Guild Wars 2

With rangers at the moment, they don’t have a defined purpose in WvW. They’re great roamers, defenders, and golem pilots. However – I think that one simple change could make a huge difference, and give rangers a critical role in WvW.

Rangers are hunters, trackers, and conceptually, a very interesting class which resonates with many players – however, their lore as trackers and hunters does not extend into the game in WvW.

Getting to the point -

Give or adjust a grandmaster trait so that Rangers can see through stealth.

this would give rangers a very useful utility, for small groups, they’ll be able to spot the thieves and mesmers who give many people huge headaches.

They would have more utility in larger groups as well.

your suggestion can be solved by simply making Sic’em apply the Revealed in the AOE of the shout, with a max of 3-5 targets. Done! anti stealth class created.

That’s a good option too, but I was thinking that it would be a trait, could call it Scanning or Eagle Eye or something,

Would be more useful if say

- An enemy zerg is charging you, and they start chaining mass invis and do something unpredictable, like charge at a 90 degree angle from you to make a flanking strike -

and the rangers can see that happening and inform the commander that a flank is incoming.

Eagle Eye is already a trait, it adds +5% damage to longbow and harpoons and adds +300 range.

Rangers already have a revealed on Sic’em.

RANGERS DO NOT NEED MORE TRAITS. It is bad enough as is to have to trait for anything at all to work properly.

Any “buffs” for rangers, should be made through changes to utilities, weapons and or pet utlities/AI attack chain.

Rangers have a role in wvw, we can roam and cause havoc behind enemy lines. If you want a more defined role in zerging then you may have to wait a while or get very comfortable with the class. Pets and countless AOE rings generally don’t mix well and due to a lack heavy AOE, zergs are not ranger’s forté. However like I said, we can roam, snipe, harass just as good and usually better than other classes.

If you want to get in front of a zerg and swing your greatsword, sure, but thats not where we’re meant to be. Trait for max damage bonus, grab a longbow, take a few steps back and snipe a squishy backliner, that’s more a ranger’s role for zerging.
Keep in mind though WvW =/= Zerging, there’s much more to it than that.

Personally, I’d like to see them improve the ground speed of the Ranger. Rangers should be the fastest class in the game and make exceptional scouts.

Now that alone wouldn’t be a real valuable role, but it would give the class an identity to build off of.

We could then expand it further… what would scouts do in a large battle? They’d probably find favorable terrain to have their allies attack from or unfavorable terrain for their allies to ambush others.

In game terms, they could give us some way to spread AE vulnerability stacks around. They could give us a way to counter stability. They could just give us burst and AE and call it a day…

An example to counter stability could be to change Entangle from a PBAE root on a long cooldown to a ‘wall of thorns’ on a much shorter cooldown. This way we could throw up a wall that would immobilize people briefly since stability won’t affect immobilize.

How you make it so they run through it and are immobilized briefly but can continue running later as opposed to hitting the wall and being stuck indefinitely? /shrug…. They could make it so players who run into the wall get a condition and after 2 seconds the condition ‘ticks’ and causes the player to become immobilized for 2 seconds.

But anything could work. Just think about what the current meta is running, consider why the current meta is winning, and give the Ranger something to upset the balance of the current meta. Anything to stop hammer trains at this point would be a good thing.

melee wise, we are fine at speed. We should have a speed while wielding bows added to one of our existing traits.

Entangle could be changed to a “thorn wall”. You enter and wines grasp ahold of you for 2 seconds. No AOE limit, but the “duration” of the people running into the wall is fixed. Wines HP are buffed a little, so that you can nuke them down with a 100b or something, but generally, you would be stuck for 2 sec. I would argue that a “line” immob, working like other line skills (line of warding, spectral wall).

Personally, i’d prefer them to do 5 things;
1 – move Sic’em and Guard to F1 and F3 respectively. Add a 15 seconds ICD to the effect from the former shouts, while the pet command effect will be possible to use at any moment (kinda similar to how trait effects linked to skills [invigorating bond etc] ICD’s work).
2 – add 2 new shouts; 1 gives AOE stability and heals for a tiny amount (personal suggestion; 4 sec stab and 700 HP heal with a 35(28) seconds CD).
1 gives boon corruption, turning 2 boons into cripple and weakness (personal suggestion; 6 seconds cripple, 6 seconds weakness. 25(20) seconds CD)
3 – Pet F2 effect overhaul. Most F2’s need a complete overhaul of the effects themselves, the rest needs a serious reduction in casting time and CD
4 – Give pets a dynamic boost to toughness and vitality depending on enemies nearby:
Personal suggestions;
10 enemies – +15% Toughness and vitality
20 enemies – +30% toughness and vitality
30 enemies – +45% toughness and vitality
40 enemies – +60% toughness and vitality
50 enemies – +75% toughness and vitality
60 enemies – +90% toughness and vitality

5 – Make Healing Spring add +5 seconds to all active boons (except regeneration) to players within the field. (making it the best waterfield in game without any doubt EVER)

i kind of feel the same way about my power necromancer sometimes. although in DS i become the best sniper in the game(weird)other than that, i find myself asking if i can do anything but whittle down the squishies from a distance. our supposed lore is that we’re dark casters and summoners that command the dead…but not in gw2. we’re more so the ball on the tee for warrior golf enthusiasts.
Ranger too is in a weird spot, rapid fire should be replaced with something like warrior’s killshot. not to mention pets AI works like a commodore 64 trying to run skyrim. plus the active condition cleanses on ranger are tied to a heal, and a grandmaster trait. i’ve found myself reluctant to play my ranger in wvw a lot because of this, with one active mass-cleanse the ranger is pretty vulnerable to conditions, so anyone who’s said that ranger’s role is not in the middle of condi bomb zergs was right.

The real problem of ranger in WvW is this class is not designed for a competitive purpose/level.
Ranger can do perfectly fine when your zerg overwhelming the others, range can make it better;
While your group get wiped, ranger die as the others too.
However, while in a close fight, especially an well-organized fight, ranger can DO NOTHING.
Use a maxed ranged LG to shoot ? Thief will take care of you.
Stay range + Barrage to a packed group? Retaliation will take care of you.
Use melee weapon and run with melee group? Either do no damage or have no survial.
Therefore, there is just simply no room for a ranger to stay.
That’s the issue.

I will prefer more traits like stealth revealing and buff removers.

Then we need more useful traits. No only-for-pigs-traits or only-for-birds-traits. and plz no must-have-traits like penetrating arrows for bows ( it’s really strong, but you must invest in it to use the bow in a proper way) or like the nature spirit-traits. The last one needs some improvements too. For example the spirits die, when you enter/leave water -.-

And i want to select my pet by appearance. In my opinion, there are too many useless pets/petskills.

“Guarding” pets should ignore stealth, and attack players that enter their area.

It would be nice to have longbow range, pierce, and speed traits, instead of just two out of three.

…but mostly it would be nice to stow a pet and get a buff, or give us new pets that don’t attack, but instead give the player a buff.

Like a little forest fairy that cures conditions, or gives you a damage boost to make up for the loss of the pet… or half the damage the pet would do…

…but mostly rangers are just boring.

Prysin.8542:

melee wise, we are fine at speed. We should have a speed while wielding bows added to one of our existing traits.

Entangle could be changed to a “thorn wall”. You enter and wines grasp ahold of you for 2 seconds. No AOE limit, but the “duration” of the people running into the wall is fixed. Wines HP are buffed a little, so that you can nuke them down with a 100b or something, but generally, you would be stuck for 2 sec. I would argue that a “line” immob, working like other line skills (line of warding, spectral wall).

Personally, i’d prefer them to do 5 things;
1 – move Sic’em and Guard to F1 and F3 respectively. Add a 15 seconds ICD to the effect from the former shouts, while the pet command effect will be possible to use at any moment (kinda similar to how trait effects linked to skills [invigorating bond etc] ICD’s work).
2 – add 2 new shouts; 1 gives AOE stability and heals for a tiny amount (personal suggestion; 4 sec stab and 700 HP heal with a 35(28) seconds CD).
1 gives boon corruption, turning 2 boons into cripple and weakness (personal suggestion; 6 seconds cripple, 6 seconds weakness. 25(20) seconds CD)
3 – Pet F2 effect overhaul. Most F2’s need a complete overhaul of the effects themselves, the rest needs a serious reduction in casting time and CD
4 – Give pets a dynamic boost to toughness and vitality depending on enemies nearby:
Personal suggestions;
10 enemies – +15% Toughness and vitality
20 enemies – +30% toughness and vitality
30 enemies – +45% toughness and vitality
40 enemies – +60% toughness and vitality
50 enemies – +75% toughness and vitality
60 enemies – +90% toughness and vitality

5 – Make Healing Spring add +5 seconds to all active boons (except regeneration) to players within the field. (making it the best waterfield in game without any doubt EVER)

That healing spring idea is pretty cool, but the pet scaling thing could be done a bit differently. Instead of boosting their stats, I would say just make them take 70% less damage from AOE attacks on all game modes. Because pets don’t have a dodge function unless you slot guard or time F3 right (which stops your pet from attacking thus lowering you dps) they usually get hit by lots of AOE. Lets hope Anet sees some of these ideas though, merging sick em and guard with the F skills would make BM builds a lot more fun.

Ezeriel.9574:

“Guarding” pets should ignore stealth, and attack players that enter their area.

It would be nice to have longbow range, pierce, and speed traits, instead of just two out of three.

…but mostly it would be nice to stow a pet and get a buff, or give us new pets that don’t attack, but instead give the player a buff.

Like a little forest fairy that cures conditions, or gives you a damage boost to make up for the loss of the pet… or half the damage the pet would do…

…but mostly rangers are just boring.

Every pet should have such passive skills, if you change its status to passive. There are enough situation (especially in the new boss fights) where your pet is a burden for the group/the tactic. Then we need a strong passive pet mechanic without exchanging the pet.

Lightsbane.9012:

i’ve found myself reluctant to play my ranger in wvw a lot because of this, with one active mass-cleanse the ranger is pretty vulnerable to conditions, so anyone who’s said that ranger’s role is not in the middle of condi bomb zergs was right.

A point to the chagrin of any Guild Wars 1 player… are the devs forgetting one of ranger’s most interesting elite skills?
http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/Melandru's_Resilience

warriorjrd.8695:

Prysin.8542:

melee wise, we are fine at speed. We should have a speed while wielding bows added to one of our existing traits.

Entangle could be changed to a “thorn wall”. You enter and wines grasp ahold of you for 2 seconds. No AOE limit, but the “duration” of the people running into the wall is fixed. Wines HP are buffed a little, so that you can nuke them down with a 100b or something, but generally, you would be stuck for 2 sec. I would argue that a “line” immob, working like other line skills (line of warding, spectral wall).

Personally, i’d prefer them to do 5 things;
1 – move Sic’em and Guard to F1 and F3 respectively. Add a 15 seconds ICD to the effect from the former shouts, while the pet command effect will be possible to use at any moment (kinda similar to how trait effects linked to skills [invigorating bond etc] ICD’s work).
2 – add 2 new shouts; 1 gives AOE stability and heals for a tiny amount (personal suggestion; 4 sec stab and 700 HP heal with a 35(28) seconds CD).
1 gives boon corruption, turning 2 boons into cripple and weakness (personal suggestion; 6 seconds cripple, 6 seconds weakness. 25(20) seconds CD)
3 – Pet F2 effect overhaul. Most F2’s need a complete overhaul of the effects themselves, the rest needs a serious reduction in casting time and CD
4 – Give pets a dynamic boost to toughness and vitality depending on enemies nearby:
Personal suggestions;
10 enemies – +15% Toughness and vitality
20 enemies – +30% toughness and vitality
30 enemies – +45% toughness and vitality
40 enemies – +60% toughness and vitality
50 enemies – +75% toughness and vitality
60 enemies – +90% toughness and vitality

5 – Make Healing Spring add +5 seconds to all active boons (except regeneration) to players within the field. (making it the best waterfield in game without any doubt EVER)

That healing spring idea is pretty cool, but the pet scaling thing could be done a bit differently. Instead of boosting their stats, I would say just make them take 70% less damage from AOE attacks on all game modes. Because pets don’t have a dodge function unless you slot guard or time F3 right (which stops your pet from attacking thus lowering you dps) they usually get hit by lots of AOE. Lets hope Anet sees some of these ideas though, merging sick em and guard with the F skills would make BM builds a lot more fun.

if you give it “resistance” to AOE, then first they have to define AOE as AOE damage. That means giving a new damage and resistance value to every NPC, every player, every destructible object and every event.
It also means that the pet would utterly destroy any classes that relies on AOE in 1v1 settings. Necromancers, Elementalists, trap rangers, hambow warriors.
the pet would just laugh at these, even without points in BM, they would barely do any damage to the pet at all.

This is why raising their stats dynamically is the better options in terms of balance. Because it would favor BM and non BM equally. While any form of resistance would either have to be “flat” or “increasing with BM points”. both of which causes issues with zerg builds.

Prysin.8542:

warriorjrd.8695:

Prysin.8542:

melee wise, we are fine at speed. We should have a speed while wielding bows added to one of our existing traits.

Entangle could be changed to a “thorn wall”. You enter and wines grasp ahold of you for 2 seconds. No AOE limit, but the “duration” of the people running into the wall is fixed. Wines HP are buffed a little, so that you can nuke them down with a 100b or something, but generally, you would be stuck for 2 sec. I would argue that a “line” immob, working like other line skills (line of warding, spectral wall).

Personally, i’d prefer them to do 5 things;
1 – move Sic’em and Guard to F1 and F3 respectively. Add a 15 seconds ICD to the effect from the former shouts, while the pet command effect will be possible to use at any moment (kinda similar to how trait effects linked to skills [invigorating bond etc] ICD’s work).
2 – add 2 new shouts; 1 gives AOE stability and heals for a tiny amount (personal suggestion; 4 sec stab and 700 HP heal with a 35(28) seconds CD).
1 gives boon corruption, turning 2 boons into cripple and weakness (personal suggestion; 6 seconds cripple, 6 seconds weakness. 25(20) seconds CD)
3 – Pet F2 effect overhaul. Most F2’s need a complete overhaul of the effects themselves, the rest needs a serious reduction in casting time and CD
4 – Give pets a dynamic boost to toughness and vitality depending on enemies nearby:
Personal suggestions;
10 enemies – +15% Toughness and vitality
20 enemies – +30% toughness and vitality
30 enemies – +45% toughness and vitality
40 enemies – +60% toughness and vitality
50 enemies – +75% toughness and vitality
60 enemies – +90% toughness and vitality

5 – Make Healing Spring add +5 seconds to all active boons (except regeneration) to players within the field. (making it the best waterfield in game without any doubt EVER)

That healing spring idea is pretty cool, but the pet scaling thing could be done a bit differently. Instead of boosting their stats, I would say just make them take 70% less damage from AOE attacks on all game modes. Because pets don’t have a dodge function unless you slot guard or time F3 right (which stops your pet from attacking thus lowering you dps) they usually get hit by lots of AOE. Lets hope Anet sees some of these ideas though, merging sick em and guard with the F skills would make BM builds a lot more fun.

if you give it “resistance” to AOE, then first they have to define AOE as AOE damage. That means giving a new damage and resistance value to every NPC, every player, every destructible object and every event.
It also means that the pet would utterly destroy any classes that relies on AOE in 1v1 settings. Necromancers, Elementalists, trap rangers, hambow warriors.
the pet would just laugh at these, even without points in BM, they would barely do any damage to the pet at all.

This is why raising their stats dynamically is the better options in terms of balance. Because it would favor BM and non BM equally. While any form of resistance would either have to be “flat” or “increasing with BM points”. both of which causes issues with zerg builds.

True, in 1v1s it may become too powerful, i’m just wondering if the HP/toughness increase would be enough to handle the full on AOE spam a blob can produce. It’s a good suggestion though, there’s no question pets need some kind of buff when it comes to zergs, but not only defensively. It’d be nice if we had a pet that had an F2 that maybe dropped some kind of high damaging AOE attack. Right now we have spiders and murrellow that use AOE, but the damage from those is minimal, they’re more for conditions.

I saw a suggestion a long time ago of giving rangers a gorilla pet that had some CC. It’s F2 would be something like allowing the ranger to give the gorilla an AOE target and it leaped there for a knockdown/stun or damage. The increased survivability of pets is a good step, but I feel we need a pet that has some AOE damage capability.

it wouldnt be enough for you to tank the damage entirely. Its kinda like running PVT ranger. Sure you can eat all the AOE, but if you do not heal/get out of it, it will still kill you.

EDIT:
Personally, what i would like is for ALL devourer pets to have AOE ranged attacks. They are perfect for the job. Just PLEASE give me pets with ranged AOE F2’s

Hamster.4861:

Give or adjust a grandmaster trait so that Rangers can see through stealth.

That would be so ridiculously overpowered that Warriors need a GM trait that makes them immune to ongoing damage to stay king of the game.

gm trait to see through stealth? lol, OP

they should make muddy terrain apply revealed for 1s to anyone who walks in it

now we have a purpose. reveal guilds that go through veil, and we also are better at fighting thieves even if we do go glass

I’m not a ranger player (still) but i played a lot of mmo and the issue of the ranger “beast master” (the ranged dps that uses a pet) is always the same. How useful is the pet?
There’s no need to speak again regarding why pet can be useless in certain situations.
So, my two cents.

Add pets with ranged attacks (with some drawback compared to melee counterpart)
or
Add pets that don’t attack but have only utilities or buffs.

This should fix the role of ranger in wvw zergs and in all situations in wich the pet can’t do stuffs.

Purifer.3946:

I’m not a ranger player (still) but i played a lot of mmo and the issue of the ranger “beast master” (the ranged dps that uses a pet) is always the same. How useful is the pet?
There’s no need to speak again regarding why pet can be useless in certain situations.
So, my two cents.

Add pets with ranged attacks (with some drawback compared to melee counterpart)
or
Add pets that don’t attack but have only utilities or buffs.

This should fix the role of ranger in wvw zergs and in all situations in wich the pet can’t do stuffs.

We got 6 ranged pets, and one “utility” type pet as is. We got all this.

The pet attack format is not the problem, their sustain is. Giving them more damage in WvW would be counterproductive, as the pets can already hit for 8k or more if you spec into BM and uses a cooldown or two. Pet DPS itself is FINE. Only thing i’d want to ask for is for some pets (devourers) to have an player targetable AOE attack on their F2 command rather then their current system, if only to boost ranger AOE damage a little. Sure it wouldnt be epic, but even a devourer can hit for 2k+ with points in BM…..

What rangers NEEDS is;
A valuable Group Utility – i mentioned such things in my post further up in this thread.
Better/more AOE damage options.
An overhaul of the traits relating to pets, they are just too spread out in too many trees.
A 2.5x buff to spirit health and toughness in WvW ONLY (other modes are fine by now).

Fast Hands trait, 1 second off rapid fire, and a burst skill wouldn’t hurt too

Here’s some simple alternatives that can be made to the ranger that’d significantly increase their value in wvw:

1. Increase pet health. This, by itself, won’t do anything, but pet health, at it’s current state, is so terrible in this game mode. Pet health was increased in PvE as the enemies just hit too hard, but it went unchanged in wvw because it’d be too strong on small scale. While this is true, pet health should NOT match their health in PvP. In WvW enemies are faster and hit significantly harder (or are much, much tankier) than in pvp, as enemies can consume food to gain additional stats, crit damage isn’t capped, and particular rune and sigil sets are available. They need the extra oomph here.

2. Default speed needs to be increased in pets. WvW isn’t about fighting on nodes in small places, but running and chasing across the battlefield, pushing and pulling. Base movement increase is essential.

3. Spirits need to be invulnerable in wvw and pve. This would hardly effect small scale combate in wvw – but is that even balanced to begin with? Spirits die after 60 seconds regardless, and go on CD for another 25 seconds. Trait points are still required to make them move and to proc more often. I’d even give up their actives to have the option of making them invulnerable. Disable the actives if you have to. (Though having the nature spirit would make rangers an actually desired class and give us a real use in a zerg!)

4. Allow either (a) F2 skill to be selectable from the pet’s list of abilities or (b) allow more control to the player of their pet. If I could tell my pet when to give me swiftness or use it’s blast finisher, I’d be much more helpful.

5. Pets scale with number of (opposing) players, just as world events do. Or allow us to make them untargetable and invulnerable, and to only be used for their F2 because that’s better than no pet at all!

Prysin.8542:

Purifer.3946:

I’m not a ranger player (still) but i played a lot of mmo and the issue of the ranger “beast master” (the ranged dps that uses a pet) is always the same. How useful is the pet?
There’s no need to speak again regarding why pet can be useless in certain situations.
So, my two cents.

Add pets with ranged attacks (with some drawback compared to melee counterpart)
or
Add pets that don’t attack but have only utilities or buffs.

This should fix the role of ranger in wvw zergs and in all situations in wich the pet can’t do stuffs.

We got 6 ranged pets, and one “utility” type pet as is. We got all this.

The pet attack format is not the problem, their sustain is. Giving them more damage in WvW would be counterproductive, as the pets can already hit for 8k or more if you spec into BM and uses a cooldown or two. Pet DPS itself is FINE. Only thing i’d want to ask for is for some pets (devourers) to have an player targetable AOE attack on their F2 command rather then their current system, if only to boost ranger AOE damage a little. Sure it wouldnt be epic, but even a devourer can hit for 2k+ with points in BM…..

What rangers NEEDS is;
A valuable Group Utility – i mentioned such things in my post further up in this thread.
Better/more AOE damage options.
An overhaul of the traits relating to pets, they are just too spread out in too many trees.
A 2.5x buff to spirit health and toughness in WvW ONLY (other modes are fine by now).

I didn’t explain it well. I mean pets that stay sticked to the ranger and basically can be killed if: 1) they focus the pet and not you, 2) you are cought in a big aoe dmg, in wich you should not be.
The problem of ranged and utility pet is that you can’t keep them out of trouble.

I have this image in my head of a monkey or ape pet with the F2 command of interact that could use/refresh siege.

Signet of the Beastmaster
Active effects of Signets also affect you.
Passive effects of Signets also affect allies around you.

This would allow the ranger to give:
- AoE toughness
- AoE health regeneration
- AoE 25% movement speed
- AoE remove 1 condition every 10 seconds

Purifer.3946:

Prysin.8542:

Purifer.3946:

I’m not a ranger player (still) but i played a lot of mmo and the issue of the ranger “beast master” (the ranged dps that uses a pet) is always the same. How useful is the pet?
There’s no need to speak again regarding why pet can be useless in certain situations.
So, my two cents.

Add pets with ranged attacks (with some drawback compared to melee counterpart)
or
Add pets that don’t attack but have only utilities or buffs.

This should fix the role of ranger in wvw zergs and in all situations in wich the pet can’t do stuffs.

We got 6 ranged pets, and one “utility” type pet as is. We got all this.

The pet attack format is not the problem, their sustain is. Giving them more damage in WvW would be counterproductive, as the pets can already hit for 8k or more if you spec into BM and uses a cooldown or two. Pet DPS itself is FINE. Only thing i’d want to ask for is for some pets (devourers) to have an player targetable AOE attack on their F2 command rather then their current system, if only to boost ranger AOE damage a little. Sure it wouldnt be epic, but even a devourer can hit for 2k+ with points in BM…..

What rangers NEEDS is;
A valuable Group Utility – i mentioned such things in my post further up in this thread.
Better/more AOE damage options.
An overhaul of the traits relating to pets, they are just too spread out in too many trees.
A 2.5x buff to spirit health and toughness in WvW ONLY (other modes are fine by now).

I didn’t explain it well. I mean pets that stay sticked to the ranger and basically can be killed if: 1) they focus the pet and not you, 2) you are cought in a big aoe dmg, in wich you should not be.
The problem of ranged and utility pet is that you can’t keep them out of trouble.

you can set them to passive, in which case they are glued to you, atleast within 200 range.

The more you reply, the less sure i am if you have even played ranger for 10 minutes. This is basic information.