Guild Wars 2

I have been playing ranger for a long time now and I am really sad to see that patch after patch the same issues go unattended by the ArenaNet balance team.

How is it possible that power rangers are still by far the worst direct damage profession? I’ll try to make a clear list of the current issues a ranger has to deal with every day while playing PvP.

1. DPS reliant on our pets
In any kind of PvP situation your pet damage is negligible because unlike NPCs, players move around while fighting.
We can’t have a major portion of our damage tied to an AI that simply does not cut it. Using pets for utility would be a way better choice, like today’s patch improving their ability to buff the party with vigor, fury or cleansing conditions.

2. Condition removal
Rangers desperately need some kind of active condition removal. It has been brought up by the community a thousand times yet we still have to fully spec into Wilderness Survival to get Empathic Bond and/or use Signet of Renewal, which is all passive. The active on Signet of Renewal cannot be taken into consideration because your pet has to be close to you and alive, which is not that common when you are being focused due to all the AoE damage and conditions going on.
A single immobilize and the ranger is dead. We have been asking for lighting reflexes to cleanse movement impairing conditions like the thief’s Withdraw/Roll for Initiative and remove the damage it does, but nothing has changed in over a year.

3. Weapons
Personally I have been playing a double bow ranger in soloQ (185 EU) because there is just no reason to use a melee weapon for a higher damage output.
- Greatsword, being a good weapon, is not cut for DPS because all of its damage is tied to Maul and no decent PvPer will ever be hit with a Signet of the Hunt+Maul combo.
- Sword, our highest DPS weapon with its #1 chain can force you to take a deadly CC or attack making it usually a bad choice.

4. Traits
Like I said in point 2, having only 40 points left (30 WS for Empathic Bond) leaves us with few choices.
As a direct damage dealer in PvP you need to invest in either your precision or critical damage trait line. Luckily for us, our Skirmishing has both of these desirable stats. Sadly most of the traits are lackluster.

In conclusion, give us some condition removal outside of EB so we can have the build diversity that we all want. Because I have never nor I will ever want to play the current spirit ranger that everyone seems to love these days.

It still amazes me how you gave warriors Cleansing Ire (+Dogged March) when they had signet of stamina (full condition cleanse) on a 36 seg traited and Mending (removes 3 conditions) on a 20 seg cooldown arguing that they lacked condition removal yet rangers have not seen an improvement on the matter.

Maybe you could pay attention to Heal as One, that currently is useless and make it remove 3 conditions. That way it could see some use, because right now pretty much every ranger is running Healing Spring for support or Troll Unguent as a survival tool.

It won’t happen.
What will most likely happen is that they will give to warrior an Empathetic Bond-like trait, but on Master tier, because everyone knows that Warriors lack condition removals.

sorrow.2364:

because everyone knows that Warriors lack condition removals.

where have you been? on mars? you are like 2 3 months late.

Pretty much this. +1. Doubting a dev response because ranger is in the title, but I’d love to be proven wrong.

Not that I disagree with you entirely I just want to add some things to consider.

I think the entire point of the ranger class is to maneuver with a pet. You can play bow/rifle warrior if you’re into the high damage range builds without having any of it attributed to a minion.

Also you can shift+right click to take off the auto attack on sword 1 so it doesn’t root you in place.

As for condition removal, I do wish there were other routes rangers could take. IMO I think healing spring should remove more conditions but only heal you. It seems silly to me at least the a ranged class is encouraged to group with his/her teammates in order to effectively use the heal skill. (Maybe have a sort of pulsing effect that cures a condition every pulse idk)

@HappinessFactory;

I think the entire point of the ranger class is to maneuver with a pet. You can play bow/rifle warrior if you’re into the high damage range builds without having any of it attributed to a minion.

That’s true, but at the same time, that is also largely left up to player interpretation. Maybe rangers have their damage split with their pets to have to work together, or maybe, the player has to rely on their pet for useful boons in order to improve themselves. Maybe the ranger player has all of the damage but can’t hold an opponent in place to land it without the pet.

There is more than one interpretation of how a ranger and pet could work together in order to be efficient is all. It’s left highly up to interpretation, but asking at least for more options that don’t undermine the philosophy that the ranger has to work with their pet to achieve the best results is a legitimate request I think. It shouldn’t always be a damage focused problem.

jcbroe.4329:

@HappinessFactory;

I think the entire point of the ranger class is to maneuver with a pet. You can play bow/rifle warrior if you’re into the high damage range builds without having any of it attributed to a minion.

That’s true, but at the same time, that is also largely left up to player interpretation. Maybe rangers have their damage split with their pets to have to work together, or maybe, the player has to rely on their pet for useful boons in order to improve themselves. Maybe the ranger player has all of the damage but can’t hold an opponent in place to land it without the pet.

There is more than one interpretation of how a ranger and pet could work together in order to be efficient is all. It’s left highly up to interpretation, but asking at least for more options that don’t undermine the philosophy that the ranger has to work with their pet to achieve the best results is a legitimate request I think. It shouldn’t always be a damage focused problem.

I think what you’re looking for might already be there. I run wolf/drake hound on all of my builds because of their CC abilities. I time them so I can kite my opponents more effectively and it allows me to stay alive longer. Is this the kind of thing you’re looking for? Or do you want your pet to have much more utility and a lot less damage?

You also have to consider if they move some damage off the pet on to the ranger. The pet won’t get more utility, that would just be straight buffs. And I doubt the ranger is in a place to receive such drastic buffs.

Lighter.5631:

sorrow.2364:

because everyone knows that Warriors lack condition removals.

where have you been? on mars? you are like 2 3 months late.

It’s hard to tell sometimes but that was sarcasm I’m pretty sure.

HappinessFactory.4910:

jcbroe.4329:

@HappinessFactory;

I think the entire point of the ranger class is to maneuver with a pet. You can play bow/rifle warrior if you’re into the high damage range builds without having any of it attributed to a minion.

That’s true, but at the same time, that is also largely left up to player interpretation. Maybe rangers have their damage split with their pets to have to work together, or maybe, the player has to rely on their pet for useful boons in order to improve themselves. Maybe the ranger player has all of the damage but can’t hold an opponent in place to land it without the pet.

There is more than one interpretation of how a ranger and pet could work together in order to be efficient is all. It’s left highly up to interpretation, but asking at least for more options that don’t undermine the philosophy that the ranger has to work with their pet to achieve the best results is a legitimate request I think. It shouldn’t always be a damage focused problem.

I think what you’re looking for might already be there. I run wolf/drake hound on all of my builds because of their CC abilities. I time them so I can kite my opponents more effectively and it allows me to stay alive longer. Is this the kind of thing you’re looking for? Or do you want your pet to have much more utility and a lot less damage?

You also have to consider if they move some damage off the pet on to the ranger. The pet won’t get more utility, that would just be straight buffs. And I doubt the ranger is in a place to receive such drastic buffs.

It isn’t that, as much as it is the reliance on the RNG of the utilities. Most classes, for instance, can CC their opponent at the right moment and land their burst. Rangers, however, don’t have the luxury of having that type of on demand CC (for the most part), and have to try to “force” the pet into getting to do exactly what you want.

Or, for instance, maybe I want to make my pet a boon machine, and don’t want it to do any damage. Sadly, the pet still carries a portion of that power based damage, making builds with that intention that would want to build for power suffer, because currently, pets with the best boon support aren’t always the most useful pets, but still carry a portion of the damage potential that seems just a bit too large for the power build to be successful.

Now, I’d argue that parts of the patch are a step in the right direction. Vigorous Training and Intimidation Training are both steps in the right direction, as is the change to all of the F2 skills for the pets (especially Fern Hound).

That being said, those F2 skills still suffer from not always being reliable, particularly so when it comes to activating on demand.

However, Boons on pet swap is a good direction. I just think cleaning up the reliability of the pet F2 skills, along with a few more lesser pet trait options being upgraded to their better counterparts, is a very good direction to go.

My preference, however, is to not see so much damage on an AI entity, especially in a PvP environment. I’d rather have the wolfs leap do zero damage with a knockdown but be an on demand active skill, and have myself do all the damage. AKA I’d rather play with the pet and utilize its actions, the play off of the pets actions.

@jcbroe

If you study your pets cast time you can figure out how each f2 ability works. Most of them do have a long cast time and repeatedly pressing f2 will interrupt the ability. And the pet can be interrupted by stuns and whatnot, if you keep and eye on your pet it’s easier to work with.

But what I want you to do is to look at what you’re asking for. You want to take most(or all) of the damage away from your pet and on to the ranger. But you don’t get to shift that power and add utility to the pet without making the ranger rediculously overpowered.

There might be a way to balance it where only some of the pets damage is moved to the ranger, and then the rest of the damage is taken off the pet to make its utility more reliable (remember utility is power too). But then it doesn’t make sense thematically, why would a giant bear do no damage when it’s mailing someone’s face? All of this has to be taken in consideration.

HappinessFactory.4910:

@jcbroe

If you study your pets cast time you can figure out how each f2 ability works. Most of them do have a long cast time and repeatedly pressing f2 will interrupt the ability. And the pet can be interrupted by stuns and whatnot, if you keep and eye on your pet it’s easier to work with.

But what I want you to do is to look at what you’re asking for. You want to take most(or all) of the damage away from your pet and on to the ranger. But you don’t get to shift that power and add utility to the pet without making the ranger rediculously overpowered.

There might be a way to balance it where only some of the pets damage is moved to the ranger, and then the rest of the damage is taken off the pet to make its utility more reliable (remember utility is power too). But then it doesn’t make sense thematically, why would a giant bear do no damage when it’s mailing someone’s face? All of this has to be taken in consideration.

That’s extremely fair. I think of the F2 as a QoL change though. I’ve been playing ranger for too long, it isn’t a lack of understanding as to how their F2s function and how to interpret their animations to predict their actions.

It’s merely a debate of why a player controlled action doesn’t take immediate precedence over any action the pet can make (including when it decided to begin activating its skill and reposition, interrupting itself).

And I’m really, really not asking for the power to be shifted back to the player. Ranger would easily be the strongest class in the game. If, for some reason, pets were given a bit better on demand CC or boon utility, at the cost of their damage, I would only want the ranger players damage balanced accordingly. Better power scaling on particular skills, and maybe a bit higher base damage, while taking into account any support the pet may be providing.

If I had a test environment of my own, I would take these vague ideas and create the best example I could make in order to portray it. So I’ll just have to list what I’m going for vaguely lol.

-Pets maintain an important role of the success of the ranger in combat, but the actual features of that role can be varied based on player choice.
-Responsive player controlled features that needn’t be “forced” to work by players to avoiding frustrating gameplay experiences.

I would love nothing more than the pet’s F2 abilities to work and for the pet to be a benefit to the class instead of a hindrance. But at some point you have to ask yourself why things haven’t been fixed? The game has been out a year and these are issues leftover from beta. Is it too complicated to fix? Does ANet simply not care? Do they not know? These are the questions the players are asking given how little improvement the class has seen over the past year. If the core mechanic of the class can’t work then it’s time to redesign it.

There’s just no real direction or focus for the class. Players have asked for months what ANet wants the class to do and still no one knows.

No, no “they are working on it”.