Guild Wars 2

EverythingXen.1835:

Detharos.3157:

snip

I hope you saved those posts somewhere, because this isn’t the thread they’re going to read.

Noted. In the very least, I can copy past them from this thread when the time comes.

ItIsFinished.9462:

Elementalist: Ability to change Attunements.
Engineer: Wide array of kits and additional abilities dependent on equipped slots skills.
Necromancer: Death Shroud and Spectral Walk
Guardian: Virtues.
Thief: Steal/Initiative and most access to stealth.
Warrior: Adrenaline/Burst
Mesmer: Clones and Shatter abilities.
Ranger: Pets…

This is what makes the classes Unique.

But the funny thing is, every class can have a pet…..via racial skills but at the same time, they won’t suffer a damage loss for having a companion..go figure. They are on par with the rangers pets, especially if the rangers pet dies and is on a 1 min cooldown which is close to most racial elites….

I’m quoting myself because I brought this up a long time ago and it is still relevant. Us Rangers have a broken mechanic.

We need to have the ability to use ALL the pets skills on demand. Also, since we are a jack of all trades, we need to make the pets ability’s on par with the other classes.

What I mean is take thief for example, their class mechanic is stealth and mobility. Why not make a series of pets that offer/have access to stealth and mobility skills…just on a smaller scale. Or Mesmer, their mechanic is clones, can we have some pets that offer clone type abilities? Take Engineer, their class mechanic is kits. Lets make the Ursine pets dig up Ascalonian Rifles or Charr mines, allowing us to use a new weapon for a short period of time during combat. These suggestions are simply allowing the ranger to have a “unique” class mechanic.

After all, we are a “jack of all trades” kind of class, right?

Atherakhia.4086:

hooma.9642:

raubvogel.5071:

…
Warrior is in the best shape. In offensive and defensive way! Powerful traits in the right trait line. Highest Health. Powerful support skills and elite skills (eg signet, banner). Good damage mitigation etc.
…

problem is the most powerful traits are concentraited in ONE line.

remove adrenalin from cleansing ire so warrior need berserkers might to constantly remove condis. that way they are forced to decide how they want to trait.

They won’t get it though. They’ll just go 30 disc for burst mastery.

Warrior doesn’t gain enough damage for investing in arms or strength and that’s part of the problem. Invest in DPS trees and gain nothing, but lose a TON of defense. Spec in defense and gain a TON of defense and lose no real damage.

problem is http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Armored_Attack..
with basetoughness and speccing 25 points in defense they get 127 Strength.. thats like traiting 15 in strength. with full defense its 132.. thats nearly half of strengh provide.
another problem http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Merciless_Hammer
25% +dmg is more than strength will provide.. problem on this trait is during a 1vs1 its maybe not that strong but in a group fight with maybe another hammer warrior or some other form of cc its potential is far stronger

“Jack of all Trades” is a cop-out term rangers have been using, because our purpose is so ill defined we don’t know what else to say.

Engineers and Elementalists also toss around the same term. And given the nature of attunement and kits I’m more than willing to give it to them. Their profession mechanics suits the concept of ‘changing’ better than ours does, and it allows them much greater access to numbers of skills during combat. They might actually get the variety to really make their respective mechanics sing, if there weren’t so many pseudo-Jacks around trying not to step on eachother’s feet.

We can’t all have the same place in combat, or it’s the same as nobody having one.
I think part of the Ranger discussion, should be focused on trying to find one that really fits our semi-unrestricted access to an NPC.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the feedback so far! I have some requests:

• Please keep the feedback focused on Ranger.
• In your feedback, please tell us what area of the game you play the most (PvE/WvW/sPvP).
  • If possible, include stats on how much you play in each of those areas too.
• Please include the profession you play the most, even if it isn’t Ranger.
• Most importantly, Pleased keep your feedback as concise as possible. Using special formatting is really nice if your post is a long one.

Thanks,

Allie

we cant only focus on ranger without bringing some other builds down a little. we would overbuff the ranger if we not consider potential “shut downs” also and how we disarm them.

makes me wonder do u actual read this part of the forum? or do u havent seen this thread https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/sPvP-Thieves-driving-away-damage-dealers/first ?

and to be more clearing regarding ranger we need to know what will happen to the pet. will the ai reworked or not. if yes how long will it take? atm the pet ai is a intergral part of the class. until we dont know what anets plan are for that we would just break potential good solutions into to many parts that are hurting this discussion. so before u actually talk about ranger u need to discuss what should or will happen to the pet. until then there are to many unknown facts that need to consider.

half or more of https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Ranger-Balance-PvP-WvW-PvE-PvX/first is about pet.. so we need to split this discussion. it would help if u create 2 threads. 1 for pet and after that is finished with a clear goal how pet should work we can focus on the rest.. the actual impact of the pet is to high to ignore it or put into the same discussion.

Area of Gameplay Distribution: PvE (40%) WvW(40%) PvP(20%)

Profession played the most: Guardian [although I have 6 80s and am an alt lover]

Concise Feedback on Ranger:
(This is for PvE/WvW side of them. In PvP I think they are very strong, and I actually mainly play ranger in PvP)

1)Trait Lines are not Harmonious. Things like having all of the trap related traits nested in the precision/crit damage line instead of located with condi duration or condi damage.

2)Pet skills dependent on long animations: I remember a dev saying that the skill has to wait for the animation to channel, and that is the reason the skills take so long to cast and are so unreliable.

3)Lower the ICD of spirits: Currently Spirits only proc their ability once per 10 seconds on a 70% chance (if traited). This is one attack out of 10 seconds worth of attack that gets this bonus. I feel the value should be lowered a bit such as to 8 seconds instead.

4)Make ability to stow pet completely: Many reasons to do this but kind of self explanatory.

5)Make Pet AI more intelligent: Currently pets attack and attack until they die. It is hard to command them in combat using just return to me and attack my target. If you gave the ability to set some simple parameters (If pet health <25% return to me; if my health is <50% use your ability, etc.) Kind of similar to how other games allow you to give simply AI logic to your npc party members.

TLDR; Traits are the biggest problem, disordered and no synthesis, pets are the other problem as they are they are nothing more than fodder and occasionally their skill will work.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the feedback so far! I have some requests:

• Please keep the feedback focused on Ranger.
• In your feedback, please tell us what area of the game you play the most (PvE/WvW/sPvP).
  • If possible, include stats on how much you play in each of those areas too.
• Please include the profession you play the most, even if it isn’t Ranger.
• Most importantly, Pleased keep your feedback as concise as possible. Using special formatting is really nice if your post is a long one.

Thanks,

Allie

PvE(50%) WvW(50%)

I currently play a Warrior for both but I have all 8 classes to 80 and have played Thief, mesmer, guardian, and necro extensively.

The main problem with rangers is pets. The AI is terrible and they die taking out a large portion of the rangers damage.
I see 2 ways of fixing the issue.

1. Make the pet more of a vanity pet(doesn’t get hit) but it gives the ranger extra F1-F4 abilities that the pet will perform. Then rebalance ranger damage accordingly.

2. Allow pets to be fully put away and give the ranger a bonus to damage.

PvE+WvW suggestions:

• Pets need to become a lot more reliable. The best way to achieve this is to split the Juvenile Pets from the NPC Animal group. Make them a separate group so any change there will not affect the whole animal kingdom of Tyria.
• Pets need innate resistance to random AoE (75%) with a trait in BM to go up to 95%.
• Pets need better pathfinding (if possible) and faster animations.
• Pets need to hit more reliably. Suggestions: larger radius, cleave, attack while moving.
• Pets need to have gap-closers like leap, pounce, swoop etc.
• Pet leash range needs to be increased a bit (3000).
• Pets need to be right next to you when you are standing still, not 30 feet away from you (and dying in random AoE’s because of it).
• Pets need to have their own dodge bar with parameters when to use them.
• Pet F2 needs to fire the moment I press the button; not 3-6s later (if it works at all).
• Pet scaling. Pets need to get stat bonuses depending on your gear. Now the ascended power creep sets in but pets never grow with the new stats.
• Consideration: Removal of the pet swap mechanic (and traits revolving around swapping pets like Loud Whistle). Instead Rangers could focus around choosing only one pet and F4 can then be changed to function as a Revive Pet channeled ability. That way a defeated pet can be brought back into the fight, instead of punishing the Ranger with a 60s CD because the pet died in a heartbeat due to nonexistent AI.
• A trait in BM which allows Pets to radiate an aura offering a bonus to allies depending on the pet family (like Toughness aura when using a Bear).
• Add more pets for Rangers to tame (like Dolphins, Rock Dogs, Wind Riders etc.)
• Trait lines need work. For instance Trap traits need to go in Wilderness Survival and traits like Martial Mastery should go in Skirmishing.
• Too many weak traits only affecting pets!
• Signet actives need to affect both Ranger and Pet by default!
• With the above change Signet of the Beastmaster can become: “Retain passive effects of signets when activating them”
• Shouts should have been an AI mode, not a utility. The effects are not meaningful enough to be worth a utility slot. S&R for instance is a useless shout as it is prone to fail at random. Other shouts also offer only minimal effects.
• Rangers would be perfect for anti-stealth Counter Play. As such I suggest a Trap that works like the WvW Stealth Disruptor Trap (but on a smaller scale) to flush out stealthed opponents. Easy to implement as the mechanics are already available.
• Rangers need more abilities that benefit his allies. Currently Rangers are shunned everywhere because they offer nothing to the team that another class can’t do much better. We need to see ‘LF1M Ranger’ some day. Suggestions: Shouts with AoE benefits and Spirits that offer their boons all the time (not 35-70% of the time). Guardian shouts and Warrior shouts+banners are much more useful because Ranger Shouts only affect the pet and Spirits are just not reliable and die too easily.
• Arrows should pierce by default. We’re unparalelled archers and such, but we don’t feel like it atm. Heck, Warrior and Thief are more useful with a bow than Rangers at present time. Rangers should have been the ones with abilities like double shot and AoE effect arrows.
• Arrows should fly faster. The projectiles are still moving too slow and can easily miss a target with a simple sidestep. This is extremely noticeable on the LB.
• Change Eagle Eye trait to include SB range increase to 1200.
• Change Signet of the Hunt active. Suggestion, have it give Camouflage and Swiftness (like Wintersday Scout ability). That way Rangers can choose to use the Camouflage for an attack preparation (or to try and hide briefly); or use the Swiftness to try and gain/cover distance.
• Change the ‘Animal Cruelty’ utilities and traits that sacrifice/torment your pet. The Ranger is a class that has to rely on his animal companion for ~30% damage. But what I find odd about that is that the Ranger is also the only class that actively tries to kill his own pet all the time through his own utilities and traits!

Some quick suggestions to stop ‘Animal Cruelty’:

1. Shared Anquish – Change to “Incoming disabling conditions are transferred to your Foe instead.”
   Alternate suggestion: “Incoming disabling conditions Entangle your Foe.”
2. Empathic Bond – Change to “Periodically cure conditions from you and your pet.”
3. “Protect Me” – Change this to also grant Aegis, Protection, Retaliation, Swiftness and Regeneration to the pet for the duration
4. Signet of Renewal Active – Change to “Cure conditions from yourself, your pet and nearby allies”

Ah, my apologies.
I didn’t mean to yammer on too much about other classes.

This is going to be an even bigger Charlie Foxtrot than the 6.5 months of warrior buffs, lol

It may be a bit too late to suggest this, but I would personally find it extremely useful if ArenaNet kicked off the CDI on Monday with a brief, but detailed summary of their current vision for the Ranger class. Specifically I am very interested in knowing the intended roles/leanings of each weapon, trait line, utility skill type (shouts vs. traps vs. spirits, etc.)… and perhaps even pet species.

This would then allow us to start the CDI discussion of Ranger balance evolution with the following question: Do you think ArenaNet’s intended design of the Ranger is solid, and we need to focus on evolving the Ranger to meet that design, or do you think it is the intended design itself that needs to evolve?

I’d suggest replacing the pet mechanic (or moving it somehow into optional utility skills) and bringing back preparations similar to GW1 instead. The preparations could have static effects, effects varying based on weapons, or effects based on slotted utilities (like engi’s tool belt).

I play 60/40 Dungeons and Fractals vs. WvW roaming/small scale.

The ranger problems are as follows:

-Pet doesn’t scale with gear. Set stats are horrible as berk players can get up to 60-70% crit damage bonus or more while the pet maxes at 30% crit damage bonus and requires a trait. Pets also can’t have their precision increased.

With the release of ascended gear, pets, which comprise 30-40% of a ranger’s damage, fall behind.

Scale pets with the ranger’s stats like mesmer illusions. In fact, do this for all minions. Scaling is a very important part for viability of minions.

- Pets have terrible AI. Pets stop all the time to have animations for attacks. These animations should work on the move, because otherwise pets can never have uptime on a moving target. Every time my wolf goes to autoattack an engineer with swiftness, he lands maybe one autoattack and then spends much more time catching up to the target since he self-rooted to bite the engineer.

Pets also have erratic delivery of F2 skills, and F2 skills should have 0.5 sec cast times at most considering their weaker effects for the most part.

-So many of the pet families are bad. Bears autoattack for less than a burning damage tick from a noncondition spec. So do moas. Moas with a measly 3-6 vuln stacks on a hefty cooldown is really bad. The moa vulnerability stacks need to be raised or replaced with weakness instead.

Moa, bear, and anything that isn’t a drake/feline/wolf needs their damage from autoattacks raised to compete. Pig’s Forage F2 skill should automatically give the foraged weapon to the ranger or work like steal where the f2 button turns into the foraged ability.

-All pets need cleaving. Ranger AoE is terrible precisely because all pets but the drake don’t have any AoE whatsoever, and melee pets don’t cleave. So a melee spec ranger with a melee pet has 30-40% of his damage not cleaving, unlike the other melee classes like guardians and warriors and sword thieves.

- Raise pet speed to 33% native increase.

- Have the pet have his own separate heal on its pet bar as the F5. Linking pet recovery to the ranger is horrible design, as it forces the ranger to waste a heal he may not need just to keep the pet up.

- Remove the pet death penalty, just leave a 15 sec swap cd. The 45 sec cd on pet death when you make the death of a pet so easy and frequent is not enjoyable play.

- Implement the 70-80% damage avoidance to AoE already. Pets will never be viable in WvW and PvE so long as you insist on making pets who cannot dodge tank damage that was designed to be lethal to players. You could raise pet health by 500% and it still would mean just a couple of seconds more before a pet dies in a zerg or to high level fractal mobs.

-The trait for 2 sec quickness on pet swap is worthless considering the pet staggers for the same amount of time after it has switched in.

- Make boons on the ranger apply to the pet natively. Pets are a portion of the ranger’s damage, an extension of their functionality. What you currently have imposed on rangers is like making a warrior go 20 points into his defense line so boons apply to his greatsword skills.

YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE TO TRAIT PETS FOR THEM TO BE FUNCTIONAL. THEY SHOULD BE GOOD BASELINE.

For the ranger himself, here are the problems:

- Terrible coefficients on power weapons. You nerf power weapons to account for pet damage, yet conditions for rangers do 100% of their damage without penalty. Right there, you have forced rangers to spec into condition specs for most of their builds, because the base numbers for power weapons are so low.

- Lack of access to boons. Ranger only has access to regen and swiftness, the weakest boons. If the class is designed around not having boons, then its damage and defenses should be balanced with that lack of access in mind. Currently it is not. Warriors and thieves and conjure elementalists are self sufficient because they can stack offensive boons pretty efficiently, inflating their damage numbers significantly.

- Lack of boons means lack of group utilities. Spirits do not come even close to the utility of warrior banners or elementalist fields might/fury stacking. On top of that spirits die pretty quickly to aoe in wvw and boss mechanics. The spirits also need a minimum of 20 points in nature magic to not be total garbage.

- Ranger utilities are really bad and require heavy trait support to be less bad. The signets all require 30 points in Marksman for signet of the beastmaster, as they’re useless without the trait. The actives need to be affecting the ranger BASELINE. The 30 point trait could simply grant the ranger the passives while the signets are on cooldown.

-Traps need to be 900 and greater range baseline. They also need to do more considering necromancer marks and engineer grenades and elementalist staff skills do much more without taking up utility slots. Condense the traps or add additional effects.

- Shouts are worthless. Protect Me causes the pet to not attack, costing damage and hurting your pet! Guard is the worst offender, doing literally nothing but being the source of protection for the pet. None of the shouts have meaningful group utility, and a 30 point nature magic trait giving swiftness and regen is severely underbudget considering guardian and warrior shouts.

- Stunbreakers have too long cd’s. Ranger stunbreakers are really bad, and it’s part of the reason why many rangers feel the need to spec full bunker since their offensive specs do not have the defensive options to survive.

-Condition removal on the ranger is tied to healing spring. The others are a passive, random removals that either cost 30 trait points on the defense line, or a utility slot that also happens to damage the pet.

You need to stop doing these utilities that shift negative outcomes from the ranger onto the pet. The other classes don’t suffer setbacks for using their condition and stun clears, why should the ranger’s pet suffer for the ranger taking advantage of a trait or utility skill?

- Entangle and Rampage as One are weak elites because Entangle is made obsolete by teleports clearing roots (and players being able to move out of roots in between pulses without havint to break the roots), and Rampage as One is easily boonstripped.

- Heal as One will never be taken as it’s a much weaker heal than troll unguent and doesn’t clear conditions like healing srping. Moreover, troll unguent and heal as one will never be used by offensive specs as offensive specs have little access to condition removal outside healing spring.

Redesign the Water spirit. It is worthless in light of healing spring’s superior effects as a water blast field with condition removal, and on demand healing nature compared to the water spirit’s random heal proc.

- Change Storm spirit proc to weakness or blind. Swiftness is worthless in most of the game settings when it is easily provided by most other classes at a cheaper to no opportunity cost.

Ranger weapons:

-Mainhand sword needs to have its leap animation interruptible by dodge. Buff the damage of the abilities by 10%

-Axe offhand needs to have whirling defense be a moving skill. Increase its damage as the channel does terrible damage for the amount of time channeled compared to other skills. The Phantasmal Warden puts the ranger skill to shame.

- Axe mainhand needs ricochet damage tripled. Its damage is horrendously low baseline. Splitblade needs its direct damage portion also increased significantly to be worthwhile to power based specs.

It’s kind of curious how the trait for axes increases crit damage yet the mainhand axe is only useful as a condition weapon because of it’s ghastly power base numbers and coefficients.

- Greatsword needs a damage increase of about 20% to all its skills. Change maul vulnerability to 10 stacks or change it to something else altogether. Its current stack application is weak.

- Leap could use a 1 second root.

- Shortbow was overnerfed. Poison spread is a terrible skill with terrible damage and poison duration. Thief bow completely overshadows the ranger shortbow as the thief shorbow: a) has incredibly powerful aoe, b) has a far superior poison FIELD that can be blasted for weaknes, c) has better defensive tools with a teleport or chain evades and cripple.

- Longbow needs a cripple or a lower cd on knockback shot. Remove the low threshold of damage and make the medium baseline with the large damage threshold being 600 range+

Buff Barrage damage significantly. For a 25 sec cd traited aoe it’s absolutely horrible AoE.

Make both the shortbow and longbow pierce baseline.

Why power rangers don’t work:

- In addition to their lower base numbers, power based rangers have no way to deal with boon stacking. This forces the ranger to go into conditions to deal with opponents who have high access to protection and aegis.

-Ranger burst is too slow in delivery and highly telegraphed. Maul is the easiest burst skill to dodge by far, and in order to do any amount of burst the ranger requires signet stacking that has 60+ sec cd’s. Mesmer/thief/warrior burst has much lower cd, in fact most of them can burst high every 15 seconds or less.

- Power ranger defenses are bad. You have signet of stone and that’s it. When you nerfed spirit ranger dodging, you gutted power ranger survivability, what little thay had left.

Glass specs either need high cc and evasion alongside burst (burst which rangers don’t have, as their burst is staggered because of raven f2 activation delay and maul telegraphing), or they need ample access to immunities like warrior stances and mesmer distortion.

The ranger has little of those. 2 dodges and a serpent strike isn’t going to keep a ranger alive.

Ranger specific things I’ve noticed (not in order of magnitude/priority):

1) Shouts are crap at baseline. I could go into a detailed analysis, but honestly just compare them to Warrior and Guardian shouts. Better buffs that are also on classes that have better skill coefficients. Double whammy.

2) Signets require heavy investment to be worth it. Not as bad off as the Shouts, but still pretty bad because they are pet centric at default and this compounds with the next issue…

3) The class appears to be balanced around 100% up-time of an incredibly unreliable mechanic (pets). They either need to be more reliable (which has been attempted in the past via raw stat buffs and ended poorly due to pets becoming OP in small scale situations) or they need to be more disposable to ensure that a Ranger always has a pet of some sort able to do something no matter the situation.

Suggestion: Redo the pets so that a Ranger carries a pet assigned to each F key. Each pet has a script of actions while deployed; with maybe some fine control of the script list set in the pet management window for that pet. The pets DO NOT come out unless summoned, and pressing the related F-key stows them. Each pet slot has its own cool down, and is short enough that one is not stuck for extended periods without a pet at all due to the vagaries of AI in a high speed combat environment. Make them a resource to be managed instead of a hindrance to be worked around.

Make sure to tweak each pet skill script so that they have a clearly defined purpose in a fight; so that a Ranger has to make a valid choice in pet types to carry in their load-out to either shore up their personal weaknesses or to magnify their strengths.

Also, pets and other summons do not get scaled with gear at moment; which makes them inferior to other mechanics thanks to Ascended Gear. Please do something to address this, as it affects more than one class.

You guys sure are the eternal optimists, aren’t you?

I’ll be waiting on the sidelines with a sandwich board reading “No PvE splits, No chance”.
Just watch. There won’t be any big changes there. Not even for a class voted this overwhelmingly desperate for them. If I could remember how many ectos I had on my inactive account, I’d bet them all right now that this is exactly how it’s about to play out.

3 years ago, I’d never be able to make that same bet (Stumme would take them All!)

I Play the Ranger the most, and out of 1100 hours split between PvE and WvW. I have 11 full gear sets and I am always buying more. I have tried out every combination you can think of as far as Ranger traits/weapons/pets, etc. goes.

I really don’t have too many complaints. Rangers have more options than any other profession, However, there is one that’s been bugging me….

- Trait Distribution for Class Mechanics.

• Warriors and Engineers have only 3 traits that affect their class mechanic. Other professions have between 8 and 12.
• Rangers? We have 26 traits that affect our pet, and several more that affect skills that only affect our pet initially.
• Other classes have, at the most, 16% of their traits that affect their main class mechanic (F1-F4). Rangers have about 50% of their traits tied to their pets.
• This does more to kill build diversity than anything, because virtually all of our builds has to involve our pets or pet related skills in some way. Rangers might have more options, but most of those are extremely weak in comparison to other professions.
• Other professions by comparison, can entirely ignore their class mechanic most of the time, or, even if they don’t ignore it, its still strong enough to where it is useful, even when not traited.
• Rangers do not have that luxury. Pets are pretty weak without traits because of how the AI works, and even fully built up through as many traits as possible, they are still lacking compared to other profession mechanics because of their AI, and general unresponsiveness.

omg seriously guys, save the balance suggestions and analyses for the real thread. put it in a text file. or something. theres no point till monday. this isnt the thread youre looking for!

Hi i mainly sPvP and my main is a Ranger

I wont suggest something, ive already said enough..

There are plenty of them in Ranger forums.What have you doing so far?Do we need a special CDI to suggest things?Dont you read what we say in Rangers forums?

So you increased attention now and what?
We keep suggesting a thousand ideas that you dont want to or cant do?

You may consider giving us some info on what you thing the problem is and on what area you can work on..

I wont be suprised if Anet thinks that Rangers are ok and have no idea why we picked em..
If this is true it has no meaning and its unfair for all of us to take this seriously..

insanemaniac.2456:

omg seriously guys, save the balance suggestions and analyses for the real thread. put it in a text file. or something. theres no point till monday. this isnt the thread youre looking for!

I was actually asking myself as I was writing that post before yours, if I should wait til monday, or if I should go on ahead and post it because it would tick off atleast one person….

anyways, what I posted is a good starting point (for me at least) when the thread gets put up on monday, instead of having 50+ starting points like the person who made that massive multi post earlier in this thread.

Dardamaniac.1295:

Hi i mainly sPvP and my main is a Ranger

I wont suggest something, ive already said enough..

There are plenty of them in Ranger forums.What have you doing so far?Do we need a special CDI to suggest things?Dont you read what we say in Rangers forums?

So you increased attention now and what?
We keep suggesting a thousand ideas that you dont want to or cant do?

You may consider giving us some info on what you thing the problem is and on what area you can work on..

I wont be suprised if Anet thinks that Rangers are ok and have no idea why we picked em..
If this is true it has no meaning and its unfair for all of us to take this seriously..

I’m pretty sure that Anet is tracking all the things wrong with Rangers (and all professions), especially with things like pet AI, which, they have specifically talked about and addressed in the past.

Bonus: Global: Professions: How would you like to see us evolve Ranger balance?- Owner- Allie Murdock

Dear Allie and dear Forum,

these are my changes and my suggestions for the ranger I would like to see:

• 1st: Ranger should play with his/her pet and not against it! That means the current situation of the pet system is not acceptable (for me). You just target a foe and click F1 and maybe f2 for the pet’s skill. Thats all. Nothing really “special” I think. That must change!

So my suggestion is that the pet becomes a part of the ranger’s playstyle. (At least more than it is now). That means my idea is to give each weapon 1-2 new “Pet Skills” that makes your pet do a special skill (like Mesmer got skills on each weapon for Phantasms/Clones).

One “Pet weapon skill” could be like command the pet to rush to your foe and knocks it down and causes 3 stacks of bleeding (this skill would be nice for catching a “running away player” in pvp or WvW.

The pet would get for the duration of the skill 50% more speed (for 5 seconds I think) And the skill would get a long range like 250 Metres . I could imagine this skill on horn or GS! What do you think about it?

Another idea of me would be to make the ranger more “spiritual” and “magical”.
I think it would go well with him, because rangers already can call magical spirits (utility skills). This proves already that he has magical approaches.

• So my 2nd suggestion is:
  Give the Ranger a new “magical” weapon. Maybe a completely new one or a staff. The skills could call “nature spirits” (but not like the ulitity skills), these “spirits” help the ranger with attacking.

I see approaches on the GS skill 2/3 or sword skill 2/3. I find this idea of helping spirits on attacks very interesting and I think that we could still improve this idea a little more to gave the spirits a more imporant role in gameplay.

• 3rd:
  New Pets:

I heard alot about the wish of new pets for the ranger and I think this is a very important question!

The variety of tameable pets for rangers is not big today.
I think it would be very nice if we would get new tameable pets! I do not want completely new pets but already existing ones! Like a firefly (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Firefly) or an imp (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Fire_Imp) or a wurm (http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Jungle_Wurm_Hatchling). I hope that will come somedays!

So thank you for your attention and I like to hear comments from you or critics!

How about this, 20 point trait in Survivalist tree that gives you a certain amount of damage increased if you are NOT running a pet? That way players can avoid being punished for having a pet when the situation makes pets useless

When in game, I hardly ever play dungeons, or pvp, so most of my feedback is centered around playing wvw by roaming and in guild raids. I only take my ranger out for roaming and never for guild raids and this is due to the lack of a role for the ranger in a team based wvw environment.

A good game should cater for rewarding synchronised group play. At the end of the day nothing is more rewarding to me in game then heading out from warcamp with a group of approximately 20 and taking on enemy groups of double or size or more; and coming out on top. In fact it gets really fun when facing an equally skilled and synchronised opponent with even numbers and duking it out. Its really about being a team player and providing support to others, which is what makes a game a good game.

There are a few classes which excel in this synchronised play, however most of the medium armor classes do not fall into this category and there is good reason for this. They have no clear defined role which they can fulfill.

When I look at the ranger, there are hints of a role that is was meant to fulfill, but thats all. To me, it seems that the ranger was supposed to be in charge of crowd control by providing snares, freezes and immobs with areas of effect. Now this is a good idea, because its a role which has not yet been fully developed in wvw. However, the skills that provide these area of effects, either pigeon hole the ranger into having no escape skills (trapper) or provide escape skills with only a single aoe immobilise (survival/signet).

What I would like to see happen to the ranger is that it is given a proper toolkit to provide crowd control, in support of the team such that they can either evade an oncoming push or they can keep a number of enemy in a kill zone.

While I’m sure there are ifs and buts to the following, I would suggest this for getting better crowd control:

• Make muddy terrain a trap and remove the ground targeting.
• Predator’s instinct has its cooldown removed. The cripple it provides is now 5s.
• Change whirling defense such that it pulls an enemy once a pulse, increase the aoe range to 300.

Additionally, here are some small fixes on my personal wishlist:

• Might buff on call of the wild is now 3 stacks instead of 1.
• Make rampage as one a shout.
• Complete overhaul of search and rescue, which is a terrible skill.
• Channeled abilities can now be cast on the run and are no longer interrupted when casting (this includes: barrage, horn skills, traps, whirling defense etc).

Thanks Chris, you are awesome!

Area of Gameplay Distribution: PvE (90%) WvW(9%) PvP(1%)

Profession played the most: Engineer [although I have maxed out every profession besides Necromanecr]

Concise Feedback on Ranger:
—NOTE—I PLAY BERSERKER!!!—NOTE—
(For Tequatl & Dungeons/Fractals)
Are we a control class? Long Range? Healing? What exactly is our purpose in a team? This is an issue that has been plaguing the Ranger since the days of GW1, where we are built up to be a Jack-of-All-Trades, without the versatility of an Elementalist or Engineer/Ritualist.

Here are the main issues in my opinion that hold Ranger back:

1) Our weapon sets besides OH axe don’t do anything significant.
_*Main-Hand*
Sword:
Firstly, let me say this is my FAVORITE Ranger weapon. However… 111111111111111113evade1111111111111111. That sums up Sword in a nutshell. It deals damage… And damage… and damage… and damage. Kinda like Guardian 1h Sword, but without their extraordinary utility skills. I’m sure you’re already aware about the “sticking”/evade issue on 1h sword, so I’m not going to bother bringing that up. Instead, it’s the #2 skills bothers me. I believe the intention behind #2 skill is to leap and then range a foe, but in practice, it’s not needed anywhere in PvE. For example, bosses in FoTM boil down to mostly Melee or Range, with little reason to switch between the two. Why use the #2 skill anywhere? So instead, I suggest hitting two birds with one stone: “spice up” our 1h Sword by changing #2 to something else useful.

Axe:
Oh boy, where do I start… Useless? Just what is the point of this weapon’s existence? Is it Power, or Condition damage? AoE or Single Target? From my experience, the only times I ever used it were for when I wanted to use my Offhand weapons without the “stick” of 1h Sword, however the loss in damage was so awful… So.. pathetically awful… That I never touched MH Axe again. What MH Axe needs is firstly a more defined role, and secondly a damage buff. Third, and most importantly: MH Axe needs to synergize with OH weapons, where 1h Sword does not.

_*Off-Hand*
Torch:
When designing an OH weapon, the most important question to arise is: How can it synergize with MH weapons? Both the #4 and #5 are fairly similar and lackluster in PvE, as all they do is burn the enemy. The #5 Bonfire would be useful if the Ranger had more Blast Finishers to give himself Might, which he lacks on any of his MH weapons and Utilities. The #4 is in need of a total makeover, while the #5 needs more synergy. One idea I had was to make #4 a Condition-Removal.

Axe:
The best off-hand in the game, in my opinion. I wanted to highlight this, so that other weapons follow it as an example of a great weapon, with both damage and utility.

_*Two-Handed*
Shortbow:
111111111111111113evade11111111111111. Same issue as 1h sword, minus the awesome damage. Was nerfed to 900 range awhile ago, which made it even more lackluster compared to the Longbow. Just what is the point of this weapon? I have no ideas, but I do hope it is addressed. Even the newby Bearbows use Longbow instead of this miserable pile of skritt…

2) Trait compression
Too many traits are necessary just to make a basic build. 20 Marksmanship is necessary, for our niches of Eagle Eye, Spotter, and Piercing Arrows, while, 20 Skirmishing is always necessary just to make our pets deal decent damage (Pet Prowess and Companion’s Might). ALWAYS having to invest 40 trait points just to pull our weight doesn’t give the Ranger a lot of freedom. Some traits, such as Piercing Arrows, need to be moved down a line or combined with Eagle Eye, while other traits (Pet Prowess) shouldn’t have to exist in the first place, and those bonuses should be innate instead.

3) TRULY different pets
If Ranger is the “Pet Class”, why not give us pets with TRULY different abilities? What if instead, we had a pet that DOESN’T engage in combat, but instead buffs us and allies? Something like as long as it is alive, it would buff its owner’s damage by 25% and pulsate Protection for anyone within a 240 radius, but be INCREDIBLY fragile to damage?

4) Permastow
Sometimes we just want out Pet to GTFO, especially when a Thief uses Shadow Refuge. Maybe change the Stow function to stop only when we attack, rather than entering combat.

5) Utilities
Spirits activating their effects only once every 10 seconds is underwhelming, Spirit actives have too high recharge with underwhelming and low radius effects, Sharpening Stone and Lightning Reflexes have too high recharge, our signets shouldn’t force us to trait just to use their active, while traps are just low damage combo fields… (Granted, Spike Trap would be cool if made into a Blast Finisher)

TLDR; Our trait and skills do not have a significant enough impact in PvE. Our role in dungeons are undecided, yet we lack versatility outside 111111 spamming.

Erro.2784:

• Make muddy terrain a trap and remove the ground targeting.

This is a terrible idea ! Muddy Terrain is one of the only things that actually can redeem the ranger currently (in wvw).
Please Anet, don’t listen to this guy.

Fractals and dungeons- Less use of stacking. Stacking is fine but stacking for the entire encounter is not fine.

WvW- Servers need balance. EoTM proves that a balanced match is fun.

Erro.2784:

What I would like to see happen to the ranger is that it is given a proper toolkit to provide crowd control, in support of the team such that they can either evade an oncoming push or they can keep a number of enemy in a kill zone

Nice attempt in theory, but in addition to doing absolutely nothing for End-game PvE, it also fails to live up to your opening point about WvW as well where those of us who DID beat to 2-1 odds and route some Zergs, did so through stacking Stability and Condition shedding pretty much exactly like GvG. In GvG, you never had multiple Condition spammers either (hex spammers were kitten-way…. we don’t talk about that). It was very rare to ever see more a few spots going to Rangers / Dervishes / Necros / Sins once all the Badtouch/en-gen/S-way garbage was nerfed out of the lower rank matchups too.

Granted, these boons can be stripped by a well still but that further cements the point that Ranger itself has nothing to offer here even IF your view of things was carried its natural conclusion. None of the formats leave room for a ranger to be part of them. And it’s not the ranger that was designed wrong from the ground up. It was the formats.

As far as I see it, Ranger has just one problem.

Pets are completely unreliable.

There’s a reason why a huge number of rangers take the wolf – it has an AoE cc that’s at least somewhat reliable to use. The issue with pets isn’t so much lack of damage or lack of support, it’s the fact that what we do have in our pets is COMPLETELY unreliable. That moa will never heal me when I need him to. That devourer will tunnel away and evade just when I need him to DPSing his target. Our pets already have a ton of stuff in them, the main problem is we’re playing the RNG game anytime we want them to do what we want.

Bottom line is reliability. Ranger lacks it. Engineer became much stronger after some RNG was removed from his abilities. (Toss Elixir S, Transmute.) The same needs to happen with Ranger if he’s ever to become useful in high-level play. And all of the Ranger’s RNG comes from his pet. There’s no way a band-aid fix like some simple numbers tweaking is going to change that. If my pet can deal 30k damage, but he only does it ever other Tuesday, it’s still a garbage mechanic.

Wishful thinking time…
—-

There’s CC pets, healing pets, damage pets, support pets and tank pets. That addresses almost every sub-problem that the ranger has, such as team support and lack of CC. If pets could be made more reliable, all that would need following is simple number changes. What I’d like to see is fully controllable pets. Yes, my moa will now heal wherever I need him to, and he’ll give fury on-demand. It might be less powerful than when it was RNG, but if it’s fully reliable, it becomes that much more useful.

In balancing the Ranger and his pets, I’d also like Anet to keep in mind that the Ranger’s mechanic is not at all unique in its current incarnation. Any other class with summons gets pretty much the exact same functionality – Summon the pet, and after being summoned, the skill chains into a pet attack. For the Ranger’s mechanic to truly feel special, it would be great if control of the pet was explored more. No other class gets to specifically command their pet’s actions, so if that were brought to another level it would really feel great to play a Ranger.

That’s okay though, you can give us 5% more damage on Greatsword and call it a day. I know that’s all I can expect.

EverythingXen.1835:

I hope Ms. Murdock gets a lot of information from the AI programmers before she starts the thread on Monday, and sets as clear ground rules on it as possible.

Rangers are certain to win the vote, and I’d hate for the thread to waste time on Pet AI complaints/suggestions that have zero technical feasibility of ever being fixed/implemented.

I’d hate to see people spinning their wheels about “pet AI” when they have no idea what they’re talking about.

It’s not the AI, its the state of melee vs. ranged combat in GW2. If you’re playing melee, that pet is on you like crazy glue. If you’re playing ranged, it never touches you. That’s not an AI problem. The AI is performing just fine.

As far as PvE is concerned, make the pet dodge roll when you do. That’s all. Simple fix changes the entire QoL of the Ranger class in PvE.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Hey everyone,

Thanks for the feedback so far! I have some requests:

• Please keep the feedback focused on Ranger.
• In your feedback, please tell us what area of the game you play the most (PvE/WvW/sPvP).
  • If possible, include stats on how much you play in each of those areas too.
• Please include the profession you play the most, even if it isn’t Ranger.
• Most importantly, Pleased keep your feedback as concise as possible. Using special formatting is really nice if your post is a long one.

Thanks,

Allie

I play PVE the most, usually in the form of mapping and solo hunting champions for a challenge. IMO, the game mechanics are not suited to pvp gameplay; it’s far too spammy and haphazard. PvP just “feels messy”. Thus, I play PVE almost exclusively.

The profession I play the most is All Of Them. Sticking with just one gets boring so I have one of each.

Regarding the Ranger feedback, I have nothing to add to my first post (on page 1) so I will just include it here under a spoiler tag for convenient reference.

Fenrir.6183:

This is a terrible idea ! Muddy Terrain is one of the only things that actually can redeem the ranger currently (in wvw).
Please Anet, don’t listen to this guy.

Thanks for the feedback. Its actually more of buff than you realise, think it over some more.

ilr.9675:

Nice attempt in theory, but in addition to doing absolutely nothing for End-game PvE, it also fails to live up to your opening point about WvW as well where those of us who DID beat to 2-1 odds and route some Zergs, did so through stacking Stability and Condition shedding pretty much exactly like GvG. In GvG, you never had multiple Condition spammers either (hex spammers were kitten-way…. we don’t talk about that). It was very rare to ever see more a few spots going to Rangers / Dervishes / Necros / Sins once all the Badtouch/en-gen/S-way garbage was nerfed out of the lower rank matchups too.

Granted, these boons can be stripped by a well still but that further cements the point that Ranger itself has nothing to offer here even IF your view of things was carried its natural conclusion. None of the formats leave room for a ranger to be part of them. And it’s not the ranger that was designed wrong from the ground up. It was the formats.

Its funny that you discuss how to beat zergs, in fact its very recognisable. I run with a guild that prides itself on taking on number far greater than our own, in open wvw and field an excellent GvG setup. Its actually from these fights that I have made the observation, that there is a lack for a class that can effectively and efficiently lock a group in a kill zone. Ranger has some abilities that resemble this: muddy terrain, spike trap, entangle, frozen trap, krytan drakehound f2, but none of them are near as effective as they should be. By making them more effective you are providing a crucial role for rangers in wvw without making a complete overhaul of the class.

I don’t play high end pve too often, but the occasions that I did I never felt the ranger was underpowered. Having said that, since I do not plat it often, I undoubtedly miss some of the nuances that others will pick up on. I leave that feedback up to them.

Aegael.6938:

As far as I see it, Ranger has just one problem.

Pets are completely unreliable.

There’s a reason why a huge number of rangers take the wolf – it has an AoE cc that’s at least somewhat reliable to use.

They take the wolf for perma-regen and the fact that its other two attacks are leaps. Leaps that get it to actually land attacks on kiting targets. Which returns to my original point, ranged vs. melee is the real issue. Not AI.

Aegael.6938:

The issue with pets isn’t so much lack of damage or lack of support, it’s the fact that what we do have in our pets is COMPLETELY unreliable. That moa will never heal me when I need him to. That devourer will tunnel away and evade just when I need him to DPSing his target. Our pets already have a ton of stuff in them, the main problem is we’re playing the RNG game anytime we want them to do what we want.

The problem with Rangers is that most of them are completely unsure about how exactly to use the pets and how they will react to specific skills. Relying on AI you don’t understand can seem completely random and will never be used by the player as it was originally intended.

What the Ranger needs is better control over his pet. A better understanding of the AI itself will help, but if players expect it to perform in certain ways its usually best if the player is forced play it that way.

I would be all for letting F1 through F4 control pet skills. Then just remove the Ranger’s swap. Not everything needs to have the Warrior’s original intended design of weapon swapping guys. By all appearances of the Ranger’s UI, it looks like that was the original intent of the pet, but then they got all ‘swap’-happy and gave everyone and everything a reason to swap…including Ranger pets.

That being said, trust me on this, your pet isn’t doing things when it’s not supposed to. It’s using the skills in it’s own best interest. Player control could end up being worse in that respect. For instance, that devourer may not have been hitting the target when you wanted it to because it used an evade, but would it be around to hit the target at all if it didn’t?

Aegael.6938:

In balancing the Ranger and his pets, I’d also like Anet to keep in mind that the Ranger’s mechanic is not at all unique in its current incarnation. Any other class with summons gets pretty much the exact same functionality – Summon the pet, and after being summoned, the skill chains into a pet attack. For the Ranger’s mechanic to truly feel special, it would be great if control of the pet was explored more. No other class gets to specifically command their pet’s actions, so if that were brought to another level it would really feel great to play a Ranger.

This is a major point I will concede on. The Ranger’s class ability is absolutely not unique. However, you may very well get a Guardian-esuqe answer from the devs about how other things make up for it and blah, blah, blah.

It would be nice if all classes had a mechanic that was unique. While they’re at it, maybe they’ll give the Guardian’s signe…I mean…“Virtues” a looking at.

Erro.2784:

Fenrir.6183:

This is a terrible idea ! Muddy Terrain is one of the only things that actually can redeem the ranger currently (in wvw).
Please Anet, don’t listen to this guy.

Thanks for the feedback. Its actually more of buff than you realise, think it over some more.

How is it a buff? Muddy Terrain is basically a trap with built-in Trapper’s Expertise PLUS 50% longer range.

Sarision.6347:

Erro.2784:

Fenrir.6183:

This is a terrible idea ! Muddy Terrain is one of the only things that actually can redeem the ranger currently (in wvw).
Please Anet, don’t listen to this guy.

Thanks for the feedback. Its actually more of buff than you realise, think it over some more.

How is it a buff? Muddy Terrain is basically a trap with built-in Trapper’s Expertise PLUS 50% longer range.

You could trait it. Greater range and you could throw it down before a fight breaks out to get your cd’s back earlier.
Also, if you convert muddy terrain to a trap but keep the stats it has right now, you could buff the other traps to the same amount.

Ok you have a point on throwing it down before a fight, but changing it to trap means losing the ground-target which you get it back by spending an extra trait, and even then you still loose 1/3 range.

Sarision.6347:

How is it a buff? Muddy Terrain is basically a trap with built-in Trapper’s Expertise PLUS 50% longer range.

By making it a trap, muddy terrain will be unblockable and it will open the ability up to the effect of trap potency. In combination, it will greatly aid in locking in players in a kill zone. Additionally, by making it a trap, it will allow for flexibility of play when you want to run with melee ball or stay on perimeter.

Adding in to the discussion on pets, my opinion is that they are in a good place at the moment for solo play, not for wvw. That being said, I would rather have focus placed on improving the ranger itself rather than the pets. Creating a role for it in wvw (whether its the one I outlined above, or something else) is the most important topic the devs need to address.

Erro.2784:

By making them more effective you are providing a crucial role for rangers in wvw without making a complete overhaul of the class.

They can’t be “made more effective” though. There isn’t that sort of depth in the system.

And even if they were given the ability to override the over-abundance of counters to them, players would just come to resent it as much as Immobilizer Spam or Stealth-Stomping because it has no accessible counter for the individual caught in it. It doesn’t leave room for timing, or adaptation. It’s just another hard control that takes “skill” out of the equation, often in a setting that was already purely participation/population based. And that’s the OPPOSITE of what we want as players who enjoy the ability survive and even win when fairly outnumbered.

ilr.9675:

It’s just another hard control that takes “skill” out of the equation, often in a setting that was already purely participation/population based. And that’s the OPPOSITE of what we want as players who enjoy the ability survive and even win when fairly outnumbered.

Hard control with no dps, does not take skill out of the equation. Setting up the ranger to compliment other classes is exactly what this game is about: team play. Its about creating proper synergy between classes and rewarding working as a team, rather than bringing more numbers to a fight.

I play most of the time PvE and sometimes a little bit of PvP (tournemants or rankings are not in my interest, just having fun against a player) . WvW is almost never played.

My main is a necromancer in open world, team related (like fractals or dungeons) is it my warrior.

Fractals: I like fractals actually especially the newly added mai trin and molten fractal boss fights. I don not like the concept of agony though: it totaly negates health or armor promoting a zerkerish playstyle but then again some of the mechanics promote a bit more defensive playstyle so it’s not a big deal in my opinion.

pvp and wvw: Those are not my things so I will not comment on them.

Ranger:
This may sounds a bit strange but a big problem to me is how the ranger feels. It feels like “you or your pet” instead of “you and your pet” and this why:

- The passive of trait lines only affect either the player or the pet.
- most traits affect either the player or the pet in a positve way.
- sigils, gear,… only affects the ranger.
- I also see a lot of animal cruelty traits/skills like empathic bond/“protect me”/“signet of renwal”
- pets are unresponsive to the ranger
-…

I hope that the ranger balance moves from this difficult to balance “you or your pet” ranger towards a “you and your pet” ranger. Making a pet (partially) scale with it’s user would be a good idea (maybe even in the damage modifiers).

Wvw 90%+

Ranger: pets will never work in large scale combats or at defend/attack situations. Pets only good against none moving, single targets.

My ideas:
- stove pet for a brutal amount of damage buff (warriors have nearly +50% dps with same power setup)
-change class mechanic (you guys done it with guardian) maybe something like elementalist attuments.
-f1: the good, old pet style as now
-f2: lonely wolf. No pet, extra stats
-f3: trapper. Change skills to traps (engis have cool granades, bombs for 1 utility)
-f4: party buffer. Share buffs depend what pet do you stoved

- traits/utilitys need a massive rework. Why we need to spend 30 points if we want to use a skill? (Signets) sometimes 30 points still not enough (shouts whats not shouts)

- We dont have real cc. Roots can be dodged, destroyed or cured or you just port out from it.
- Rampage as one just a stability in wvw with a very long cd.

- weapons need clear roles. Every weapons have a bit of dmg, cc, condition, aoe but just a bit. We need a real aoe, cc etc… weapon. Longbow and greatsword are cloce to be good. But low dps as hell and that annoying barrage… Sometimes retailation kill you when you shoot the zerg (or thives hunt you down while channelling). Ss skillrs are fun but uncontrollable. We have only 1v1 weapons except axe what is a joke in wvw. The projectile should fly as a boomerang and should follow the ground. I think only our offhands are ok.

-traits: opening strike is a joke. 3 trait for a critical and a short vulnerability + a 30 point slot if u want to refresh it and you can do it only with 1 specific skill. Shouts are jokes too. The regen and swiftness is just lol and only buff your pet. Maybe for 5 points but not for 30. Signets need 30 points if u want to use them. Why 1 trap 1 utility slot? Engis use bombs, nades in packs. Spirits will never work in big combats, sorry. Same problem as pets, minions. We should stove them for passive (maybe if u click on the active they dissappear and give a loooong buff for your allis)

Here’s my contribution :

That you’re asking what’s the class people want changed the most is disturbing. Little enough people play this game’s pvp consistently and you ask the majority of the player base, aka very casual pvp players, if not first timers that only play wvw and pve what they think should be changed balance wise. This isn’t about democracy or something, this is about the pvp balance of a game that’s been out for a year and a half now and truth being you are as clueless as most of the people are when it comes to pvp balance, so clueless that you ask for what people THINK WOUD BE A GOOD IDEA. If you’d have listened to top pvp players 1 year ago in the PTS instead of making excuses and hanging on to kittened concepts or changes, it would probably not be this way.

I have no realistic approach to fixing this game. The balance is too kittened up and it’d require a complete revamp that is lightyears away from being realistic. IF you even had the right people to make something happen, which you don’t. You only have quote on quote “casual competitive pvpers” in the devs team. Really funny.

Actually, one concrete example : Will you ever admit the immobilise stacking is a bad idea ? And how long will it take you ? And will you even revert it to what it was before ? Or will you keep trying to justify that it’s a beneficial change for the game and makes it a better experience ? I’m curious. Prove me wrong, I’ll be happy.

PART 1

PvP-45% (Ranger,Warrior)
PvE-30% (Ranger,Warrior,Guardian)
WvW-25% (Elementalist,Ranger,Guardian)

Mainly used profession: RANGER.

Signets: I don’t understand why 3 of 4 signet skills affect only the pet and not the Ranger as well, that’s not fair at all considering other classes’ signet skills.
Rangers need to invest 30 points in Marksmanship in order to use 3 skills properly (talking about “Signet of the wild”, “Signet of stone” and “Signet of the hunt” while granting no bonuses for the active use of “Signet of renewal”).
Personally, I would replace “signet of the beastmaster” trait (XI) with something else and make all signets affect Ranger AND pet by default;
if this is not possible at all, I think that ADDING the effect “maintain the passive effects of signets when you activate them” to “signet of beastmaster” trait would at least compensate the unfairness of Ranger’s signet skills compared to all the other classes’ signets.

“Beastmaster’s might” trait is useless as it is right now: to make it viable you should buff the stacks at least to 8-10 per signet activation in my opinion, or make it something like warrior’s “deep strike” trait.

“Eagle eye” trait should increase Shortbow range as well, adding the possibility to regain 1200 range with SB if traited properly.

“Tail wind” Skirmishing minor trait: making this trait working even out of combat (like “speedy kit” trait from engi already does) would be a great decision, adding a lot more mobility to rangers (mainly in PvP) without making it a perma-swiftness trait (9 sec CD).

“Fortifying bond” minor trait: maybe you should consider the boons sharing in both directions, so that the boons a pet gets are shared with Ranger as well, and move it to Grandmaster (possibly moving it to Beastmastery or Skirmishing or Wilderness Survival trait line).

The “Skirmishing” trait line has very few good traits: if you’re not interested in traps or in “Quick draw” (X) trait, I don’t see why I should invest in this “damage orientated” line since there are no good traits for dps right now, apart from the stats it gives you (Precision and Crit. Damage). I would consider moving some traits here from other trait lines: a suggestion may be to move here all the “bows traits” making this trait line the one you want to invest points in if you’re interested in bows.

As a short time solution for the pet AI problem I would increase the attack speed of pets: what about the “agility training” Skirmishing trait (VI) would not only give a 30% increased movement speed for pets but also a…let’s say 20-30% attack speed for them as well? I would also increase the radius of the pet single target attacks, so your opponent could no longer evade pet’s attacks just by running around.

Traps:
The skirmishing trait “trapper’s expertise” gives you only a 600 range for traps making them not so useful in a condition orientated build, forcing you to stay melee in order to deal damage with them; considering that a necro conditionmancer has a lot more AOEs than ranger and that they all have a 1200 range why should I go with a Ranger trapper build instead of a necro condition build?
If you’re trying to make the traps more viable in game, I think you should not only add the combo fields to the trap skills but also improve the range of them to 900 at least (by traiting “trapper’s expertise” of course). You should also consider adding some more buffs to traps skills and traits (something like ripping boons from opponents in the trap radius for example, or cleaning conditions), making it worth to spend points in a trait line that buffs your precision and crit. damage (really not the stats I’m looking for in a condi. build).

PART 2

Considering to add more active remove condition skills or effects is necessary: if you don’t want to add too many new effects to skills, then you should consider moving “Emphatic bond” from Grandmaster tier to Master, allowing more build diversity without forcing a Ranger to spend 30 points in “Wilderness Survival” in order to take the ONLY efficient remove condition possibility there is for this class. I would not nerf this trait even if moving it to Master tier since it is always dependent on whether the pet is alive or not (after the bug fix of course). Making this skill more accessible would make other player think in advance if it is a good thing to ignore completely the pet or maybe it is better to kill him first, before focusing on Ranger (in PvP and WvW, even if it far too easy to kill pets in WvW).

Reducing the damages a pet takes from AoEs in WvW would be another thing to consider: maybe adding a permanent buff to pets (only when entering WvW) that grants them a % reduction from all AoE damages or from damages in general.

“Beastmastery” trait line: there are a lot of useless traits here: VII, VIII, IX; I’ve never seen a Ranger using this traits, never ever since release: replacing them with something new should be considered. Grandmaster traits of this trait line are also far too weak to be so deep in this line: that’s why no one goes 30 in beastmastery anymore. Reworking this trait line is mandatory in my opinion. All traits in this line have so little impact in a fight that are a total waste of points by now.

“Master’s bond” trait (II): I would consider to have the bond reset when the Ranger is downed or killed, not the pet. At least make the bond stay even if pet is deactivated or swapped, this would make the trait a good choice for both dps and bunker builds.

“Heal as One” healing skill: I really think this skill could be reworked so it becomes a condi. removal healing skill: maybe adding the effect that condition duration is reduced by 100% for N seconds after the use of this skill. The effect would be equal to warrior’s “Berserker Stance” while being different from any other healing/condition cleansing skill in the game. It would balance a bit the fact that Ranger has very few options to counter conditions. Improving the efficiency of this skill would make Rangers think twice before going with “Healing Spring” 100% of the times.

PART 3

WEAPONS: there are 2 weapons that really need to be looked at and improved, Longbow and Greatsword, these are my suggestions:

LONGBOW:
*1 (Long range shot): adding a few more damages at max range (1000+) would be nice (10-20%?) or maybe the Cripple condi. on a successful hit.
*2 (Rapid fire): due to the fact that the cast time is insanely long (4½ sec) and the skill is incredibly easy to dodge, I would add a 5-10% increase damage PER hit, at least, making this a real burst skill. I would NOT decrease the cast time since it would just make easier to dodge this skill.
*3 (Hunter’s shot): why not adding some effect to the skill? Like gaining N stacks of might for N seconds on a successful hit while invisible after the use of this skill (only with this skill, not every time stealth is gained)? This would grant Ranger an option to gain access to might since this class has very few option to gain such an important buff.
*4 (Point blank shot): making this skill hitting all targets in a straight line (even without “piercing arrows” traited) will make it too OP? or making it a channeled skill so it deals more damages the more you charge the attack.
*5 (Barrage): it would be awesome having the cast time reduced a bit (1¾ instead of 2¾) and the damages increased a bit because, by now, it deals a very little damage more than just auto-attack (5-10% increased damage would be enough in my opinion).

GREATSWORD
*1 (Slash – chain): I would add effect on a successful hit. Like 5-8 seconds of Vulnerability or Weakness on hit maybe?
*1 (Slice – chain): same as above or inverted: if Slash has Vulnerability than Slice has Weakness.
*2 (Maul): maybe reducing the visibility of the animation or the cast time (from ¾ second to ½ second for example) would help to land the strike because it is very easy to dodge by now. Or, you could make this skill a 2 hit skill and halfing the damage of both hit, making the first strike hit immediately when you activate the skill and the second one normally after the cast time: let’s say Maul now deals 400 dmage in total (by reading the description of the skill); with 2 hits, every attack should deal 200 damages. By doing so you would make the skill less easy to dodge entirely, making Maul a viable and reliable burst skill.
*3 (Swoop): why not adding a 7-8 seconds of swiftness for the Ranger after the leap (even if it does not hit a target)? Would give a lot more mobility to the weapon, considering the fact that the builds in which you’re using a Greatsword aren’t usally very mobile.

I know that I suggested a lot of things, some of them may be too strong or too drastic, some of them could be new and some others already sad by other players before me but I am merely offering something to think about, hoping that developers will think about changes never considered before.

Erro.2784:

Sarision.6347:

How is it a buff? Muddy Terrain is basically a trap with built-in Trapper’s Expertise PLUS 50% longer range.

By making it a trap, muddy terrain will be unblockable and it will open the ability up to the effect of trap potency. In combination, it will greatly aid in locking in players in a kill zone. Additionally, by making it a trap, it will allow for flexibility of play when you want to run with melee ball or stay on perimeter.

Changing it to trap will not do anything in locking in players in killing zone, unless you’re willing to reduce its cast time.

The only benefit of changing it to trap is the condition increase from Trap Potency, but that means going 30 in Skirmishing, not to mention you also have to trait for Trap Expertise just to get 2/3 of the original range back. My build consists of 30/10/30 so I don’t have the luxury of having the trap traits, and even if the trap traits are moved to WS, I wouldn’t take them as I have more important traits to take.

PVE: Currently, there isn’t much use of defensive stats in PVE, I’d like to see the dungeons in FOTM which certain level would ask for certain Healing Power or Toughness or HP pool to finish, currently the problem of Berserker meta will not be solved by nerf the crit damage. Defensive stats really needs to be more obvious in PVE when u choose them.

WvW: 7 weeks is an odd length for 6 team match up rotation, I really want each world/team have the same chance to meet other teams, as a TC player, we met JQ like 6 times and like only 3 times with BG. This isn’t equally fair chance.

Ranger: I am not a ranger player, but the reason I don’t want ranger in my organized group is that ranger melee damage is far from competitive. While ranger’s range attack is OK, but if u are far from your team, u won’t get stacks of might and fury, so buff ranger’s melee attack may made me consider include a ranger in my organized dungeon group.