Guild Wars 2

Healing Skills

I feel ranger heals fall behind other classes in terms of secondary perks and cooldown to benefit ratio even after high evasion mechanics are considered. First let’s take a look at those that just raw heal:

Heal as One: Heal yourself and your pet.
Troll Unguent: You and your pet regenerate health over time
Water Spirit: Summon a water spirit that grants nearby allies a chance to heal when attacking.
(Water Spirit: Aqua Surge):
Heal yourself and cause your water spirit to heal nearby allies.

This leaves us with only one heal skill having an additional perk being Healing Spring. Unfortunately the high cooldown on it greatly waters down the healing output of healing spring, even if you were running sword warhorn/gs to take full advantage of the water field which most are not. Removing 3 conditions every 20 seconds on your heal like a certain warrior heal for example, would in many cases be superior. As such I’d even go so far as to adding the above effect to Heal as One(3 conditions removed), since rangers get extraordinary build diversity penalties when it comes to condition removal.

At any rate, take a look at how many of the other classes in comparison get much more additional effects on their heals, especially condi removes:

http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Healing_skill

So where as healing skills are concerned, some added perks to ranger heals would be greatly appreciated. Condition removal would be the biggest desire.. even specified conditions like “Removes poison and burn” rather than all conditions, but obviously there are other effects you can consider as well… buffs like might, aegis, retaliation, or other bonuses.

Access to condition removal.
This I’ve already outlined somewhat in the above, but the ranger class is hurting from lack of condition removal options. How many rangers honestly can get the chance to try out Bark Skin when we sacrifice 3 conditions removed per second to get it? Consider adding some minor condition removal traits into other trait lines so the sacrifices don’t have to be so heavy. (There would still be tough choices.)

Weapon Skills

Greatsword:

Greatsword Evade:
Jon Peters as I recall was entertaining the thought of moving the evade from GS 1(3rd strike) to Swoop. We’d see potentially less evade frequency but have more control of how and when we evade. I like this idea, but please add something else into the 3rd strike if you do such. I’d suggest cripple. I’m admittedly biased in that as a greatsword wielding melee ranger wanting to limit my foes ability to escape.. however the greatsword has very little capability to slow down fleeing targets and it would be a godsend.

Greatsword Number 4:
I think it would be better if melee hits didn’t automatically trigger counter-attack so we could block multiple melee hits as well and counter-attack as we please. Instead, the melee ranger counter attack should be done the same way throwing the sword is from range.. and that just which attack is used would change based on range. Logically, it should be up to the player when and how they counter-attack and not up to enemies. Currently melee opponents that spot our counter attack can easily force the counter-attack ending the block early which is annoying when you are getting focused by multiple opponents and trying to block arrows at the same time.

Axe off-hand

-Please consider enabling movement similar to thief dagger storm when utilizing the number 5 Whirling Defense skill.

To be continued:

Pets

*New distance/gap closer skill for melee pets: *
When fighting a kiting or moving opponent, it’s no mystery that the melee pets can land as little as 10% of their attacks at times, and spend an extremely inappropriate amount of time waddling around chasing targets. I suggest adding a fifth skill; a distance closer to ALL melee pets. Something like pounce on sword number one or swoop on the GS for the ranger, or the charging skills the warrior has. Something that can rapidly gap a distance. The reason being is, any melee character in this game at this time has some method to fight mobile opponents: a means of catching up rapidly, be it high speed charges, teleport to location skills or whatever. (Some of which I outlined above.) The melee pets of the ranger despite being in equal need of such utilities have no access to them. It wouldn’t cover the difference in damage we suffer from the pet’s limitations with having to stop to attack and the nature of when it launches its attacks, but it would help increase the periods in which we can bring our full might to bear against moving targets which as admittedly much smaller than other classes.

Devourer

-Slightly increase Devourer DPS capability.

I’m not really sure what was intended with the devourer. I always had the idea that it was supposed to be the damage dealer of the ranged pet options, but as it stands it is falling behind where it needs to be. It barely outdamages spiders, yet has far less useful utilities such as immobilize and weakness. I understand the concerns in setting ranged pet damage, however as it stands devourer damage is just too low to make it a worthy alternative to the spiders. The first thing, is take a look at some of the devourer F2s and lower the cast time and consider upping the damage slightly. Lashtail F2 does quite a lot less damage than drake f2s, yet it channels twice as long.

-Get rid of the evade skill on devourer, and add some damage skill.

Honestly, having an evade on the devourer is near useless to begin with. If someone wanted it specifically dead, the evade isn’t going to help all that much and the duration of the evade animation is exceedingly long when its burrowing and unborrowing which drastically reduces its dps output whenever that skill is activated making it undesirable in most cases. To make matters worse, despite the massive amount of time spent on the animation, not all of the animation period has evade attached to it. IIRC when it’s getting out of the ground, it’s not attacking but not evading which is pretty much wasting precious time.

Spiders

I only have one complaint about the spiders, and that’s that one of their attacks creates a combo field that literally lasts barely a second. I don’t know if this was intended or not, but its very, very hard to take advantage of. If you don’t want us doing combo fields in that attack, remove it, and if you do.. give us a duration to work with.

Porky porks

You will be familiar with this complaint from the ranger forums, but the porsine pets F2 has too much delay created between casting the skill, the item appearing on the ground, picking up the item and then the final delay of consuming the item.. to be truly what it should be. I don’t have any suggestions on how to fix this due to the complications with the animations system, but please consider having a brainstorming session on how to make this more viable.

Moas

-Moa heal NEEDS to be player controlled.

Ah, at last the moas. I hate to say it, but the key appeal in using them is just not working out. I’m full melee yet I still find myself missing my moas heals a lot whenever I try them due to the awkward timings of its using it, the cast/animation time and the fact that both me and my opponents are very mobile with skills creating and gapping distances often putting me out of position to take advantage of the heal when it fires off at an preferred time.

-Please do not make the above suggestion an option in exchange for control of the f2 buffs currently held. The reason I say that is that honestly, both need to be controlled to be fully useable.. otherwise the exact same problem that happens with the heal would happen with the buffs.

Utility Skills

Signet Active effects
-Please change ranger signet actives to effect THE RANGER first, and to be traited to include the pet, not the opposite as it is currently. The pet is already holding us back a lot of the times so sacrificing actives to help it out only weakens us in most cases. So that means, signet of the wild should, without traits, add a damage buff the ranger character. Signet of stone active should make the ranger invulnerable first, and include the pet only after being traited with Signet of the beastmaster. (which would be more fitting with the trait name anyways.)

escape capability. I feel like rangers should have the capability to excel a little further than they do at in-battle and non-combat mobility, in fitting with one of the definitions of the word ranger: “1. A wanderer; a rover.”

While we are very fast with the right weapons(Sword/gs), we are still greatly excelled by sword/greatsword warriors in that aspect. One of the primary reasons I rolled with s/gs was the potential to make good escapes in WvW roaming, and I don’t see the need in this case for such a discrepancy between us and the warriors in the question of mobility. Please consider including added benefits to some traits to increase the distance created/covered by swoop and sword 2. I’m sure this is shaky grounds, but I’ve always found it weird how you can have such an easier time hitting a high battle escape/combat break ratio on warriors than you can on rangers. I feel we should at least be equal in that aspect when built for mobility, as we make equal sacrifices for it in terms of weapon skills.

Traits

Jon Peters already hinted that more attention is being given to ranger trait lines to increase build diversity. I don’t have much else to say in the way of traits overall outside what I already have, but I would encourage ArenaNet as a whole to continue to listen the some of the discussions in the ranger forum on this topic. And as is the case with all classes, please continue to build a game with great character build diversity in the way of traits. Nobody likes overly defined class roles.