Guild Wars 2

At one point in development, the ranger was split into two different professions, the warden and the marksman. Eventually these two were merged into the ranger again.

Source: http://tap-repeatedly.com/2011/06/exclusive-interview-arenanets-jon-peters-and-jonathan-sharp/

Currently there are 3 Adventurer Professions, 3 Scholars Professoins and only 2 Soldier

Split Ranger back in 2 again. Make a Soldier profession Warden aka BEASTMASTER. Make an actual proper Ranger profession one without pet but Master of Range that can use Rifles, Pistols, Longbow and Shortbow like rangers in other Games, with NO PET

Rangers aren’t called rangers because they fight at range. Think of it more like forest rangers – they roam (or ‘range’) around the wilderness, living off the land and working with it through pets and nature spirits rather than technology or other forms of magic.

This fits perfectly with the pet mechanic and the lack of guns.

Edit: Also most other games I know of rangers are very much nature/pet based. I’m pretty sure having an animal companion and nature based magic/skills is a huge part of the DnD ranger class, in Dragon Age the ranger is a specialisation for rouges that gives you…yep, animal companions.

In fact, here’s Wikipedia’s definition of a ranger as a video game character class:
“A Ranger (also known as Hunter, Scout or Tracker) is a type of Archer appearing in fantasy fiction and role-playing games. Rangers are usually associated with the wisdom of nature. Rangers tend to be wise, cunning, and perceptive in addition to being skilled woodsmen. Many are skilled in stealth, wilderness survival, beast-mastery, herbalism, and tracking. Archery and (often dual-wielding) swordplay are common to rangers, though there are many instances where rangers use a variety of weapons, skills, and sometimes magic or have a resistance to magic.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ranger_

Yes they call it a type of archer, but also put a lot of emphasis on the nature theme, which is exactly what GW2 gives us.

Yeah, the whole pet mechanic feels broken or not complete. I agree.

They should allow skill choices for pets. And I wish they would advance the pet commands a bit. Be able to target a location rather then just a enemies, or decide to keep your pet stowed for fighting so pets are not always there. Not everyone one likes using pets all the time. Ranger has some decent skills, but its nice to have it so pets are optional. I can stow my pet but as soon as a enemy has struck wither i want my pet our or not, he pops out anyways. Another feature I wouldn’t mind seeing is being able to individually name your pets. Every-time you decide to change out any of the four pets with other ones the name resets. So if you want a different creature to have its own name and you switch, then you don’t have to go in and change the name YET again. Also I am not sure if it is broken or it is just that easy to interrupt but i like using the nature spirit elite skill. It heals and cure condition of near by players, and you can give it the command to revive and it does a mass revive. However I been finding that for some reason it does not always revive when i tell it too. Players could be right beneath where the spirit is and still not be revived but the command will cooldown as if it casted. Im hoping its a bug, but elite skills start to feel lack luster when its bad enough you got to wait forever to use them which i understand cause they can be really powerful however when they dont seem to work the way they should have the time they just seem such a waste. Ultimatly i feel the last five slots should all be customizable, were healing spell and elite is optional, this way if you are in a party then one person can be healer as a option, and others can replace there healing slot with a regular skill. I would like it if skills worked like this. It would feel a little more customizable then. Another thing I would like is two switch around your weapon skills so they are in a different order. That would be nice!

It makes more sense to give rifles to the warrior. Warriors are about war, rifles are tools of war. You can’t craft a rifle out in the woods with only basic survival supplies and resources.

Rifles are also pretty loud and would not be helpful in a survival situation where stealth is important.

What if ranger gets massive stat buff IF he does not use pet (think of it like merge)

People then have a choice of using pet or not.

I would definitly never use pet if this make it in

My main is a ranger and i don’t see a problem with them at all, I’m rolling short bow/longbow combo and switching pets during combat no issues.. working as intended i believe, i really do not see an issue with them? (I haven’t played a ‘melee’ ranger as i don’t like melee classes so can’t comment on that)

I don’t think that the ranger would need to be remade in any way.

I am usually playing bow (either of them, depends on what I feel like using) and sword/dagger (because barely noone else uses it) and it works great.

But I can see the wish of some players, to play without pet. To draw a comparison to GW1, there you had to at least put in 1 skill to even HAVE the pet. And then even more, if you wanted the pet to be able to do more than autoattacks.
In GW2, the pet became just a part of the ranger. I can see, how some people don’t like that but I guess it is, how Arenanet sees the class.

From a gameplay point of view, the class works good in both range and melee I think.

And just because ‘rangers’ in other games use rifles and pistols, it doesn’t mean they need to do that here too. As stated before, rifles and pistols are not really weapons ‘from wood’ but bows are.

If I get this right, your biggest grief is, being forced to have a pet around during combat? Ever thought of trying warrior?

I cannot understand all these posts about wanting the Ranger to not have pets and instead have rifles. Play a Warrior, or an Engineer. They are exactly the same as a Ranger without Pets but with Rifles, only more!

Those of us who traditionally play Rangers know that they have had pets since an AD&D2E Kit (I think that was the first) and rifles are completely contradictory to the class.

My main is a ranger. I find there are some problems with the class, things that really bug me.

Most people believe that a ranger does more damage with a Great Sword than with a bow. Why is this? I could understand daggers, could understand bows, even a sword. But a GREAT SWORD? It’s just such a random weapon for a Ranger to have, and for it to be one of the best weapons to use it is just kind of irritating. I made a ranger to be a ranger not a warrior knock off.

Rangers are also kinda low for dps. If you go 100% dps glass cannon build, then you only even out with other classes that aren’t even trying to be glass cannon. This isn’t that big of an issue since not everyone can be the best dps, but it’s still kinda silly.

Why can’t we crit “Bosses” the ones with the little target symbols, like Dragons and some Dungeon Bosses? That decreases my damage significantly since precision, and crit bleed (condition damage) is what most rangers run (unless they want to be low damage and high survivability). So I do maybe 1/3 of my normal damage to these bosses.

Another thing, my pet gets in the way when I am trying to run ANYWHERE. If I put it on passive it pulls like 20 things and slows me down, even occasionally killing me.

Why does my pet stand so far in front of me? I would prefer it to be more to the left or right, and closer to my side. No other class has to deal with an ally unit running into stuff with the exception of Flesh Golem which seems to attack anything in sight anyway.

When I jump down something and it makes my pet run around for AGES, not just taking forever to get to me, but also pulling every single mob on the way. This can be really irritating, especially when the only “fix” is to swap it out right after landing. (Since there’s a cooldown on swapping this can be annoying.)

I decide to change my pet because there will be a different boss or situation to fight, I have to WAIT for the cool down to finish. This isn’t too bad unless you want to see what ability a pet has and you swap to it to check and then you have to wait 20 seconds if you want to pick a different one (out of combat). Really annoying.

People were abusing the abilities on the Red Moa and the Siamoth to get plasma so they put in the swap cool down out of combat to prevent people from abusing these abilities. So now everyone has to wait 20 seconds to swap out of combat, instead of just making those specific pets have a cool down that doesn’t reset after swapping. :|

Elric of Grans.7684:

I cannot understand all these posts about wanting the Ranger to not have pets and instead have rifles. Play a Warrior, or an Engineer. They are exactly the same as a Ranger without Pets but with Rifles, only more!

Those of us who traditionally play Rangers know that they have had pets since an AD&D2E Kit (I think that was the first) and rifles are completely contradictory to the class.

Sorry pets are horrible and useless. They only cause you wipes and lower Ranger’s dps by 40%

Trimethicon.7405:

Yeah, the whole pet mechanic feels broken or not complete. I agree.

Same here. In WoW Hunter pets made perfect sense. In GW2 they just feel… Off? I can’t put my finger on it but that’s how it feels. I know TWO reasons I really dislike:

1) no complete control over your pet skills

2) delay on F2 skills, aka pet unresponsiveness

There is certainly more to it but I leave this to the experts.

LooLoo.1437:

My main is a ranger. I find there are some problems with the class, things that really bug me.

Most people believe that a ranger does more damage with a Great Sword than with a bow. Why is this? I could understand daggers, could understand bows, even a sword. But a GREAT SWORD? It’s just such a random weapon for a Ranger to have, and for it to be one of the best weapons to use it is just kind of irritating. I made a ranger to be a ranger not a warrior knock off.

The fantasy ranger has been using a greatsword since Aragorn…