Imagine birds with the stats of a full zerk ranger. They would make backstabs look like a joke.

Prysin.8542:

Detharos.3157:

I can just see it coming one of these days.. the future of the ranger class.

“We have decided to change the perceptions of the ranger class, and focus all the ranger damage into the pet. For a long time the pet was thought to be a burden, and now it will be the key to your success. To support this changer, the ranger has had all his attacks and evasive utilities removed. The ranger himself will take up a purely support roll from here on in, with all of his 1-5 keys adding various buffs to the pet.”

“.. Unfortunately, there are no plans to change AI at this time, or introduce gear scaling for the pet. We’re going to see how this change goes for a year and then decide whether we should add a separate heal for the pet or a tied-to-ranger evade.”

And then, in the coming months after..

“We have come to understand the dangers in WvW zerging of the ranger class essentially having disposable drake bombs and suicide assault pets available every 40 seconds. Now to accommodate for the recent pet changes in terms of balance, the pet swap cool down will be increased to 120 seconds. We believe this change will encourage the skillful use of pets and encourage more rangers to use their f3 key in major battles.”

Ranger Armageddon is coming, one way or another.

That wouldnt happen ever, as that means they have to change the AI to make it happen. Not to mention rebalancing all pet stats.

Imagine birds with the stats of a full zerk ranger. They would make backstabs look like a joke.

I wasn’t suggesting it as a legitimate change. That would make us a class where effectively 100% of our damage could be sidestepped with A and D keys instead of just 30%. It was a joke. What I just described would cause a 99% reroll rate in the ranger community. I was merely using sarcasm to elude to the line of thinking that where skilled rangers know the pets stand for their contribution to the fight(Let’s be honest, against a skilled player the pet is pretty much 100% useless) and how useful the balance team seems to think they are/believe(Who seem to believe it is a wonderful mechanic in need of maybe a few tweaks).. that we are at completely different worlds, let alone being in the same room in terms of changes this class needs to see.

ArenaNet probably would consider it a legitimate option..

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Concentration_Training

Randomly read about this;
This trait should be applied at ALL times, and at full strength in all modes.

The PvP (this is why it doesnt work in WvW too i assume) “nerf” is uncalled for. Even the might stacking from the Jungle Stalker is hopelessly bad even with the duration increase.

Having it apply only in combat defeats the purpose of some pets, which instantly applies their bonuses before attacking (Swiftness from birds)

There are a lot of things that should be applied at all times and are not. I’m a strong believer that piercing arrow should be applied at all times and not a trait thing. Same with short bow bleed, why do I have to be flanking to get short bow to bleed but warrior rifle doesn’t have to flank? What’s up with that? Why do we have to trait in order to have a decent condition cleanser? Why do we have to trait in order to make spirits viable, shouldn’t they start off viable to begin with? Why do we have to trait into BM in order to turn our 30% pet handicap into a 29% pet handicap, it doesn’t make sense to drop 30 points to pick up only 1% of our damage! (sorry for the sarcasm in that one, I’m still kittened off about pets.) I hope when they said there are changes coming that they where implying the removal of pets

Akisame.9508:

There are a lot of things that should be applied at all times and are not. I’m a strong believer that piercing arrow should be applied at all times and not a trait thing. Same with short bow bleed, why do I have to be flanking to get short bow to bleed but warrior rifle doesn’t have to flank? What’s up with that? Why do we have to trait in order to have a decent condition cleanser? Why do we have to trait in order to make spirits viable, shouldn’t they start off viable to begin with? Why do we have to trait into BM in order to turn our 30% pet handicap into a 29% pet handicap, it doesn’t make sense to drop 30 points to pick up only 1% of our damage! (sorry for the sarcasm in that one, I’m still kittened off about pets.) I hope when they said there are changes coming that they where implying the removal of pets

Very, very good points.

For the shortbow though, I can see how with it’s rate of fire, the bleed stacks would accumulate too quickly and be too easily maintained. However, having said that, I’m a long time advocate of making whatever changes necessary to the rate of fire and bleed duration on the autoattack for the autoattack to always apply bleeds, especially with the weapon only being 900 range now.

@Thread;

My shortbow suggestions:

That being said about the shortbow, I also want all of the cooldown skills redesigned so they factor heavier into increasing the DPS of the weapon, because I don’t believe that any weapon in the game should be designed around reaching peak DPS by just autoattacking. Even if it does (necro scepter for example), the other skills should be worth using in damage rotation more than just “and an occasional poison and cripple with some weak pet bleeds” so that they at least have a little bit of a burst factor versus just sustaining with the autoattack.

It could be done easily by just giving the shortbow another damage condition, like burning, torment, or confusion. Burning might be too strong, but Shortbow 4 and 5 could easily be reworked to incorporate torment and confusion respectively. Heck, since confusion doesn’t “make sense” for the ranger, I think just applying torment on interrupt on top of daze/stun on shortbow 5 would be enough, provided it is enough stacks.

My only other suggestion for shortbow is to turn poison volley into “serpent’s shot.” It still fires 5 poison arrows, but instead of in a cone, it fires them in an oscillating pattern. Think 1 arrow in the middle the flies straight, and the 2 on either side moving wavering in and out, all intersecting at certain ranges (let’s say 300, 500, 700, 900). Then, increase the base damage to like 270 (a little more than twice the base autoattack damage). Landing all 5 poison arrows is now more of a skill shot then just getting point blank, so it does more physical damage to compensate (this falls in line with engineers pistol poison volley).

Yea, our range weapons need more love, more utilities, better skills. Although the longbow has seen a little bit of love, our short bow has only seen nerfs. First they nerfed our damage claiming it was an ‘animation fix’, later they came clean and acknowledged that it was a nerf because they thought we where spamming #1 to much, which that was only the case because all other skills SUCK. Then they nerfed the range in order to make the longbow look better. Honestly, if they want the longbow to look better, then they should make it better, not making other weapons worse, that’s like adding insult to injury. Then everyone claims that we are master’s of range because we get the longest attack of 1500 range, but honestly, when you look around, we’re not the only ones that have attacks for 1500 range. Look at the tooltips and you’ll see that engineer turrets for example has 1500 range. If they have to trait into it in order to get that range I don’t know. If they don’t have to trait into it to get that range then I’m gonna be kittened because we do have to trait for it. It’s also funny how they can THROW something further then our short bow can shoot. It would also be nice to remove height as a distance counter to make attacking from fort walls viable. If they are going to keep pets in I would like my bird to be able to FLY up the keep wall and attack my target, and vise versa.

bump, cant let this die

Akisame.9508:

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

They would then be too strong. In order for the warrior banners to have effects when you move, you have to pick them up…thus giving up your usual weapon skills.
No, what they need is to have much more hp. Still being killable but not dying in 1/4 of a second like they usually do. Either that or no/very short cooldown on recast.

One thing i would love to see is the ability to play as your pet. You are vulnerable but stay in the same spot you were and you just play with your pet, using its abilities.
It would give us more purpose, would be awesome for scouting and give the pet another meaningful way of being used. Seriously, they need to add this.

how long are you gonna let rangers be ridiculed and BANNED from higher level WvW play Arena Net? this is an entire profession we’re talking about here, not just one spec.

Fenrir.6183:

Akisame.9508:

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

They would then be too strong. In order for the warrior banners to have effects when you move, you have to pick them up…thus giving up your usual weapon skills.
No, what they need is to have much more hp. Still being killable but not dying in 1/4 of a second like they usually do. Either that or no/very short cooldown on recast.

One thing i would love to see is the ability to play as your pet. You are vulnerable but stay in the same spot you were and you just play with your pet, using its abilities.
It would give us more purpose, would be awesome for scouting and give the pet another meaningful way of being used. Seriously, they need to add this.

I think the spirits also should have somewhat better passive effects for the ranger who summoned them. Therewith spirits will get a new, distinguished role. While warrior banners would be still all about groupsupport, ranger spirits would not just offer buffs to the group but also even stronger buffs to the summoner.

To go along with everybody that is making spirit suggestions, and to incorporate an idea that xXxOrcaxXx.9328 gave me with his/her suggestion;

Spirits actives should be reworked entirely, and instead of what they currently are, have them be a “burst utility” function. For example, change storm spirits active to “allies affected by this gain shocking aura for x seconds and apply blind on their next attack.”

Sun: Fire Shield to allies and allies next attack applies a decently long duration burn.
Frost: Frost Aura to allies and allies apply x second chill on their next attack.
Stone: Allies gain magnetic aura and remove a boon with their next attack.

All just tentative though. It doesn’t have to be my exact suggested changes, but I like the idea of this type of functionality.

What do you guys think?

Those spirit changes sound great for pvp… again, would only use frost spirit for dungeon runs… and thats it.

It’s a double-blades sword. If it’s unkillable then what’s the point of the grand master trait of NM? I don’t think Anet will re-design another trait for ranger.
I would say different spirit should have different HP, and the effect of spirit should be increase too.
e.g. defense spirit as stone/water spirit has 3x HP more than offense type as frost/sun. Storm get 2x HP but call of lightening consume 1/2 HP of it (let player decide whether he want more extra passive bonus or the 1-time damage). Also Increase the traited passive pro rate to 100%.

Fenrir.6183:

Akisame.9508:

Spirits should be untouchable, like warrior banners. To this day I still have not seen one single spirit ranger in WvW.

They would then be too strong. In order for the warrior banners to have effects when you move, you have to pick them up…thus giving up your usual weapon skills.
No, what they need is to have much more hp. Still being killable but not dying in 1/4 of a second like they usually do. Either that or no/very short cooldown on recast.

One thing i would love to see is the ability to play as your pet. You are vulnerable but stay in the same spot you were and you just play with your pet, using its abilities.
It would give us more purpose, would be awesome for scouting and give the pet another meaningful way of being used. Seriously, they need to add this.

love the thread and the ideas…. i have more specific issues pertaining to the pet, but many are listed above: and i saved this to a file to copy/paste cause im tired of rewriting the same things over and over:

For ranger pets: The thing is always in the world, is never invulnerable, thus is
ALWAYS a target, and always on the aggro table…this could be changed such that
“pet passive” applies the determined buff, but unlikely because it would be too
easy to exploit. SO: pet on the aggro table, what does this do? Well, it all has
to do with mob stacking. Sorry , but there is just no more efficient way of
killing off 2-3 (or 30, doesnt matter) mobs than to stack em all up and go hog wild
with the aoe. The ranger’s pet causes issues here because mobs generally only pull
so many at the time (typically 6-7 max) before they “run out of room” around the
player and reset themselves. The ranger’s pet is a hinderance because it allows
that many more mobs to be already aggro’d, locking you the ranger in comat, but
they arent going to focus on you until your group is dead, and/or your pet is
(takes about the same length of time to kill off 2-3 of 7 as it does for your pet
to die). OK, l2p? sure..except that that same principal applies when fighting
things like Mai Trin, or the Wardens in the marionette fight… whether alive,
dead, passive or otherwise, that ranger pet (likely with low dps table and higher
toughness as per what generally pulls highest aggro currently) is drawing aggro to
itself, and can NOT be controlled with specific movements in any way (such as to
reliably bring a mob/boss somewhere you need it to be..mai trin and the blue aoe
field, marionette wardens and any kiting/stacking/facing issues that need to be
done). And worse during Mai Trin: the cannon barrage phase that stupid pet is
going to draw extra cannon fire to you, the ranger, alive, dead, passive, other…
thus unless its one of those rather terrible rangers (i seen no shortage of people
on rangers who i swear might not be able to tie their own shoes)…then its some
mechanic about the specific fight (mechanics that are absolutely everywhere by
design, mind you) that the pet’s presence causes to short circuit and make that
mechanic needlessly harder to achieve. That’s why even good rangers are so reviled
in anything other than MUCH older open world content… though most blindly blame
the player instead of whoever made the design call that rangers will be forced to
have this thing with them.

My only suggestion is a total overhaul or otherwise have the pet just be purely for RP, but a complete non-combatant otherwise because they said many times they WILL NOT make a permanent stow, and WILL NOT allow rangers to be without pets.

+1 for the utilities too, i say the whole class could use a huge overhaul to make it in keeping with the group dynamics that current trend of content designs only have getting larger, and larger

Since this is a nice huge thread, I will post another suggestion I have:

The ranger shouts suggestion

“Search and Rescue”

I do like this skill in higher FotMs, however I just want to use it when I’m unable to revive my mate myself, due to heavy AoEs, etc.
Unfortunately those AoEs are as deadly for my pet as they are for me.
Therefore this skill remains most time unused.

Suggestion:

• Pet should be invulnerable or
• Pet should get a massive healthboost or atleast
• Pet should gain protection, regen and swiftness (and aegis) while reviving
• Cooldown should be cut by half if the pet can’t revive someone
• Give the skill a small range, so the pet can revive someone even if it can’t stand directly upon the downed player

“Guard”

This skill is unused for 99,9% of the time in GW2 (I honestly never saw someone using this skill).
Therefore I want to change it into a taunt, which causes all enemies in the area to autoattack the pet.
This would allow some sort of agressive tanking and makes the ranger more durable.

Suggestion:

• Introduce a new condition named “Taunt”, which will force all enemies affected to slowly run towards the user and autoattack him.
• “Guard” (should be renamed) will cause the pet to taunt nearby enemies for a long duration (~5 secs or so)
• Pet gains Protection, Retaliation and Regeneration for the duration of the taunt

In PvE this effect would still persist after the condition runs out. An exeption would be made for champs or elites.
As example: Whoever drawed aggro before, if you’re using the taunt, all enemies affected will target your pet. They will still target your pet after the taunt runs out, until the enviroment changes (New player joins the fight, new mobs spawn, etc.).

“Sic ’Em”

While the boons for your pet are quite nice, the shout could use more durability in WvW.

Suggestion:

• Activating “Sic ’Em” without a target will cause your pet to follow a stealthed player, if there are any in range.
• (OPTIONAL: And reveals him (OPTIONAL: When the pet hits the target))
• (OPTIONAL: Or the pet will reveal all stealthed players in an area)

“Protect Me”

Same as “Guard”, I never saw someone using it. Therefore I want to change up the behaviour. The new shout should focus around exchanging boons/conditions with your pet while having a relative low cooldown to on the one hand address the condition removing issue the ranger have amd on the other hand give the superior rune of the soldier some use.

Suggestion:

• Short cooldown (max. 20secs)
• Pet gives its boons to the ranger upon activation
• Pet takes all conditions off the ranger

This suggestion might be too powerful, but it should fokus around condition trading/cleansing and have a low cooldown. Another idea would be, that the pet just takes all conditions or that the pet cleanses all conditions from both the ranger and the pet.

“Ramapage as One”

RaO should be turned into a shout keeping all current stats, so that RaO can benefit from traits and runes aswell. (this suggestion was borrowed from Erro.2784)

Suggestion:

• Turn Rampage as One into a shout

“Heal as One”

HaO is pretty useless right now and only used if you need on-demand healing.
So my idea is to rework HaO the same way I want to rework RaO. Turn it into a shout, which lasts a couple of seconds and gives defensive boons and heal/conditionremove on hit. (this suggestion was borrowed from Soilder.3607)

Suggestion:

• Turn Heal as One into a shout
• While active it gives regeneration, protection and retaliation
• While active both ranger and pet get healed on hit
• (OPTIONAL: cures conditions on hit)

If Troll Unguent gets reworked to a warrior Healing Signet 2.0, as proposed in other threads, the active of TU could acquire the position of on-demand healing. So HaO could be reworked according to my suggestions without loosing any diversity.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Since this is a nice huge thread, I will post another suggestion I have:
Suggestion:

• Introduce a new condition named “Taunt”, which will force all enemies affected to slowly run towards the user and autoattack him.
• “Guard” or “Protect Me” will cause the pet to taunt nearby enemies for a long duration (~5 secs or so)

“Sic ’Em”

While the boons for your pet are quite nice, the shout could use more durability in WvW.

Suggestion:

• Activating “Sic ’Em” without a target will cause your pet to follow a stealthed player, if there are any in range.
• (OPTIONAL: And reveals him (OPTIONAL: When the pet hits the target))
• (OPTIONAL: Or the pet will reveal all stealthed players in the affected area)

or just something the pet could do to force a reveal because you are a “Ranger” which means you should have the ability to “track” a specific animal in the forest, or know when some idiot is hiding behind yonder rock… and guard dogs have been used for thousands of years for a reason: they know and can follow /reveal any stink that doesn’t belong…in fact only reliable way to silence a guard dog is to kill it :/

And the “Taunt” thing does exist lol…there is a mob… one mob in the entire whole game who is able to goad players (it’s more of a charm..beside the point) into fighting him… he is in brisban wilderness or w/e and is the champ in an event over near a fortress randomly filled with level 80 bandits in a level 15-24 zone…so it exists lol. Although why call on the pet for anything since it does so fast and such… i’d rather those skills be made more in line with warrior/guard shouts for scope of function

Inimicus.7162:

or just something the pet could do to force a reveal because you are a “Ranger” which means you should have the ability to “track” a specific animal in the forest, or know when some idiot is hiding behind yonder rock… and guard dogs have been used for thousands of years for a reason: they know and can follow /reveal any stink that doesn’t belong…in fact only reliable way to silence a guard dog is to kill it :/

That were my thoughts behind this suggestion.

Inimicus.7162:

Although why call on the pet for anything since it does so fast and such… i’d rather those skills be made more in line with warrior/guard shouts for scope of function

Oh please, no! Warrior would be even more OP. Just think about 100b + taunt.
Thw gaurdian shouts are all about defensive buffs, not about CCing the enemy.
No, I think a taunting pet would suit the ranger just fine.
As example: If you have trouble with your LB ranger to stay on max. range, you could command your pet to gain aggro and keep the enemies away from you.

I’ve enhanced my previous post and want to hear your thoughts on it:

“Protect Me”

Same as “Guard”, I never saw someone using it. Therefore I want to change up the behaviour. The new shout should focus around exchanging boons/conditions with your pet while having a relative low cooldown to on the one hand address the condition removing issue the ranger have amd on the other hand give the superior rune of the soldier some use.

Suggestion:

• Short cooldown (max. 20secs)
• Pet gives its boons to the ranger upon activation
• Pet takes all conditions off the ranger

This suggestion might be too powerful, but it should fokus around condition trading/cleansing and have a low cooldown. Another idea would be, that the pet just takes all conditions or that the pet cleanses all conditions from both the ranger and the pet.

The great and wonderful changes that they are so excited about:

Profession Changes
Ranger:
We’re going to be fixing a bug with Spirit of Nature that caused it to have an incorrect healing power value. We’re also looking at adding combo fields to existing abilities to allow for more play through different combo finishers.

• Spirit of Nature: Reduced the healing per second while summoned from 480 to 320.
• Viper’s Nest: This ability is now a poison combo field.

:( seriously?

Glad we’re getting that poison field on Viper’s nest. I know they mentioned maybe putting a field on a trap or two a couple weeks ago, and I was worried it might not go through. Clearly my fears were unfounded, and Ranger will reign supreme. Might as well just delete the thread jcbroe, Rangers are now officially in a good place.

At least with it being a field now maybe it will hit 5 targets. Still worthless overall and no one will ever slot this.

Akisame.9508:

The great and wonderful changes that they are so excited about:

Profession Changes
Ranger:
We’re going to be fixing a bug with Spirit of Nature that caused it to have an incorrect healing power value. We’re also looking at adding combo fields to existing abilities to allow for more play through different combo finishers.

• Spirit of Nature: Reduced the healing per second while summoned from 480 to 320.
• Viper’s Nest: This ability is now a poison combo field.

:( seriously?

It was just a recap from the livestream for all of the professions. When they say “the end of the living world season,” it does imply that the next balance patch isn’t for another 3 patches. Patch dates will be Feb. 4th, Feb 18th, and March 4th. That makes the earliest possible balance update March 11th.

I’m assuming that within the next few friday livestreams, we’ll learn more changes and get a better preview.

However, if these truly are the only things that get changed by then, there will be a justified complete and total outrage from the community.

It’s more than 2 months to work on a balance patch and the devs teased big changes. I’d say we should at least give them more of a change to tease more incoming changes is all.

Also, I’m not telling the community that they should be patient. Patience has been stretched much too thin already for people that need the game to be balanced in order to enjoy it, and the best thing I can suggest to those people is to change their pace up and try Loadout (F2P, January 31st release) for awhile (it is a 3rd person shooter) so that they don’t have to continue to be burned out until March.

Missing from that preview…

Ranger
• Amazing things!

Swagger.1459:

Missing from that preview…

Ranger
• Amazing things!

Swagger.1459:

Missing from that preview…

Ranger
• Amazing things!

Lol +1

I wonder if we can get them to slowly start answering really generic details about these amazing changes? For instance, land based, or water based combat?

for the start for power rangers:
debugging http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Furious_Grip would actual help power rangers a lot

longbow: range for skillcoeff is useless. u will in 90% be in less than 600 range -> remove

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Steady_Focus -> useless. u will 90% or more never have endurance full in spvp in a fight
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Peak_Strength -> useless. as powerranger that will only happen at start of fight.

the only somehow usefull http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Hunter%27s_Tactics

wrong traitline:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Two-Handed_Training

to bad to skill for that:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Hunter

so where other classes have 10% more dmg while endurance not full or 20% more dmg when under xx% or for weapon xx 5/10% more dmg in a reasonable line for power builds, ranger got it all over the place with useless dmg-bonus, cause the bonus will only inflict 10% or less of a fight.

next point: all adepttraits except http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Mighty_Swap and http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Predator%27s_Instinct is nearly useless for powerrangers. either to long cooldown with bad reward like http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Beastmaster%27s_Bond or conditionfokus or only affect pet at all.

the nerf to http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Natural_Vigor is hurting powerrangers really hard. u can compensate it with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Renewal or http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Vigorous_Training or http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Primal_Reflexes

but in times where thiefs running with http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bountiful_Theft or s/d and with the low applying of boons in mind we only help the enemy and not us.

either we need to waste a heal for vigor or get hit by a critical. both are situations that arent really wanted as powerranger. i suggest a trait like every other class has… vigor on critical hit with 5s duration and 10s cooldown.

with a better condiremove http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Bark_Skin could be usefull for powerranger if the health thres. would be 33% and not 25. i suggest removing it to either skirmishing or markmannship and put the healththres. to 33%

Everyone knows power ragers are screwed in this game right off the bat because:

a) you need at least 2-4 other power rangers for it to work
b) no megazord

Nuff said.

jcbroe.4329:

Swagger.1459:

Missing from that preview…

Ranger
• Amazing things!

Lol +1

I wonder if we can get them to slowly start answering really generic details about these amazing changes? For instance, land based, or water based combat?

Neither. It will be (hot) air based…

ZeftheWicked.3076:

Everyone knows power ragers are screwed in this game right off the bat because:

a) you need at least 2-4 other power rangers for it to work
b) no megazord

Nuff said.

Signet ranger really isn’t bad. I run it all the time in PvP.

Edit: Well, with a bow it’s bad. Just don’t use a bow.

Atherakhia.4086:

At least with it being a field now maybe it will hit 5 targets. Still worthless overall and no one will ever slot this.

I’d rather they fix bonfire so it hits the full 5.

Substance E.4852:

Atherakhia.4086:

At least with it being a field now maybe it will hit 5 targets. Still worthless overall and no one will ever slot this.

I’d rather they fix bonfire so it hits the full 5.

Yea, I don’t understand it.

Spirit only hits 3 as well I believe? Same with Lightning Reflexes.

Atherakhia.4086:

Substance E.4852:

Atherakhia.4086:

At least with it being a field now maybe it will hit 5 targets. Still worthless overall and no one will ever slot this.

I’d rather they fix bonfire so it hits the full 5.

Yea, I don’t understand it.

Spirit only hits 3 as well I believe? Same with Lightning Reflexes.

Yea, it’s funny isn’kitten When something is broken and it’s a benefit for us, they fix it really fast, like the longbow fury thing last month I think it was. However, if it’s broken and is hurting us or not doing what it should do, they don’t care and don’t even bother looking into it. For me this company is full of BS and I don’t think we should hold our breath’s for any fixes on this next patch. I have a feeling we’ll be getting more nerf’s then fixes….again.

Wow, it’s so funny that if you put the word isn’t and then the word it right after, ANet picks that up as a bad word, isn’kitten Yet they let BS go through, LOL

because its a 3 letter word refering to human part but eh. They said wonderfull things are coming for ranger this year so maybe this include a few new elite like one that allow you to have both pet out at the same time for a decent amount of time :P

Swagger.1459:

Missing from that preview…

Ranger
• Amazing things!

That can only mean one of two things. Rangers get their game and gems refunded or they will convert all rangers into warriors.

i hope this has received some dev eyes. ranger profession is saddest profession.