Guild Wars 2

Many of the Ranger’s utility skills seem horribly unusable and they have some of the worst weapon skills in the game, namely on the short bow and main hand axe.

The short bow consists of 3 skills that look identical with some different effects, a boring “3 shots in 1”, and an interesting but horribly underutilized dodge.

The axe has some cool off hands but the main hand skills are the most boring skills in the game. You have your auto attack which is just a ricocheting axe which makes no sense even by video game standards, a boring “3 shots in 1” just like the shortbow, and the freeze shares the same animation as your auto attack but with an ice effect.

This doesn’t even take the torch into consideration but then again i dont know what you could do with the torch.

Now lets look at the utilities, all the shouts are boring and useless, even in PvE the only skill that is useful is Sic Em and that is on a ridiculously long cooldown for no reason. These either need to have some extra effects to make them useful or just rework them completely.

The spirits are pretty cool but the storm spirit is useless, the active should do much more damage than it does.

It seems like the Ranger was rushed through development and Anet didn’t think things through. Other classes suffer from similar complaints but they aren’t nearly as bad imo.

Axe and torch are my preferred weapon set. I seem to do ok with them, but everyone has their preferences, I suppose. =)

If you haven’t heard, Ranger skills are getting an update. You can view them on the latest Ready Up broadcast. You can leave feedback about them in the pertinent thread(s) on the appropriate sub-forum.

Good luck.

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Axe and torch are my preferred weapon set. I seem to do ok with them, but everyone has their preferences, I suppose. =)

If you haven’t heard, Ranger skills are getting an update. You can view them on the latest Ready Up broadcast. You can leave feedback about them in the pertinent thread(s) in the appropriate sub-forum.

Good luck.

I’m not saying they are bad at all, I think they are horribly boring and uneventful. I didn’t know about the ranger update, ill check that out.

Ahh, so you are not happy with the animations? Or something else?

Like I said, you can leave your feedback and the Devs, as they stated, will use that to make any adjustments they feel are appropriate. =)

Inculpatus cedo.9234:

Ahh, so you are not happy with the animations? Or something else?

Like I said, you can leave your feedback and the Devs, as they stated, will use that to make any adjustments they feel are appropriate. =)

Like I said, I don’t like how 3 of the short bow skills are identical but with different effects and the other one is your basic League of Legends-esque skillshot minus the skill. There are just no fun mechanics behind the Ranger’s skills unlike the Necromancer or Thief.

Upcoming ranger changes (from live stream 25 July)

Signet of Beastmaster – This signet hampered the way rangers could spec. This signet no longer exists and all the signets have those effects baseline (affecting you and your pet). The trait that now replaced Signet of the Beastmaster is now called Predator’s Onslaught – You and your pet deal bonus damage to enemies suffering from movement impeding abilities (Crippled, Chilled and Immobilize). The damage bonus is 10% for your self and 5% for your pet.

Read the Wind – In addition to increase longbow/harpoon projectile velocity, attack speed is also increased (fire arrows fast).

Strider’s Defense – Increased the % to block from 15% to 20%

Beastmastery trait line – Remove the requirement to use specific pets with some traits. For example, Rending Attacks now bleeds with any pet crit on their basic attack. Stability training will activate with any pet when they are disabled. Intimidation Training now applies Cripple on any of your pet’s F2 skills with strikes.

Sic’ Em this skill now applies 6s of Revealed to enemies.

Entangled – Recharged of this ability reduced from 150s to 60s. Duration of the roots themselves decreased from from 20s to 5s.

Longbow
Cast times have been tightened up so you are not stuck casting something for a long time.
Long Range Shot – short range damage increased by 17%. Medium range damage by 7%. Long range damage unaffected.
Rapid Fire – Hard to use as you were stuck casting it for 5s at a time. Cast time now reduced by 50%
Barrage – Reduced cast time by 0.5 seconds.

Greatsword
For autoattack combo, damage of Power Stab (3rd skill in the chain) increased by 10%
Maul – Increased the max amount of targets from 3 to 5 while increasing the radius from 150 to 220.
Swoop now evades in the attack portion of the ability. You can be still stuck while traveling to your target.
Counterattack – Aftercast reduced – now you can respond much more quickly after landing your knockback.
Hilt Bash – Stun and daze duration of the skill have been increased from 1s to 1.5s

Axe
Axe Ricochet – Now grant might on hit. 3s base might duration. You want to hit multiple targets for max amount of might stacks.
Path of Scars – Velocity of projectile increased by 25%

Pets
Black Bear’s Enfeebling Roar slightly changed so that it no longer goes through blocks and evades but now delivers a strike.
Polar Bear’s Icy Roar has received the same sort of rework.

Ranger: High single target DPS. Long range single target damage – should be the best (mesmer comes second). Sustainability through melee evasion and dodging. Sustained melee AoE.

• Weakeness: Dealing with boons on enemies – no boon rip. Lack in stun breakers with some builds but it is intentional since you can evade so much. Reliance on pet for maximum efficiency as pet is factored into your damage output. Your damage will be smaller than other classes due to the pet. Pet have issues against high end PvE encounters since they are more of a hindrance than help. AoE at long ranged but it is a trade off with having highest single target DPS at long range. Mobility – can’t escape fights as good as some other classes.
• Official design: Pretty close to the player feedbacks.

Copied from Balance Philosophy news.
It’ll be updated according to this style, unless ANet gives us new balance philosophy update…

FrostSpectre.4198:

Ranger: High single target DPS. Long range single target damage – should be the best (mesmer comes second). Sustainability through melee evasion and dodging. Sustained melee AoE.

• Weakeness: Dealing with boons on enemies – no boon rip. Lack in stun breakers with some builds but it is intentional since you can evade so much. Reliance on pet for maximum efficiency as pet is factored into your damage output. Your damage will be smaller than other classes due to the pet. Pet have issues against high end PvE encounters since they are more of a hindrance than help. AoE at long ranged but it is a trade off with having highest single target DPS at long range. Mobility – can’t escape fights as good as some other classes.
• Official design: Pretty close to the player feedbacks.

Copied from Balance Philosophy news.
It’ll be updated according to this style, unless ANet gives us new balance philosophy update…

I dislike how Anet declares pets as a weakness. It should be an extension of a Ranger’s arm.

Goose.9317:

Many of the Ranger’s utility skills seem horribly unusable and they have some of the worst weapon skills in the game, namely on the short bow and main hand axe.

The short bow consists of 3 skills that look identical with some different effects, a boring “3 shots in 1”, and an interesting but horribly underutilized dodge.

The axe has some cool off hands but the main hand skills are the most boring skills in the game. You have your auto attack which is just a ricocheting axe which makes no sense even by video game standards, a boring “3 shots in 1” just like the shortbow, and the freeze shares the same animation as your auto attack but with an ice effect.

This doesn’t even take the torch into consideration but then again i dont know what you could do with the torch.

Now lets look at the utilities, all the shouts are boring and useless, even in PvE the only skill that is useful is Sic Em and that is on a ridiculously long cooldown for no reason. These either need to have some extra effects to make them useful or just rework them completely.

The spirits are pretty cool but the storm spirit is useless, the active should do much more damage than it does.

It seems like the Ranger was rushed through development and Anet didn’t think things through. Other classes suffer from similar complaints but they aren’t nearly as bad imo.

Didn’t you read the upcoming changes to Axe/GS/LB traits, signets, etc.

so the ranger pet is classified as a weakness? while i dont disagree and would pay a large sum of my money to never see my ranger pet again, i still cannot understand the thinking behind making a class and then strapping an unnecessary ball-and-chain on it. if the pet is a weakness then what is the point of it even existing? it serves no purpose but to drag you down.

What’s funny is the Ranger is the only class that had their class specific mechanic classified as a weakness. Intentionally.

RE: Ranger design direction

The shorthand summary doesn’t really capture the feel behind those statements.

It was less of an: ‘Oh. Pets scale terribly. Uhh, we meant to do that? Totally working as intended.’
More of an: ‘The usefulness of the pet is something we’re keeping in mind for future balance patches; because we realize a pet whose dead all the time in upper level content isn’t contributing anything, and want other people to be happy to see a ranger with a pet for what they bring to the fight.’

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=qD9Tvfk1pjk&list=UUP_FgMqOxp_VsM0UfrL-DxA#t=3585

re: OP

I think what was added was very well thought out.
But, I’m also kind of sad to not hear any news about deeper problems being addressed. I don’t expect them to tear out the AI tomorrow, but, even just some solid progress on some middle-of-the-road difficulty things would be nice to see. Make Guard useful as something other than a trait proc, expand attack of opportunity so it’s less niche, get Traps somewhere in the neighborhood of the condition damage traitline. Stuff like that.