Guild Wars 2

Muzical.1396:

Then spend a month in WvW, and I mean on a T1 server, SoR, JQ, TC, etc.

They actually need to spend time at the top, in the middle, and at the bottom because the play in each is different and fixing a problem at one tier can create problems with others. For example, Edge of the Mists solves the queue problem in T1 WvW (though that was supposed to be one of the incentives to spread out and not ball up on the T1 servers but, whatever) but it just creates another map to suck players out of the main WvW maps on lower-tiered servers making their population problem even worse. Similarly, balancing dungeons for elite speed runners playing highly optimized characters makes for a quite frustrating experience for causal players running less optimal builds. I used to enjoy doing the old fairly easy Taquatl every day. Now, if I want to get a laugh out of my friends on voice chat on Eredon Terrace, where the Taquatl event is almost never done and only succeeded with outside help, I’ll mention that Taquatl is up on the event timer. If an event happens and nobody shows up to do it, what good is it?

So, please, consider casual play as well as elite play when making decisions about the direction of the game.

I mostly highlighted those servers because you’re pretty much guaranteed a huge crowd no matter when you’re playing. I don’t know what the crowd is like on other servers during ANet’s workday. But yeah, I’ve always been a 100%-casual player, which yeah is part of why I like to get a build I like and stick with it.

+1 to missing old-school Teq, but at least Teq is in a high-level map. What frustrated me more was what was done to Maw, a level 10 event, and Fire ele, which is 15. That could be a very good way to scare off someone who’s new to MMOs or even just to GW2.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

You’ve officially made me realize that you have zero intention of fixing the pet or the ranger. Thanks for that moving onto my thief and warrior.

Also what an awful example…you’re comparing something as integral to the ranger as the pet to a 2×4???? You do realize that it can take MANY 2×4s to build a house don’t you? 2×4s are a dime a dozen – not something as integral as, say, an I-beam?

Please oh please stick to other examples. The example you used says there is little to no value in the pet…which I agree with but I don’t think you were trying to say that.

An actual suggestion, for PvE:
If we can’t have perma-stow for the pet, can I at least stow it for JPs? Troll’s End was kind of annoying when the pet kept coming out just because I missed my jump, and TE specifically is in a major city, so no chance of combat.

Paulie.6215:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

You’ve officially made me realize that you have zero intention of fixing the pet or the ranger. Thanks for that moving onto my thief and warrior.

Also what an awful example…you’re comparing something as integral to the ranger as the pet to a 2×4???? You do realize that it can take MANY 2×4s to build a house don’t you? 2×4s are a dime a dozen – not something as integral as, say, an I-beam?

Please oh please stick to other examples. The example you used says there is little to no value in the pet…which I agree with but I don’t think you were trying to say that.

Poor Allie, anything she says is pretty much met with backlash…. unfortunately its kinda warranted when statements like "we are supposed to be excellent skirmishers because of our allegedly awesome sustain DPS (lol, we have no sustain, no dps and defintely not the combination) or making terrible comparisions (pet to a 2×4 in the house known as ranger…. facepalm)

I’m starting to wonder if anyone at anet even plays this class?

Honest to god suggestion, scrap this class, and make a new one

If the past 1.5 years of bandaid fixed have not worked , what on earth makes you think this upcoming batch of bandaids are going to work????

Anything short of an overhaul will not help the ranger, we all know thats how badly in a spot ranger is in every aspect of the game.

Go big or go home. If anet actually believes that we currently have good sustain DPS like Allie stated, I’m afraid theres very little hope.

The past 1.5 years of incompetence speaks for itself.

I honestly still believe that after this 50+ page CDI, Anet still thinks they are right (that rangers somehow have good sustainability, dps, pets are OK, just need some minor tweaks, etc) – That is what I have gotten out of all the red posts in this CDI. It’s amazing how little they seem to care.

Game Mode
PvX

Proposal overview

Replace spirit health mechanic.

Goal of Proposal

Make spirits into something between banners and spirit weapons.

Proposal Functionality

Remove the health mechanic from spirits. Spirits are now destroyed by stomping the spirit. Once the stomp animation starts, the spirit stops moving and cannot use its active. Hopefully this adds some counter play where enemies must decide to either focus on the ranger or the spirits. This prevents them from soaking AoE damage but allows them to work well in PvE.

Associated Risk

Not sure. I’m just throwing out ideas.

Muzical.1396:

Berk.8561:

A general observation:

“It’s extremely important that we stay true to our philosophy that you should be able to play Guild Wars 2 the way you want to play the game in order to reach the most powerful rewards.” – Colin Johanson on Guild Wars 2 in the Months Ahead

(https://www.guildwars2.com/en/news/colin-johanson-on-guild-wars-2-in-the-months-ahead/)

Allie Murdock has, throughout this thread, stated that the design philosophy of the Ranger is slow and steady damage rather than burst damage and that the pet is integral to the class concept. I just want to make sure it’s not lost that based on the player comments, this clearly clashes with the way many people want to play their Ranger. So this should raise the question of why the game won’t let people play their Rangers the way many clearly want to. Specifically (these have been mentioned again and again in this thread)
(Snipped for post size)

^THIS. I cannot +1 this enough.

I’d argue that, before ANet should be allowed to change a class, especially substantially, spend four months, yes, months, maining that class, and I mean at least 10 hours a week. Spend a month on PvE, and I mean Living Story (reload Canach’s dungeon and play a ranger; have fun!) explorable paths of Arah, CM, CoE, Teq, Wurm, Fire ele, map clearing, etc. Spend a month in sPvP, and find out how fun that is under the mess its “roadmap” is for those of us who just did it for kicks. Then spend a month in WvW, and I mean on a T1 server, SoR, JQ, TC, etc. And, on and off during this time, also spend time in mapchat in a huge place like LA, pop your ANet tag, and talk to players about how we play the game.
Snip for length

That is an extremely important observation that Berk made. And I do hope that future changes to Profession Balance and new stuff added to Professions, will continue to let us play the way we want.

You mentioned that you want someone at Anet to only play Ranger for like 4 months straight. That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

Anet wants the Ranger to be a sustain class, but it is much easier to just do what other profession do, and burst someone or something down as fast as humanly possible. The way our traits are set up make this possible, such as Sharpened Edges and Companion’s Might.

Now, there is some, but very little sustain that comes into play. I can utterly destroy someone in WvW by stacking bleeds and conditions, burst style, using Rabid gear. The whole point is to throw down as many traps as possible, use the bleed stacking from axe, and use the immobilize from my spider to make sure that the enemy stays inside the traps. The sheer amount of conditions I can inflict alone makes sure than the enemy’s condition removals are all wasted while I continue to stack bleeds, cripples, burns, and poison whith no worry. (I’ve dropped more enemies with Throw Torch lately than any other skill because of the long burn duration. That sustain is secondary to my burst though, because I use it only after Burst fails (which is rare), where it should be coming first!)

SkiTz.4590:

Paulie.6215:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Aidenwolf.5964:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Also, you guys can’t see this due to the limitations of formatting on our forums, but a lot of these points were made by many of you guys. As such, they are much more emphasized in the email threads and discussions we have internally.

First, thank you for your summary. What I think got missed in the pile was the idea that pet damage should be rebalanced so that they no longer draw 30% of our damage from us in the first place. All other classes core mechanics add to base damage where as rangers loose almost a third of our player damage in order to have an AI run around with us. If our pets hit every time and are never dead, we just get to 100% base damage of every other class capping us at 100% a warrior hits 115% with his/her core mechanic.

This does not take into account the loss of gear stats on the pet which is significant.

I’m not saying this isn’t possible, but I want you to understand exactly what that suggestion means. It would mean completely rebalancing the Ranger.

The Ranger is designed to have a pet. If the pet was taken away or didn’t do damage, then it wouldn’t be a Ranger anymore. Does that make sense?

The only reason Rangers lose damage is because the AI is not currently what it ought to be. That doesn’t necessarily mean that we should completely redesign the Ranger and get rid of the pet.

Think of it this way: You’re building a house and a 2×4 breaks while you’re trying to screw it in to something. Do you scrap the house and completely rebuild it because that one piece broke, or do you grab a new 2×4 and use that instead? Which do you think would be more efficient?

What I’ve been seeing a lot of is that you guys don’t necessarily dislike pets. What you dislike is how they act and how they are controlled. It seems to me that these are feelings that have been built up over time, and have culminated into “pets have to go” because you guys haven’t seen the improvements that should be made to pets to make them desirable. I certainly don’t blame you for getting to this point, but I do want to know the core of the problem before we start talking about rebalancing an entire class.

You’ve officially made me realize that you have zero intention of fixing the pet or the ranger. Thanks for that moving onto my thief and warrior.

Also what an awful example…you’re comparing something as integral to the ranger as the pet to a 2×4???? You do realize that it can take MANY 2×4s to build a house don’t you? 2×4s are a dime a dozen – not something as integral as, say, an I-beam?

Please oh please stick to other examples. The example you used says there is little to no value in the pet…which I agree with but I don’t think you were trying to say that.

Poor Allie, anything she says is pretty much met with backlash…. unfortunately its kinda warranted when statements like "we are supposed to be excellent skirmishers because of our allegedly awesome sustain DPS (lol, we have no sustain, no dps and defintely not the combination) or making terrible comparisions (pet to a 2×4 in the house known as ranger…. facepalm)

I’m starting to wonder if anyone at anet even plays this class?

Honest to god suggestion, scrap this class, and make a new one

If the past 1.5 years of bandaid fixed have not worked , what on earth makes you think this upcoming batch of bandaids are going to work????

Anything short of an overhaul will not help the ranger, we all know thats how badly in a spot ranger is in every aspect of the game.

Go big or go home. If anet actually believes that we currently have good sustain DPS like Allie stated, I’m afraid theres very little hope.

The past 1.5 years of incompetence speaks for itself.

I honestly still believe that after this 50+ page CDI, Anet still thinks they are right (that rangers somehow have good sustainability, dps, pets are OK, just need some minor tweaks, etc) – That is what I have gotten out of all the red posts in this CDI. It’s amazing how little they seem to care.

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
• - “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

Re: 2×4 vs foundation!

The seeming difference in scope is not necessarily because there’s any workload misunderstandings between us, but because as customers we only experience the surface of the game and as a developer their daily lives are the deeper infrastructure. Even our wildest requests may very well be 2×4′s, from the perspective of somebody who knows what it takes to make a game run.

It’s like talking to a fish about lillypads covering the surface of a lake. From your perspective it’s obscuring the entire lake, but for them, it’s the thin green roof of a much larger world.

Oh! Let’s start making bets on how long it will take them to give us another pity post that states nothing but the obvious, gives no additional information on which things they are looking at in particular and how they are thinking about going about it(so we can discuss and fine tune), or actual information that gives anything more then the fact they did little more then skim the entire thread.

Vox Hollow.2736:

Re: 2×4 vs foundation!

The seeming difference in scope is not necessarily because there’s any workload misunderstandings between us, but because as customers we only experience the surface of the game and as a developer their daily lives are the deeper infrastructure.

It’s like talking to a fish about lillypads covering the surface of a lake. From your perspective it’s obscuring the entire lake, but for them, it’s the thin green roof of a much larger world.

No, ANet is only experiencing the surface. We as players are the one who notice that something doesn’t work as intended. ANet has everything on the paper. And maybe it looks nice on the paper but in terms of the ranger, it hasn’t payed out the way the devs thought. And yes, we don’t have any information about their workprogress but we do know better than the devs to what’s OP, UP or balanced.

nethykins.7986:

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
  – “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

But, what big overhaul to the class does everyone propose, and not just propose, but how would it work? Its easy to just say “Permastow Pets!”, but, how does it work? You can’t just say “Overhaul the Ranger!”, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and expect to fix everything. You can’t expect them to spend months and months of their time running on a player suggestion about permastowing pets if it turns out to be a dead end and not work at all, since it takes alot of time and money to do such a thing.

You can do that to Lion’s Arch, where they just have to move around graphical assets, but to completely change around the ranger, something 1/8th of the players of this game spend all of their time doing, is considerably more difficult.

Yeah, go on and argue that there have been plenty of reasonable suggestions in this thread,….this thread, that way less than 1% of all Rangers have posted on, where probably 1% of those posts have put any thought into how it affects the game beyond “Well, I don’t see any downsides, so its good, right?”. There is a lot more at play here than just removing pets, or increasing weapon damage. It changes the entire balance of power in the game when a change is made, and everything related to it must be taken into consideration.

I’m not advocating Anet’s Philosophy concerning the Ranger, because, frankly, I think it sucks. But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

Specific Game Mode
PvX
Proposal Overview
An approach to be inclusive of several ideas gleamed from the community and making them readily available to the developers through an integrated usage of three main concepts considered to be negative for the ranger: The Pet AI, Spirits, and Traits.

Goal of Proposal
To try to actualize how to kill 3 birds with one stone (pun intended).

Proposal Functionality
A lot more adaptable to fit balancing issues and improve ranger UI by lessening the amount of clutter on the screen while also adding increased benefit to the pet without having rely heavily upon the broken AI and finally freeing up the traits to be less tied to utilities allowing a greater variety of ranger builds.

First step would be to integrate the spirits within the pet. This would resemble to some extent having auras surrounding your pet as if itself had become a spirit. The utility skill would be refitted to give the pet the aura and perhaps a secondary function similar to that of the spirits by creating an aoe around the pet or ranger. The second functionality can certainly be open to more concepts.

This reduces Trait reliance which are meant to make certain utility skills more potent in a state of situational uses rather than making them usable from a state of uselessness.

Associated Risks
The specifics, numbers, and perhaps balancing issues but nonetheless it seems conceptual a rock solid idea.

Chrispy.5641:

nethykins.7986:

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
  – “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

But, what big overhaul to the class does everyone propose, and not just propose, but how would it work? Its easy to just say “Permastow Pets!”, but, how does it work? You can’t just say “Overhaul the Ranger!”, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and expect to fix everything. You can’t expect them to spend months and months of their time running on a player suggestion about permastowing pets if it turns out to be a dead end and not work at all, since it takes alot of time and money to do such a thing.

You can do that to Lion’s Arch, where they just have to move around graphical assets, but to completely change around the ranger, something 1/8th of the players of this game spend all of their time doing, is considerably more difficult.

Yeah, go on and argue that there have been plenty of reasonable suggestions in this thread,….this thread, that way less than 1% of all Rangers have posted on, where probably 1% of those posts have put any thought into how it affects the game beyond “Well, I don’t see any downsides, so its good, right?”. There is a lot more at play here than just removing pets, or increasing weapon damage. It changes the entire balance of power in the game when a change is made, and everything related to it must be taken into consideration.

I’m not advocating Anet’s Philosphy concerning the Ranger, because, frankly, I think it sucks. But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

We’re nearing 55 pages of suggestions Chrispy. We’ve had no direction/input from ANet asking us to provide additional information on anything. We still don’t know if pets will be fixed, if we should work around them, or if we should plan for their removal. And that’s after 2 weeks of nothing but a giant circle [censored] on pets and little else in this thread.

Rangers need a lot more than a functioning pet for them to ever break out of 8th place in WvW. Find a niche they can fill.

At what point do you want us to actually hold ANet accountable for this dysfunctional thread?

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted it to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

Also the 30% are if you’re using a DPS pet, otherwise it’s less than that.

I think developers miss why most rangers run condition builds. And the answer is that unlike power builds, ranger condition damage doesn’t take the arbitrary 30% damage penalty for having a pet.

A ranger’s conditions do the same damage as any condition class. A rangers power attacks do significantly less damage than any other power class. No changes to pet AI will ever make up for the fact that pets will never live up to that full 30% potential damage that the rangers paid for them, so the ranger’s penalty needs to be reduced significantly for power specs.

In fact, I don’t even understand why the penalty is so stiff given that most pets noncrit autoattack for about 700-800 damage at best. That’s literally an engineer’s burning ticks with a few might stacks. The penalty to the ranger’s power based attacks is completely disproportionate to the actual damage contributon of pets. So you end upwith two low damage dealing entities that even when put together don’t match single functioning entities like warrior, thief, or lightning hammer elementalist. Hell, not even guardians.

Furthermore, power rangers will never be viable so long as their defensive options are nonexistent, and they have no ways to deal with boon spam since they have no boon removal. Condition specs are the ranger’s only answer to the protection boon spam.

The defenses rangers have are solely tied to toughness stat stacking and regen. Serpent Strike and offhand dagger #4 mean nothing when you can lose a third or half of your health as a berserker ranger to a single attack. The only other alternative is a 64 sec traited signet invulnerability. Power rangers are all glass and no cannon.

Chrispy.5641:

nethykins.7986:

Just to add do your closing statements – especially on the “Go big or go home” statement.

I’m personally confused about ANet’s bipolar nature:

• - “Our Game Design philosophy has changed….. but…. This is what the philosophy of the ranger should have always been …so it should stay that way”
  – “Yeah, we burnt LA to the ground and if we think dungeons aren’t good enough, we scrap them and start over. Who says we don’t take risks? ….but…. we’re not going to look into an overhaul of a class that needs it…”*

Surely, if something needs an overhaul it should be given?
(Revamped dungeons, Magic Find, and WvW progression says hello….and they’re all asking why the ranger isn’t invited to the overhaul party.)

But, what big overhaul to the class does everyone propose, and not just propose, but how would it work? Its easy to just say “Permastow Pets!”, but, how does it work? You can’t just say “Overhaul the Ranger!”, and expect Anet to wave a magic wand and expect to fix everything. You can’t expect them to spend months and months of their time running on a player suggestion about permastowing pets if it turns out to be a dead end and not work at all, since it takes alot of time and money to do such a thing.

You can do that to Lion’s Arch, where they just have to move around graphical assets, but to completely change around the ranger, something 1/8th of the players of this game spend all of their time doing, is considerably more difficult.

Yeah, go on and argue that there have been plenty of reasonable suggestions in this thread,….this thread, that way less than 1% of all Rangers have posted on, where probably 1% of those posts have put any thought into how it affects the game beyond “Well, I don’t see any downsides, so its good, right?”. There is a lot more at play here than just removing pets, or increasing weapon damage. It changes the entire balance of power in the game when a change is made, and everything related to it must be taken into consideration.

I’m not advocating Anet’s Philosphy concerning the Ranger, because, frankly, I think it sucks. But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

I understand the calling out for change but not knowing how to do it – and having them spend months on something that eventually turns up not working, but isn’t the point of taking suggestions is to eventually use one of them…it could be anything. It could be spirit buffs from stowed pets, or just a permastow option that increases attributes, and any single one of them could cause the same outcome.

They’ll eventually waste time and money on something. We could even say they’d wasted time and money on the current iteration of the ranger as it stands now, if they have to have a CDI a year or so into the future to have players tell them that what they intended isn’t working, then a few things in the past would be a waste in the grand scheme of it all.

On a lighter note though:
I’m pretty sure AFKing in LA was something players spent 1/8th of their time doing in game.

Chrispy.5641:

That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

My biggest problem with the Ranger is that while I’ve seen fairly strong Rangers in WvW, they’ve all been melee Rangers and I, like many others in this thread, really want to play an archer. I like ranged attacks. I don’t want to play a melee Ranger. If I wanted to play a Melee character, my 2 Fighters and 1 Guardian wouldn’t both be under 25th level. All of my 80s I’ve done largely with ranged attacks (Ranger, Thief with two pistols, Mesmer with greatsword) and it’s a preference I’ve often had in tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing games, too. Heck, my Ranger even has 5 levels of ballista mastery. Apparently a lot of people want to play Rangers as archers, so why is it a problem to give them what they want?

So I don’t want an ANet employee to play a Ranger for 4 months in WvW with Axe, Torch, Sword, and Warhorn or other melee weapon combination. I want them to play with at least one weapon slot equipped with a bow and perhaps even double bow and see how that goes, since there are players who want to specifically play that way.

Chrispy.5641:

But, I also understand the position Anet is in, because, if they make big changes to the Ranger, and it turns out to not work,…that is a lot of wasted time, money, and effort to fix something when it didn’t actually fix anything.

What can be worst than 30% of our damage on a Pet AI that is hindering us in all aspects of the game?

They had well over a year to reckon ranger’s problems. All we had was “We know it’s broken, but can’t repair it”. If repairs can’t be done without breaking the game, what is bad with asking for a working class mecanic… Maybe not the best, but at least one that works in all situation.

There is a ton of ideas in this CDI, and a ton more in the ranger’s subforum; they are basically the same since the game came out, and even since before it came out.
They only now come around saying, yeah, we will try and fix your pet…

Most people started asking to get rid of the pet after anet said they wouldn’t have the resource to fix it. Now that people are asing to get rid of it, Anet says, what if we can fix it?
They can’t, then they can?

Now, I love my pet, I’d love more control over it (stay there, do there, attack this), i’d love more meaningful synergy (no more kill it to save yourself, no more you OR your pet in traits… ) I’d love my pet to not get one shotted in WvW zergs… Every time they said awesome things are coming for the rangers, we saw nerfs.
Give any class a 30% loss on stats for one minute, and allow them to use their F skill only once every minutes… or, make achievements where one player needs to be at two places at the same time, to make up for the achievs our pet stops us from getting…
I’d love to see an Anet’s video of rangers getting the laser’s achievement…

So yeah, as much as I love my pet, the way I can give it little task, would it be kill a mob while I cut that tree, or attack that player while I cap the point, or anything else, the fact that it is always dead in my main game mode, and that it will not go up/down walls make the DPS loss too much… If I cannot keep it alive, what is the point of being in the obligation to keep it?
For the pet to work
1) they have to get their AI off the PVE mobs
2) they have to recreate AI – better faster reaction
3) they have to change traits that hurt the pet
4) they have to lower the ratio of pet only/ranger only traits. Make more pet and ranger / pet and allies /ranger and allies traits (so that we are welcomed in groups)
5) they have to make it so the pet does not die in 2 seconds in heavy melee settings settings

For the ranger to work without the pet :
1) does not apply
2) does not apply
3) they would need to be changed
4) They would need to change
5) does not apply
6) they need to make another class mechanic… Easy way out “F1-F4 are utilities that a player can choose among the old ranger’s pet special abilities”

5 points to change keeping the pet, 3 by getting rid of it…

Easy for players to expect a new class mecanic instead of a pet fix… and most are just asking for a perma stow option, with a little bonus… not eve a trait rework, just a possibility to not have pet in the way anymore…. until anet finds a way to give us a working class mecanic…

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

My biggest problem with the Ranger is that while I’ve seen fairly strong Rangers in WvW, they’ve all been melee Rangers and I, like many others in this thread, really want to play an archer. I like ranged attacks. I don’t want to play a melee Ranger. If I wanted to play a Melee character, my 2 Fighters and 1 Guardian wouldn’t both be under 25th level. All of my 80s I’ve done largely with ranged attacks (Ranger, Thief with two pistols, Mesmer with greatsword) and it’s a preference I’ve often had in tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing games, too. Heck, my Ranger even has 5 levels of ballista mastery. Apparently a lot of people want to play Rangers as archers, so why is it a problem to give them what they want?

So I don’t want an ANet employee to play a Ranger for 4 months in WvW with Axe, Torch, Sword, and Warhorn or other melee weapon combination. I want them to play with at least one weapon slot equipped with a bow and perhaps even double bow and see how that goes, since there are players who want to specifically play that way.

I’m in the same boat… but to take it one step further, I want to play a power Ranger. If I wanted to play a condi class I certainly wouldn’t choose an inferior one like the Ranger. I want to be a RANGEr. The second thing I want is to have fun while playing it. There’s no enjoyment for me turning on auto attack and strafing around opponents until one of us dies of boredom. Unfortunately, that’s the only thing the Ranger offers unless you play Axe+Dagger/Sword+Torch, and even though that set is more engaging, it becomes more mechanical than skillful after awhile.

Why is it too much to ask, after 55 pages, to expect this class to have a power oriented build that works at range? I couldn’t care less if you do it with the pet or without at this point. I want to know after 55+ pages that more will be done for this class than fixing a pet.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

Just think about this for a second…Lets just say that the damage nerf to pets from over a year ago needs to be reverted…..well, what about Every single change to every single profession since then? What kind of imbalance would be created if you suddenly gave pets back their damage? Do you just revert everything back to what it was in 2012, or do you find a different way that doesn’t break everything? There is way too many things to take into account, not just Rangers, but how the interplay will work with all other professions, as well as how the simple act of killing an npc monster will change.

Atherakhia.4086:

We’re nearing 55 pages of suggestions Chrispy. We’ve had no direction/input from ANet asking us to provide additional information on anything. We still don’t know if pets will be fixed, if we should work around them, or if we should plan for their removal. And that’s after 2 weeks of nothing but a giant circle [censored] on pets and little else in this thread.

Rangers need a lot more than a functioning pet for them to ever break out of 8th place in WvW. Find a niche they can fill.

At what point do you want us to actually hold ANet accountable for this dysfunctional thread?

accountable for what exactly? And after you remove hundreds and hundreds of posts that revolve either around attacking or defending Anet, there might be, 20 pages of suggestions, and half of them I can reliably say repeat the same basic ideas. Anet has made posts when necessary, and I don’t think its necessary for them to make another post saying the exact same thing as they did last week.

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

That would be awesome, since that’s what I’ve been doing since launch, and there are things I understand about the Ranger that has made me able to sucessfully play with almost any set of gear or trait combination. But, there are things about the Profession that I have noticed that cannot be ignored by people who have played the Ranger long enough, such as the lack of reliable condition removal, the general lack of support from pets due to AI, and….the fact that we aren’t actually that good at sustaining (except for Ally support through spotter, spirits, and healing spring).

My biggest problem with the Ranger is that while I’ve seen fairly strong Rangers in WvW, they’ve all been melee Rangers and I, like many others in this thread, really want to play an archer. I like ranged attacks. I don’t want to play a melee Ranger. If I wanted to play a Melee character, my 2 Fighters and 1 Guardian wouldn’t both be under 25th level. All of my 80s I’ve done largely with ranged attacks (Ranger, Thief with two pistols, Mesmer with greatsword) and it’s a preference I’ve often had in tabletop pen-and-paper role-playing games, too. Heck, my Ranger even has 5 levels of ballista mastery. Apparently a lot of people want to play Rangers as archers, so why is it a problem to give them what they want?

So I don’t want an ANet employee to play a Ranger for 4 months in WvW with Axe, Torch, Sword, and Warhorn or other melee weapon combination. I want them to play with at least one weapon slot equipped with a bow and perhaps even double bow and see how that goes, since there are players who want to specifically play that way.

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

Jocksy.3415:

For the pet to work
1) they have to get their AI off the PVE mobs
2) they have to recreate AI – better faster reaction
3) they have to change traits that hurt the pet
4) they have to lower the ratio of pet only/ranger only traits. Make more pet and ranger / pet and allies /ranger and allies traits (so that we are welcomed in groups)
5) they have to make it so the pet does not die in 2 seconds in heavy melee settings settings

For the ranger to work without the pet :
1) does not apply
2) does not apply
3) they would need to be changed
4) They would need to change
5) does not apply
6) they need to make another class mechanic… Easy way out “F1-F4 are utilities that a player can choose among the old ranger’s pet special abilities”

5 points to change keeping the pet, 3 by getting rid of it…

Easy for players to expect a new class mecanic instead of a pet fix… and most are just asking for a perma stow option, with a little bonus… not eve a trait rework, just a possibility to not have pet in the way anymore…. until anet finds a way to give us a working class mecanic…

While I do agree with you that the pet has to be more versatile or removed it is very clear that replacing the pet with another mechanic is probably too much work to do. They would have to change the whole code of the ranger in order to do so.

Chrispy.5641:

Just think about this for a second…Lets just say that the damage nerf to pets from over a year ago needs to be reverted…..well, what about Every single change to every single profession since then? What kind of imbalance would be created if you suddenly gave pets back their damage? Do you just revert everything back to what it was in 2012, or do you find a different way that doesn’t break everything? There is way too many things to take into account, not just Rangers, but how the interplay will work with all other professions, as well as how the simple act of killing an npc monster will change.

1. I want them to revert the damage on the ranger, not the damage on the pet; I want to nearly nullify it.
2. I don’t think that the devs were totally brain afk while programming GW2.
They probably have some sort of damagechart, where they can see what skill does how much damage under what circumstances. Ofcourse they have to test it. But let me ask you this: If they implement a new class, doesn’t they also have to balance it out?
3. Noone ever said this would be easy or quick to do. ANet would probably like to take the easier route and just adjust some numbers. But I hope we made clear that they have to spend more time on fixing the ranger as they have initially planned.

Specific Game Mode
PvP, WvW, PvE
Proposal Overview
Fix Spirits dying from oneshot mechanisms
Goal of Proposal
Change spirits state so that they take the same damage regardless of ennemy strengh
Proposal Functionality
Fix Spirit HP to 10 (or more with an increase with traits), they can’t take more than 1 damage per hit. They become immune to boons, conditions, lifesteal and healing.
Associated Risks
They’ll still die against big zergs in WvW in a few seconds. Will need some tweeks to make them as sturdy in PvP because fast attacking class will down them really quick.
Extensions
Could also be applied to phantasms, spirit weapons and eventually pets at some point.

arkealia.2713:

Specific Game Mode
PvP, WvW, PvE
Proposal Overview
Fix Spirits dying from oneshot mechanisms
Goal of Proposal
Change spirits state so that they take the same damage regardless of ennemy strengh
Proposal Functionality
Fix Spirit HP to 10 (or more with an increase with traits), they can’t take more than 1 damage per hit. They become immune to boons, conditions, lifesteal and healing.
Associated Risks
They’ll still die against big zergs in WvW in a few seconds. Will need some tweeks to make them as sturdy in PvP because fast attacking class will down them really quick.
Extensions
Could also be applied to phantasms, spirit weapons and eventually pets at some point.

Another risk: Every damage, no matter how strong would lower the “HP” by one.
Your spirits would die easy to weak, long lasting AoE.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Chrispy.5641:

Just think about this for a second…Lets just say that the damage nerf to pets from over a year ago needs to be reverted…..well, what about Every single change to every single profession since then? What kind of imbalance would be created if you suddenly gave pets back their damage? Do you just revert everything back to what it was in 2012, or do you find a different way that doesn’t break everything? There is way too many things to take into account, not just Rangers, but how the interplay will work with all other professions, as well as how the simple act of killing an npc monster will change.

1. I want them to revert the damage on the ranger, not the damage on the pet; I want to nearly nullify it.
2. I don’t think that the devs were totally brain afk while programming GW2.
They probably have some sort of damagechart, where they can see what skill does how much damage under what circumstances. Ofcourse they have to test it. But let me ask you this: If they implement a new class, doesn’t they also have to balance it out?
3. Noone ever said this would be easy or quick to do. ANet would probably like to take the easier route and just adjust some numbers. But I hope we made clear that they have to spend more time on fixing the ranger as they have initially planned.

So, what’s with all the conjecture from everyone going in Anet’s Direction? They have said before (late last year) that this stuff was going to take time. Do you want report cards every week on what exactly they are doing to the ranger all the time or something?

On the new class thing, of course they have to balance it, but they also have to balance the simplest of changes.

for example, what about the suggestion I made a week ago, about letting Heal as One benefit from Shout traits.

Currently, you get 6520 healing every 21.25 seconds, or 307 hp per second. If Anet did make it a shout, and it benefited from shout traits, the heal would be able to cooldown 20% faster, and suddenly the healing becomes 378 hp per second. Then there is the Regen that Nature’s Voice would give, which can add on an additional 130 hp per second. there’s the free swiftness from that trait, and then there are runes of the soldier to consider too.

What effects would that sudden 40% increase in net healing do to the game (from faster recharge, and regeneration)? Would it make Rangers too hard to kill? Arguably, no, because Warriors get roughly the same healing for free from Healing Signet, but, are Rangers supposed to get the same amount of healing? If there some other mechanic that justifies Rangers having less overall healing than Warriors?

Apply all that to moving the pet’s damage to the Ranger. Its not as simple as just giving them damage. For example, my Maul skill will be able to deal just over 25K damage in a single burst with that change, and also after considering the sigil changes. What effect is that going to have on the game now that I can suddenly 1 shot even defensive builds?

EDIT – And I’m not saying to think about that stuff with every single suggestion you yourself make, but, just consider that someone on Anet’s staff has to spend their time thinking about all of that, with every suggestion made in this thread that gets passed on to them.

Chrispy.5641:

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

Sounds like it’s worth a try, but barrage from the walls has it’s own liabilities in my experience, not the least of which is that getting line of site to lay down a barrage can involve having to jump up on a wall, with can mean getting yanked off the wall, though using Rage as One helps a bit with that. My bigger concern is that both Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise are in the Skirmishing trait line, which means I’m giving up Quick Draw, which means my bow skills will take longer to recharge, right? It would be nice if I didn’t have to lose a trait that make bows more useful in order to do a trap build. Again, I’m looking to primarily be an archer, not a trap guy who uses a bow.

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

Sounds like it’s worth a try, but barrage from the walls has it’s own liabilities in my experience, not the least of which is that getting line of site to lay down a barrage can involve having to jump up on a wall, with can mean getting yanked off the wall, though using Rage as One helps a bit with that. My bigger concern is that both Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise are in the Skirmishing trait line, which means I’m giving up Quick Draw, which means my bow skills will take longer to recharge, right? It would be nice if I didn’t have to lose a trait that make bows more useful in order to do a trap build. Again, I’m looking to primarily be an archer, not a trap guy who uses a bow.

And here’s the problem many people have. They want their entire build to be optimized 100% of the time, but there are cases where that just isn’t possible (like what I described). People say that going full traps interferes with other aspects of the build, and, well…., its supposed to!

So I use Axes? I doesn’t mean that I have to have Axe traits instead of trap traits.

Edit – Another Example,….Rampager Gear! Do you invest more into Power or Condition Damage? Or do you try to find the happy medium between the two?

Sube Dai.8496:

Substance E.4852:

Chrispy.5641:

afoot.6932:

Arghore.8340:

…or add spirits to pets (which I personally don’t like at all, but that’s some other discussion)…

Please, elaborate. The potential change to spirits is the topic I’m most interested in at this point.

What the Dev had written::

PvX
General:

1. Remove spirits. They clutter up the map and provide less strategic value with target changes.
   1. Instead, apply an aura to the pet that does the same thing spirits currently do.
      1. Obviously, this would be a huge rework and would require changes to spirit traits.

I personally don’t see how that could be balanced at all.

In all likelihood it means we give up the spirit active or we are limited to 1 spirit at a time per pet.

Something that would make us much better for pve/wvw zergs but would probably be very bad for spvp. A split would be best but I’m assuming they are looking for any reason to gut spirit bunkers at this point anyway.

Anything that buffs the pet, and only the pet, is a massive fail. People hate that our damage is separated, regardless of how much you can buff it.

And removing party support to buff 30% of our damage = epic epic fail.

True but what I am getting from the suggestion isn’t that it just puffs the pet. It means that the spirit AoE Buff will radiate from the pet itself rather than a separate mob. It means we would have always mobile spirits that could have the durability of a devourer or bear.

Even if we have to give up the activate effects or can only have one on at time, the ability to roll in a zerg with a sturdy frost or stone spirit flowing out of a brown bear is a massive buff to the class that has little team buff utility. We would, overnight, become desired in wvw instead of laughed at.

Chrispy.5641:

And here’s the problem many people have. They want their entire build to be optimized 100% of the time, but there are cases where that just isn’t possible (like what I described). People say that going full traps interferes with other aspects of the build, and, well…., its supposed to!

Yes, I get that. But I said I wanted to be an Archer. That’s not the same as wanting to be a trap guy who uses bows. I would like to specialize in bows and be effective that way, not have it be some stylistic color applied on top of a trap build.

It’s like saying you want to visit New York City so I send you to Las Vegas to the New York themed casino where you can see a reduced scale replica if various famous buildings in New York City all mashed together around a casino. You didn’t ask for a casino with a cheesy replica of New York City wrapped around it so would you be happy if that’s what you got?

I did some sample builds in a build editor and to really do the trap build right, I’d also have to drain the Marksmanship trait line, since it doesn’t add to Condition damage at all, which reduces Power and eliminates all of the traits that would make a bow worthwhile to use. It would be nice if the Trap traits actually added to Condition Damage instead of Precision (fairly useless with traps) and Critical Damage (also fairly useless with traps). If the trap traits were in the Wilderness Survival line that added Condition Damage (which actually goes with traps) and Toughness, it would work much better and I wouldn’t have to sacrifice every bow trait to optimize the trap part of the build, just Quick Draw.

Specific Game Mode
WvW

Proposal Overview
Move the trap traits Trapper’s Defense, Trapper’s Expertise, and Trap Potency under Wilderness Survival.

Goal of Proposal
Skirmishing boosts Precision and Critical Damage, which are irrelevant to traps and using them. Wilderness Survival boosts Toughness and Condition Damage, the latter of which is relevant to traps. The current orientation, makes it difficult to combine a condition trap build with other types of builds because to get the trap traits and maximize Condition Damage, a player needs to maximize both Wilderness Survival (for the Condition Damage) and Skirmishing (for the trap traits) making, it difficult to combine improved Power, with beastmastery, or with bow-related traits found under Marksmanship.

Proposal Functionality
Move the trap traits Trapper’s Defense, Trapper’s Expertise, and Trap Potency under Wilderness Survival instead of Skirmishing.

Associated Risks
Would make it difficult to combine a trap build with Empathic Bond.

Chrispy.5641:

Berk.8561:

Chrispy.5641:

Uh….just so we’re clear, I can use that same Rabid build in my post, and throw traps off of a wall in WvW, and then use Barrage from a Longbow, and scatter every attacking player away from a gate (unless its like a 20+ man zerg). I don’t need to use melee. I could also forget the axe/torch (which is definitely not melee itself) and switch to shortbow instead. Shooting an enemy in the back as they try to run away from my traps is freaking hilarious when they fall to the bleeding and poison I can stack.

Sounds like it’s worth a try, but barrage from the walls has it’s own liabilities in my experience, not the least of which is that getting line of site to lay down a barrage can involve having to jump up on a wall, with can mean getting yanked off the wall, though using Rage as One helps a bit with that. My bigger concern is that both Trap Potency and Trapper’s Expertise are in the Skirmishing trait line, which means I’m giving up Quick Draw, which means my bow skills will take longer to recharge, right? It would be nice if I didn’t have to lose a trait that make bows more useful in order to do a trap build. Again, I’m looking to primarily be an archer, not a trap guy who uses a bow.

And here’s the problem many people have. They want their entire build to be optimized 100% of the time, but there are cases where that just isn’t possible (like what I described). People say that going full traps interferes with other aspects of the build, and, well…., its supposed to!

So I use Axes? I doesn’t mean that I have to have Axe traits instead of trap traits.

Edit – Another Example,….Rampager Gear! Do you invest more into Power or Condition Damage? Or do you try to find the happy medium between the two?

Since I learned that rangers’ pet wouldn’t get a fix in a near/foreseeable future (in what? november?) I’ve been levelling other classes… and I mean, all at the same time… (yeah, I’m crazy like that).
My level 48 necro with found gear and only partial trait selection is doing more damage and have more survivability in WvW than my level 80 / exotic ranger. I can go with my level 40something war into pack of mobs of 5+ levels than I, and still survive… the bow feels more deadly than my ranger’s one on my war and more funny on my thief… and these chars are not yet 80.
Anything I put in the competency bar is useful as is, intraited. (except, maybe, for ground-targetting of necro’s marks… and engie’s too… untraited engie is not so great) But for pretty much everything else, untraited works great, traits are just nice addition.

Rangers (and engie) need to be traited for things to work half as expected, in terms of range and damage and utilities… How is it that 6/10 profession feel like traits are optional, while 2 seem balanced around traits being taken?
You know the WvW skill points? One is easy, two were pain with my ranger; went with an uplevel (38?) staff Ele… took a long time to kill the things, but hey, didn’t fall once!
If all professions were balanced around their traits, all professions would feel the obligation to trait for what they play….
Now, admittedly, they are all unstuffed uplevels… maybe they will feel differently at 80, maybe other players find that other class also are worthless untraited… but from my experience most of the other professions’ competency feel useful untraited – though they might be more when traited – I feel with other professions I can swap things around on the skillbar without paying a price, while I feel on my ranger (and engie) that I need the traits for something to be on the skill bar…

Berk.8561:

I did some sample builds in a build editor and to really do the trap build right, I’d also have to drain the Marksmanship trait line, since it doesn’t add to Condition damage at all, which reduces Power and eliminates all of the traits that would make a bow worthwhile to use. It would be nice if the Trap traits actually added to Condition Damage instead of Precision (useless with traps) and Critical Damage (also useless with traps). If the trap traits were in the Wilderness Survival line that added Condition Damage (which actually goes with traps) and Toughness, I would work much better and I wouldn’t have to sacrifice every bow trait to optimize the trap part of the build, just Quick Draw.

There’s where you have to make decisions if you want a trap build. While Marksmanship seems useless for a trap build at first, the Condition Duration most certainly isn’t useless, especially to extend the duration of poison past 10 seconds, per pulse with vipers nest! Or maybe you take the no damage frost trap instead, and pretty much Perma-chill anyone who crosses your path if you are also carrying an axe.

And using Precision with Trap Builds is quite awesome too, not for increasing the damage you do with burning, bleeding, and poison, but it does increase your chances to fire off more bleeding if you use Sharpended Edges and have an Earth Sigil, which indirectly increases the damage you deal. Just using traps (no weapons), I can very easily get over 1000 dps, just by using the low damage pulses of flame trap and viper’s nest. Then lets throw down the spike trap and Axe #2….you ain’t living much longer if you didn’t bring condition removal! The condition stacking is the reason (to me) why traps are good the way they are in Skirmishing, even though there is no condition damage, or condition duration in that trait line. I don’t know why people keep saying that Precision and Skirmishing doesn’t help traps at all, because it certainly does! (if changes are made, I would reccomend that Critical damage goes to marksmanship, and condition duration goes to skirmishing, since Marksmanship is all about damage anyways)

And your problem is still that you want to have a build that optimizes both bows and traps, or some other skill. You don’t need Quickdraw to do that. Don’t forget that on my build, you can proc bleed two times for every attack you do (through a trait and sigil). One barrage can potentially stack on 120 bleeds between 5 enemies if my crit chance is high enough (24 each!), and using skills like muddy terrain, spike trap, and spiders, ensures that you can get as many of those bleeds stacked on as possible. Your bow is still optimized for damage, but in a totally different way. The trait doesn’t need to specifically reference bows to affect them.

One concern brought up awhile ago:
Greatswords.

What happened to them? You mentioned taking away the Evade, and buffing their damage?

Personally, I’d love a Melee option for Ranger besides 1h Sword.

Thinking in terms of balance, I raise the question: how should we balance a full-melee Ranger?

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
We should focus how our Melee options interact, and which niches they provide.

Goal of Proposal
To achieve diverse and efficient Melee options for the Ranger.

Proposal Functionality

—1h sword/Axe+Greatsword
Highest melee DPS.
Swapping between GS and 1h Sword for highest Ranger damage possible. Sword for Auto-attack, Greatsword for a high recharging Burst. (A high-recharge skill on a 20s cooldown with be ideal.)

—1h sword/Warhorn+1h sword/Torch
Buffs for team.
Makes use of combo field in Warhorn with the awesome Fire Field of Torch.

—1h sword/Axe+1h sword/Torch
CC and Blind.
If you were to go through with giving Torch a pulsing blind, then Axe would be an amazing weapon for pulling foes into your AoE.

—1h sword/Axe+1h sword/Torch
CC and Blind.
If you were to go through with giving Torch a pulsing blind, then Axe would be an amazing weapon for pulling foes into your AoE.

—1h sword/dagger+Greatsword
Defensive set.
Swaps between GS evade #3 and block, and the 1h sword’s evades.

Associated Risks
By rebalancing GS into a burst-damage weapon, we may anger the WvWers and PvPers who use it in bunker builds.

Greatsword doesn’t really need much. Just bring the auto attack in line with other weapons with similar defensive capabilities (spear and guardian hammer).

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

Actually Orca, I believe a couple of months after the game was released, ranger community was complaining that we couldn’t dps as well as all the other classes and a dev was quoted as saying that we might not see those large number’s because ‘about’ 30% of the ranger’s damage is done by the pet, so we have to figure pet damage when viewing our own damage in order to get the real DPS amount like all other classes. That is where the 30% came from. Later player’s changed it to 30 to 40 percent and I can only believe it’s because with the addition of new and more powerful gear, everyone’s DPS goes up by their 100% number’s while ours only goes up by a 70% number because as you know, pets don’t scale with our armor. Either that or people are just over exaggerating to get their point across. <Shrug>

You’ve been around here for a while and are a steadfast, reliable poster on the ranger forums, I thought you would have known that. I wish I remember exactly when that quote came out so I can link it but it was a while ago.

Edit
Just like when people say because the word ranger has the word range in it doesn’t mean we are a ranged class. In one of the video’s where they are talking about classes just a few months ago, they talked like 10 o 20 minutes about each class. when asked about ranger’s they talked about ranger’s for only 2 minutes (feeling the love there) but one of the things said was, and I don’t remember the exact phrasing of it, but that ranger’s where designed to be the long range damage dealers of the game. (would love to find that one too so I can link it here).

Akisame.9508:

You’ve been around here for a while and are a steadfast, reliable poster on the ranger forums, I thought you would have known that. I wish I remember exactly when that quote came out so I can link it but it was a while ago.

Thanks for the kind words but I switched from the german forum onto the english forum just 3 months ago. So I’m not familiar with any dev posts earlier than that.

Akisame.9508:

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

Well, but they do know how much damage they have taken from the ranger and shifted to the pet. Now they have to revert that. We hardly can give more detail if we don’t know the detailed stuff. We’re all just guessing that the ranger loses 30% of his damage but we don’t know for sure. ANet knows and they have to do the changes. We just can say what we want to happen.

Actually Orca, I believe a couple of months after the game was released, ranger community was complaining that we couldn’t dps as well as all the other classes and a dev was quoted as saying that we might not see those large number’s because ‘about’ 30% of the ranger’s damage is done by the pet, so we have to figure pet damage when viewing our own damage in order to get the real DPS amount like all other classes. That is where the 30% came from. Later player’s changed it to 30 to 40 percent and I can only believe it’s because with the addition of new and more powerful gear, everyone’s DPS goes up by their 100% number’s while ours only goes up by a 70% number because as you know, pets don’t scale with our armor. Either that or people are just over exaggerating to get their point across. <Shrug>

You’ve been around here for a while and are a steadfast, reliable poster on the ranger forums, I thought you would have known that. I wish I remember exactly when that quote came out so I can link it but it was a while ago.

Edit
Just like when people say because the word ranger has the word range in it doesn’t mean we are a ranged class. In one of the video’s where they are talking about classes just a few months ago, they talked like 10 o 20 minutes about each class. when asked about ranger’s they talked about ranger’s for only 2 minutes (feeling the love there) but one of the things said was, and I don’t remember the exact phrasing of it, but that ranger’s where designed to be the long range damage dealers of the game. (would love to find that one too so I can link it here).

While we are digging up dev posts, someone should find the one they made after they nerfed Sb range that described how they didn’t want us just spamming 111111111 to deal damage. Because we are the "sustained damage’ dealers of the game…

On the GW2 Homepage this is what is written for Rangers as a description;
“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

We need emphasis on reach of our weapons and base damage at ranger.
I know the devs what to keep GW1 separate but maybe they should look at how they built the Ranger there, in my opinion it was a well balanced class in GW1

Renn.8241:

On the GW2 Homepage this is what is written for Rangers as a description;
“Rangers rely on a keen eye, a steady hand, and the power of nature itself. Unparalleled archers, rangers are capable of bringing down foes from a distance with their bows. With traps, nature spirits, and a stable of loyal pets at their command, rangers can adapt to any situation.”

We need emphasis on reach of our weapons and base damage at ranger.
I know the devs what to keep GW1 separate but maybe they should look at how they built the Ranger there, in my opinion it was a well balanced class in GW1

True but they gave most of our good bow skills to the warrior (burning arrows, pin down) and our preparations became thief venoms. We pretty much just have spirits (no where as good as gw1) and pets (only ever saw use in bunnythumper/petminionfactory builds).

Substance E.4852:

While we are digging up dev posts, someone should find the one they made after they nerfed Sb range that described how they didn’t want us just spamming 111111111 to deal damage. Because we are the "sustained damage’ dealers of the game…

Actually, he said, spamming 1 was not fun. LOL. JP’s answer is even more hilarious and ironic given the design philosophy provided in this thread.

https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/ranger/Ranger-SB-Nerf-Not-40-milliseconds/page/8#post398770

Took a couple of days to get debugging in on this. It is in fact a 40ms difference which equates to about 7% less damage when spamming 1. We made this change because it was creating some animation bugs to leave it where it was. It was also encouraging just spamming 1 which isn’t the most fun gameplay. If our data shows shortly that shortbow is now not effective we can certainly address that, but would do so by improving other skills on that weapon rather than by reintroducing the spam on 1 and the bugs that it was creating.

I’m inclined to think that the core of the issue is who makes decisions for ranger vs. who plays rangers; they’re not the same.

Allie, has making a viable DPS or burst build been up for discussion internally? Or are you guys resolutely sticking with your sustained damage philosophy?

On a side note, I’ve seen quite a few players in-game mentioning how cool it would be to have one or two ‘unique pets’ in the game, perhaps something like a phoenix with particle effects. It’s no core issue, but it might be a simple addition to add a bit more appeal to the profession.

Allie Murdock.8152:

I do want to say though, just because it’s an emotional reaction doesn’t make it invalid. Some have been unhappy with the balance of the class for a long time, so I think reacting emotionally is very human and I don’t fault them for it.

A whole year of neglect to an entire class will do that. It rubs some players the wrong way. Speaking of which, necromancers called, they’d like to have a word.

I think the fix to rangers was just long overdue, just as the fix to necromancers is long overdue too. But meanwhile we are expected to enjoy the new Living Story, while the unbalances still run rampant. I’m not surprised to see some very angry posts and bitterness.