Guild Wars 2

I thank everyone in advance for reading my upcoming wall of text. (it will not be that long I swear)
I have clocked over 2000 hours in all game modes, and I have enjoyed the class. It has never been top tier in most game modes, except the early spiriter in PvP, but it can be played to a moderate success now in all content except WvW zerg warfare.

I feel as if the reason for this is that there are some unused opportunities within some of the traits and some of the utility skills. The prime culprit, as far as utilities go, are shouts.

Some time ago the developers introduced natures voice as a trait to try and push shouts into play. I personally consider this a temporary solution. The main issue with shouts is that they are fairly bad by themselves. Guard can be used with this new trait somewhat. Sick em and Protect me are very situational at best. Search and rescue is abysmal.

My suggestion would be as such, starting with the shouts themselves with the intention of pushing them to be useful by themselves:

Guard – allies within the guard radius receive 10% reduced damage from physical attacks. The pet is teleported to its targeted location.

Protect me – the pet is teleported to yourself. The duration is reduced to 4 seconds, the CD is reduced to 40 seconds. It will also clear 2 conditions.

Sick em – The pet is teleported to its attack range relative to the target of the cast. The first 3 attacks are guaranteed critical hits for the pet.

Search and rescue – The targeting interface is similar to the Guard. The effect is similar to the Engineer resurrecting elixir toss. For X seconds it heals everything for X% of health. Can be interrupted. The pet is teleported onto the area.

The teleport animation is the one we have when summoning spirits, a flurry of leaves. The reason for teleporting is to provide more responsiveness and increase overall differentiation from regular commands.

I would like to mention a few traits that I feel are in need of being reworked/tweaked for better use.

Natures voice – changed the boons given to depend on shout activated. Regeneration and Swiftness default removed. The effects are all AoE with a range of 600 centered on the Ranger
Guard – gives 10 seconds of regeneration
Sick em – gives 10 seconds of 3 stacks of might
Protect me – gives a 10 second aegis (to differentiate it from stone spirit)
Search and Rescue – gives a 2 second stability

Shout mastery – alongside of 20% CD reduction it also gives 10 second swiftness. This is to keep Guard builds viable and working.

Two more notable mentions here are:

Natures bounty – The effect changed from a 33% duration increase on regeneration, to a 33% effectiveness increase on regeneration. Meaning, regeneration applied by the Ranger will heal for 1/3rd more compared to other classes.

Instinctual bond – This is the new trait the rangers got with the April feature patch. The concept is very nice, but the implementation is not. Because of the ICD it can be very difficult to time it to work with every F2 activation leading to a lot of down time. The option of not having an ICD would be OP as there are some pets with very short F2 CDs. The solution would be to make it work on pet swap, because it is the most reliable way and a very nice middle ground of up time. You can heal every 16 seconds max.

Thank you for reading and I hope it was not very taxing on you.

id rather see spirits become auras, the secondary effects can radiate out from the ranger.

right now, they are too fragile for use in wvw and generally too fragile for dungeons unless you have some awesome placement.

if the spirits are changed to auras, then rangers could just swap to those utility skills when in groups and provide good benefits to their party, where as right now, they are really only useful in sPvP and then only after a 30 point trait investment. a spirit that doesnt follow you by default and dies the second it takes aoe damage is a terrible design.

as far as shout improvements, i agree that everything except sic ‘em needs to be improved (sic ’em is about to become “good enough to slot sometimes”), but I’m not a fan of teleporting the pet, and removing swiftness from Nature’s Voice would hurt all the roamers that rely on that skill.

Guard needs to be instant cast.
Sic ’em changes next patch are good enough.
Protect me needs to perform a defensive function that doesnt kill the pet.
Search and rescue needs to be removed or changed heavily. Elementalist Glyph of Renewal can rez themselves, can rez players outside of keeps and bring them inside, can rez multiple people at one time, or it can rez someone to full health. Thats incredible.

I don’t know if having your pet teleport to an enemy with Sic Em is a good idea. I wouldn’t want my ranged Devourer getting cleaved.

Also, the shout boons should center on the pet, I think.

I use a « Guard build », this means that it’s the only shout I use and I have 6 points in Nature Magic to reach Nature’s Voice. But I don’t use Shout Mastery because the boons duration are already higher than the skill’s cd (Traveler runes). With those changes, I’ll need one Grandmaster trait + an Adept trait on two different lines, it’s quiet broken.

I also like the actual basic skill (protection and stealth for the pet) and I’d like to keep it.
If you run 6 points in Nature Magic (outside a Spirit build), you are a condi bunker and you consequently have a good amount of armor (around 3K). You give a 10 % damage reduction for bunker builds (X/X/6/6/x) every 15/12 sec, possibly in addition to Companion‘s Defense and Nature’s Protection.

In another hand, you give perma swiftness (and a very good skill even outside Nature’s Voice) through Guard to every rangers builds with a simple Adept trait.
In both cases, there is something wrong to me.

Another thing, Aegis doesn’t really fit with Protect Me. If you don’t take damage, you don’t need to block.

(sorry for the English)

@Raven: This is about non-spirit support. Mainly shouts and some traits.

@Espleen: Sick em would teleport the spider/devourer to 900 attack range not into melee. Melee pets would be teleported into melee.