Guild Wars 2

Hi everibody

First of all, i an nobody who has been known as a good player in TPvP. but i played ranger for long enough to make me think of some changes that could be done in a future.

The point of this changes is to increase build diversity and make playing as a ranger something confortable to play and enjoyable to watch from a espectator´s perspective

So, here is the link:

http://pastebin.com/iwtjFFnp

And also here is it:

TRAITS

Marksmanship

Keen edge: Moved to master tier
Piercing arrows:Moved to adept tier (swap with keen edge)
Beastmaster´s bond: Changed the functionality of this trait, it now increases your damage dealt by 20% when your pet is downed

Skirmishing

Honed axes: This trait now also decreases the cooldown of main hand axe by 20%

Wilderness survival

Healer´s celerity: Moved to master tier, changed the functionality of this trait, it now grants you and your ally 5 seconds of quickness when reviving an ally
Martial mastery: Moved to adept tier
Hide in plain sigth: Reduced cooldown to 15 seconds, chandged its functionality to apply 3 seconds of stealth when disabled

Nature´s magic

Evasive purity: Moved to adept tier
Circle of life: Moved to master tier, changet its functionality to create a healing spring when you start reviving an ally, it does tha same effectss than the actual trait (3 seconds of regeneration and remove one condition every pulse, pulses 3 times and last for 5 seconds)

Beastmastery

Speed training: Changed its functionality to decrease the cooldown of pet skills (rampage as one and heal as one ) and the skills of pets by 20%
Master´s bond: Changed its functionality to give 1 stack (or 5 in pvp) of master´s bond to the pet when you kill a foe, the stacks are not removed in any form and are shared when you swap pets, the stacks last for 300 seconds
Pet type especific traits All this traits now apply for all pet types

UTILITY / HEALING SKILLS

Sharpening stone: Added a 2 seconds cast time, reduced cooldown to 20 seconds
Search and rescue: Added a 1 second cast time, changed its functionality to revive and make the pet invulnerable for 3 seconds and make it search for downed targets and revive them at 50% the speed of a player, the effect of this skill last for 10 seconds
Ligthning reflexes: Reduced vigor duration to 5 seconds, reduced cooldown to 30 seconds, this skill now removes movement impairement effects
Heal as one: This is now a pet skill

CONTINUED NEXT POST

WEAPON SKILLS

Shortbow

Crossfire: Increased cast time to match thief´s shortbow fire rate, increased damage by 33% and bleed duretion to 5 seconds
Poison volley: Increased damage by 50%, added a .75 seconds cast time (to match splitblade)
Crippling shot: Increased damage by 100% increased cripple duration to 5 seconds, added a .75 seconds cast time (to match splitblade)
Concussion shot: Increased cast time to 1 second, the ranger is no longer able to move when casting this skill,, increased damage by 100% and cooldown to 15 seconds

Sword

Kick: Increased cast time to .5 seconds, increased cripple duration to 4 seconds, thus skill can now hit 3 targets
Hornet strike / Monarch leap: This skill can now hit 3 targets
Serpent´s strike This skill can now hit 3 targets

Longbow

Long range shot: Changed the damage ranges to match mesmer´s greatword auto attack (300, 300-600, 600-900 and 900+), changed damage to match the extra damage range
Point blank shot: Increased cast time to .75 seconds, reduced cooldown to 12seconds
Hunter´s shot: Increased cast time to .75 seconds, reduced cooldown to 10 seconds
Barrage: Increased cast time to match the barrage’s duration (near 6 seconds or so), reduced cooldown to 15 seconds

Greatsword

Counter attack kick: This skill can be done when moving, this skill can now hit 3 targets
Hilt bash: Increased cast time to .75 seconds, reduced cooldown to 15 seconds

Axe

Spliblade: Increased damage by 200% so it deals de damage of 3 ricochets when hit at point blank
Winter´s bite: The proyectile is no longer homing, reduced chill duration to 2 seconds, this skill now bounces three times like ricochet
Whirling defense: Reduced duration to 3 seconds, reduced number of hits to 9, reduced cooldown to 15 seconds, retaliation duration remains to be 4 seconds

Spear

Jab: decreased damage to match stab
Evasive strike:Decreased damage to match jab, this skill can be done while moving
Counter strike: This skill will continue blocking if the target is not in range
Trow spear: Increased damage to match greatsword´s cripplig throw, added 5 seconds of cripple, reduced cooldown to 15 seconds
Man-o-war: This skill can be done when moving, reduced cooldown to 20 seconds

PETS

Bears

Slash: This skill can now hit 3 targets
Bite: Instead of apply regeneration to the bear this skill now heals for 1000+ healing power per each target hit, it can now hit 3 targets
Shake it off: this skill now cures two conditions instead of one
Enfeebling roar: Reduced cooldown to 25 seconds
Chilling roar: Reduced cooldown to 20 secods
Poison cloud: Increased damage to match carrionn devourer´s poison cloud damage, reduced cooldown to 25 seconds
Rending maul: This skill now moves the arctodus 300 units at the moment of falling

Moas

Peck: This skill now moves the moa 100 units to its target
Frenzied attack: This skill now does a flying karate moa kick that hit two times, and moves the moa to its target 400 units, this skill can no hit 3 targets damage increased to match drake´s chomp skill, each hit apply 2 stacks of vulnerability for 10 seconds
Harmonic cry: Reduced cooldown to 30 seconds
Protecting screech: Reduced cooldown to 20 seconds
Furious screech: Reduced cooldown to 20 seconds, reduced fury duration to 10 seconds
Chilling screech: Reduced cooldown to 25 seconds, this skill now hits two times, dealing damage and aplying 3 seconds of chill and thus, increasing damage by 100%
Dazing screech: Decreased cooldown to 15 seconds

Pigs

Jab: This skill can now hi 3 targets
Maul: This skill now moves the pig to its target 300 units, this skill can now hit 3 targets
Forage (all): Reduced cooldown to 30 seconds, the bundles can no longer be picked up by enemies

The point of all this changes is to increase build diversity and make skills that have no counter or are very hard to see coming can now be countered by fast reflexes, while increasing their overall effectiveness.

If you read all this , then thanks a lot for your attention.

Any feedback is also welcome.

1. on sb doesn’t need cast time I don’t play ranger but js

Ok you are rigth, but the point of the shortbow change was to keep a similar DPS while decreasing the fire rate to give bigger room to blind, evade, but also give de chance to increase the damage output if you manage to use the poison volley at poit blank when the enemy cant evade it, and making all skills exept 3 which is an evade easier to dodge, but in exchange meke them stronger so to reach maximun DPS is now something diferent to pressing 1 frenetically.

Bears and moas will never be used for the simple reason that they do no damage whatsoever.

Bear autoattacks hit for less than a burning tick on a power spec. Moa is not too far behind on how terrible its damage is.

No amount of utility will ever overcome the premium that is damage. Damage is the best commodity in a game with no healers.

The same can be said for greatsword and Barrage. The problem with barrage is not only its cooldown, it’s that you do more damage to yourself on someone with retal than you actually do to the targets. The skill tickles compared to other classes’ aoe.

And longbow will not work like mesmer greatsword because mesmer can pair greatsword with staff to keep ranged options while having defense. The ranger has no effective defensive ranged weapons. You can disengage with monarch’s leap but doing so means your ranged pressure drops to zero as you do no damage with a melee weapon from range unlike mesmer staff.

Mesmer greatsword also has amazing burst from illusionary berserker that is aoe cleave to boot, applies a cripple, and does the damage of a rapid fire in the small time it takes to cast it compared to rapid fire’s long cast time (and horrible DPS by definition as the autoattack from midrange or more actually outdamages the rapid fire channel).

Adding the cast time to the longbow stealth and knockback just makes the weapon even more vulnerable, as those are your only defenses and you NEED them to even last a bit longer.

And most importantly, ranger utilities suck and require trait investment to even work (signets require 30 markman, are totally worthless outside signet of renewal without any trait points; spirits require 20-30 in Nature Magic or else they too are worthless).

Rangers also have little active condition removal and all of their stunbreaks are terrible. Signet of Renewal is a whopping 60 sec cd, just for a stunbreak and condi removal. Lightning Reflexes has no condition removal, and your only sources of condi removal are healing spring, signet of renewal and a 30 point trait in Wilderness.

Power builds will never be viable because pets dont get crit damage from the ranger’s, so they’re effectively capped at 30% crit bonus while power classes can hit 60% crit dmg bonus in spvp and 110%+ in WvW/PvE, and god forbid they introduce ascended stats in spvp because they introduced stat upgrades in pve but forgot to update pets to those upgrade values, making pve rangers even worse off as 30-40% of their damage doesn’t scale at all.

Pets can’t hit moving targets, and they already said they’re not going to open the “can of worms” that is the AI they forced on this class (introduced a flawed mechanic, and then throw up your arms and decide not to fix the class you broke from the start because it’s time consuming and AI is unpopular in spvp, that’s developers for you).

Pets have no aoe/cleave outside the drake, so melee rangers are even more handicapped because unlike other melee who cleave with all their abilities, melee rangers have less cleave damage, and due to the erratic delivery of pet damage power/burst rangers are not viable as they are too fragile and have none of the burst to compensate for it.

Ok i agree that damage is the most important part of the game, but also i dont want to make a miracle, i just want to improve what is oseless so it can be a little less useless.

For example:

Moa changes will greatly increase the capabylity of a moa to keep with its target, imagine the autoattack moves you 100 units to the target, that means the moa will attack at 230 units of distance instead of 130, and it will close the gap betwenn its target by 100 units, which means the target has to run more than 100 units away from the moa to prevent it to autoattack him again, and also, the new skill 2 i propose will be like moa morph skill 2 (the kick), if you ever watched your pet being hit with moa morph in hotjoin, you would get surprised of how easy ti can stay on target, almost all the time it was on the target dealing maximun dps.

So in short, moas will deal the same low damage, but they´ll stay on target much more easily than the rest of the pets.

And on bears, i know that this will not change a lot, but at least the cleave and the masive health of bears will make them a realiable option for aoe in team figths, on top of the improved active skills.

Pigs will be a middle ground betwen moa and bear, having cleaving attacks and a bit of cap closing with maul, but not that of the moa that i think will be very hard to shake off.

Longbow changes also reduce the cooldowns, and .75 secs cast time is not that long, and stealth shot is too storng to be that fast, but both got buffed in aviavility, but nerfed on being almos unavoidable.

On power builds, i could perfectly increasded the damage of sword/ greatsword, but i honestly think it would be OP if idid, so i just made some changes to make cleave and the aviavility of skills better insteand of increasing the damage.

What is the justification for the massacre of the shortbow?

Most of these changes seem to be marginal changes to useless traits. They still will be useless even with the random changes. I’d like something that clearly intends to bring back or create a new style of build.

For instance these changes won’t make trapper viable. None of the mandatory traits 0-30-30-0-0 are changed. Empatic bond, both trap traits and bleed on crit are exactly the same. The only possible changes are hide in plain sight (worse for point holding) and a couple of traits that aren’t going to be brought over shared anguish.

i know i know, but honestly, i didnt made thos changes to traps/ singents because i didnt know how to change it withouht revamping the entire line or making them OP.

Here are my ideas:

1 Make traps deal double condition duration by default
2 Move that grandmaster trait to adept level
3 Delete trapper´s defense
4 Create a new Grandmaster trait

Also on shortbow, the autoattack will have the same DPS, it will just fire slower, but i didnt calculate the exact numbers.