Guild Wars 2

By now, we’re all aware of where the current ranger Spirit build stands in the meta. However, this discussion is meant to be more comprehensive than that. Through the games life cycle up until this point, rangers have been consistently rated at the top of the list, approaching or fitting into an OP status.

So, the question that needs to be asked ranges past current meta builds, and this question is: what are problems that the class faces that make it so not likable or not favorable for PvP?

My own thoughts:

-A huge part of the problem has always come from the function of the weapon skills. Most of the weapon skills have extremely basic and easy to use functions, that are strong on top of their ease of use, and have short cooldowns that aren’t punishing enough for whiffing attacks. Most weapon skills don’t need any rotations to be made effective; rotations being a necessary mechanic in order to increase the skill ceiling of gameplay.

-Building off of the last point, utilities and traits are the next issue that needs to be addressed. Rangers don’t really have many utilities or traits that bolster weapon skills, meaning that they have their own unique functions that aren’t dependent on weapon skills, and weapons themselves aren’t really dependent on any trait investment to be useful (the best one rangers have in current builds is Offhand Training). That means that ranger traits can be used entirely to buff either utilities or the pet (30 points has always been necessary in Wilderness Survival for condi removal, but consequently, that only helps builds by adding toughness and condi damage), and because of that utilities can be made extremely strong with no cost to the damage output of the weapons, which is where we get imbalanced builds like the Spirit build, which allows rangers to maintain full damage output on their weapon skills, while building entirely for team support, and the team support utilities can also output a large amount of damage with active effects.

-That leads into the next issue; the pet mechanic. The pet mechanic was designed to be an “always on” source of damage that is AI controlled. That is a problem, because players that go into a PvP mode are extremely turned off by going up against any sort of Player vs AI element, since that essentially takes player skill out of part of the equation. Then, there is also a ranger player, who can also be attacking you while the AI is attacking you, which, regardless of effectiveness, has a frustrating “feel,” due to the ranger class feeling like it has an AI handicap helping them, that is hard to counterplay due to the pet swap mechanic.

Suggestions for improvement:

-Add more necessary rotations for skills on weaponsets. Overall, the class needs to be harder to play.
-If passive elements aren’t removed, make them harder to use. Rangers spirits in particular should have a shorter lifespan than the cooldown, in order to encourage more mindful tactics that punish players that decide to just spam spirits. Also, the elite spirit probably has too many rez chances, and the storm spirit active probably does too much damage.
-Change the pet mechanic. Allow the “always out” idealism to be retained, but make the pet have to be “summoned” (look at the way spirits work currently). F1 summons them to attack a target, then toggles to a “sic” option to change targets. F2 is a unique attack. F3 is in invulnerability that also makes the pet stop attacking for its duration. F4 “returns” the pet, un-summoning them and putting them on cooldown. If the pet dies, it goes on full cooldown, while F4 keeps the remaining cooldown. Balance for damage options and utility options accordingly.

Granted I’m just one person, and my opinions don’t always represent everybody elses. But it seems like the community would be in full agreement that the ranger class definitely needs to be changed to require a higher skill investment in order to be successful.

Discuss? Opinions, suggestions, etc. A comprehensive discussion/suggestion thread is definitely needed, since just saying something is OP doesn’t really help the devs make any changes.

The largest complaint I had with the Ranger class since the moment I first started playing it was how boring the class was to play. The vast majority of your time is spent auto-attacking with each weapon while you wait to use most of the other skills defensively. As you mentioned, there is no ‘combo’ or synergy with any of the weapon options.

The next issue I had with the class is too much of the class is devoted to the pet and yet ANet hasn’t fleshed out the pet enough to warrant its use. When all is said and done, the pet acts as little more than a DOT. The F2 abilities are near impossible to use strategically and instead are only effective point blank when the target is actively engaging you. ANet handicaps the player for using the pet, but they never bothered to flesh out the pet enough where it was more beneficial than a hindrance.

Now you mention that the class has always functioned well in structured combat, but even when doing ‘well’, it was never more than a bunker/regen class that used conditions. It has never had an effective power option, and the primary reason for this is the lack of on-demand burst, poor AE, and low coefficients on their attacks.

They really need to either flesh out the pet mechanic so it actually adds something to the class, or they need to scrap it and just move it further down the path where it’s little more than a DOT. A more responsive F2. Secondary attacks set to be player controlled, and the pet actually being able to hit moving targets are all things that need to happen or you may as well remove the pet entirely.

The weapons need to have more synergy within themselves. Why doesn’t the longbow have an aimed shot that does high damage? It now has a knockback to move a target to the higher tiered damage range of the weapon. It has a stealth that allows you to reset openning strikes, and then it has …. nothing. It can’t follow this up with anything but a Rapid Fire which is actually only about 10% more damage than auto attack over the same time frame. Similar issues exist with pretty much all weapons.

Of all the classes I play, the Ranger is without doubt the most boring and shallow of them all. The Ranger in GW2 is easily the worst implementation of the Ranger archetype I’ve ever seen in any MMO.

Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch is extremely fluid and fun to play, with tons of synergy.

Furajir.3815:

Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch is extremely fluid and fun to play, with tons of synergy.

100% this, even if you are a good player the moment you touch a shortbow you become an autoattack spammer and everyone hates you.

With that combination you can literally change your attack pattern every single swap, you are never pigeonholed into 1 style of engaging, with an evade on both sets, how is that not everything you could ever want in 2 weaponsets?

Something that might work.

Change the minor spirit’s to Enchantment’s. So there isn’t anymore Ai clutter, leave the Elite the same.

Add in a new skill remove enchantment to say Mesmer class only.

Just an idea, I’m not talken about the cd’s effects and changes of the skills I’m just thinking the Ai clutter was so stupid. So without breaking the class completely just change what they are.

I wanted to enjoy the Ranger profession in GW2, given that I enjoyed all 3 medium armor professions in GW1.
As Atherakhia said there is a lot of effectivity put into the pet but the pet itself is not an engaging mechanic not because it couldn’t be but well I think in their aim of simplifying the pet they took out part of the enjoyment of it.

About Ranger spirits. I think there is a general issue of trade-off and weak foundations in the game that could be improved. Not really that pets and AI are bad tools to have in the game. I think of GW1 with Spirits vs GW2 and it’s to me not that AI are terrible things to have but I think Traits sometimes are too…important?
A untraited spirit can’t move. For that lack of mobility the actual range for which it applies passive effects is truthfully pretty small and it has pitiful health given where it needs to be to be in effect. I think Anet should make Spirits at a base level a bit more weildy and given that they don’t move in that state they’d be cast outside of the immediate action and wouldn’t be causing the same visual mess as Spirit Unbound versions.

If I was just going to change Rangers based on their current state then Nature’s Vengeance would also decrease Spirit Toughness by taking the trait which makes cleaving them out easier and faster to do.

Furajir.3815:

Axe/Dagger and Sword/Torch is extremely fluid and fun to play, with tons of synergy.

It is very fun and fluid, but I’d also say its extremely easy. The conditions in which it applies conditions are very lenient, and/or easy to accomplish, and are also on fairly short cooldowns. The evades are also on short cooldown, while providing good utility through long lasting poisons.

Luckily, the auto attacks (especially without power investment) aren’t very powerful, so that does kind of offset the strengths of the cooldown skills. But making Splitblades and Throw Torch, for instance, more punishing on whiff might be better to try to edge away from the spam meta, and make timing them that much more crucial, given how strong they are. Just as an example.

I absolutely agree, Been playing my warrior for months. I believe that either immunity timers need to be introduced, or, a stat needs to affect the duration and or condition damage you take, regardless of food buffs etc.

Something definitely needs to be done. Good points have been made all around, especially how traits dictate the game. It would be one thing if every trait in every slot was a competitive option is some aspect, especially grandmaster traits. But, because there aren’t, it automatically drives builds into “obvious” options.

The same goes for the tradeoff discussion, there is a huge issue with investments and tradeoffs. A huge example I can give is something like, look at how little trait investment it takes for condition builds and weapons to work for rangers, versus look at how 30 marksmanship is mandatory to make a longbow/power build as optimal as it can be, and then even then, it doesn’t really necessarily compete with the output of the condition build.

If more investment is required, it should be able to do more or do better, because you’re trading off something else you could be invested in and limiting your options in that way.

So yes, good discussion so far.