Guild Wars 2

This CDI is absolutely pointless when no devs are going to jump in and relay their thoughts on all this… already 8 pages worth of viable suggestions and not a single person on anet staff bothers to give feedback….

that tells me 2 things.
1 – they don’t give a kitten about rangers (we already know this to be true because of their utter disregard for class mechanics)
2 – No one at anet even plays rangers – probably also true when I saw on of the devs live stream talk about rangers and he basically said majority of this class doesn’t make any sense and has very little synergy.

Honestly, someone from anet staff please tell me how many hours they have played on a ranger?? does ANYONE on this dev team even know whats going?

SkiTz.4590:

This CDI is absolutely pointless when no devs are going to jump in and relay their thoughts on all this… already 8 pages worth of viable suggestions and not a single person on anet staff bothers to give feedback….

that tells me 2 things.
1 – they don’t give a kitten about rangers (we already know this to be true because of their utter disregard for class mechanics)
2 – No one at anet even plays rangers – probably also true when I saw on of the devs live stream talk about rangers and he basically said majority of this class doesn’t make any sense and has very little synergy.

Honestly, someone from anet staff please tell me how many hours they have played on a ranger?? does ANYONE on this dev team even know whats going?

This thread is threehundretmotherfartingfifty posts long and its been out for not even 24h! Keep ur poop together, there is just one person (Allie) mentoring this thread.

BEASTMASTERY IS A TRAIT LINE, NOT THE WHOLE PROFESSION…
Rangers have a massive number of companion-based traits scattered across all five trait lines. Some highly-regarded professions can perform well with minimal attention paid to their class mechanic (Guardians) or specialize for passive rewards while ignoring their class mechanic (Warriors). Conversely, Ranger builds are like dancers in a mine-field if they want to avoid added dependence on their companions. Pet-based traits need to be re-aligned, with investment in Beastmastery the clear choice for pet-based play.

Taming Lions (and other dangerous hobbies)
Several traits can be combined or eliminated.

• Fortifying bond. The Ranger and pet together represent “one player’s worth of heroic effort”. This trait is now an automatic feature gained by all Rangers.
• Rending Attacks/Stability Training/Intimidation Training. These traits are combined into a single “Specialized Training” trait. Requiring multiple traits because you equip companions from two different breeds is excessive.
• Pet’s Prowess & Expertise Training. These traits are combined into a single master-tier Beastmastery trait. These traits favor different breeds. Combining them allows mix-&-match breeds with lower opportunity cost.

Stay Between The Lines. The Lines Are Your Friends.
The majority of pet-based traits should be found in the 5th trait line (Beastmaster).

• Empathic Bond. Becomes a master-tier Beastmastery trait, reducing the ‘trait tax’ associated with this crucial ability from 30 to 20.
• Carnivorous Appetite. Becomes a master-tier Beastmastery trait.
• Concentration/Shout Mastery. These traits swap places, gathering pet-traits in Beastmastery and shout-traits in Nature Magic.

Those Aren’t Holes… They’re Opportunities!
The above steps create several gaps in the Ranger trait array. These holes would need to be filled with new effects, hopefully enhancing the diversity and effectiveness of our weapons or utility skills. While this represents additional work before the process could be considered complete, its work that should bring the Ranger more in line with expected performance levels and increase competitive build diversity.

xXxOrcaxXx.9328:

SkiTz.4590:

This CDI is absolutely pointless when no devs are going to jump in and relay their thoughts on all this… already 8 pages worth of viable suggestions and not a single person on anet staff bothers to give feedback….

that tells me 2 things.
1 – they don’t give a kitten about rangers (we already know this to be true because of their utter disregard for class mechanics)
2 – No one at anet even plays rangers – probably also true when I saw on of the devs live stream talk about rangers and he basically said majority of this class doesn’t make any sense and has very little synergy.

Honestly, someone from anet staff please tell me how many hours they have played on a ranger?? does ANYONE on this dev team even know whats going?

This thread is threehundretmotherfartingfifty posts long and its been out for not even 24h! Keep ur poop together, there is just one person (Allie) mentoring this thread.

OK, I’ll keep my poop together, than, after 48 hours, if there is nothing said by anet team, than can i release my poop?

SkiTz.4590:

OK, I’ll keep my poop together, than, after 48 hours, if there is nothing said by anet team, than can i release my poop?

No.

Specific Game Mode: WvW

Proposal Overview

“Inactive” pets evade attacks.

Goal of Proposal

An active mechanic for the ranger to save their pet from incredible damage and cc in zerg warfare, especially in those “double-dodge” situations in which the player is concentrating on survival.

Proposal Functionality

Setting the pet to “Avoid Combat” allows the pet to constantly evade attacks, as long as it does not use skills.

Using F3, “Return to Me”, also allows the pet to constantly evade attacks as long as it does not use skills.

In either case, evasion comes to an end if the pet

• is told to attack a target using F1
• begins to use its F2 skill
• responds to a pet shout such as “Guard” or “Search and Rescue”
• is told to use Lick Wounds
• … or in other words, is doing anything other than following the ranger.

If the pet loses its evade state because of some action, and then it returns to being inactive, then it will regain its evade state.

If the ranger is in combat when they use F3 “Return to Me” or “Avoid Combat”, then pet skills F1, F2 and Guard should incur a short cooldown (perhaps 1 to 5s) before they can be activated (see associated risks)

Associated Risks

There should be a delay after putting the pet into its evade state for it to be able to attack again. The reason being, it should not be possible to abuse the evade mechanic to twitch evade an enemy attack only to immediately have the pet go on the offensive again. If the pet is told to evade, the player should have to commit the pet to being offline for a period in return for it surviving.

Notes

May also be useful in dungeons.

xallever.1874:

Zatoichi.1049:

So its been about 24 hours at at this point, 7 pages of proposals, and very little response (pratically none) to said proposals from devs. I was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly?) that devs would be active proponents in the advancement of the discussion in this forum. So far what im mostly seeing is people posting their own ideas and ignoring/bypassing the ideas of others. We honestly need some sort of moderation in here, motivation if you will, on the part of the devs, to move this thread in a direction of discussion, other wise by tommorow well be 20 pages in, floating in a sea of lost and forgotten proposals. Are the ideas good so far? are they way off base? What aspects of the proposals so far are peaking your intrest? More dev involvment please from here on out please.

This. +1

Otherwise, CDI or not…

They say you should never judge a person too harshly until you’ve walked a mile their shoes.

I think Allie has her hands full in just trying to juggle, organize and edit these “walls-of-text” suggestions of ours. This CDI has been up just a little over a day, so perhaps we can be a bit more patient.

Specific Game Mode
PVE
Proposal Overview
QoL pet improvements
Goal of Proposal
Improving pet functionality
Proposal Functionality

-Make pet stow available at all times, no dmg compensation required imo. This would be a great mechanic to save the pet for certain boss abilities & remove the annoyance that the pet represents at certain places(for example Jade Maw)

-Aggressive/Passive hotkey option

-Adding a new ranged dps pet, available in pve only. This is missing in my opinion. The governing attribute for devourers is toughness & vitality for the spiders if I recall correctly. I’d like to have a low health ranged pet with higher dps than spiders (10-15% stronger), for example a bird that bounces between the ranger and it’s target.

-Fixing f2 ability fumble + quicker execution of f2 abilities There is no reason why a jungle stalker cannot roar much faster. (shorter animation for it would be real good)

-Quicker reactions to F3 & maybe a speed boost that lasts until the pet is back at the user (maybe make it impossible to cancel, if it’s quick enough why not)

-Ascended Pet stats. Make all pets roughly 5-10% stronger in pve.

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Show pet information in the same format as the party window.

Goal of Proposal
Allow rangers to see boons and conditions on the pet.

Proposal Functionality
Display pet information in the same format as information in the party window so that the ranger can see what boons and conditions are on the pet at all times. Placement could be in its current location or in the same area as party members.

Associated Risks:
None. We should have been able to see this information from the start.

Specific Game Mode
WvW
Proposal Overview
Weapons

Goal of Proposal
Shortbow is the only full condi weapon that should be its focus.
Axe Offhand viablty

Proposal Functionality
Shortbow needs to go back to 1200 range, Nerf the power coeifichent into the ground so when ur not flanking u get some on hit on crit procs and thats it. (Split for spvp if necessary but for WvW its curently useless )
Shortbow 4 remove pet bleed fact and increase cripple duration.
Axe off hand 5 allow movement and nerf acordingly.
Another idea change to reflictive bubble cast at current position no dmg no retal apply vulnerblty on entering

Associated Risks
If axe 5 alowed movment and dodging without changes its OP. Shortbow might be so much fun ppl stop using longbow.

Specific Game Mode
PVE
Proposal Overview
QoL utility skill improvements

Proposal Functionality

-Reverse signet functionality. Active effects would work for the ranger by default & while traited the pets would benefit as well.
-The fire field duration provided by the flame trap is too short. I propose to change to trap’s fire field to last at least 8 seconds, to offset this change to cd to 30 seconds.
-The cooldown on Rampage as One is too long. I feel that most of the time the very long stability is not all that usefull in pve & this skill is just overall inferior to warrior’s elite signet. (warrior’s can benefit from the active effect 50% of the time & the passive effect is also good-ish)

Zatoichi.1049:

So its been about 24 hours at at this point, 7 pages of proposals, and very little response (pratically none) to said proposals from devs. I was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly?) that devs would be active proponents in the advancement of the discussion in this forum. So far what im mostly seeing is people posting their own ideas and ignoring/bypassing the ideas of others. We honestly need some sort of moderation in here, motivation if you will, on the part of the devs, to move this thread in a direction of discussion, other wise by tommorow well be 20 pages in, floating in a sea of lost and forgotten proposals. Are the ideas good so far? are they way off base? What aspects of the proposals so far are peaking your intrest? More dev involvment please from here on out please.

I agree. While I expected the first few hours to be filled with suggestions I thought we’d see more debate and discussion by this time.

Game Mode
PvE, but will apply to all of the gamemodes.

Proposal
I want to remove the RNG aspect of the Spirits aswell as making some minor improvments to them.

Goal of Proposal
Rework how the Spirits passive effects are triggered aswell as the fuctionality on some of them.

Proposal Functionality
Sun Spirit:
Give it a 100% chance to trigger it effect on a critical hit and if no critical hit occurs in 3(or 5) hits the effect trigger on the 3(or 5)th strike. With a 10sec cooldown.
More reliable trigger of the burning effect instead of relying on RNG based chance to proc.

Stone/Storm Spirit:
The on hit effect is removed, and replaced by a protection/swiftness AoE buff that triggers every 10 seconds. The durations of the boons staying the same as they are.
Quality of life change, aswell as removing the RNG aspect. While giving the ranger a good way to support their allies with speed/protection outside of combat.

Frost Spirit:
On hit effect is removed, and replaced with a constant 10% increase damage effect.
Since the effect, to my knowledge has no cooldown at the moment, it might aswell give a constant 5%-10%? increased damage all the time instead. Reference:
http://wiki.guildwars2.com/wiki/Frost_Spirit

Water Spirit:
On hit effect removed and replaced with a heal triggering every 5 seconds, and a condition is removed every 10 seconds for 60 seconds.
Currently, the water spirit proc effect heals for 4800 in a minute, which is pretty bad, doubling that should give the spirit the boost it needs, aswell as the added much needed condition removal.

Vigorous Spirits:
The increased chance to proc a spirits effect will be replaced by an increased boon/condi duration on the spirits effects instead.

Associated Risks
The changes to Sun/Storm and Stone wont bring much risk with them, but the change to Frost and Water could raise some risks with them. The damage buff being to high and all, or the heal/condi proccs on Water.

Specific Game Mode
PVE
Proposal Overview
Trait changes

Proposal Functionality

-Piercing arrows need to go. Maybe change bow auto attacks to pierce by default.

-Move Spotter to skirmishing. It just makes sense.

-The 5 target limit rule on boons make Fortifying bond too important. This is not good for variety.

Specific Game Mode
PvE (primary mode of play, changes should apply to all modes)

Proposal Overview
Move traps to the Wilderness Survival tree and swap condition damage & duration in the trait lines.

Goal of Proposal
Resolve poor synergy in trap builds between stats and trap purpose.

Proposal Functionality
Puts traps in a line that augments conditions, which are the primary purpose of traps. Gives trap builds condition duration instead of damage since not all traps are built for damage (frost, viper’s nest).

Associated Risks
Balance of traps with different stat allocations, overloading of the wilderness survival tree, underloading of skirmishing.

Ision.3207:

xallever.1874:

Zatoichi.1049:

So its been about 24 hours at at this point, 7 pages of proposals, and very little response (pratically none) to said proposals from devs. I was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly?) that devs would be active proponents in the advancement of the discussion in this forum. So far what im mostly seeing is people posting their own ideas and ignoring/bypassing the ideas of others. We honestly need some sort of moderation in here, motivation if you will, on the part of the devs, to move this thread in a direction of discussion, other wise by tommorow well be 20 pages in, floating in a sea of lost and forgotten proposals. Are the ideas good so far? are they way off base? What aspects of the proposals so far are peaking your intrest? More dev involvment please from here on out please.

This. +1

Otherwise, CDI or not…

They say you should never judge a person too harshly until you’ve walked a mile their shoes.

I think Allie has her hands full is just trying to juggle, organize and edit these “walls-of-text” suggestions of ours. This CDI has been up just a little over a day, so perhaps we can be a bit more patient.

I dont believe i am judging anyone, nor am i being harsh, by stating a fact. Simply, we have seen little to no response from the devs yet. Whether theymplanned to wait it out, to begin responding today or not, this must change. I am merely expressing my slight dissatisfaction of this lack thus far. Patience really inst the issue here, i just want what i believe was promised, a discussion involving both devs and players. I feel the need to mention this now, before we are 20 pages deep with no responses. Think of it as a simple call to action.

Specific Game Mode
PvE (primary mode of play, changes should apply to all modes)

Proposal Overview
Swap quickdraw and spotter.

Goal of Proposal
Move a bow-focused trait to the marksmanship line, and a crit-focused trait to the skirmishing line.

Proposal Functionality
Provides more cohesion between these two traits and the trees they’re in.

Associated Risks
Additional critical chance in a line that already offers crit as its focus, additional overloading of the marksmanship major trait slot.

Zatoichi.1049:

Ision.3207:

xallever.1874:

Zatoichi.1049:

So its been about 24 hours at at this point, 7 pages of proposals, and very little response (pratically none) to said proposals from devs. I was under the impression (perhaps incorrectly?) that devs would be active proponents in the advancement of the discussion in this forum. So far what im mostly seeing is people posting their own ideas and ignoring/bypassing the ideas of others. We honestly need some sort of moderation in here, motivation if you will, on the part of the devs, to move this thread in a direction of discussion, other wise by tommorow well be 20 pages in, floating in a sea of lost and forgotten proposals. Are the ideas good so far? are they way off base? What aspects of the proposals so far are peaking your intrest? More dev involvment please from here on out please.

This. +1

Otherwise, CDI or not…

They say you should never judge a person too harshly until you’ve walked a mile their shoes.

I think Allie has her hands full is just trying to juggle, organize and edit these “walls-of-text” suggestions of ours. This CDI has been up just a little over a day, so perhaps we can be a bit more patient.

I dont believe i am judging anyone, nor am i being harsh, by stating a fact. Simply, we have seen little to no response from the devs yet. Whether theymplanned to wait it out, to begin responding today or not, this must change. I am merely expressing my slight dissatisfaction of this lack thus far. Patience really inst the issue here, i just want what i believe was promised, a discussion involving both devs and players. I feel the need to mention this now, before we are 20 pages deep with no responses. Think of it as a simple call to action.

It’s around 9AM now in Seattle, be patient.

Zatoichi.1049:

I dont believe i am judging anyone, nor am i being harsh, by stating a fact. Simply, we have seen little to no response from the devs yet. Whether theymplanned to wait it out, to begin responding today or not, this must change. I am merely expressing my slight dissatisfaction of this lack thus far. Patience really inst the issue here, i just want what i believe was promised, a discussion involving both devs and players. I feel the need to mention this now, before we are 20 pages deep with no responses. Think of it as a simple call to action.

I think the lack of ArenaNet posts is a result of the thread being opened towards the end of the day which led to them not actually being in the office for most of the thread’s life so far. They basically opened it and then had 2-3 hours before they left the office for the day. They’ve only been back in the office for about an hour now, so I expect more interaction soon (once they have a chance to read through the suggestions so far).

Yeah, it’s too soon to have answers, but this kind of shows how high ranger hopes are on the results of this CDI. XD

Specific Game Mode
Mosty PvE

Proposal Overview/Goal of Proposal
Make Longbow viable for signet rangers, make signets viable for longbow ranger.

Proposal Functionality
Pretty simple, rearange or change the first traitline of the ranger. Remorceless, piecring arrow, eagle eye are important for a longbow ranger, as are signet of the beastmater, signet cds and might on signet use for a ranger focusing on mighstacking for his pet.
Being blocked out of a weapson choice, simply for trying to paly witht he class mechanic or vice versa should no be an issue.

Associated Risks
Straight forward, rearanging or chaning traits, or even moving them to utility skills (see fake elite skills for ranger) always go with a risk of breaking the class further if it isnt done with caution.

Game Mode : WvW

Proposal Overview
Improve the support of ranger into organized groups (10 to 20 people) by buffing its spirits

Goal of Proposal
Spirits have too low healt and they just blow up after a coiple of seconds into a fight so you can’t really give the entire 60 seconds duration buff

Proposal Functionality
The effect of spirtis are really usefull, specially the Stone Spirit wicht grants 4s Protection every ~ 6 seconds, the passive effect is awesome too, it makes an immobilizing and crippling AoE for 4 seconds, same with Water Spirit, chance to heal and waterfield on command, the other 3 spirits are great too. I’ve tried a full spirits build for WvW warband (20 players) and the effect are awesome, probably the best support build of the game, but after trying it on fight I noticed that my spirits couldn’t last longer than 10 seconds wich is only 1/6 of their duration..
The trait Vigorous Spirits is awesome for the Trigger Chance: 70% but useless with the Health Increase, even by adding an additional 100% health to your spirits they will blow up in 10 seconds. Spirits Unbound is another awesome trait and it’s another pillar of the spirit build. What should be changed is the survivability of spirits. I have two proposal:
1) Make them last shorter with longer CD but immune to damage and with no effect CD (I would say the effect last 20 seconds with a spirit recharge rate of 60-80 seconds, active effect can only trigger once).
2) Leave the effect like this but buff their survivability and make it scale with the amount of enemies
Spirit of Nature: Why does it revive 5 allies only? Make it like warbanner and revive 5 allies
Associated Risks
Making ranger an useful class?

Specific Game Mode
WvW; larger implications

Proposal Overview
Streamline the way Pet and Master interact

Goal of Proposal
The interaction between Pet and Master lacks clarity.

• Master helps Pet?
  • Master has skills to increase a Pet’s damage, and Pets have damaging F2s. But the Pet’s execution is messy and unspectacular, so this gameplay lacks reward and polish.
  • Master has heals for pet, but, this is ultimately hampered because health doesn’t scale very well. You either have no hope of healing the pet, or it’s no concern at all; it’s very rare you’ve hit the Goldilocks Damage Input that make this interaction feel both possible and needed.
• Pet helps Master?
  • Many Pet Skills do feature control, and Master’s ranged is pretty slow. But the pet’s skills are too weak individually, and the speed problem hamstrings the concept under a catch 22. (your pet needs your help in order to catch your opponent, so that it can help you catch your opponent.)
  • Pet buffing Master (like fury, or regen) is actually in a pretty good place, although it’s underutilized.

The result is Master and Pet opening up opportunities for eachother in some formless mush of buff and control spam, and neither of us are really capable of capitalizing on any of it.

Proposal Functionality
Pick one and polish it to a shine.
Master helps Pet, or Pet helps Master.
What I want out of a Pet and Master interaction is one where each participant’s part in the process is crystal clear. I get the desire to offer different ways to play with the pet, but in practice this has ended up confusing and bit on the boring side. Our interaction should have highs and lows, instead of a constant white noise that makes it hard to feel skillful or clutch.

Because I hate the Damage Division with all of my hate, I prefer ‘Pet helps Master.’

Associated Risks
Anytime you lose a player building option, it presents a risk factor that the people who were previously choosing it might miss it.
Another risk factor is that technical limitations ultimately limit how you polish your chosen interaction. So they might need to be designed around in order to really hammer home the effect you’re going for.

Specific Game Mode
PvP (PvX)

Proposal Overview
Change to Moment of Clarity (Trait)

Goal of Proposal
-To make the trait synergize better with a wider variety of builds and classes.
-To improve the Ranger’s Single target damage.
-To increase build diversity within the profession.

Proposal Functionality
Moment of Clarity You and your pet deal 20% more damage whilst the target is Stunned, Dazed or Knocked down.
Reasoning – As said in a previous post by another player of the ranger. There are only 3 skills that can interrupt on-call, Point Blank Shot, Concussion Shot and Hilt Bash. With the proposed changes in my other post (https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/5#post3684613) the number of on-call interrupts could possibly go up if pet skills could also go on our utility bar and the activation time on these skills reduced by a bit.
With the proposed change to MoC a player could forgo putting 30 points in Marksmanship for signets when they could easily deal 20% whilst a target is stunned or KDed. The trait would also synergize well with other classes that stun or knockdown, like Warriors, Mesmers, Engineers, Guardians, Eles and other Rangers.
The most important part though, would be the synergy with at least 2 families of pets; Canines and Swine.

Associated Risks
Rangers can chain CC from 4-6 seconds depending on what pets they take. Also, in combination with the changes I proposed here; https://forum-en.gw2archive.eu/forum/professions/balance/Collaborative-Development-Ranger-Profession/page/5#post3684613 , a ranger could really become the new AoE FOTM.

I’m willing to see how it plays out because the aim here is definitely to bring the Ranger to the point where they can say, “We have more viable builds now.”

SPECIFIC GAME MODE

PVE. I’m pretty sure the other modes will benefit as well.

Anet, sorry for the long line of text in advance, but there is NO WAY I can give comments about my favorite class without passing the 400 char limit. I tried!

PROPOSAL OVERVIEW
Improvements and changes to current Ranger weapon skills. I will make another post regarding traits, but I need to be focused on one subject at a time.

PROPOSAL FUNCTIONALITY

Greatsword:
1) Maul: Allow this to become a blast finisher. Not only does it make sense (animation wise), but also it will greatly improve ranger’s melee abilities, as they will be able to blast fields in close range. By increasing it’s cool down a few sec’s, it won’t become a balance issue.

2) Swoop: Fix animation bugs. One of them is that sometimes the ranger using swoop will stop mid animation and then do the leap. Also, we have this weird glitch where the eagle animation stays even after the skill is finished.

3) Counterattack: Allow players to control the counter. For example, at the moment at melee distance rangers will automatically counter attack. This can be an issue, since sometimes the player just wants to block a series of attacks. Similarly to how we can throw the sword, allow the player to control if they want to counter attack by adding a second function to the block.

4) Hilt Bash: The stun duration for this is too short. Please increase by a second at least.

Longbow:
1) Rapid Fire: This should be the long bow’s signature attack. Not only can it do with a faster startup animation, but a considerable amount of damage as well. Please make it so other players WANT to avoid this attack.

2) Hunter’s shot: One issue with this skill is that, if the ranger uses barrage, then HS, the stealth effect is completely negated. Since the amount of stealth time for this is so short, we can have it so the stealth is not removed even upon attacking.

3) Point Blank Shot: Allow rangers to charge this attack- for example, releasing the button rapidly will cause a stun, but if charged, it can have various “push” ranges depending on how long the button is held. Also, increase the damage considerably.

4) Barrage: Allow rangers to move while using barrage. This can be done easily by making the character shoot upwards while running. The location of the AOE will not move with the ranger though.

Shortbow:
1) Poison Volley: This attack is fairly weak, and has little to no use except for the moment you think your opponent will heal. Please improve this skill by increasing the duration of such poison and increasing it’s range a bit. I’m a bit over the fence on this skill.

2) Quick Shot: There is a glitch that sticks the character in place while doing the skill. It has gotten me killed more often than I would like to admit.

3) Concussion Shot: Increase stun duration by .5 seconds or just 1 second.

Sword:
1) Slash, Kick, Pounce: Love the animation, but hate the stickiness. I agree that expert players can overcome this by removing the auto-attack function on this, but I believe making this ability be overridden by dodge will make all the difference.

2) Hornet Sting: Reverse the process- Make the first leap towards the enemy and the second leap away from the enemy. Makes more sense since rangers want to HIT and RUN.

Axe:
1) Ricochet: Increase the damage on this a bit.

2) Splitblade: Increase the bleed stacks by one or two stacks to make it more useful.

3) Winter’s bite: Increase chill duration a bit.

2) Whirling Defense: Allow rangers to move while doing this skill. Other classes can do it well, why does ranger has to stay grounded?

Torch:
1) Throw Torch: unfortunately, this is one petty skill. It would be nice to see this transformed into something better, although I’m not sure.

1) Throw Torch: Make this similar to the warriors fire field with the bow in range and duration. It would give rangers the ability to create might fields and other players will definitely have them more welcomed.

ASSOCIATED RISKS
Last comments for the weapon changes: Would these changes make rangers dangerous? Yes, it would. However, isn’t that the point? Every class should be a threat to other classes, and rangers are no exception. Without calling it OP right away, isn’t it the point that all classes should be impressive in their own right? Rangers will be more accepted into dungeons and WVW, and less of a draw back to parties. I’ll do traits later, but for now, thanks ANET.

Specific Game Mode
PvE, but also applites to WvW as we use the same setups.

Proposal Overview
Traits, weapons and skills changes.

Goal of Proposal
Making ranger more viable.

Proposal Functionality
First of all, trait lines. Power with precision, toughness with critical damage, condition damage with condition duration, vitality with healing power and bood duration with pet attribute bonus.

Now the functionality.
In my opinion spirits should work as necromancer minnions, they should follow on default and disappear when killed, not on 60 seconds. Apart from water and sun spirit, rest are the mobile buff stations. You can kill a spirit but you can’t deal with warrior banner, so maybe make them unkillable with buffs like warriors give?
I would also change the spirit of nature skill to full party heal in a range of 1500 instead of reviving.

Traps – throwable at default with the range increase trait. Muddy terrain is on 900, why not the traps? Combo field on every trap is nice idea, but how would it work with spike one?

Weapons:
Shortbow should be on 1200 range. And sorry, but in my opinion lowering longbow and speargun (skills on travel range) damage when player is closer is just stupid.
I still need to click 1st skill on LB range 1200+.

And please change the drake running animation ;] .

And maybe I’m beeing stupid right now, but give the pet an option to follow stealthed thief. If I mark him and order pet to attack, it will go after him up to hell. Hit from pet means I can see the cloacked kitten.That would require switching of the range pet can go.

Associated Risks
Why not to risk? It’s just a game .

mtpelion.4562:

Zatoichi.1049:

I dont believe i am judging anyone, nor am i being harsh, by stating a fact. Simply, we have seen little to no response from the devs yet. Whether theymplanned to wait it out, to begin responding today or not, this must change. I am merely expressing my slight dissatisfaction of this lack thus far. Patience really inst the issue here, i just want what i believe was promised, a discussion involving both devs and players. I feel the need to mention this now, before we are 20 pages deep with no responses. Think of it as a simple call to action.

I think the lack of ArenaNet posts is a result of the thread being opened towards the end of the day which led to them not actually being in the office for most of the thread’s life so far. They basically opened it and then had 2-3 hours before they left the office for the day. They’ve only been back in the office for about an hour now, so I expect more interaction soon (once they have a chance to read through the suggestions so far).

Well thats good to know, in a sort of off putting way. But i mean, is it too much to ask to get 1 or 2 “off the clock” responses? would love to see more than one dev in here today.

Aioros.4862:

Yeah, it’s too soon to have answers, but this kind of shows how high ranger hopes are on the results of this CDI. XD

So true, so true

Killsmith.8169:

Specific Game Mode
PvX

Proposal Overview
Show pet information in the same format as the party window.

Goal of Proposal
Allow rangers to see boons and conditions on the pet.

Proposal Functionality
Display pet information in the same format as information in the party window so that the ranger can see what boons and conditions are on the pet at all times. Placement could be in its current location or in the same area as party members.

Associated Risks:
None. We should have been able to see this information from the start.

There is one major associated risk: New players. I believe this is the reason it hasn’t been implemented by now. This game is very careful to come off as open and easy, not trying to overwhelm a new player.

With that said though, if you want a ranger to be competent and care about their pet, then this needs to happen. By design, a ranger’s pet is as important to the ranger as the weapon it wields.

To extend this idea, it would be so very nice if we could tell if our pet is dead or low on health. When a pet dies, it’s health bar shows it at 2hp. That’s okay, because it’s consistent and you know, hey, it’s dead. But, sometimes a dead pet will be partly revived and be shown much larger health, and you won’t know if it’s alive unless you look at the pet. Upon looking at the pet in the frantic fray of battle, you notice its health bar is green. But is it dark green, or normal green? Dark green means dead.

Solution: Change the “dead” pet health color to red, like allies who are in a downed state. Pretty please.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Change Guard! to not be ground-targeted, remove its stealth component, and reduce protection duration. Change Protect Me! to grant pet protection, only redirect a portion of damage to the pet, and reduce its cooldown.

Goal of Proposal
Make these two shouts more desirable as utility skills, when compared with other ranger utilities. Guard! can be used to help the pet’s survivability, while Protect Me! will be changed to no longer be a death sentence for the pet.

Proposal Functionality
Guard! fulfills its roll of being the low cooldown survivability shout for the pet, but the ground targeting forces the pet to stop attacking and reset its AI. The stealth provides little utility, so removing it should help in balancing.

Protect Me! is currently used as a poor man’s block, but is basically a death sentence for everything it’s useful for, sacrificing the ranger’s DPS and utility. These changes will hopefully make the skill more desirable.

Associated Risks
Synergy with Nature’s Voice making these skills extremely powerful, Protect Me! is a stun breaker which can’t be on too low of a cooldown.

Specific Game Mode
WvW(PvX)

Proposal Overview
Traits

Goal of Proposal
There are currently alot

Proposal Functionality
So most Importantly 5 point in beastmaster its rly bad pls change
All minor traits in the marksmaship line need GM trait to be usefull and then only for PvE. I would suggest merging them in to the 25 one or GM trait itself. Or just adding a cooldown.
The Axe trait skirmishing 9 Is kinda boring and weak. Id like to see extra bounces instead.
All pet related traits not in BM line theres just to many and they all buff your pet never the pet buffs you. Id like to see these merged moved buffed etc. Not all of them but currently theres to many and to spread out
Also more Condi removel

Associated Risks:
Merging of pet traits could lead to BM builds where the pet is to effective.

Zatoichi.1049:

Aioros.4862:

Yeah, it’s too soon to have answers, but this kind of shows how high ranger hopes are on the results of this CDI. XD

So true, so true

I think you’re confusing “high hopes” with “desperation”.

Most of these proposals amount to beating our heads against the wall for a year or more now, but trotting them out one last time in the belief that maybe we’ll see a little developer cogitation this go-round.

Our posts will all get read. I believe that. That’s what CDIs are all about. But this topic in particular deserves a little bit of feedback.

The day is young and I don’t expect responses for another few hours, but I’m already a bit disappointed that the Primer for the discussion is all of about 3 sentences describing a philosophical goal for Rangers that is almost entirely untrue in reality. I’m disappointed that one of the few responses we have seen amounts to an Open Admission that they’ve had their fingers in their ears about Ranger concerns since approximately forever.

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ranger Design Philosophy: Please keep this in mind when posting feedback.
The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

I just need to ask, why the complete shift in design philosophy and the complete exclusion of the archer aspect all of a sudden?

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.

WvW

Ferocity on Spotter

For Group Play is spotter really important and sometimes the only way to find a Group for dungeons.
But with the coming Critical Damage Changes it would be the Chance for ranger to be more important in Group Play outside the Spirits.
I dont know how the new formula will be but what about +150 Ferocity on Spotter?

There is no risk when the balancer add a balanced amount of ferocity to spotter.
I would suggest a Maximum of 5% crit dmg?

Aveneo.2068:

Allie Murdock.8152:

Ranger Design Philosophy: Please keep this in mind when posting feedback.
The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

I just need to ask, why the complete shift in design philosophy and the complete exclusion of the archer aspect all of a sudden?

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.

Precisely.

No idea what happened to the ranger profession in GW2. It was very promising. I myself have 3 maxed out rangers, which serve me in PvE and PvP. Although I’ve always played a ranger class in MMOs, I feel it has become somewhat misunderstood here. Just like you said, the philosophy has shifted from a nature driven master of bow with a pet companion to something… broken.
Hope this thread will have it fixed in the nearest future.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Change of the skill [“Search and Rescue”], because since the update of reviving only downed players at a low speed, it has been pretty much abandoned from builds.

Goal of Proposal
Making [“Search and Rescue”] a more useful ability in some parts of PvE and WvW environment.

Proposal Functionality
[“Search and Rescue”] got a really hard, but actually needed nerf a long time ago. The change I am proposing changes the functionality of this skill a bit, but it certainly needs a rework.

[“Search and Rescue”]: Shout. The pet moves to the nearest downed target and roars. (In case of some pets maybe another word) The roar restores 3000 + (1 * Healing power) Health of downed player in a radius of 900 Units around the pet.
Number of targets: 5
Cooldown 40 seconds.
Use time 1 second.

This gives the skill a more party/ large encounter relevant meaning. At the moment the skill takes away the damage your pet normally deals and only slowly revives one target. The new one instead wouldn’t even nearly fully ressurrect a target, but gives every downed player a small health blast, that might give him just the few seconds he needs to get his skill that saves him. Also it wouldn’t make rangers thing “If I take this skill, my dps will heavily suffer”, since the pet only has to shout and then can go back to attacking.
It also makes the ranger a bit more valuable in large scale encounter as for example the worm or tequatl. The ranger is and should stay a more single target damage, but a boost (by other players feelable) in team playability should help him along the lines.

Associated Risks
If the aoe Healing is too high it would easily be way too strong, and if it is too low, it would be utterly useless. The cooldown should be between 40-50 seconds, because noone is downed that long and making it more, would render it useless again.

Nike.2631:

I’m disappointed that one of the few responses we have seen amounts to an Open Admission that they’ve had their fingers in their ears about Ranger concerns since approximately forever.

In addititon to that I will sum up my philosophy about the ranger:
When I created my ranger back in the first days of GW2, I was expecting an archer.
I am dissapointed because the ranger is the only class who suffers from its unique skill, the pets. Furthermore the ranged combat is in a very bad spot in GW2. These are the main reasons why I am not satified with the current ranger class.
My goal is to make the pets optional and increase the effectiveness of ranged combat.

Specific Gameplay Mode: WvW

Proposed Overview: Overhaul pet attacks. Each pet gets 1 to 4 attacks, assigned to the f1, f2, f3, and f4 keys.

Goal of Proposal: Eliminate the rangers dependence on questionable AI without losing the flavor or the ranger.

proposed functionality: Give each pet predetermined attacks. Assign these attacks to the function keys (instant cast). They pet does not otherwise attack. This allows the ranger to better control the skills the pet uses and increases the responsiveness of the pet. Additionally, because the pet skills are now active, it removes the passive nature of the rangers attack. Other skills can be balanced accordingly.

Associated Risks: Pets won’t tank for the ranger.

Like you, I chose the class simply to use a bow. I’ve used a bow/xbow in every MMO I’ve played for 25 years. Not always as a Ranger mind you, but most modern MMO’s equate the Ranger to the woodland archer model.

I personally don’t mind the pet. I think if it actually worked and the controls were responsive it would be a great addition to the class. But I am annoyed at the miserable state they’re in and how they’re effectively 100% useless in WvW (the game mode I play 99% of the time). I also don’t like how ANet has said they don’t want to give us more control of the pet because it would be too ‘off-putting’ for new players. I don’t buy this because I had more keybinds in WoW for my Hunter’s pet than I have keybinds for my entire class in GW2. I’m also not sure there’s a more off-putting mechanic in this entire game than the Ranger’s 1h sword #1 skill.

If ANet can’t get the pet functional than they need to tell us so we can either put forward suggestions to work around the issues it has or simply wave the white flag of defeat and work on ideas to phase it out.

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

Allie Murdock.8152:

The Ranger is a resilient profession that excels at skirmishing by drawing from nature to support themselves as well as their allies. Alongside their pet, they have some of the best single target and sustained damage that will whittle their opponents down.

Lets take this point by point.

A Resilient Profession. The Ranger is a medium armor, medium hit point profession with poor native condition removal/conversion and with a major portion of its functionality partitioned into the hands of a flawed AI where it can be destroyed independently. They’re maybe not as bad off as Elementalists, but the reality is still they are bad at one of the things the Developers think they’re good at. Yes, Rangers can — though MASSIVE trait investment — cover these flaws in a few highly specialized builds, but as a default position for the profession as a whole this statement is so untrue as to be ludicrous.

Excellence in Skirmishing. If “skirmish” means something along the lines of “mobile conflict from range” …nobody is good at it. The underlying damage co-efficients for ranged attacks are brutally punitive and doubly abusive considering most melee attacks also cleave, while Rangers have to trait for piercing. Ranger’s have modest access to knockbacks, immobilizes, cripples, and swiftness — all completely overshadowed by melee-oriented opponents’ easy access to gap closers and CC removal/immunity. And when the fight does inevitably turn to melee, the Ranger’s ability to reestablish position is limited at best, hampered by poor counters to the CC melee-based professions routinely employ to ensure their attacks land.

Supporting Themselves and Their Allies. This may come as a surprise to anyone other than most people who play the game, but Rangers are not considered an amazing Support class. While Spotter, Frost Spirit, and some shared Fury skills are welcome contributions in the one-dimension world of “More DPS”, Ranger Support tends towards inadequate magnitude, long cooldowns, or effective ranges that directly conflict with their role as skirmishers.

Alongside their Pet. Most of the time our Pets simply are NOT along side us – They’re either throwing themselves into melee like maniacs or standing like statues waiting for death to come to them. And they don’t have to wait long, because the content designers’ first and final solution to creating challenge is splashing the landscape with mega-damage red circles that pets categorically fail to respond to.

The best single target and sustained damage. This is probably true, and yet… So what? Success in nearly all encounters hinges on AoE damage or spikes. “Sustained damage” is the “I have nothing better to offer” form of damage ALL professions deliver when they aren’t doing something USEFUL. Being good at standing there hacking on a billion HP World Boss is not something to be proud of. With this statement the Ranger has been defined as the ‘supreme master of mediocrity’.

Lets Whittle our Opponents! The final piece of the philosophy neatly sums up everything that is WRONG with the Ranger profession – a class that must employ mediocre damage to slowly take tiny cuts out of their opponents, while leveraging mediocre survivability, exerting mediocre positional control, contributing mediocre support skills, and saddled with a less than mediocre class mechanic.

The Real Outcome. Its not that the final result is unplayable. You can still go and indulge in basic abnegation out on the landscape. Its that that Rangers are boring and dull, responding poorly to the slightest difficulty when compared to other professions.

Like anyone who played GW1, I chose a Ranger for the bows.

Here, take a look: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_ranger_skills
I challenge anyone to read that list and come back with “Ranger isn’t about bows”.

If they really wanted to move away from bows, then they should have given this class a different name because this universe already has a Ranger, and this guy ain’kitten

This is just the simpliest and most obvious suggestion to make

In most MMOs Ranger – > classic “archer” archetype

in gw2 – rangers have one of the worst ranged DPS in the entire game.

Developers, please give me a logical reason as to why the alleged “unparalled archer” has one of the most laughable range DPS in the game?

Eles outdps rangers in range and more versatility(staff >>>>LB)
Warrior rifle and LB deal more damage than ranger. Rangers don’t even have the strongest longbow damage…. what on earth is this?? seriously? you let warriors do better DPS at ranged attacks? I just don’t…. facepalm…

Engineer rifle, pistols, necro staff have better dps and versatlity
guardians have a ton of utlity on their staff + wave of wrath that is the ultimate tagging weapon

Rangers suck at range, and horribly. Not like they are 2nd or 3rd best range dps class, they are one of the worst. They offer absolutely nothing. useful other than sitting back at 1500 range like a coward and spamming 1.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Make special buffs persist through pet swaps.

Goal of Proposal
Increase the effectiveness of these special buffs in certain edge cases, such as when the pet must be swapped for survival and in some clever swap uses (like chaining CC to get MoC procs, which are lost for the pet each swap).

Proposal Functionality
Rampage as One, Signet actives, and MoC procs will persist to the new pet when they’re swapped. Normal buffs (might, swiftness, etc) will continue to be erased for balance purposes and potential abuse prevention.

Associated Risks
Low risk of impact, this is mostly a quality of life thing for having to swap to keep the pet alive and to eke out a little more dps with clever swapping strategies.

mtpelion.4562:

Like anyone who played GW1, I chose a Ranger for the bows.

Here, take a look: http://wiki.guildwars.com/wiki/List_of_ranger_skills
I challenge anyone to read that list and come back with “Ranger isn’t about bows”.

If they really wanted to move away from bows, then they should have given this class a different name because this universe already has a Ranger, and this guy ain’kitten

the difference in the amount of viable skills that we had in GW1 was so much fun… in GW2…. lol, thats all i got

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Add condition removal to shouts through a new trait.

Goal of Proposal
Increase the desirability of shouts to rangers and add access to condition cleansing.

Proposal Functionality
Add a new master-tier trait to remove one condition from the pet and ranger when shouting, or a grandmaster-tier trait to remove one condition from allies in range (maybe to replace current nature’s voice). This trait would likely fit best in wilderness survival or beastmastery.

Associated Risks
Synergy with nature’s voice making shouts too powerful, especially in pvp.

Game Mode: PvE/ WvW
PART III

Proposal Overview
Improval of the Pet Skills, further Details about Symbiosis Skills/ Pet Combos
Adding more new Pets:
Gryphons, Dolphins, Phoenix’, Basilisks, Tarantulas, Lions, Crocodiles, Tigers, Panda Bears, Crabs (Lurkers), Rats, Rhinos, Armadillos, Turtles, Monkeys to name a few options

Goal of Proposal
Making each Pet more unique and important for Build Diversity and a better integral part of the Ranger Class in regard of the Combat System as also while being outside of Combat Showing only some examples.

Proposal Functionality

Associated Ricks
Could make Pets too important as build defining mechanic, but its a balacing Thing only of the Symbiosis SKilsl and the Pet Combos

Nike.2631:

ARENANET’S RANGER DESIGN PHILOSOPHY:
THE BAD, THE UGLY, AND THE PETS

snip

Devs, please read and re-read Nike’s post. It’s towards the bottom of page 8.

Specific Game Mode
PvE

Proposal Overview
Increase the time available to activate Monarch’s Leap.

Goal of Proposal
Allow use of one or two skills between the activation of Hornet’s Sting and Monarch’s leap. Currently ML deactivates after 2.5 seconds, which is about the same time to use just one skill between animation times, casting times, and latency, thus there’s little to no opportunity to use this skill as anything other than an immediate reactivation.

Proposal Functionality
Increase the deactivation time of Monarch’s Leap to 5 seconds to allow the casting of one to two skills between casting Hornet’s Sting and ML.

Associated Risks
Low risk – quality of life improvement. Small risk in being able to hold a gap closer for longer than before, especially in pvp.

SkiTz.4590:

This CDI is absolutely pointless when no devs are going to jump in and relay their thoughts on all this… already 8 pages worth of viable suggestions and not a single person on anet staff bothers to give feedback….

that tells me 2 things.
1 – they don’t give a kitten about rangers (we already know this to be true because of their utter disregard for class mechanics)
2 – No one at anet even plays rangers – probably also true when I saw on of the devs live stream talk about rangers and he basically said majority of this class doesn’t make any sense and has very little synergy.

Honestly, someone from anet staff please tell me how many hours they have played on a ranger?? does ANYONE on this dev team even know whats going?

I used to think anet didn’t play rangers until I did fractals with a ranger that popped his red tag at the end of the run, not saying he knew how to play it though

ok, so i post it here again. its just my mind and some ideas for weapons how i would like the gameplay on them

area of game i play most and stats:
since release i only play tpvp in decent teams, my main profession is the ranger and the second profession is the guardian. i played 4121 tournament games, 2398 with ranger and 1668 with guardian. at all i have 3456 pvp games on ranger, my first build was trapper ranger pretty fast after the beta, then beastmaster ranger and now the spirit ranger. my pvp stats: i was rank 85 on qualipoint ladder, rank ~15 in the teamque ladder and rank "somewhere" in the mighty soloq ladder

my feedback:

weapon skills:

longbow:

the weapon skills itself, not only the damage feels rly bad.
the main problem when you run longbow is the survive. when enemy players decide to attack you, you have rly low survive and cant rly do dmg in this time.
i think the longbow rly need a skill rework, not only dmg changes.

skill1: always same decent dmg
skill2: 1 arrow shot with much dmg, if attack in stealth more dmg, in stealth from behind it also daze
skill3: same like now but combinate it with skill 4 (but just a short range knock) and give swiftness to player aswell
skill4: new skill: press first time huge dodge backwards, press again go in stealth and blind narly enemys with blindfield (animation is throw a smoke granade on rangers postion)
skill5: you can run when cast barrage, it fires 5 arrows with decent dmg, 1 arrow to your target and 4 arrows to nearly enemys. the target get cripled. if you do this skill in stealth the target get root

if you play longbow ranger, in my mind it should be something like backstab thief gameplay

longsword:

this weapon also have to less survive, to slow and easy to see attack animations (maul) and well, it dont feels like a ranger weapon atm, more like a slow warrior weapon.
i think this weapon should feel like medieval longsword fighting, so it should feel fast like this :P
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mjT4JepA-Vc
so i think this also need a skill rework and not only dmg changes.

skill1: should be same, but a bit faster
skill2: same animation like maul, but a bit faster and without bear animation.
this skill have rly high dmg and is blast finisher.
skill3: step sideward (dodge) and attack with decent dmg
skill4: block like now arrows and melee, if block melee it knocks the enemy down with a faster animation then atm and decent dmg. if you press the skill twice then you do the skill swoop like it is now in the game but with cripple if it hits in front. if it hits behind it knocks the enemy.
skill5: step sideward (dodge) and daze, so its like the old skill but with dodge. but it needs more range to use it effective when you whant interrupt enemeys

shortbow:

i think its in a good place right now,
but if you compare elexier cannon on engi, this one can stack more bleeding on auto attack without need to attack from behind, just saying

main hand axe:

the auto attack of this one need a improve,
the rest is pretty good

dagger:

is fine in my mind

sword:

is fine in my mind,
maybe the auto attack need some improve

off hand axe:

skill4: is fine
skill5: is fine, but there should a option to active this skill twice.
activate this skill first its the actual effect, press the skill again it should knock the enemy back and blast finish, or maybe only blast finish. but there should be a option to press this skill 2 times, because theres much situations you have to interrupt your own skill if enemys go melee vs you.

well thats my mind on weapons atm.
maybe there are some good ideas to pick out.